by Marisa Logan
But she came across a few studies that were more disturbing. Studies that indicated some types of GMOs could harm the heart, kidney, and liver. And there was another issue that bothered her more.
Tessa was a strong supporter of fully organic foods. She never used chemical fertilizers or weed killers. But she learned that there were some types of genetically modified corn that were resistant to chemical weed killers.
With normal corn, farmers would need to spray the weed killers only on the weeds, since the chemicals could harm the growth of the corn as well. But these genetically modified “super corns” could take a dose of chemical spray and keep growing just fine. It made things easier on farmers, since they could just douse entire fields with pesticides without worry. Which meant some people were eating corn that had been doused in chemicals. And while the corn might be resistant to it, that didn't mean that people were.
She sat at her computer late Saturday night, her head resting in her hand, a glass of wine sitting by her side. It was a lot more information than she could process. She simply wasn't a scientist. She'd gone to college for a degree in philosophy, and since there were very few job opportunities for philosophers nowadays, she'd taken the best office job she could find. She was starting to wonder whether she'd chosen the right career path.
She refilled her wine glass and walked over to the window, looking out over the darkened garden plots.
She tried to imagine what it would be like, growing foods there that had been affected the same way some of the Dunham crops had. She knew that deep down a lot of the fear surrounding GMOs was nothing more than propaganda and politics, which had caused a lot of misunderstanding by the populace. But then she thought about her garden being doused in heavy sprays of toxic chemicals, chemicals that were used more heavily on some GMO crops than on natural crops. She thought about eating fruits and vegetables that had been covered in those chemical sprays, having all of that inside of her, affecting her in she knew not what way.
She shuddered and took a sip from her wine glass. Maybe it was just her personal superstitions, but she couldn't embrace the idea of eating such things. And as far as she was concerned, a company like Dunham at the very least had a responsibility for transparency. If there was even the smallest danger from their products, then their customers deserved to know the truth. That way, the consumers could make up their own minds.
People who supported and endorsed GMOs could be free to eat them, while people like Tessa and her neighbors could stick with their homegrown, fully organic foods.
While she was thinking about all of this, Tessa caught sight of a shadow moving among the fields. She leaned closer to the window, peering outside. It was probably just one of her neighbors, checking their plot. When she focused on the movement, she realized which garden plot the person was working on. It was the one she and Samson had dubbed “The Mystery Plot.”
Tessa was on a first name basis with most of her neighbors. They all shared what they grew, and they all helped each other out. But there was one plot, just one, that no one in the community ever worked on. Yet it always thrived. There were magnificent squash, zucchini, and tomatoes there throughout the season, and in the fall there were plump pumpkins growing just in time for Halloween. The rows of crops were always perfectly tilled, the weeds were always pulled, and the produce was harvested at its peak freshness. But no one seemed to know who was doing it.
For awhile, Tessa had assumed that whoever worked on the Mystery Plot tended their crops during the weekdays, when a lot of the gardeners were at their day jobs. But Samson, who worked nights and weekends at a little music store downtown, said he'd never seen anyone there during the day. A few of the neighbors claimed it must have been a ghost, though Tessa didn't believe in such things.
She set down her wine glass and grabbed a flashlight, then headed out into the garden patch. She walked along the lines of crops without turning the flashlight on until she was at the edge of the Mystery Plot. When she flicked on the light and cast it about the area, she saw nothing but carefully tilled rows of soil. This early in the season, nothing much had grown yet, but someone had started prepping the soil, just as Tessa had in her own plot earlier that day.
She flicked off the flashlight and headed back to her apartment. She had enough worries in her life right now without chasing gardening ghosts. She finished off her wine, turned off the lights, and headed to bed, hoping that a fresh perspective after a good night's sleep would help her get past her moral dilemmas.
Chapter 4
At work on Monday, Tessa started doing a little digging. In between meeting her quota for entering files into the computer, she ran some searches through the database of older files. She had a few pages from the file she'd stolen, and she picked out a few keywords from it to search for. She ran searches on the terms “GMO,” “pesticides,” “safety,” “inspection,” and a few others. What she found started making her realize there was more to this problem than she'd ever imagined.
She found dozens of files similar to the one she'd first discovered. Hundreds. Many of them dated back years and years, since before she started working at Dunham. After going over a good number of them, she started noticing a pattern. Each report started off with some small, seemingly innocuous problem that one of the inspectors had found. Trace amounts of an unauthorized chemical. Improper labeling of shipments. The discover of substances that, while not necessarily illegal or dangerous, were certainly not anything that Dunham admitted were being used. And at the bottom of almost every one of these reports, there was a note from the inspector suggesting further investigation. But as far as she could tell, there had never been any further investigation. At least, not in any of the reports that her department processed.
