Cheeky little brat, Petra thought, but it was delicious.
“Timothy, you’ve outdone yourself,” Lydia exclaimed in her best Texan drawl. Timothy bowed with a flourish and left the room.
“So,” Lydia asked Petra, “what exciting science are you coming up with these days?” She was trying to recall what Jordan had told her about his dealings with technical people and scientists. He told her there was an art to getting the best out of them. She couldn’t remember the rest of what he said but being congenial and welcoming had to be a good place to start.
“There’s mostly a lot of inconclusive science at the moment,” Petra began. “Uh, historically, there’s been quite a bit of research in Israel. And the field is certainly starting to boom.” She took another sip of her cappuccino. “To be honest, I’m pretty much having to retool for this industry. Cannabis is a complex plant. Most plants are, but . . . uh . . .”
Lydia nodded encouragingly.
“Human interaction with cannabis is extremely complex from a physiological standpoint. It’s difficult to determine what a medical producer should be aiming to achieve.” It was a long-winded way of saying she didn’t have a damn clue what she was up to yet.
After the first month, she’d got the impression nobody really cared what she did. She was pretty sure Caldwell and Luther had hired her as a PR move. CannRose-Medi would look better if there was a scientist with a PhD on board. She realized after it was too late she should have asked for more money. But given that it was a job and she was getting paid for it, even if not handsomely, she found it curious that she still had no idea who she was reporting to. It was increasingly probable she might not be answering to anybody. My God — the door to a new universe swung open at the thought of it — she might be able to do curiosity-driven science! It was a vanishing if not extinct endeavor these days. Even back when she was a grad student there were funding cuts for fundamental plant research. They used to joke that they could maybe start applying to the Hell’s Angels or the Mexican drug cartels so they could keep working on plants. And here she was, up to her ears in weed. “It’s not something I’ve ever worked with before. Cannabis that is.”
“Why, of course. I can certainly understand that.”
“I am starting an experiment, though. The clones are being prepped today. Um . . . I did mention this at the interview . . . most of the plant research I’ve been involved with had very little to do with secondary metabolism or, say, soil-plant relations, disease resistance, that kind of thing — all the issues that would concern marijuana growers specifically. So I’m having to catch up.”
Lydia nodded, a slight furrow forming in her brow.
Petra figured she might as well come out with her current problem too, since the worst Lydia could be was indifferent. “I’m having technical hurdles as well. I’m not a technician. All those instruments that Lazlo just brought back from the EPA, somebody needs to look after them. I could probably do it, but that’s all I’d end up doing, and I think CannRose hired me to do research.”
Lydia suddenly remembered what it was Jordan had said about keeping scientists at their best: Make sure they had the tools and resources at their disposal and then give them problems they couldn’t possibly solve. It was amazing what they could come up with. “We absolutely want you to do the best science possible for CannRose-Medi. What resources and tools do you need?”
Petra blinked. Lydia had gotten to the crux of the issue before she had herself. “A tech,” she said. “A technician. Someone to do that kind of work for me.”
“That’s a simple thing, I think.”
Petra nodded.
“I’ll just speak to Luther about it and have it cleared. Of course, you’ll want to do the interviewing yourself.”
Petra nodded again. Given the complete ignorance in the whole company of virtually anything required to do her job, she found it hard to believe she’d just hit pay dirt with Lydia.
“I don’t imagine Greg will know what you’re looking for in the person, so maybe you can make up a little list for him. For the posting. I’ve noticed he likes lists.” Lydia smiled.
Petra smiled back. “There’s one more thing I could use. It would be very helpful.”
“Yes?”
“I need a couple of growth chambers.”
“Now would you need two of these exactly?”
“Um . . . the more the merrier!”
“So we should get them in bulk.”
