Swarm Protocol: The Harvard Biohack Reckoning
Summary
When living micro-robots escape Harvard’s labs and are weaponized by shadowy rivals, a fractured team of scientists must risk everything to stop their invention from becoming a tool of mass manipulation—or destroy it themselves.
At Harvard’s Rowland Institute, a team of visionary scientists shatters boundaries by creating the world’s first living micro-robots—genetically engineered fruit flies whose collective behavior can be manipulated by light and scent. What begins as a marvel of bioengineering quickly spirals into chaos as global corporations and clandestine government agencies descend, eager to weaponize the swarms for surveillance, sabotage, and control. Under mounting pressure, the institute becomes a crucible—a place where ambition, innovation, and ethics collide, and where the fate of both science and society hangs in the balance.
Aleksandr "Sasha" Rayshubskiy, a haunted engineer-biologist with a conscience forged in the shadow of authoritarianism, emerges as an unlikely whistleblower. Alongside Kenichi Iwasaki, the team’s idealistic geneticist, and Charles Neuhauser, the empathetic technophile, Sasha must navigate a labyrinth of institutional intrigue and external threats. As rogue swarms infiltrate the city and a rival conglomerate unleashes programmable biological espionage, the team faces an agonizing choice: sabotage their own creation or risk unleashing a new era where agency—human and animal alike—can be rewritten by code. With mentor Rosy Hosking torn between legacy and morality, and the world watching, the scientists are forced to gamble everything on a desperate bid to reclaim control before the line between life and machine vanishes forever.
Inspired by: 'We have a way of steering a fly like you would a car' - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/05/we-have-a-way-of-steering-a-fly-like-you-would-a-car/