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My NaNoWriMo novel this year will be about the illegal distribution of a miraculous cure-all, a panacea that uses nanotechnology to essentially reboot you from a clean DNA set. (Don't sweat the science, this will be more Douglas Adams than Michael Crichton) It will get spread without warning, and I want to use quick panaches of people waking up healed.
I need those people. Sure, I could make them all up, pull names from a phone booth or one of the online name generators, but why do that when there are so many bizarre characters right here?
So, line up. Who wants to get healed in my book? Maladies can be real or fictional, name versions are used at your discretion.
[ October 16, 2003, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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I should mention - if you want to keep your names private, feel free to e-mail me. I'll respect all confidences and show you how I use your name before I post it anywhere. Some will be panaches, some will be mentions as part of a group, who knows? Last year's book had a character named Slash Bowles...
Personal situations may be edited for amusement value Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I'm still trying to decide which is funnier, Kat's name or Dan's "Delusions of Glandure". Both elicited a snort from me.
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Nick Mayo. My right ankle is pretty messed up because of all the time I idiotically tried to skateboard in my Middle School years. Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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Nick Mayo is a great "funny character with disease" name. Mayo just lends itself so nicely to comedy.
How about Kira Apple? Apple's a GREAT last name! and I can have something like...sensitive ears! That whenever I fly on airplanes I have clogged ears for days afterwards! ANd then i fly on an airplane after the cure and i am so happy to not be completely incapacitated by bad earness that I hijack the plane to the Bahamas!
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Comedian rushes on the stage. "Doctor, Doctor. It hurts whenever I do this...oh wait.. no it doesn't. Gee. This isn't funny anymore."
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CEOs of pharmeceutical companies will all commit suicide by jumping out of their top-floor-office windows.
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The book will be about a group of scientists who discover this cure and are split on whether to release it or not. The son of the scientist most against spreading it early will get ahold of it and add it to a shampoo formula where he works. Then I get to let him deal with involuntarily imposed health, and the effects this has on society. Pharmaceutical companies get pissed, supermodels wake up with their original breasts, hysterectomies get reversed, there's the overpopulation problem, etc. And lawsuits. Lots and lots of lawsuits.
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I know it's your real name, Nick. That doesn't change the fact that it lends itself to comedy quite nicely. So does mine! Come on! APPLE?
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So basically, your miraculous cure-all doesn't "cure everything" so much as expell all unnatural things from the body? So would people not be able to wear contact lenses? Hearing aids? Braces? Posts: 3516 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Toretha Powers, could you make my tailbone go at the right angle? (this problem is called coxidia, but I don't think I spell it right, since I've never seen it written and the doctor only said the word twice, then ingored me)
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Noemon, I think it is one of her real names. I always think of her delightful "P" last name, but I've seen Zamboni before/
But I rolled with "Grey Poupon's" jaundice.
Chris, call me what you well. I need the following fixed, ASAP:
Hearing loss Tone deafness Incompetant aortic valve (cadaver replacement x 2) Dilated aorta (now a bionic replacement part!) Flat feet Hammertoes Depression
(hey, you'd be depressed, too, if you had my body to deal with )
Keep the white streak at the temple, little freckle at base of right pinky, and laugh lines at the corners of the eyes. They're my beauty marks. Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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*hugs CT very, very carefully* You're a treasure.
*grin* KatharinaZamboni is my AIM handle. However, I no longer have a computer with AIM, so it languishes and languishes.
It came from an e-mail made up a million years ago. I hate having numbers in addresses, so last names are better. The first name was Francesca (after my Latin prof), but I wanted a last name that would balance out the girly and the frilly of Francesca, and Zamboni is a rough, bloody embodiment of masculinity contained in what is inherently a very, very funny word.
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And I have asthma. If you are so inclined, you can have me throw my inhaler into a lake, and then run five laps around it.
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Amy Powers - She has a severe skin problem that has rendered her an ugly and embittered feminist. She wrote a book about how men do not take women seriously. She has become very powerful, an awed icon of the feminist movement who, despite being a victim of a skin disease, has overcome the odds and is now a bitchy CEO of a major corporation.
Take away the skin problem and she is stunning. Also, she didn't wear a bra when she was young, so gravity really did take its toll on her. When she is healed of all ailments, she will have quite a figure.
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One interesting comparison. A few weeks ago the History Channel was running a special on Quacks, Doctors, and Miracle Men.
