Strange New Feet

by Shannon Esposito

“Good. I’ll send you four tickets.”

  “Four?”

  “Sure, one for Kat and Reuben and I don’t think you’ll have a problem scratching up a date after today.”

  “Fine. I give up.” Safia blows her a kiss. “Gotta go. Give my love to Dad.”

  “Talk to you soon.”

  Safia stuffs another bite of orange into her mouth, chews, swallows and then sighs. “Play messages.”

  “Message One. Twelve fifteen P.M. Hey, It’s Mom. I just saw you on the news. Don’t worry Dad’s not watching. Call me when you get home. Love you. Message Two. One fifty seven P.M. Hey, It’s me, Rita. I saw your law breaking escapade. Please call me with all the juicy details, you naughty girl. Bye.”

  She smiles, finishes her orange. Her phone rings. She has a feeling it will be ringing all night.

  “Screen calls,” she instructs, and then. “Dial Rita O.”

  Rita picks up immediately. Safia can hear the suppressed laughter in her voice. “So….?”

  “Okay, go ahead and have your laugh.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she laughs anyway. “You know the hospital is going to be buzzing about this for weeks.”

  “I know.” She cringes. “It was desperate, but it worked. I’ll explain later. Listen, are we still on for tomorrow night?”

  “You still want to go?”

  Safia smiled. “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, crazy woman. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  Chapter 4

  Safia slips on a soft camel colored suit and lets her dark, wavy hair fall in long pieces around her face. Her eyes are lined and smudged in black eyeliner, emphasizing their almond shape and specs of gold. Her cheeks and lips are tinted a pale peach. She checks her watch, it’s almost eight. Rita will be there soon. Sighing, she stares out the window, watching rain drops slide down the glass and melt into each other. The city exists as a blur of lights in the background. She shifts her focus to her reflection and the two carat scarab diamond glittering around her neck—a reminder of their Egyptian ancestry and one of the few over-the-top gifts from her mother that she has ever accepted. Her mother gave it to her on her sixteenth birthday, along with a wish that its light protect her in the past, present and future. Safia can remember back then being embarrassed by her mother’s eccentricity but, when she turned eighteen and was finally told about the ordeal her parents endured because of their entanglement with the past, she understood. She understood a lot about her mother’s peculiarity and gifts after that. She also understood more about the one that was passed down to her.

  Rita’s knock brings her out of her thoughts. Crossing the living room in black heels, she opens the door for Rita, whose smile is bordering on amusement.

  “Well, well, don’t you look different this evening? Hmmm,” Rita looks her over with one finger tapping her scarlet lip. “Oh, yes, I know…you’re wearing clothes!”

  “Go ahead, laugh. My mother happens to think it will get me a date.”

  The two women chuckle as Safia locks her door and they head for the car.

  As Rita slips into the driver’s seat, adjusting her black silk dress beneath her, she glances over at Safia. “Are you sure you’re ready to go back to the scene of the crime so soon?”

  Safia pulls her shoulder belt across her body and snaps it in place with a nod. “Can’t wait.”

  Traffic is surprisingly light and so is the group of protesters still hanging around the museum. The two women ignore their pleas and taunts as they make their way up the

  marble stairs and into the grand front entrance. They present their membership cards to an elderly woman with bright eyes and follow the ‘Eduardo Kac Exhibit’ signs out into the wide main hallway and up an S-shaped set of wood and wrought iron steps. At the top of the steps lay a series of oblong rooms with lacquered wood floors and black ceilings spilling out just the right amount of light into the rooms.

  The first room they enter is labeled “Baroque” and its vast white walls hold dozens of works by Reubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Jordaens. The air is cool and dry, but as Safia eyes the dark, almost underexposed look of the thick oils, she begins to feel a heaviness around her. Almost like an empathy for the lively souls trapped in all that murky shadow.

  “This room always makes me feel guilty for not attending mass,” Rita whispers with a grin.

