Young girl PuppyBug transforms The Holy Sentence

at the Global Cosmological Forum 20XX

Audio-recording of the pilot sketch

Pilot sketch text

(Published courtesy of the radio The Backbone of Europe)

“Hello, dear listeners! We are reporting to you directly from The Palace of The Global Cosmological Forum in Da Voss. We await the long-announced presentation of the beautiful and wonderful Clare Overlie.

As you all know, she is a twelve-year-old dark-haired girl, a thinker philosopher of a great level, and almost supernatural abilities manifest in her in practically everything. Her parents are incredibly wealthy; her father is a business partner and a close friend a well-known philanthropic billionaire Willi Door. Many Czechs know this young girl better by her Czech nickname “Bousheek”. She calls herself that because when she was very young and living with her parents in Prague, she did not know how to pronounce the “r” and “ch” correctly. If she could, her nickname would be “Broucheek”. She said that in Czech it means a little bug with a purple dress that looks like a little girl. Well, nobody can be perfect, but she’s almost perfect physically and mentally. Due to the intensive care of a speech therapist, she speaks almost correctly. Originally, she was mispronouncing  words in all eight languages she spoke fluently and delightfully in her early childhood. People who speak English will know her as “PuppyBug”. After the commercial break, please stay tuned to our radio station, „The Backbone of Europe.”

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“No more food will threaten your laundry-tablets for all types of intelligent washing machines. Eater-Predator will eat any dirt caused by food. Does the dirt from the food annoy you? Do the food stains destroy your life? Eater-Predator is here for you!”

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„Yes, dear friends of our radio. You have come to your receivers just in time. The little girl PuppyBug is already appearing in the hall. To much applause from the large audience, she approaches her tiny microphone, Chinese-made, of course. In the front row, I see Professor Claude Roach. He is nodding his head significantly. Next to him, the well-known billionaire and philanthropist Willi Door applauds. Adored George Apollo Gibe is waving some kind of paper over his head, perhaps a certificate. Don‘t forget the media superstar and director of one of the world’s largest nonprofit organizations. It is Madame Rottekind who is directly strung up in an attractive turquoise spacesuit. Everyone else, of course, is properly vaccinated, tested and they are wearing FFP2 or FFP3 respirators. It’s as if Sir Aromath’s ghost is hovering over it all, like steam over a pot. You can hear for yourself that the assembly is now so quiet that you could hear a yellow pin drop. PuppyBug taps the microphone, making my headphones and my head buzz a bit. So PuppyBug has the floor.”

„Dear attendees, ladies, and gentleman,

here I am, by bus, dear friends.

By bus because I’m pretty much modest and eco-friendly. Unlike a lot of people who just pretend to be. It’s kind of comic that no bus runs right to this Cosmological Forum Palace. So I had to walk almost two kilometers with my heavy purple backpack. Both of my inseparable bodyguards, whom I call Laurel and Hardy for a resemblance to classic movie comedians, stumbled at my heels. I made the very long bus journey from Prague because it is definitely more environmentally friendly than flying here on my father’s private HondaJet Elite.

I would like to give you now a solemn presentation of the crucial report on the meaning of my life and yours. I know you’ve been waiting impatiently for my performance. So please listen carefully to my presentation, which I have called The Transformation of the Holy Sentence.

Some time ago, I found my mother’s glass of saltwater at home, from which almost all the water had evaporated. Yet, there were white crystals of table salt at the bottom of the glass. Suddenly, it was all clear to me. I’ve come to realize that all life on our planet and in the universe is based on exactly the same crystallization process as poor NaCl demonstrated in that glass.

So I say with all my childlike seriousness that there is virtually no fundamental difference between the crystallization of table salt and any life in our cosmos. The difference is only in the complexity of such crystals. It’s only as different as LEGO sets for toddlers and LEGO sets for high school kids and their college-educated dads. Almost everyone tells us the silly thing that the nucleic acids in the nuclei of our cells contain our genetic information and are designed to serve us by building our own bodies. That DNA and RNA nucleic acids serve to properly create bodies for humans, animals, and plants. To ensure their proper functioning so that all living things live well. This is, of course, pure nonsense. That’s what people might have thought fifty years ago when they didn’t have the great scientific information that even kids like me know today.

And I don’t think people 50 years ago were stupid at all. Uncle Willi, what are you looking at me like that for? It’s all the other way around. But it’s not a mental merry-go-round like the chicken and the egg. What came first, the chicken or the egg? I don’t want to ask such a nonsensical roundabout question.