“Actually, they’re pretty big. About double the size of a refrigerator. Sometimes bigger. A DNA sequencer would probably be handy too!” Petra was joking now. The DNA sequencer she had her eye on cost over a million bucks and given its potential, she’d like a team, not just a tech. The thing about marijuana was, because of hybridization and the crazy underworld breeding over the past forty years, the genetics were all fragmented, duplicated, triplicated and multiplied every which way. It was practically impossible to get a reliable reference. Everything she’d read indicated it was probably a mug’s game at this point. Especially with the less expensive sequencers. “Just kidding,” she said.
“Really?”
“Well, we could consider it down the line. Let somebody else start working on it.”
“They can do the heavy lifting? Is that what you’re implying?”
“Exactly.”
“But these other things that you need, you know where to get them?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know what I’m going to do? I’m just going talk to our CFO. He can set you up with a budget. That way you don’t have to go through Lazlo or that other young fellow we have for purchasing, I forget his name. You can order what you need directly. Would that suit you?”
“That would be fantastic!”
Lydia beamed. “I’m so glad we had this chat. We should get together more often. I don’t get to talk much to people in the other wing. Of course, I travel a lot these days. Almost as much as Caldwell! You know,” she confided, “I never would have imagined I’d be doing something like this in a million years.”
“Me neither,” said Petra.
Chapter 31
“I don’t believe this.” Joe was staring at the feeding records for Flower Room II. “He’s starving them again.”
“I thought you guys had worked that all out,” said Lizzie, one of the grow staff, sitting at the next desk and sorting through the flower-room logs.
“Who okayed this?”
She shrugged. “Gus, before he . . . you know . . .”
“Bet he didn’t. Bet it’s just Damian. What a jerk,” Joe muttered.
“So now we’re back to doing it his way again?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“It’d be nice if you guys could start agreeing on things.”
“Okay. So I’ll ask you this: When have all the plants looked the best? No hermies. No diseases. Happy, happy.”
Lizzie considered Joe’s question for a few seconds. “Umm . . . about two months ago,” she said. “Yeah, the flower rooms looked really lush. And the one nursery too.”
“Right. And where had Damian been the whole month before that?”
“See what you mean.”
“Yeah. So the plants were just fine while he was on his friggin’ expenses-paid trip home to Colorado.”
“Uh-huh.” The young woman thought it best to be noncommittal.
#
Damian showed up an hour later. Since his stays in the north were fairly intensive and he worked through weekends, he didn’t feel the need to keep a regular schedule. This was seen as an affront by many of the grow staff. Greg and Gus — up until the time he quit — held everybody else at CannRose to tight schedules. Clearly master grower was a mysterious position. The staff had never been able to figure out what the job actually entailed. More specifically they were never sure who was actually the master.
“Glad you could make it,” Joe said, as Damian sauntered into the cultivation office.
“Yup,
” Damian replied and gestured as if to brush away a fly. He found Joe depressing with his square-head and brush cut, his perky wife and his pink, plastic-looking kids, like they’d come out of a 3D printer. Damian had run into the whole family one Saturday at the deli in Hullbrooke. He imagined Joe and the kids chowing down on their nightly meat and potatoes. Or fish and potatoes. The picture was nauseating. He hoped spending time in the facility with such mediocrity and claustrophobic family values would not rob him of his own soul. If Lydia wasn’t paying him so much he’d be back in Colorado.
“So why are we doing this again?” Joe was wasting no time. He threw the fertilizer record down on the table in front of Damian. “That batch was set for filling out and you’re starving them.”
“They were overfed.”
“They were not. And what about these mothers? They’ve just been cloned. What the frig?”
“Yeah, well. What the frig.” Damian shrugged, turned and walked out of the office.
“I was talking to you.”
“You mean you were talking at me,” he said, looking briefly back over his shoulder.
“This isn’t about you or me. This is about the plants, asshole.”
Damian threw up his arms and kept walking. He swiveled around briefly — “Must be an East Coast thing with you guys!” — before vanishing into the hallway that led to the mother pods.