  The next room is brighter with glass cases full of Egyptian art. They pass by slowly, admiring the smoke blackened earth ware and the limestone relief carvings of women in white dresses and long dark wigs. Safia’s eyes glisten as she recalls the photo her mother had shown her of her great-great-grandmother. Great-great-grandmother Safia—her namesake. As they move on, she eyes the statues of the animal-headed gods and goddesses, feeling the connection to her past roots deepen through the physical representation of the Egyptian culture. With her mood now lighter, they pass into the next room.

  The Art of Asia is displayed in similar glass cases and white pedestals full of bronze shay dynasty wine vessels; elaborately adorned, feminine wood sculptures with jeweled tiaras, painted with impossibly bright pigments.On the walls hang complex painting of gold on silk and heavy carpets of red and gold poppies and tulips.

  “This makes me hungry for Chinese food,” Rita whispers. Safia agrees and smiling, they move on to the modern science exhibit room which is wide and sectioned off by a maze of square columns.

  “Rita!”

  As they round one of the columns, a broad shouldered man with peppered, spiked hair in a shiny black dinner jacket is suddenly rushing toward them. He comes up fast, squeezing Rita in a suffocating bear hug and then turns to Safia with a crooked grin. Rita is laughing.

  “Safia, may I present to you Giorgio Minwell…the artist.”

  “Oh, pleased to meet you,” Safia says, grinning through a hardy handshake.

  “I’m so glad you both could…” he stops mid-thought and, still holding Safia’s hand, studies her more closely. There is an awkward moment of silence and then his bushy brows shoot up over the black frames of his glasses. “Safia Raine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ahhhh,” he chuckles. “I hear I owe you a bit of gratitude for breaking up the protest yesterday.”

  “Oh, no,” Safia smirks. “It was nothing really.”

  “Yes, nothing indeed.” His grin spreads under a wide, pockmarked nose. “Just the same, let me buy you a drink.” He motions for one of the servers leaning against the wall, plucks two glasses of champagne off his tray and hands one to each of the ladies. He then takes another and holds it up, letting the light glow in the pale bubbles.

  “A toast,” he pauses, his expression shifts and becomes more intense. “To man’s superiority over nature.” His dark eyes hold Safia’s as he speaks.

  She feels some sort of unnamable challenge. “To Eduardo,” she answers, raising her glass.

  Giorgio nods in approval and they all drink.

  “Please, enjoy the exhibits, both Eduardo’s and mine. Let me know what you think, all right?”

  They nod and watch him move off to greet a small gathering of college students.

  “So, how did you meet Mr. Giorgio again?” Safia asks, still thinking about his toast.

  “Oh,” Rita says, pushing a strand of auburn hair from her face. “Well, he was apparently contacting genetic research facilities a few years back, trying to get someone to sponsor his bio-art visions. I just happened to answer the phone. The hospital wouldn’t sponsor him, but I liked his ideas so I gave him my personal number and tried to help him out with any questions or problems he ran into.”

  “What did he mean by ‘man’s superiority over nature’?”

  Rita glances at her with soft, pale eyes and squeezes her arm affectionately. “To him, the point is not what he meant by it, but what you thought of it. He just likes to make people think, that’s all. Come on. Let’s browse.”

  They move through Eduardo’s exhibits first admiring the 16x20 mounted photos
of Alba, the first bunny to have a glow in the dark jelly fish gene inserted into her genome in the name of art. As Safia stares at the eerily green rabbit, she feels the mixture of awe and fear pumping through her veins. It’s one thing to imagine it, to hear about scientists doing it, but to actually see the results of a chimera creation in person did open up wider questions and fears about how far man would go. She pushes the monsters from her mind and takes a swallow of champagne.

  Rita has moved on, and Safia goes to stand beside her as she admires the exhibit called ‘Move 36.’ It is a 3-D digital projection of the original exhibit. She moves around it, reading the text projected beneath the plant in the middle of what looks like a clay and sand chessboard.

  Eduardo Kac translated the universal computer code into Descates’ statement “cogito ergo sum” then into a gene that was inserted into this plant’s genome. It sits in the spot where Deep Blue defeated the human.