I’m asking: What came first, nucleic acids or animals and plants? Of course, nucleic acids. And what is the most important process that has advanced and ensured the creation of new and ever more complex and efficient organisms on Earth for millions and millions of years? Well, spontaneous mutations in nucleic acid codes. Daddy has the terribly old paperback book in his library by a Mr. John Gribbin called, ‚In Search of the Double Helix,‘ published sometime in 1985, when I was not yet born. From the end of chapter eight, I copied down this sentence into my little purple notebook: „This is the process (of spontaneous changes in the genetic code) that has produced human beings, and all the rest of life on Earth, from an ancestral molecule, a molecule that have been more like transfer RNA than anything else in the cell today.”

So the absolute primitive created all of us as we sit here by sheer chance – that liquid crystal made us just to serve as a tool for its propagation – for its constant replication.

Mr. Gribbin came up with the same thing when, a few pages later, he states: „Our real role in life is to act as mobile homes, providing the equivalent of air conditioned luxury for the successful molecules inside our cells.”

So we ourselves serve those liquid crystals, those simple and utterly stupid nucleic acids. And we serve them faithfully. By eating, we supply them with the chemicals needed to build their molecular chains and the complex structure that makes it all possible. By breathing, we provide the energy to do so. Therefore, over time, these microscopic creators have equipped us with the instinct of self-preservation. They allowed us to experience satisfaction, joy, love, and pain. In a sense, then, they are our creators and perhaps our gods, whom we constantly serve. By serving them faithfully, we allow them to multiply in every part of our bodies. When mommies and daddies have children, new and new individuals are created, predestined to this seemingly happy duty, which they can never get rid of in their lifetime.

Uncle Willi, what are you shaking your head at? Do you think you don’t to serve to those nucleic acids like that? You think everyone has to serve only you because of the fact that you’ve amassed great wealth. But, dear Uncle, you’re wrong. You’re probably confused about how you’ve been going round to various scientific institutions and laboratories around the world with a briefcase full of millions of dollars. If you like something, you shovel your money in there, and then everyone can break their backs to please you. You’re shaking your head that it is not so? Do you want to reform? That’s not so easy for you, my godfather. Probably because of your insatiable desire for fame and honorable recognition.

What now, Uncle? That you don’t humbly serve your own RNA molecules in your body? You can see for yourself. For example, hold your breath. Don’t breathe for ten minutes. The nucleic acid will teach you how to obey. And anyone who does resist will just quit and die. God’s perfect punishment. Nucleic acids don’t need a villain who won’t obey and don´t serve well the structure in which the relentless liquid crystals multiply and die.

You can see for yourself. Hold your breath. Don’t breathe for ten minutes. The nucleic acid will teach you how to listen. And anyone who does resist will just quit and die – God’s perfect punishment. Nucleic acids don’t need a villain who won’t obey and serve well the structure in which the multiplication and demise of those tireless liquid crystals takes place.

Science has recently begun to interfere with these natural regularities. Scientists are intervening into originally spontaneous genetic mutations. Stupid DNA and RNA crystals really don’t care. If they can pass on their information more efficiently, they will accept without protest the path of controlled or even utterly artificial evolution of animals, plants, viruses, and humans. They are really just systematically arranged sets of atoms, elementary particles, strings, or bits of frozen energy. Or, however, we modern kids are supposed to imagine it.

After all, John the Apostle says at the very beginning of his gospel:

„In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.“

I think he captured it extremely accurately in a religious context. He must have been quite a learned and thoughtful man, that Saint John the Beloved. I’ll try to parse his holy sentence, or, actually, his holy phrase. His Eminence, the Cardinal, who is present here will forgive me because I´m still a minor child.

Today we would probably replace the term “word” with “information”. Or perhaps more accurately, we should rather talk about “communication”, as the interaction among information. For simple information is carried by every stray photon flying crazily through space-time to somewhere in the back of the universe. But let’s stick with the term “information” for simplicity’s sake.

DNA actually serves only as a library, or more accurately as a data store, for much smaller RNA molecules. As the original creator of life, and in fact a kind of God, we can really probably imagine some primordial ribonucleic acid – RNA. Yet, it is most likely that this primordial creator in its original form no longer exists at all.

Then we can transform the apostle’s statement into modern scientific language:

„In the beginning was Information, and the Information was with RNA, and the Information was RNA.“

I can even continue my transformation of Saint John’s text:

„He was with RNA in the beginning. Through RNA all things were made; without RNA nothing was made that has been made. In RNA was life, and that life was the means for humans to know the universe.“

You can see how the Christian Church hit the nail on the head already in the first century AD, even without the help of modern science. Praise be to our utterly unintelligent creator – a mere crystal that unwittingly created animals, plants, viruses, bacteria, and intelligent beings and allowed joy, love, hate, pain, and religion to arise.

Praise be to the natural RNA molecules in you, in me and in all living things!

Thank you for your attention.“

„Dear listeners, the little girl PuppyBug leaves her little lectern with her head held high. The hall is so quiet that you could hear a red pin drop. Is there something wrong? After the commercial break, please stay with us and our radio station, The Backbone of Europe.“