She sat at her computer, drumming her fingers on her desk, wondering what she should do. There was still nothing in these reports to prove that illegal or dangerous chemicals were being used. But there was the possibility. A possibility that seemed pretty likely, given the large number of reports that had gone unchecked. Someone at Dunham Enterprises was either keeping themselves willfully ignorant of the possible risk, or else actively covering it up.
“Whatcha doing?”
Tessa jumped, her hand going to her chest. She looked up to see Mindy's spiky red head sticking up over the wall between their cubicles.
“Geez, jumpy much?” Mindy asked.
“You just startled me.” Tessa took a few deep breaths to calm herself. She clicked the button to minimize the report on her screen. “What's up?”
“I was asking you that, Tessy girl.” Mindy leaned her arms on the wall and propped her chin on her hands. “You're slacking off today.” She nodded to Tessa's outbox, which barely had any files in it. “You never slack off. What's up?”
“It's nothing.” Tessa grabbed another file from her inbox and opened it. “I just had a long weekend. I'll catch up.”
“There's no rush,” Mindy said, snorting. She nodded to the several year's worth of backlogged files stacked up against the far wall. “It's not like those are going anywhere.”
Tessa glanced over at the stacks of unprocessed files. The most recent files she had entered into the system were from inspections that had taken place over three years ago. Most of the ones she'd found in the database were even older. If there had been any followup, she realized, then the files would still be in the boxes of backlogged reports. That was where she had to look.
After Mindy went back to work, Tessa headed over to the stacks of boxes. She didn't know where to begin. All of the boxes were dated, marking when they'd received the reports. But they received reports from hundreds of branches across the country.
She checked the file number on the first report she'd taken. Some of the reports they processed, such as the inventory reports, were compiled monthly. But a lot of the safety inspections were only conducted twice a year. She headed down the line of boxes until she found some from six months ago, then dug through them until she found a file wit
h a matching number to the one she already had. She searched again until she found another report from a year ago, a year and a half ago, two years ago, and so on, until she had a stack of consecutive reports from the same facility.
She brought the reports back to her desk and started looking through them, starting with the oldest one. It was written by the same inspector who'd filled out the first report, and it contained more notes at the bottom urging for a more detailed inspection of the facility. But the next report was written by someone else entirely. There was no way for her to know if the first inspector had quit, gotten fired, or simply been transferred to a different location. But the next inspector, for whatever the reason, reported that nothing was out of the ordinary at all.
There was a similar pattern throughout the reports. Here and there, she found reports that indicated a possible problem, only to find that the inspector who had reported it was no longer working at the same facility by the following year. And the new inspector never found any problems at first. It could have been because they were intentionally covering things up. Or because they simply didn't know what to look for without having seen the previous inspector's reports. But whatever the reason, there were three years of reports, six files in all, but no inspector had remained at the same location for more than a year.
She took out some key pages from several of the reports and photocopied them, then returned the files to the boxes where she'd found them. She made note of the name on the most recent report, which had been filed only a month ago. It was written by a woman named Elizabeth O'Conner.
She searched through the company's HR database until she found a phone number and extension for Mrs. O'Conner, at Dunham's Eastern Pennsylvania branch. It was time for Tessa to find out what was really going on here.
Chapter 5
“Hello, Elizabeth O'Conner speaking, how may I help you?”
“Hi,” Tessa said. She stood in her apartment, pacing around her living room. She'd gotten off work early so she could go home and make the phone call before O'Conner left her own office. “My name is Tessa Cunningham, and I'm with the Dunham Department of Information Resources. I've just gone over your most recent inspection report.”
“Oh,” the woman said. Her voice sounded tense. “I wasn't expecting a response so soon. Is something wrong?”
“Well,” Tessa said, “that's kind of what I'm calling to find out. You see, we sometimes need to follow up on reports that indicate any possible problems, and you had a few notes in your report that raised some red flags.”
Technically, this was only half-true. It was part of Tessa's job to investigate the reports and ensure they were accurate. But she was supposed to report any serious problems to Mr. Morgan. She already knew that he wouldn't look into this any further. She just hoped he didn't find out that she'd been taking matters into her own hands.
“Is this about the pesticide tests?” Elizabeth asked. “I made note of them in my report. There was nothing above that went above the minimum safety levels, but...”
“But?” Tessa stood still, holding the phone in a tight grip.
“Well...” Elizabeth hesitated, and Tessa could almost hear the woman mulling it over in her head. “I'm not sure what exactly it is you want from me. I filed my report, and I made sure everything was done according to protocol.”
That's true. But you also noted in your report that you think there might be a need for further investigation.”
“Are you investigating me?”
“What?” Tessa asked. “No...no. It's not that. You're not in any trouble or anything.”
“Then what's going on?” Elizabeth asked. “I've worked at four different facilities and done plenty of inspections. No one's ever called me to follow up on one.”
“I'm just trying to find out if there's some kind of risk.”
“I can't say.”
“Can't?” Tessa asked. She frowned. “What does that mean.”
