Richard Garriott, a video game designer, hitched a ride to the International Space Station with the Russians earlier this week. He brought with him a hard drive containing the digitized DNA sequences of both celebrities (including Stephen Colbert and a Playboy model) and ordinary schmucks. The idea is that, in the event of some planetary calamity that wipes out the human race, a “backup copy” of human genetic information will be kept safe in orbit.
Of course, nobody asked me for any of my DNA. Which is too bad, because I’m having a lot of fun imagining aliens trying to recreate me from scratch:
NARG: Hey, Zerl, c’mere and look at this.
ZERL: What is it?
NARG: Come here and look at the specimen in Vat 42. Does that look right to you?
ZERL: Hmm, it is scrawnier than the others. Are you sure you didn’t get the sequence wrong?
NARG: No, I checked that. It’s the exact same sequence that we found in that primitive archive.
ZERL: Strange. Well, let it mature and then stick it in the cage with that oddly proportioned female. It might cheer her up.
NARG: Can’t we just eat its brains? I mean, look at that ginormous head.
ZERL: A tempting thought. Perhaps later, after the female grows tired of it.