I watched them talk about the first man to find a cure for Syphillus. He fathered the modern pharmacuetical industry. He created the first "Silver Bullet" pill.
He died hated and broke.
It seems his cure for Syphillus angered a bunch of people--the Quacks selling medicines that did not work, the Moralists who saw Syphillus as God's judgement on the wicked, and the Charities and Rest Homes that gathered great amounts of money to take care of sick Syphilillu patients.
Add to that his instructions on how to use the medication (which contained a small amount of an Arsenic compound, so was deadly in larger doses) and on whom to use it for (patients in the early stages of the disease, not those who were greatly afflicted) were ignored by doctors who thought they knew all the answers, and ended up with dead patients.
He was hounded, sued, and verbally beaten over and over again.
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quote:It seems his cure for Syphillus angered a bunch of people--the Quacks selling medicines that did not work, the Moralists who saw Syphillus as God's judgement on the wicked, and the Charities and Rest Homes that gathered great amounts of money to take care of sick Syphilillu patients.
Medicine has been conflicted with various forms of morality since the beginning. Strange and sad.
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Leonide - think of it more like how Alvin changed Arthur Stuart, from the dna out. It will - and keep in mind this is silly fiction - examine your dna, compare it to a known "good" set, and then basically reset you. Any ailments you've acquired since birth will get overwritten, any genetic problems will get fixed. I'll get into a few specifics (birth control still works, but hysterectomies and vasectomies will grow back; breast implants won't be expelled but plastic surgery will be erased, it may even regrow missing limbs, haven't decided yet) but for the most part if science and narrative fiction disagree, I'll be going with the fiction. Haven't decided yet about the trickier questions. If you have a donated kidney and yours grows back, what happens to the old one? Whatif you gave this to a chimp, who matches our dna up to 99%? Things like that.
[ October 16, 2003, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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Kira Marx (or Gardner – my maiden name). I would love to have my PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) cured so that I could easily have many babies. I’m also Rh-negative and would prefer not to be, again because of the baby issue (I’m married to an Rh-positive and have to take an Rh inhibitor after every pregnancy so that my body doesn’t reject an Rh-positive baby).
Andrew Marx is colorblind and would love a cure. He always wanted to join the air force, which is not a possibility if you’re colorblind. Or if you’re 6’5’’, which he is.
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quote:She has a severe skin problem that has rendered her an ugly and embittered feminist.
I'm not sure I like the implication - feminists object to a world of being judged solely on their aesthetic qualities because they are too ugly to succeed in it?
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I'd also like to point out that I know of no other forum where so many people are comfortable releasing their real names. I love this place...
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katherina - IMO, that statement doesn't imply that all feminists have the same core origin, only that that's what caused this one. I'm overweight because I'm too lazy to exercise, but that doesn't mean I think all fat people are lazy.
[ October 16, 2003, 12:38 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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Olivia Fowler, polycystic kidney disease. I have it, though it has not affected my health yet. My mom has had a kidney transplant, and my father died from heart complications resulting from the disease and extended hemo dialysis. Nasty stuff.
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Well, I'm assuming that these nanotech machines have been programmed with someone's idea of "clean DNA". So, let's assume (as many do) that homosexuality is a genetically rooted phenomenon. Let's assume that your nanotech programmer feels (as many do) that it is an undesirable genetic anomaly. So, if he programmed the nanotechs to eradicate whatever genetic component makes me gay, I could very well wake up straight. That would certainly make my life rather chaotic.
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Rivka Katzin. Scoliosis (mild), rheumatoid arthritis (juvenile onset), plethora of respiratory allergies which cause a chronic cough, family tendency to type II diabetes.
[Edit: oh! Almost forgot! Very nearsighted. Make me not need glasses or contacts anymore, please. ]
If these nanobots are comparing to a SINGLE set of DNA (which is the simplest scenario), then not only could it change sexual preference (assuming that is genetic), but a whole lot of other things.
Gender. Skin color. Eye and hair color. Height. Handedness.
And you can't just have it skip X/Y chromosomes, not if you want it to fix color-blindness, hemophilia, etc.
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Dana Williams – asthma, eyesight so bad I’m ineligible for lasiks, and a mild tremor in my left arm and leg. Also I can’t straighten my left elbow fully after shattering it in seventh grade.
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