Damian opened the door to the South Mother Pod. “How are we all today, my southern belles?” The strains in the South Mother were all shapes and sizes and most of them were very bushy. They were old breeds and hybrids and many were even first generation, grown up from seed. Damian was extremely secretive about where the seeds had come from. They had names like Sweet Puddin’, Jakarta Honey, Hula Colada, Bubba Kush, Alabama Blitz, Skunk Bunny and Toto’s Revenge. Of course by the time any of these plants’ children or derivative products got to market, the names would be gone. They’d be sanitized to things like A-Bmz-4a or Whole Flowers SB-3. Yeah, all so the state could pretend it wasn’t dealing pot. So ridiculous.
Damian motioned to the other person in the room, a young woman. She was new to cultivation work. He pointed to the plastic basket of shears. “Make sure everything’s a good fit or you’ll end up with blisters.”
The young woman walked over to the table, grabbed a small pair of gloves and tried out a few shears until she found a comfortable pair.
“So, you’ll just be looking for any wilted, unhealthy, damaged, dead or dying leaves and cutting them off at the base of the frond, like this.” And Damian clipped off a yellowing seven-pointer in one easy move. “Don’t just take the leaflets. Make sure it’s the whole thing.”
They began working down the same row. Occasionally Damian would point out something the young woman had missed. They both looked up when the door opened and Cassie came into the pod to get clones for Petra’s experiment. She’d hoped Damian might be in one of the other pods. Possibly in the west one where he was most effective at killing the mothers by a slow death. Cassie decided to ignore both Damian and the new hire. She would be very busy. She was to make fifteen cuttings each from four different mothers: Alabama Blitz, Krishna’s Caress, Columbian Amber and Amazonian Amma. Petra had asked about Toto’s Revenge. Cassie told her it was a strain that grew well in any climate and really was the weediest strain of weed. Cassie was thinking it was probably the only one Damian wouldn’t be able to kill.
“Hey, hey! What’s this, man? Why you doin’ a hatchet job on my Krishna?” Damian said with a raised voice after seeing what Cassie was up to.
“I’m not a man.” Cassie snipped forcefully with the shears. “And I’m getting clones for Petra.” She wanted to add “asshole” but refrained.
“Who?”
“Petra. You know? The scientist? That woman with the degrees who actually knows something about plants?”
“Oh. Her. I don’t know she knows so much about plants. She’s just going to mangle them.”
“Really!”
“Yeah. That’s what scientists do.”
“They do?”
“Yeah. They do. Cut everything up into tiny pieces and lose all connection to what they started out with.”
“Wow, Damian. You know so much!”
“Yeah, I do. I know a few things.”
“Yeah. It’s just so hard to know what they are . . .”
Damian shook his head and kept smiling.
“It’s stunning,” Cassie said, “trying to figure out the few things you know. It’s so minimal . . . it’s awesome! Humbling!”
Damian had never experienced Cassie’s chirpy sarcasm before. He found it oddly titillating. “Glad you find me so transformative,” he said.
“Oh totally. It’s, like, life changing! You know, critical.”
The young woman pruning off the dead leaves wasn’t sure what she was witnessing but figured it wise to just keep her head down.
PART SEVEN
Growth
Oh Wads! Lose your clumpings of disaster. Lose your knack for despair. Swing your light so we may bask, knowing gentler fools have loved us. Since you must waste eons, can you not do it brightly? Bring laughter that the sun may prevail and the moon have one last go around before throwing in the towel? Oh Wads and your Sphincters of Titus! What can we say? Lose your tidings of terror and the ends of your days. Wake up. Gently.
from Cannto VIII, Cannabidadas
Chapter 32
Ernie adjusted his slipping eye patch. It was getting a little greasy and the elastic was going on it. Time for a new one. He bought them in packages of four, one of the few things, along with shoes, that he purchased new. He’d been contemplating getting something made from snakeskin for special occasions. The odd catering gig where he cooked on site demanded a good play on the talented chef image. He was debating what would be best — natural markings because he often cooked wild foods, or dyed black — when he caught sight of the new production manager, the fourth CannRose had hired in little over a year and a half.
