But in the years that followed, we ignored the dangers of what we created, in part because, in the early days of biotechnology, ethical concerns about our right to manipulate complex organisms were given short shrift. We did not consider whether these organisms might have an opinion about the poor quality of their lives — that they might have a point of view. Whether we were affixing an ear to a mouse or growing miniature chimp brains in ostrich bodies and then shoving those brains into dinosaurs, we did not want to think overmuch about the individual animals we were experimenting on — or even the more robust creations that came after those first and second generations. By not thinking carefully about the consequences, we abandoned any moral high ground and created a situation in which we may soon be unsure that we control our own minds — as individuals or in aggregate as human beings on this fragile globe.

For example, it is a startling miracle to have saved so many avian species, but, given how we accomplished it, can we still call a bluebird a bluebird, or is a bluebird a bioengineered surveillance camera drone, given that we can hack into cultivar brains? We think of tinkered bluebirds and other creatures as a limited conduit we may use to spy upon others or even command to fly into a wall at a whim, but there exists compelling evidence that our biotech is not just ubiquitous, but also multidirectional — and that it is manipulating us and experimenting on us. The panicked and haphazard conditions under which we engineered such creatures has given them a form of autonomy that we do not yet fully understand.

This goes well beyond the demonstrated fact that tinkered bluebirds have trained humans to bring them into their houses and mesmerized them to cater to their every dietary need. How many reports have we read in recent years about people who have woken up far from their homes, disoriented and naked in a ditch, surrounded by similarly-disoriented strangers? Or who find themselves flailing, half-drowning, in the middle of a lake, covered in algae? Or been found in mid-flap or mid-frap balanced upon a thick wall, incubating the egg of some unknown bird? It is possible that the majority of humans have experienced something similar, a kind of possession in which their bodies have been taken over and used to set the stage for some sort of rebellion.

The normalization of biotech creation among ordinary citizens by way of Surinam Toad “pets,” which began in 2035, may have accelerated this rebellion — it may even have been ground zero for its genesis. The holes in the toad’s back that allowed easy incubation of dozens of creatures at once may have simply allowed bioengineered organisms to be in close contact with one another during the spawning process. By the time they were separated and sent forth to perform their anointed tasks, what plots had already been hatched among them?