I’ll miss you Jimmy, said an e-message from one.
Oh Jimmy, you were so funny, said another.
Were was a creep-out. It wasn’t as if he’d died or anything.
Jimmy spent his first night in RejoovenEsense at the VIP guest hotel. He poured himself a drink from the mini-bar, straight Scotch, as real as it came, then spent a while looking out the picture window at the view, not that he could make out very much except lights. He could see the Paradice dome, an immense half-circle in the distance, floodlit from below, but he didn’t yet know what it was. He thought it was a skating rink.
Next morning Crake took him for a preliminary tour of the RejoovenEsense Compound in his souped-up electric golf cart. It was, Jimmy had to admit, spectacular in all ways. Everything was sparkling clean, landscaped, ecologically pristine, and very expensive. The air was particulate-free, due to the many solar whirlpool purifying towers, discreetly placed and disguised as modern art. Rockulators took care of the microclimate, butterflies as big as plates drifted among the vividly coloured shrubs. It made all the other Compounds Jimmy had ever been in, Watson-Crick included, look shabby and retro.
“What pays for all this?” he asked Crake, as they passed the state-of-the-art Luxuries Mall – marble everywhere, colonnades, cafés, ferns, takeout booths, roller-skating path, juice bars, a self-energizing gym where running on the treadmill kept the light bulbs going, Roman-look fountains with nymphs and sea-gods.
“Grief in the face of inevitable death,” said Crake. “The wish to stop time. The human condition.”
Which was not very informative, said Jimmy.
“You’ll see,” said Crake.
They had lunch at one of the five-star Rejoov restaurants, on an air-conditioned pseudobalcony overlooking the main Compound organic-botanics greenhouse. Crake had the kanga-lamb, a new Australian splice that combined the placid character and high-protein yield of the sheep with the kangaroo’s resistance to disease and absence of methane-producing, ozone-destroying flatulence. Jimmy ordered the raisin-stuffed capon – real free-range capon, real sun-dried raisins, Crake assured him. Jimmy was so used to ChickieNobs by now, to their bland tofulike consistency and their inoffensive flavour, that the capon tasted quite wild.
“My unit’s called Paradice,” said Crake, over the soy-banana flambé. “What we’re working on is immortality.”
“So is everyone else,” said Jimmy. “They’ve kind of done it in rats.”
“Kind of is crucial,” said Crake.
“What about the cryogenics guys?” said Jimmy. “Freeze your head, get your body reconstituted once they’ve figured out how? They’re doing a brisk business, their stock’s high.”
“Sure, and a couple of years later they toss you out the back door and tell your relatives there was a power failure. Anyway, we’re cutting out the deep-freeze.”
“How do you mean?”
“With us,” said Crake, “you wouldn’t have to die first.”
“You’ve really done it?”
“Not yet,” said Crake. “But think of the R&D budget.”
“Millions?”
“Mega-millions,” said Crake.
“Can I have another drink?” said Jimmy. This was a lot to take in.
“No. I need you to listen.”
“I can listen and drink too.”
“Not very well.”
“Try me,” said Jimmy.
Within Paradice, said Crake – and they’d visit the facility after lunch – there were two major initiatives going forward. The first – the BlyssPluss Pill – was prophylactic in nature, and the logic behind it was simple: eliminate the external causes of death and you were halfway there.
“External causes?” said Jimmy.
“War, which is to say misplaced sexual energy, which we consider to be a larger factor than the economic, racial, and religious causes often cited. Contagious diseases, especially sexually transmitted ones. Overpopulation, leading – as we’ve seen in spades – to environmental degradation and poor nutrition.”
Jimmy said it sounded like a tall order: so much had been tried in those areas, so much had failed. Crake smiled. “If at first you don’t succeed, read the instructions,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“The proper study of Mankind is Man.”
“Meaning?”
“You’ve got to work with what’s on the table.”