  “I think, therefore I am,” Safia whispers absentmindedly.

  “Or, more accurately, I am thinking, therefore I exist.”

  Safia glances at Rita. Her fair blue eyes are shining with reflected light from the image of Deep Blue and with admiration.

  “But it wasn’t thinking, was it? It was just calculating and it wasn’t aware of itself calculating.”

  “Do we think or calculate? And I believe you’re right. Deep Blue wasn’t self-aware…but what about the computers today? They have almost reached the computational capability of our brains, and by the way, we almost have workable neural nets reverse-engineered from studying our own brains. Will they be self-aware?”

  Safia shrugs and tips some champagne onto her tongue, letting the fizz die before she swallows. “Well, I suppose they are evolving like we did then. At some point the brain function—or calculating—becomes complex enough to create an internal dialog and an awareness of that dialog.”

  “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  Safia smiles wryly, “I don’t know, does it? Or does it make you calculate?” She peers around a column at the next exhibit. “Wow, that’s quite a display.”

  “Mhm, my favorite,” Rita whispers. “Come on.” She grabs Safia’s free hand and pulls her quickly around to stand in front of ‘Genesis.’

  Safia stares at the projection of glowing blue letters filling the high wall.

  “It looks like DNA code.”

  “Yep, it is,” Rita answers with the high pitch of excitement. “It’s a passage from Genesis translated into Morse code and then into genetic code, and then inserted into that bacteria.” She points at the round blue projection with spots of green to the right.

  Safia reads the passage out loud, “’Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’”

  Her eyes narrow as she recalls Giorgio’s toast: man’s superiority over nature.

  She is startled by the irony. Most of the opponents of genetic engineering base their opposition on the belief that man should not play God, that man’s superiority over nature is only arrogance…and here it seems their God is giving them permission to do just that. Nature has been handed over to us, by the Creator himself, not just to rule over, protect and consume, but to command.

  “You all right?” Rita asks quietly. “You look pale.”

  “Just wondering,” Safia says, staring at the altered bacteria, “what man—with all his selfish motives and agendas—will do with this new level of power over nature.”

  “Well, we’ve already improved the next generation’s quality of life by eliminating the possibility of a lot of really bad diseases and lengthening their life spans.”

  “Yes, but,” Safia says wearily, “we both know there are two sides to every coin.”

  “Evil to balance out the good?”

  “Something like that,” Safia answers. “Fear to balance out thought.”

  “Ah, my dear new friend.”

  The two women turn to find Giorgio standing behind them, his lips twisted into a crooked grin, his eyes fierce beneath his glasses. His tone, when he addresses Safia again, reflects this blend.

  “You think of genetic engineering as a new level of power over nature?”

  Safia nods, fascinated by his expression, which is morphing into more of a squinty-eyed amusement.

  “Let me escort you to one of my exhibits personally then.” He offers her his arm,which she takes, and leads her to stand in front of an interactive plasma screen. Two thin, pasty teens step away from the screen and throw Giorgio a thumbs-up sign as they pass.

  “Welcome,” a woman’s dreamy voice announces. “To choose an evolutionary path, please select one possibility from each of the pull down menus.”

  Safia shoots Rita a questioning glance.

  “Go on,” she says, nudging her closer to the screen.

  Each menu is labeled: Engineered Foods, Vaccines, Drugs, Government, Crime, Building Materials, Education, Moral Beliefs, etc. Safia picks the last choice: Global Disasters and chooses Flood.

  “Thank you.” And then after thirty seconds has ticked away, “Here is a specimen of your created evolutionary path.”

  Tiny projectors click on around the area in front of the screen and suddenly, there in front of them in holographic form is Giorgio…well, a shorter, thinner, longer armed version of Giorgio with large round eyes…and wings!

  Rita is clapping, her face lit by the champagne and the absurdity of the image before them. Safia wants to laugh, but as impossible as Giorgio with wings looks, something in the background noise of her thoughts won’t allow her to take this so lightly.

