All aboard the mutation express

 [Originally written November 21 2020]

It’s been a while! I’m glad I keep this record now, so I can remind myself of what was going on. When we left off, the Ettin was stuck in the ground, so I exported and reimported him. Boy, the game is fast at detecting a missing Ettin, because it immediately produced another in the time it took me to reimport Smeagol, who happily settled into his new home in the incubator room and began quenching his thirst from the fountain. So now we have two Ettins. Hopefully Gollum won’t fall into the floor!

We also left off with Edmund hanging out by the seaside, occasionally going for a dive. This was something he was eager to do upon my return, so I grabbed him and carried him over to the Calendar Tree. He was not happy about this positioning and immediately called an elevator. He liked the little cave with the red berries much better, though.

I made my rounds in the typical fashion. The Mernorns and Erika needed some coaxing to eat, but at least they were happy. It’s hard to tell with Banana Norns, but I think Erika still doesn’t have her old age sprites; it seems that all Creatures 1 imports get a full shot of Life rather than scaling to their age. 

As such, old Beth is still going just as strong. She also seems to do a better job of caring for herself, as her hunger bar was just fine when I checked in on her. Like all Norns, she’s reluctant to sleep, but she did eventually get some rest.

Tom seems to have settled into place behind the purple berry bush. It’s a comfortable place with a ready supply of food that doesn’t require him to move, and he can hide from me and grin cheekily through the leaves at me. Despite having said food supply, he wasn’t eating, and I think he was disappointed to find I could see him through the bush and engage him in a rousing round of “eat fruit.” 

Meanwhile, in the ocean, Arwen finally grew her tail and gained her rich adult pigmentation. She also seemed to develop a gait problem, which worried me considerably. Instead of moving about normally, she’d get stuck in a sort of bouncing animation. I was concerned that this might be a problem with the Atlantic Mernorns and how their swimming worked, but after I removed and re-injected the swimming COB, Arwen was happily and gracefully moving about, and was soon joined by Boromir! 

Look how magnificent they are with their gorgeous coloration! Not long after, they produced a second egg, which I hatched along with the other one. First of all, I want to talk about coloration. I examined the pigment genes in both Arwen and Boromir; they both have neutral pigments and only two pigment bleed genes. All pigment-related genes are switched on at birth, so the color changes seen over the course of their lives are inherent in the mernorn sprites. Interestingly, their bleed genes differ from each other, so their children may not have the same coloration. Arwen’s first gene is female-linked with rotation 255 and swap 128, and the second is male-linked with rotation 85 and swap 200. Boromir’s first gene is male-linked with rotation 0 and swap 128, and the second is female-linked with both rotation and swap at 128.

The two boys rolled out of the seashell incubator happened to inherit the female-linked genes on both slots, so they have neutral coloration. That didn’t stop the first child, Pippin, from having a unique look, as he sported unusual arms, a mutation type I was not expecting to see so early! The second, Gandalf, looked normal, but quickly turned out to have a more sinister mutation, as he collapsed with stars around his head. I quickly gave him a metabolism transplant and defibrillant, which got him up and moving again, only for him to collapse a second time. I repeated the injection, and quit the game to dive into the genomes.

Pippin’s mutation report came back with 11 mutated genes. One of these, obviously, is his Grendel arms! I welcome this bit of variety to the otherwise very uniform Mernorn genepool. Another listed gene didn’t have any differences I could find either in the D-DNA Analyzer report or the Genetics Kit. Seven more were changes to pigment and bleed genes that didn’t actually have visual effects (life stage changes, mutability value changes, and in one amusing case the color itself mutated from Blue to 3, which the Genetics Kit autocorrected to Red, not that it matters because the value is still neutral). The remaining two mutations are as follows:

Receptor

Gene 006: 065 Prostaglandin

Organ: “Current Organ^{(001 CNS: DRIVE LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Repair Rate”. Chemical: “Prostaglandin”.
Analogue: Output = 2 - ((Signal - 0) * 255). 

Organ: “Current Organ^{(001 CNS: DRIVE LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Repair Rate”. Chemical: “EDTA”.
Analogue: Output = 2 - ((Signal - 0) * 255). 

Creatures produce prostaglandin when injured, which induces healing via receptor on a per-organ basis. In Pippin, this doesn’t work in the Drive Lobe Support organ, as the receptor is switched to use EDTA instead. The good news is that the medicinal Gelsemium herb that can be given to help speed healing with a boost of extra prostaglandin also contains EDTA, so will still have the same effect on Pippin. I just need to remember that he needs a booster when injured.

Receptor

Gene 145: 109 Antigen 3

Organ: “Current Organ^{(017 CNS: CONCEPT LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Injury”. Chemical: “Antigen 3”.
Digital: Output = 0 + 50 if Signal > 16.

Organ: “Current Organ^{(017 CNS: CONCEPT LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Injury”. Chemical: “Antigen 3”.
Analogue: Output = 0 - ((Signal - 16) * 50). 

So this one’s a double mutation – it switched from digital to analogue and also became inverted. If I understand correctly, this gene is responsible for causing Antigen 3 to damage the Concept Lobe Support organ. I’m not sure exactly how the magnitude of the output translates to the change of life force in the organ, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just say it “deals X damage to the Concept Lobe.” 