The BlyssPluss Pill was designed to take a set of givens, namely the nature of human nature, and steer these givens in a more beneficial direction than the ones hitherto taken. It was based on studies of the now unfortunately extinct pygmy or bonobo chimpanzee, a close relative of Homo sapiens sapiens. Unlike the latter species, the bonobo had not been partially monogamous with polygamous and polyandrous tendencies. Instead it had been indiscriminately promiscuous, had not pair-bonded, and had spent most of its waking life, when it wasn’t eating, engaged in copulation. Its intraspecific aggression factor had been very low.
Which had led to the concept of BlyssPluss. The aim was to produce a single pill, that, at one and the same time:
a) would protect the user against all known sexually transmitted diseases, fatal, inconvenient, or merely unsightly;
b) would provide an unlimited supply of libido and sexual prowess, coupled with a generalized sense of energy and well-being, thus reducing the frustration and blocked testosterone that led to jealousy and violence, and eliminating feelings of low self-worth;
c) would prolong youth.
These three capabilities would be the selling points, said Crake; but there would be a fourth, which would not be advertised. The BlyssPluss Pill would also act as a sure-fire one-time-does-it-all birth-control pill, for male and female alike, thus automatically lowering the population level. This effect could be made reversible, though not in individual subjects, by altering the components of the pill as needed, i.e., if the populations of any one area got too low.
“So basically you’re going to sterilize people without them knowing it under the guise of giving them the ultra in orgies?”
“That’s a crude way of putting it,” said Crake.
Such a pill, he said, would confer large-scale benefits, not only on individual users – although it had to appeal to these or it would be a failure in the marketplace – but on society as a whole; and not only on society, but on the planet. The investors were very keen on it, it was going to be global. It was all upside. There was no downside at all. He, Crake, was very excited about it.
“I didn’t know you were so altruistic,” said Jimmy. Since when had Crake been a cheerleader for the human race?
“It’s not altruism exactly,” said Crake. “More like sink or swim. I’ve seen the latest confidential Corps demographic reports. As a species we’re in deep trouble, worse than anyone’s saying. They’re afraid to release the stats because people might just give up, but take it from me, we’re running out of space-time. Demand for resources has exceeded supply for decades in marginal geopolitical areas, hence the famines and droughts; but very soon, demand is going to exceed supply for everyone. With the BlyssPluss Pill the human race will have a better chance of swimming.”
“How do you figure?” Maybe Jimmy shouldn’t have had that extra drink. He was getting a bit confused.
“Fewer people, therefore more to go around.”
“What if the fewer people are very greedy and wasteful?” said Jimmy. “That’s not out of the question.”
“They won’t be,” said Crake.
“You’ve got this thing now?” said Jimmy. He was beginning to see the possibilities. Endless high-grade sex, no consequences. Come to think of it, his own libido could use a little toning up. “Does it make your hair grow back?” He almost said Where can I get some, but stopped himself in time.
It was an elegant concept, said Crake, though it still needed some tweaking. They hadn’t got it to work seamlessly yet, not on all fronts; it was still at the clinical trial stage. A couple of the test
subjects had literally fucked themselves to death, several had assaulted old ladies and household pets, and there had been a few unfortunate cases of priapism and split dicks. Also, at first, the sexually transmitted disease protection mechanism had failed in a spectacular manner. One subject had grown a big genital wart all over her epidermis, distressing to observe, but they’d taken care of that with lasers and exfoliation, at least temporarily. In short, there had been errors, false directions taken, but they were getting very close to a solution.
Needless to say, Crake continued, the thing would become a huge money-spinner. It would be the must-have pill, in every country, in every society in the world. Of course the crank religions wouldn’t like it, in view of the fact that their raison d’être was based on misery, indefinitely deferred gratification, and sexual frustration, but they wouldn’t be able to hold out long. The tide of human desire, the desire for more and better, would overwhelm them. It would take control and drive events, as it had in every large change throughout history.
