Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  Halfway through Saturday afternoon, she found herself wondering how much damage her marriage had sustained. Nick was forgiving, yes, but she had briefly foresworn her loyalty to him, if not her love, and he knew it. It had to make a difference, and a difference that she would have to struggle to overcome. Not that Nick would keep reminding her, or that his feelings would be lessened by the memory. He was too forgiving for that. But she, she carried the guilt, and she would have to exorcise that burden.

  She was pacing back and forth in the living room, her voice echoing within her skull, when Andy tugged at her jeans and cried, “Mommy!”

  She bent to him, suddenly aware that she had been ignoring persistent demands for attention, and said, “Yes, dear?”

  “My Warbird went under the couch. Get it for me?”

  She obeyed, but when Andy followed up that demand with a request for a story, she said, “I think it’s about time I baked us some bread. Want to watch?”

  “I wanta help!”

  “Just watch, until you’re bigger.” Nick was assembling the ingredients for a cake, but she chased her husband from the counter of “his” kitchen to the table and dove into her occasional specialty. It was also her therapy, for she had long since learned that pounding bread dough into submission could quiet her mind even when her thoughts churned so vigorously that she could concentrate on nothing else.

  But her thoughts refused this time to quiet. Instead, they jumped their track. How much had she contributed to the final roundup? She had identified Chowdhury’s “boss,” but surely only seconds before Bernie would have seen it himself. She had made a phone call. She had … What else? She had given Bernie someone to talk to, and that was all. She hoped she gave Nick something more.

  * * * *

  On Sunday, she and Nick took Andy to the zoo to see the unmodified ancestral stock of the genimals he knew so well from the veedo and the airport and the highway. In the reptile house, a python was basking in the sun; on the wall beside its cage, a board displayed the skin it had recently shed. “Look at that,” said Emily. “See the scales that covered the eyes?”

  “They’re like windows!” cried Andy.

  “They make me wonder if we could make a house, or a car, or a train, from a snake. The windows would be built in, grown in, and …”

  “Your next project?” asked Nick.

  She shrugged and grinned. “Maybe, come to think of it. It would be easy enough to enlarge those scales and make them repeat along the body. It would be trickier to transplant the genes into a pumpkin, or Roachster.” Or an Armadon, she thought, and she wondered what would come of that project now that Chowdhury was out of circulation.

  * * * *

  She did not get an answer to her question right away. Neoform had lost not only one of its chief researchers and product developers, but also its research director, and on Monday, no one knew what would happen next. She and Alan Bryant were in their domed fabric “barn” that afternoon, checking on the growth of the Bioblimps, when Alan said, “Do you think they’ll make you the new chief?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not political enough. And I wouldn’t want the job if I were.” She gestured past the net that closed off most of the dome’s interior space, forming a huge cage in which young moving vans rose and fell above a long food trough. Their bells swelled and contracted, propelling them about their space, in and out of the zones of blue and gold illumination defined by the dome’s panels, in a way that would not be allowed once they reached full size, when strapped-on control pods would cover their mouths, all except a narrow opening for their breathing. Their tentacles writhed as they plucked chunks of unidentifiable meat from the trough and inserted them into the stomachs within the bells. The sphincters that controlled the openings to their cargo holds alternately gaped and puckered. Each van bore a stylized sailing ship on the side of its gasbag. “They’ll be too big for this place soon. We’ll have to take them outside and tether them.”

  “You would if you were political,” said her aide. Then he shook his head. “We won’t need to tether them. Their nervous systems are so rudimentary that we’ve had some problems designing the control circuitry, but it’s almost ready now.”

  “Tether them anyway. If the controls have been that tricky, something’s bound to go wrong. And we don’t want them wandering off and eating pedestrians.”

  Alan began to laugh, looked sidelong at her, and let it die. The image had been a funny one, straight out of ancient monster movies, but it did, he quickly realized, come a little close to home for his boss. “Have you heard anything about Chowdhury’s lab?”

  “Not a thing. I think they’re pretending he’s taking a little sabbatical. Business as usual for now.”

  * * * *

  The pretense lasted until Wednesday. That morning, when Emily reached her lab, Alan was holding a piece of paper. As she entered the room, he handed it to her. She stopped, leaned against a bench, and read:

  TO: All Employees

  FROM: T. Gruene, Personnel

  RE: Supervisory changes

  We have recently lost one of this company’s three founders, Director of Research Dr. Sean Gelarean, and a valued employee, Dr. Ralph Chowdhury, Senior Researcher in Product Development.

  We will shortly advertise for a new Director of Research. Until the results of our search for a replacement are in, Dr. Gelarean’s post will remain vacant. All reports and requests for travel funds, supplies, and project approvals should be routed to Dr. Atkinson.

  Dr. Chowdhury’s position will be filled by Dr. Adam Chand. Until now, Dr. Chand has been a research assistant in Dr. Chowdhury’s lab.