A blond picture of health, Lorne was probably a decade younger than Ernie with a California tan like he’d just stepped off a surfboard. How irritating! And he was so keen, so sincere, talking to Lazlo and Caldwell, nodding enthusiastically and hanging on to every word. Just ripe for clobbering, Ernie figured. He’d probably be on anti-anxiety meds in no time, if he wasn’t already.
Lorne had been hesitant about accepting the position after he heard about the turnover at CannRose. But Ernie knew Greg had smooth-talked him. Greg was good at that. Used phrases like “a disappointing initial trial period” and “not exactly a good fit” and often declared, “Hey, it’s just natural growing pains. Nobody’s really done this before. Unless you were born in the Stoned Age.” And Greg would laugh at his own bad jokes. But it must have reassured Lorne, who had a wife, three kids and a dog and was relocating for this job. Ernie wondered how long it would be before all hell broke loose and the guy packed it in.
Lorne had been in the herbal tea business overseeing production of the short-lived Heaven Blessed Infusions and Tibetan Toner Teas. He lost his job when the company was bought out by one of the big tea producers, who promptly shut them down. But that was CannRose’s good fortune, Greg pointed out. Lorne looked to have about the best experience anyone could have for the job. “Unless your name’s Fatty Diego from Columbia,” Greg chuckled. Ernie figured it must have been those years of being a cop and busting people that made Greg so loose with the bad weed jokes.
Three days after Lorne started work he sought out Ernie. “Finally. Just the person I wanted to talk to.”
“What can I do for you?” Ernie smiled.
“Well, I’m looking at your hours, Ernie. You don’t work much do you?”
“Nope.”
“Do you want more hours?”
“Nope.”
“You work a couple of jobs, huh. Or three, like some people I know?” Lorne grinned, flashing his perfect white teeth.
“Nope.”
“
Oh.”
Ernie noted Lorne’s tone dropped. The man didn’t approve or was puzzled perhaps. Ambition, keeping busy and absolute trust in the benefits of productivity were clearly givens in his world. Ernie waited for him to say something more but Lorne seemed to lose interest in him. “Well, you have yourself a great afternoon, Lorne,” and Ernie went back to cleaning the utility sink.
#
Ernie noticed after a few weeks that Lorne, rather than showing any signs of crumbling, was doing awfully well. Though Ernie continued to find the man’s seeming sincerity and unrufflable composure irritating, most everyone else was impressed. His very existence created a level of strategizing among management and staff that Ernie had never witnessed at CannRose. People were clearly seeking the new man’s alliance and endeavoring to shore up favor.
Percy was particularly attentive with Lorne. The QA officer fired up the machine in Lydia’s office and took Lorne double cappuccinos at coffee break. It seemed he needed Lorne to understand the importance of quality assurance. “I know it’s just humble weed we’re cultivating and processing here,” Ernie overheard him say, “but the staff need to adhere to — no, they need to unequivocally embrace — the quality system. Of course you’d know that from the tea industry.”
“It sure looks to be thorough,” Lorne said, smiling as he took the cappuccino. “Your system. It’s detailed.”
“They didn’t have a clue, you know. There was virtually nothing here in the way of a protocol. The DOH was actually rather lenient, I thought. Mind you, marijuana’s a long stretch from cranking out statins and ACE inhibitors.”
“For sure. Pharmaceuticals. That’s a whole other level, isn’t it?”
“But we’re still producing medicine. Stringency should never be dismissed out of hand just because it’s cannabis. I mean Six Sigma is out of the question! But for the love of God, the staff need to at least follow the operating procedures now they have some. Consistency in method is crucial. And they need to keep records. I worry some of them can barely spell their names, let alone fill in a maintenance log.”
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