In a normal Norn, it does 0 damage until the level of Antigen 3 rises above 16, at which point it regularly deals 50 damage. I’m actually quite glad that it inverted when it switched to analogue here. If it had not, then it would still deal no damage when Antigen 3 is less than 16, and would still deal 50 damage when Antigen 3 reached 17, but it would scale up the damage with the level of Antigen 3 in the system, quickly reaching the maximum output of 255 when Antigen 3 reached a mere 22. However, because it’s inverted, and the game clamps these values between 0 and 255, the output will always be 0, rendering Pippin immune to the Concept Lobe damaging effect of Antigen 3!

Gandalf’s report came back with 12 mutations. Four of these were inconsequential pigment gene changes. Two of them were lobe mutations, which always look intimidating, but both turned out to simply be 0s inserted after a string of <END>s in a state variable rule. He has a stimulus mutation that swaps tiredness for sleepiness, to more or less the same effect. A receptor that caused water to speed up the skin organ’s clock rate switched from being on at birth to kicking in during childhood, but that shouldn’t be too bad. But from here on out, things just got worse.

Receptor

Gene 146: 142 Prostaglandin

Organ: “Current Organ^{(017 CNS: CONCEPT LOBE SUPPORT)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Repair Rate”. Chemical: “Prostaglandin”.
Analogue: Output = 2 + ((Signal - 2) * 255).

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Perceptible i/ps”, Locus: “Leakage”. Chemical: “Prostaglandin”.
Analogue: Output = 2 + ((Signal - 2) * 255).

Uhhhhh… I don’t know what this means but I don’t think it’s anything good. First off, this means the prostaglandin healing effect for the Concept Lobe is just straight-up gone. Secondly, it seems to be having some kind of effect on the perception lobe’s “leakage,” though I haven’t a clue what this actually means in practice.

Emitter

Gene 220: 028 Hunger Lobe 9 Cell 2

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 9^(regulator)”, Locus: “Cell(2) Output”. Chemical: “Hunger”. Sample every 20 ticks.
Digital: Output = 2 if (255-Signal) > 127.

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 9^(regulator)”, Locus: “Cell(2) Output”. Chemical: “Need for Pleasure”. Sample every 20 ticks.
Digital: Output = 2 if (255-Signal) > 127.

The nasty mutations continue. Lobe 9 is the not exactly part of the normal brain lobe system; it’s a regulator that contains the receptor emitter pairs that control the hunger mechanism, much like the Life Kit Norns from Creatures 1. This mutation means that the mechanism that is supposed to raise Hunger instead raises Need for Pleasure.

Emitter

Gene 217: 029 Thirst Lobe 9 Cell 1

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 9^(regulator)”, Locus: “Cell(1) Output”. Chemical: “Thirst”. Sample every 8 ticks.
Digital: Output = 25 if (255-Signal) > 127.

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 8^(concept)”, Locus: “Cell(1) Output”. Chemical: “Thirst”. Sample every 8 ticks.
Digital: Output = 25 if (255-Signal) > 127.

Similarly to hunger, Lobe 9 regulates thirst. This, too, is screwed up in poor Gandalf. Once again, this mutation breaks the emitter-receptor mechanism for thirst, instead basing thirst on a cell in his concept lobe.

Emitter

Gene 244: 70 PGK lobe 9 cell 13

Organ: “Brain”, Tissue: “Lobe 9^(regulator)”, Locus: “Cell(13) Output”. Chemical: “Glycolase”. Sample every 2 ticks.
Analogue: Output = (Signal - 0) * 232. 

I think we’ve just found the biggest problem. This gene is responsible for producing glycolase; in Gandalf it doesn’t kick in until childhood. Glycolase is part of the process of converting glucose to ATP, which is effectively the vital life essence of a creature. Let me lay out the relevant reactions to illustrate why an inability to produce glycolase is a death sentence. Italicized inputs come from other reactions that I left out of the table. I also omitted the reaction where cyanide consumes energy, because that’s not part of the “normal” chemical cycle.

Gene	Input	Output
308	1 Hexokinase + 1 ATP	1 ADP + 1 Activase
321	1 Energy + 6 ADP	6 ATP + 1 Hotness
322	1 Glucose + 1 Glycolase	2 Pyruvic Acid + 2 Energy
323	1 Pyruvic Acid	1 Lactic Acid
324	1 Pyruvic Acid + 3 Oxygen	2 Energy + 3 Dissolved CO2
378	1 Oxygen + 1 Lactic Acid	1 Pyruvic Acid + 1 Oxygen

To produce energy, you need either oxygen and pyruvic acid, or glucose and glycolase. To get pyruvic acid, you need glucose and glycolase (the lactic acid loop effectively doesn’t produce pyruvic acid, it just changes its form back and forth). No glycolase means no pyruvic acid and no energy. No energy means no ATP. No ATP means death. Technically, I could keep this Norn on life support by injecting him with ATP until the emitter finally turns on in childhood, but given all his terrible mutations, it seems both wiser and more merciful to let him pass on – and not pass on his genes.