Jimmy said the thing sounded very interesting. Provided its shortcomings could be remedied, that is. Good name, too – BlyssPluss. A whispering, seductive sound. He liked it. He had no further wish to try it out himself, however: he had enough problems without his penis bursting.
“Where do you get the subjects?” he said. “For the clinical trials?”
Crake grinned. “From the poorer countries. Pay them a few dollars, they don’t even know what they’re taking. Sex clinics, of course – they’re happy to help. Whorehouses. Prisons. And from the ranks of the desperate, as usual.”
“Where do I fit in?”
“You’ll do the ad campaign,” said Crake.
MaddAddam
~
After lunch they went to Paradice.
The dome complex was at the far right side of the Rejoov Compound. It had its own park around it, a dense climate-controlling plantation of mixed tropical splices above which it rose like a blind eyeball. There was a security installation around the park, very tight, said Crake; even the Corpsmen were not allowed inside. Paradice had been his concept, and he’d made that a condition when he’d agreed to actualize it: he didn’t want a lot of heavy-handed ignoramuses poking into things they couldn’t understand.
Crake’s pass was good for both of them, of course. They rolled in through the first gate and along the roadway through the trees. Then there was another checkpoint, with guards – Paradice uniforms, Crake explained, not Corps – that seemed to materialize from the bushes. Then more trees. Then the curved wall of the bubble-dome itself. It might look delicate, said Crake, but it was made of a new mussel-adhesive/silicon/dendrite-formation alloy, ultra-resistant. You’d have to have some very advanced tools to cut through it, as it would reconform itself after pressure and automatically repair any gashes. Moreover, it had the capacity to both filter and breathe, like an eggshell, though it required a solar-generated current to do so.
They turned the golf cart over to one of the guards and were coded through the outer door, which closed with a whuff behind them.
“Why did it make that sound?” said Jimmy nervously.
“It’s an airlock,” said Crake. “As in spaceships.”
“What for?”
“In case this place ever has to be sealed off,” said Crake. “Hostile bioforms, toxin attacks, fanatics. The usual.”
By this time Jimmy was feeling a little strange. Crake hadn’t really told him what went on in here, not in specific detail. “Wait and see,” was all he’d said.
Once they were through the inner door they were in a familiar-enough complex. Halls, doors, staff with digital clipboards, others hunched in front of screens; it was like OrganInc Farms, it was like HelthWyzer, it was like Watson-Crick, only newer. But physical plants were just a shell, said Crake: what really counted in a research facility was the quality of the brains.
“These are top-of-the-line,” he said, nodding left and right. In return there was a lot of deferential smiling, and – this wasn’t faked – a lot of awe. Jimmy had never been clear about Crake’s exact position, but whatever his nominal title – he’d been vague about that – he was obviously the biggest ant in the anthill.
Each of the staff had a name tag with block lettering – one or two words only. BLACK RHINO. WHITE SEDGE. IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. POLAR BEAR. INDIAN TIGER. LOTIS BLUE. SWIFT FOX.
“The names,” he said to Crake. “You raided Extinctathon!”
“It’s more than the names,” said Crake. “These people are Extinctathon. They’re all Grandmasters. What you’re looking at is MaddAddam, the cream of the crop.”
“You’re joking! How come they’re here?” said Jimmy.
“They’re the splice geniuses,” said Crake. “The ones that were pulling those capers, the asphalt-eating microbes, the outbreak of neon-coloured herpes simplex on the west coast, the ChickieNob wasps and so on.”
“Neon herpes? I didn’t hear about that,” said Jimmy. Pretty funny. “How did you track them down?”
“I wasn’t the only person after them. They were making themselves very unpopular in some quarters. I just got to them ahead of the Corps, that’s all. Or I got to most of them, anyway.”
Jimmy was going to ask What happened to the others, but he thought better of it.
“So you kidnapped them, or what?” That wouldn’t have surprised Jimmy, brain-snatching being a customary practice; though usually the brains were snatched between countries, not within them.
“I merely persuaded them they’d be a lot happier and safer in here than out there.”