  “Ah, you have given my ancestors one of my favorite possibilities,” Giorgio sighs approvingly.

  “Possibility?” Safia asks, her eyes still fixed on the hologram, which is now beginning to gather a small crowd. “I didn’t see ‘genetic engineering’ in any of those folders.”

  “Yes,” he states, his voice growing soft and gaining that hypnotic quality words get when one pulls them out of deep thought. “I left it out purposely. You said you believe genetic engineering is a new level of power over nature, but I tell you we have had this power all along. There is no such thing as the way man is ‘suppose to be.’ Everything is possibility, including our genes, which collapse into probability through the influence of environment.”

  “So you’re saying that if there was a global flood, man would just sprout wings out of necessity and fly out of it?”

  Giorgio gives her a chastising glance and pushes up his glasses. “Surely, Miss Raine, you understand species evolution more than that. Of course, most would probably perish. But if the waters never receded, the remaining humans, if there are any, would have to adapt to their new environment and over generations could possibly develop wings to reach higher ground.”

  “There’s only one problem,” Safia answers, now thoroughly intrigued by where he is going with this. “Our genes do not code for wings.”

  “Do they not?” His eyes brighten as if she has just asked the million dollar question. “Miss Rita, you’re the genetics expert here. Care to explain how our genes could code for wings?”

  Rita shrugs her small shoulders, smiling in a ‘I hate to say, but he’s right’ sort of way. “Well, genes can hang about our genome unexpressed for long periods, only to be switched back on by sudden changes in our environment.”

  “So, you’re saying that we could have the genetic blueprints to build wings still encoded in our DNA? Just switched off?”

  “Exactly,” they both say at once.

  “Okay,” Safia says slowly, her dark lashes closing partly on her gaze. “But even that is a boundary. The gene pool may be a lot more vast then we realize, but it still has boundaries. But you said genes are ‘possibility.’ Did you not mean possibility within boundaries?”

  “Ah,” Giorgio laughs, wagging his pointer finger playfully at Safia. “I like this. You pay attention. Very good. But the answer is no. It is not possible
, because of the infinite number of possible environment changes, to study genes in every situation. Therefore, we can’t really say for sure what their limitations are.”

  Safia shifts her weight to one leg restlessly and shakes her head.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me give you an example,” Rita offers. “Two researchers named Kollar and Fisher once did an experiment with chick embryos. First they removed a layer of chick cells that told the cells in the layer above them to develop into beak tissue; then they replaced this layer of cells with the corresponding layer from a mouse embryo. Which in the mouse embryo this layer would tell the layer of cells above them to develop into teeth. Imagine their shock when the transplanted mouse cells caused the layer of chick cells to develop into mammal teeth instead of a beak.” She pauses to let in sink in. “Do you see the problem? The cells that developed into teeth were still 100% chick cells with 100% chick DNA.”

  “You see,” Giorgio adds softly, “we can only say genes do this or that in circumstances that we are familiar with. We don’t really know what they are capable of outside of that. Therefore, we cannot limit their possibilities. Go one step further and you will find my point. If genes have no limitations and outcome is decided by environment…and we create our environment; then the conclusion is we are already manipulating our evolution. The difference is, it has been in blind ignorance whereas genetic engineering works with purposeful, open eyes.”

  “Wow,” Safia smiles. “That’s a lot to think about.”

  “Then I have done my job,” Giorgio grins. “I will leave you lovely ladies to finish the exhibit unescorted.” He gently kisses Safia’s hand and Rita’s cheek.

  “But Giorgio,” Safia calls after him.

  “Yes?” he says, turning patiently.

  “Don’t you think that purposefully manipulating our genes is dangerous? I mean, letting nature dictate genetic change for survival is one thing. Letting man dictate it for profit is another.”

  “Man’s driving force, my dear, is still survival…not profit.”

  “Good god, what is that?” Safia says, pointing to a glass encased sculpture against the far wall.