There was a long pause. Tessa waited for awhile, then checked her phone screen to see if the call was still connected. “Hello?” Tessa asked.
“I'm here.” There was another long pause. “Look, I don't want to stir up any trouble, you understand?”
“I understand.” Tessa nervously smoothed the front of her shirt. “I don't want that, either. I just want to find out if there's anything going on that we should be concerned with.”
“Are you authorized to order a more detailed study?” Elizabeth asked. “My facilities here are a bit limited. We only have the equipment to run basic tests, checking for harmful levels of any chemicals and pesticides, that sort of thing. We green-light shipments, and they go out. To run more detailed tests, you'd need to have things sent off to an independent lab.”
Tessa chewed on her lip. She didn't have the first clue how to go about that sort of thing. She racked her brain, trying to figure out what she should do.
“Can you authorize something like that?” Elizabeth asked.
“No. Not exactly.”
“What, exactly? Who are you, anyway? What's your position?”
“I'm a data entry clerk,” Tessa said.
Elizabeth muttered a curse. “God, I don't believe this. I thought you were management. I shouldn't even be talking to you.”
“Wait, but—”
Elizabeth hung up before Tessa could get another word in. Tessa stood there, staring at the phone. She'd given her name and department to the woman. If Elizabeth decided to report this...
Tessa set her phone down and rubbed her face with both hands. She was too pent up, her muscles tense, her thoughts running a mile a minute. She imagined Elizabeth reporting her to Mr. Morgan, or someone else in the company. She wondered if they'd fire her, or if she could get into legal trouble for overstepping her bounds. Even if she hadn't technically done anything that was against company policy, there was a chance she'd be terminated just because she knew too much. Except that she didn't really know anything. Not yet.
All she knew was that Dunham was using crops that were supposedly resistant to pesticides, and as a result, they were using some kind of pesticide that had alarmed several inspectors enough for them to report it. What if, she thought, those pesticides were being used at dangerous levels? What if their products were making people sick, and no one knew about it?
She considered what Elizabeth O'Conner had said. Most of Dunham's inspections, the ones that went through Tessa's department, at least, were conducted internally. And it would be an easy thing for the company to set up procedures that would keep their own inspectors from finding anything dangerous. They might not even know what to look for. Or, like Elizabeth had said, they might not possess the right equipment needed to find what they were looking for.
The only way she could think to find out would be to get an external lab involved.
That, she knew, would mean crossing a line that she couldn't come back from.
Chapter 6
A few days passed. Tessa was out working in her garden one sunny afternoon. She still hadn't figured out what, if anything, she was going to do. Part of her still wanted to drop the whole issue. It wasn't like she had proof that Dunham was making people sick. There was just the small possibility.
A possibility no one else at the company was investigating.
She pulled out a few handfuls of weeds and old roots, dropping them into a big plastic bucket. Then she carried the bucket to one of her neighbor's plots. Mrs. Mackenzie was an elderly widow with arthritis, so Tessa helped her out a lot with carrying out her garbage or sometimes bringing in groceries. She knelt down at a pile of leaves and weeds that Mrs. Mackenzie had pulled out of her own plot, and dropped them into the bucket. The wet leaves weighed more than she'd expected, weighing the bucket down. Tessa grasped the heavy bucket by the handle and headed off to the compost bin.
Her strength started to give out just when she got to the bin. She set the bucket down for a moment, took a deep breath, then hauled the bucket up to dump it into the compost bin.
It slipped out of her grasp, spilling leaves, roots, weeds, and specks of dirt all over the ground.
“Damn it,” she muttered. She was almost tempted to leave it all there. It wasn't like it was real litter when it was all biodegradable plant matter. But her neighbors would get irritable with her about it, and she didn't want to do something like that just because she was lazy.
She knelt down and started scooping up the debris, hauling it into the bin a double-handful at a time. When she was grabbing her second handful, someone crouched down next to her and started lending a hand.
“Had a little accident?”
She looked up and saw it was Mr. Jones. He was an elderly African American man who lived in Tessa's building. She didn't see him out and about much, other than when he was checking the mail or taking out his trash. There were rumors that he was an ex-con, and some people claimed he'd spent several decades in jail for a murder committed when he was a young man. Tessa couldn't see that in him. Even though they didn't talk much, he was always so reserved.
“This is what I get for not making two trips,” Tessa said, scooping up some more leaves.
“No harm done,” Mr. Jones said. He smiled at her, revealing the deep lines in his face. There was a sadness to his smile. As if he knew he only had so many smiles to give, and each one was the loss of something beautiful.
Working together, they cleaned up the mess in no time. “Thanks,” she said, brushing off her hands. “Have a nice day.”
“You do the same.”
He watched her walk away as she circled around the building. He watched people a lot, she noticed. His apartment had one of the best views of the garden plot, and on many days he sat at his rear window, sipping tea, and watching the community around him as they worked on making things grow.