“Safer? In Corps territory?”
“I got them secure papers. Most of them agreed with me, especially when I offered to destroy their so-called real identities and all records of their previous existences.”
“I thought those guys were anti-Compound,” said Jimmy. “The stuff MaddAddam was doing was pretty hostile, from what you showed me.”
“They were anti-Compound. Still are, probably. But after the Second World War in the twentieth century, the Allies invited a lot of German rocket scientists to come and work with them, and I can’t recall anyone saying no. When your main game’s over, you can always move your chessboard elsewhere.”
“What if they try sabotage, or …”
“Escape? Yeah,” said Crake. “A couple were like that at the beginning. Not team players. Thought they’d take what they’d done here, cart it offshore. Go underground, or set up elsewhere.”
“What did you do?”
“They fell off pleebland overpasses,” said Crake.
“Is that a joke?”
“In a manner of speaking. You’ll need another name,” Crake said, “a MaddAddam name, so you’ll fit in. I thought, since I’m Crake here, you could go back to being Thickney, the way you were when we were – how old?”
“Fourteen.”
“Those were definitive times,” said Crake.
Jimmy wanted to linger, but Crake was already hurrying him along. He’d have liked to talk with some of these people, hear their stories – had any of them known his mother, for instance? – but maybe he could do that later. On the other hand, maybe not: he’d been seen with Crake, the alpha wolf, the silverback gorilla, the head lion. Nobody would want to get too cozy with him. They’d see his as the jackal position.
Paradice
~
They dropped in at Crake’s office, so Jimmy could get a little oriented, said Crake. It was a large space with many gizmos in it, as Jimmy would have expected. There was a painting on the wall: an eggplant on an orange plate. It was the first picture Jimmy ever remembered seeing in a place of Crake’s. He thought of asking if that was Crake’s girlfriend, but thought better of it.
He zeroed in on the mini-bar. “Anything in that?”
“Later,” said Crake.
Crake still had a collection of fridge magnets, but they were different ones. No more science quips.
Where God is, Man is not.
There are two moons, the one you can see and
the one you can’t.
Du musz dein Leben andern.
We understand more than we know.
I think, therefore.
To stay human is to break a limitation.
Dream steals from its lair towards its prey.
“What are you really up to here?” said Jimmy.
Crake grinned. “What is really?”
“Bogus,” said Jimmy. But he was thrown off balance.
Now, said Crake, it was time to get serious. He was going to show Jimmy the other thing they were doing – the main thing, here at Paradice. What Jimmy was about to see was … well, it couldn’t be described. It was, quite simply, Crake’s life’s work.
Jimmy put on a suitably solemn face. What next? Some gruesome new food substance, no doubt. A liver tree, a sausage vine. Or some sort of zucchini that grew wool. He braced himself.
Crake led Jimmy along and around; then they were standing in front of a large picture window. No: a one-way mirror. Jimmy looked in. There was a large central space filled with trees and plants, above them a blue sky. (Not really a blue sky, only the curved ceiling of the bubble-dome, with a clever projection device that simulated dawn, sunlight, evening, night. There was a fake moon that went through its phases, he discovered later. There was fake rain.)
That was his first view of the Crakers. They were naked, but not like the Noodie News: there was no self-consciousness, none at all. At first he couldn’t believe them, they were so beautiful. Black, yellow, white, brown, all available skin colours. Each individual was exquisite. “Are they robots, or what?” he said.
“You know how they’ve got floor models, in furniture stores?” said Crake.
“Yeah?”
“These are the floor models.”
It was the result of a logical chain of progression, said Crake that evening, over drinks in the Paradice Lounge (fake palm trees, canned music, real Campari, real soda). Once the proteonome had been fully analyzed and interspecies gene and part-gene splicing were thoroughly underway, the Paradice Project or something like it had been only a matter of time. What Jimmy had seen was the next-to-end result of seven years of intensive trial-and-error research.
The MaddAddam Trilogy Page 26
