Dagfinn Bargmann's Questionnaire

Dagfinn Bargmann took up residence in Amsterdam to participate in a world-leading genetics program tying together zoology and agriculture. The program focuses on improving agricultural output by collecting, categorizing, and understanding the genotypes of life from around the world, extant and extinct, and adapting them to use in livestock and crops. Living in the city provides convenient access to long-distance travel, both across the EU and globally, and proximity to multidisciplinary scientific networks; each necessary for Dagfinn's research and projects, official and personal, which might require fieldwork or face-to-face connections.

Dagfinn lives in a modest apartment a ways off from the city center. Their quarters are tidy, though workspaces are buried in papers and related materials. Flat surfaces tend to accumulate books. A foldable cot, blankets, and several changes of clothes are kept in their office and as their workplace does have showers, Dagfinn is known to go stretches of time without returning home.

Dagfinn makes most of their income through their position as a geneticist. The job mostly involves obtaining samples of genetic materials, from a limited set of genes to more comprehensive genomes; processing and decoding said genes and their impact; and developing methods to improve agriculture. Dagfinn mostly takes an interest in utilizing the genetic material of extinct species, either in genetically modifying current livestock and crops for greater yield or in bringing them back wholesale. Work largely takes place around the office and lab, but Dagfinn is used to regular travel for academic conferences, overseeing experiments or trials at agricultural facilities throughout the world, and the occasional expedition for hands-on specimen collection.

On the side, Dagfinn makes money with a blog and social media, anonymous, about the benefits and possibilities of genetic manipulation and de-extinction.

With most of their time spent around the office and modest living arrangements, Dagfinn saves most of their money for travel and expenses related to their personal endeavors: research that extends beyond the bounds of their job. Dagfinn's library also has regular additions.

Dagfinn wishes to pull *all* species from the jaws of extinction. Not only those critically endangered or lost within the past few centuries. But any and every species from the beginning of life, from the flightless dinosaurs to Ediacaran mysteries to long-gone mushrooms. Whether they're dangerous pathogens or humble dodos, Dagfinn wants to return them to the world. Even if attempts at de-extinction might only result in crude franken-facsimile imitiations of life lost long past, Dagfinn sees genetic modification as the key to this time-locked biodiversity. Dagfinn believes that this richness of biodiversity will act as ever-increasing fuel for the evolution of humankind and all life. *A churn of past and present, always, expanding all futures.*

Dagfinn shaped their career and moved to Amsterdam to chase this future. They are attentive to networking at academic conventions and quick to reach across disciplines if they believe it will further their research and the field as a whole. But that's only their professional, above-board life.

With their side pursuits, they connect and cooperate with individuals from across the internet and with various niche projects, not all savory. Dagfinn is not afraid to work in shades of gray if it will further the work. More distasteful connections or situations might be fine if they didn't come with consequences. Consequences that might get in the way of Dagfinn's research and goals (like prison). When Dagfinn has determined that such risks are worth it they have dabbled in illegal matters: smuggling samples across, paying for corporate espionage on proprietary knowledge, and getting their hands dirty in the field if need be.

Dagfinn is not sentimental about preserving or destroying life, on the individual level. Although they judge violence and aggression to often cause obstacles, they don't have apprehensions about their use if necessary.

As Dagfinn believes themselves to be the best chance at achieving their goals, they are reticent to put themself in grave danger. Though Dagfinn does not directly acknowledge it, there is a deeper fear of dying, stemming from deep inside. Situations that gravely endanger Dagfinn are to be avoided and mitigated if at all can be. If the only way to further the research and goal is to risk death then Dagfinn might take the chance, but with duress.

As with many children, Dagfinn was obsessed with animals, particularly dinosaurs. An interest that only grew: prehistoric marine reptiles, prehistoric flying reptiles, plants in the garden, mushrooms in the forest. It all fascinated Dagfinn, who adored natural history museums with their preserved specimens and zoos or aquariums with their living ones. Yet they would experience the impermanence of life. When Dagfinn was in their early teenhood a close childhood friend died abruptly after venturing into the woods after a rain—the very woods they had often explored together. Not a year and a half later Dagfinn's mother began a drawn-out death from prolonged illness. Dagfinn had plenty of experience with death both unforseen and long-suffered.

Ending their teen years, Dagfinn had come to view their childhood passions with a different perspective. Halls of natural history with their neat rows of fossils, illustrated books of dinosaurs and mammoths, accounts of burgeoning life before human societies: all catalogs of what had been, no longer was, and could no more contribute, whether as prey, or predator, or friend, or mother.

Dagfinn couldn't bring back those they lost. Anything "brought back" would only be some new creation in the approximate shape of what was lost. But maybe such facsimiles could contribute in the place of what long lost could not.