  “It doesn’t say a word about why we lost those ‘two valued employees,’” said Emily. “But that’s good. In fact, Wilma might make a good replacement for Sean. And Adam …”

  “He’ll do fine,” said Alan.

  Something in his tone made Emily think that he too would like to be a lab chief, but she did not respond. Instead, she handed the memo back to him and said, “Better change that routing in the computer.”

  A little later, crashing sounds, as of furniture breaking, drew her down the hall toward Chowdhury’s—now Chand’s— lab. There she joined a number of her colleagues as they watched, bemused, while Sam Dong and Micaela Potonegra expelled Chowdhury’s chosen furniture, so obviously high, ungainly, and uncomfortable, from the lab, and Chand told a pair of maintenance men, “Out! Get us some decent furniture. But get this stuff out of here!” He sounded exasperated, but there was a strange smile on his face. Emily thought it must signify a sense of triumph and relief, uncertainty and determination.

  “But, Dr. Chand,” one of the maintenance crew protested. “It takes weeks for an order to come through.”

  “Then bring in the furniture from the other lab, in the barn. We’ll do all our work in here, until the new things come and you install them in the barn.”

  “Uh, we could shorten the legs on some of these …”

  “Then do it. In the barn. Get it out of here!”

  “Yessir!”

  Chand’s face did not lose its strained mixture of expressions as he turned his attention on the spectators. “The show’s over,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.” Then, as he seemed to notice Emily for the first time, he added, “Emily! Come on in!” and jerked his head toward the lab behind him.

  She followed him in, to find Sam and Micaela pausing in their labors to stare at her, smiling almost as if she belonged with them. Perhaps, she thought, she did, for though they had borne the daily brunt of Chowdhury’s temper, she had been the one he had been trying to kill. “Adam,” she said. “Congratulations.”

  “And now what?” he said. Suddenly the uncertainty was uppermost in his expression.

  Emily looked around the room. The equipment— workstations, DNA
splicers, and more—was now concentrated on a single workbench and the tops of the lab’s freezers and incubators. “You’ll do your own thing,” she said. She pointed at the puffer fish hanging from the ceiling. “What’s that?”

  Chand’s face lit up. “Well, sure,” he said. “I was planning to …” Then her question penetrated, and he followed her finger with his gaze. “I’ve been trying to design a submarine,” he added more slowly. He explained the fish and the direction of his thought, while Emily nodded encouragingly.

  Micaela Potonegra interrupted: “We will be carrying on, though. The Armadon …” She hesitated, as if aware that the Armadons might be a sore point. They were, after all, potential competition for the company funds and energy Emily’s Bioblimps would also need. They also stood, in the mind of any Neoform employee, for Chowdhury. They were Chowdhury, in a much more solid and positive sense than the cocaine nettle and hedonic genimals. “The Armadon prototypes will be ready for testing soon, and we do want to see them into production. We’ve already put a lot of work into them, you know.”

  Emily did know. They had done most of Chowdhury’s design work, and all of the donkey work of feeding and cleaning and testing, just as Alan Bryant did for her. In a very real sense, the Armadons were as much their babies as they were Chowdhury’s. But they had been Chowdhury’s idea, and he would get the credit, even if he must enjoy it in a prison cell.

  Micaela pointed toward the back of the room. “We still have those four in here.” Emily looked and saw the cage on the floor, crowded with the baby Armadons she had first seen just the week before. “And they can’t stay in that cage any longer. They can hardly move.”

  Nodding that Micaela was speaking for them all, Adam Chand said, “Would you like one? It’ll grow, you know, and when it’s big enough, we can have the prototype shop fit it out. That won’t cost you anything.”

  Emily looked back at three expectant faces. Did they feel that they owed this to her, as recompense for what Chowdhury had done, or tried to do? Then how could she say no? And besides—the thought came to her mind for the first time in weeks—her family did need a second vehicle. Let this one grow up, and it would be perfect for Nick, though they would have to enlarge the garage. And he would be delighted by its rarity on the road, though surely that would not last. Andy would be delighted by it now, as a novel pet and as a replacement for the Chickadee in his affections.

  How could she say no?

  She didn’t.

  She said, “Thank you.”

  GREENHOUSE

  You only think you’re in control…

  Prelude

  To the Eldest and her sisters, the glass that protected their narrow gallery from sky and weather was as plain to “see” as the dark walls that shielded them from public view. Their senses were not quite of the human kind, and it was not difficult for them to register the infrared that glowed from both sorts of solid surface. Yet they could also respond to visible wavelengths, and thus they could watch both the swayings of the overhanging palm fronds and citrus branches that tempered the bright sunlight and the movements of tree limbs and clouds and sun beyond the glass.

  They could also feel. They could feel temperature and dry and wet, and if they could, they would have smiled when the pipes that arched between their shade plants and the glass spewed misting showers to keep the dryness from their leaves and blossoms and the rich soil that embraced their bulbs.

