Blood music [short story]

Vergil Ulam is a brilliant but unorthodox researcher working to develop biochips — the next quantum leap in computer technology, using the complexities of cellular structure (notably DNA) as a means of information processing. But Vergil goes several steps further, and soon has produced intelligent clumps of cellular material, able to outperform rats in laboratory tests. In doing so, he has exceeded, without authorization, guidelines laid down for genetic research, and when he is found out he loses his job and is told to destroy his experimental material. Determined to salvage something, he injects himself with part of the culture — intending to retrieve it later — and walks out of the laboratory carrying within him the seed that will develop far beyond the limits of his brilliant but blinkered imagination...

Blood Music is a short story originally published in the June 1983 issue of Analog and the winner of both the 1983 Nebula and 1984 Hugo awards for Best Novelette. View Less