  The Eldest and her sisters could hear as well, but they could not speak. They could not, in fact, communicate in any ways that humans would easily have understood. They talked to each other by the slight bendings of their stems, the curlings of their leaves, and mainly by the drifts of fragrance that rode the steady current of air that flowed from the Eldest down the gallery past all the rest. In due time, when the air had swept through all the other passages of their dwelling, those odors would return. But they would be diluted then, spread out and weakened, and of course delayed. The Eldest thus spoke always with the first and loudest voice, and no sister could threaten her dominance. So long as no one rearranged the gallery or tampered with the ventilation system, so the situation would remain. And so long as the Eldest gave no orders for change, their ordered rank and the air currents that swept their messages along the gallery would be undisturbed. She would, of course, order no disturbance of the status quo, for much of her heredity dictated a properly hierarchical sense of her own importance in the larger scheme of things.

  Now the Eldest let a long leaf curl and straighten while she twisted on her stem to peer down the gallery and be sure she had the attention of her sisters. She might have sighed if she had had lungs. Those sisters… She was the Eldest by only a little. All had had time to reach their full growth. But only she had reached a size consistent with maturity. The others were small and stunted. Some were deformed in minor, inconsequential ways. And the next generation would have to be worse. Certainly it could be no better. Unless…

  Finally, she released a small puff of intricately intermingled odors. Her message was simple, and each member of her retinue added to it comments, so that what the listener furthest downdrift sensed was something rather like:

  “WE ARE HANDICAPPED

  Cannot leave our beds

  Destiny and progeny demand

  No handicap

  Motility

  THINK

  Consider

  OUR MASTER/PET

  Has/had pistil/mate

  And scion/seedling/sprout

  THAT ONE TOO HAS

  Yes, pistil/mate

  Let’s bring!

  Them here!

  YES

  To us

  To study them

  And cherish them

  To change

  If possible

  To make them make

  Pollen

  We crave it!

  Yes, fruition

  And predestined

  Success

  IF POSSIBLE

  Will these three be enough?

  TELL, THEN, MASTER/PET

  To get more as well

  As rootstocks

  And pistils

  For our dreams”

  The conversation was not hasty, for the speakers were languid beings, unrushed and patient. But by the time the sun had dipped near the hills and the light had begun to dim, the issue was settled. The Eldest and her sisters spread their leaves and turned their faces toward the last of the light. There was nothing more to say, and only a little to do, a little that could easily await another sunny day, when energy waxed and opportunity arose. Tomorrow the Eldest would issue the necessary orders.

  Until then, she and her sisters would spend their time in dreams, dreams of some distant day when their scions/seedlings/sprouts might stalk the world beyond the walls that enclosed their gallery, when more active beings would cease their scurryings and bow before them, when…

  Darkness fell, but before the dreams grew still and dim, the Eldest sent out the call. Moments later, a hand fell upon the switch near the gallery entrance and artificial lights came on. They were dim but bright enough to sustain consciousness, intent, and dreams even when the world was lost in blackness.

  Chapter One

  “Do you have the new Slugabeds?”

  “Of course we do, Ma’am.” Tom Cross smiled at the customer and tugged surreptitiously at the side of his light green coverall. She was old enough to be his mother, and her paisley coverall was both three years behind the fashion and a hair too tight. Yet she was stylish enough in other ways; she wore no rings or earrings, and the chain around her neck was blackened aluminum, its pendant a classic pewter peace sign, both as current as could be. She must, he thought, hate to admit that she was losing her struggle to keep the figure of her
youth. “Right this way, please.”

  She babbled, as customers tend to do: “We have an antique waterbed, you know. And it doesn’t leak. But I saw the ad, and I thought how interesting it would be. Almost like having a pet. And it wouldn’t have to be plugged in.”

  Tom didn’t know she had a waterbed, antique or new. He didn’t care whether she had seen an ad, or how interesting she thought a Slugabed might be. It was enough that she had chosen to visit Mr. Greengenes’ Appliance Garden. And that he had a chance to earn a commission. Someday, perhaps, he would have a Garden of his own. For now…

  He gestured at the potted plants they were passing. “Then you don’t have any bioppliances? Our hanky bush is quite useful. And the bathroom model is very productive.”

  “Oh, we have one of those. But it doesn’t do much, you know?”

  “Neither does a Slugabed. It just lies there.”

  “But it’s warm! And it wiggles. That’s what the ad said.”

  The young man nodded. “If you wish. It’ll massage you, or cuddle you, or…” He shrugged. “And yes, it keeps itself—and you—at body temperature. It’ll warm you or cool you, depending on the weather.”

  The Slugabed display was around the next corner, just past the goldfish bushes. “These are more active,” he said. “Just drop the flowers in a bowl of water, and…”

  “My sister has two.”

  He sighed as quietly as he could, hoping she would not notice, and led her onward. “There,” he said. “We have a good selection.” The Slugabeds, looking like unrolled sleeping bags, were arrayed on a carpeted platform, without frames or headboards or box springs. They came in all sizes—crib, youth, twin, queen, king—and in as many shades of skin as one could see on a city street. A few were even piebald.