by Michael Ford
At the window, he pulled back the curtain and looked out onto a large yard below. A beautiful lawn, showered by sprinklers, surrounded by beds of flowers and bushes, with three sprawling trees in the center—oaks, he thought. But there was no Waste here—all the plant life below was healthy. Normal. A greenhouse at one side reflected the sun. Through a gate to one side, on a gravel patch, he could see the front end of a 4x4 vehicle. Kobi was stumped; he could find nothing, no way to explain what he was seeing. There was something oddly familiar about the yard. He recognized aspects of it—the greenhouse and the plant beds and the massive towering hedges at the back—like he’d been here before, and he considered again if he was still dreaming or hallucinating. That might explain the déjà vu.
He crossed the room. His clothes were hanging over a rail, but they’d been washed and were damp to the touch. Over the back of a chair was a robe. A few sizes too big, but he put it on anyway. He went to the bedroom door. It opened with a creak onto a wide second-floor landing lined with more doors and paneled with wood. The place didn’t look anything like Healhome. There were huge gilt-framed paintings on the wall. A strip of thick carpet ran over the floorboards to a stairway. Kobi smelled something—food—that made his stomach growl, drifting up from the bottom of the stairs.
“Hello?” he called, and his voice seemed to drift away. No one answered.
He resisted trying any of the other doors and descended the stairway, footsteps creaking. He’d never been in a place so grand, so old—and one that wasn’t riddled with Waste-infected plants. He almost felt like he was disturbing it, like the whole place was fragile. He could imagine a butler appearing from around a corner.
Light streamed through the front windows into an entrance hallway. A grandfather clock ticktocked gently. Treading lightly, Kobi peered through a door into an ornate dining room filled with silver ornaments on a table and shelves, and at one end was a large fireplace stacked with wooden logs. It’s almost something out of a fairy tale, thought Kobi—but those stories were always dark, violent tales. The next room was a living room with a large piano and several plush leather couches.
Kobi thought about ripping open the large mahogany door in the spacious entrance hall and fleeing. But some instinct told him not to—or maybe it was just the curiosity of exploring. He moved into the kitchen and picked up a small knife. Still, can’t hurt to be prepared. He padded lightly to a porch leading to a golden rectangle of light: the doorway looked like it framed another idealized painting of a landscape. Except it was real.
Kobi stepped out into the luscious yard. Again he was struck by a sense of familiarity. When would I have been here before? He walked down the gravel path past the 4x4, which looked clean and recently hosed down. The entire side of the house was surrounded by the same enormous hedge that obscured the view from the bedroom window.
Lying over a garden chair was a biohazard suit—the same one, he thought, that whoever rescued him had been wearing. He saw movement through the glass panels of the greenhouse. Kobi froze, then ducked behind the patio table, watching. The man inside, with his back to Kobi, was down on one knee among the plants. He wore a brown wool sweater. Kobi caught a flash of white hair. A sudden, illogical thought sent a jolt through his heart. Hales? Dad? Was it actually him that saved me?
“Dad . . . ,” he called, approaching.
The man paused, stood stiffly, then turned around. It wasn’t Hales. He was considerably taller or at least would have been if age hadn’t bent him over. He had a long, lined face and large ears partially obscured by shaggy white hair that fell to an equally bedraggled beard. His eyes were pale green, watery, behind circular, wire-rimmed spectacles. One of his hands clutched the head of his walking stick, the joints knotted and painful looking. The other hand held a basket of ripe tomatoes.
“Hendrix mentioned you’d woken up,” he said. His voice was soft. “How are you feeling?”
“Who are you?” Kobi asked. He had no idea who Hendrix was. Perhaps there was a butler somewhere. “Where are we? What happened?”
“That’s a lot of questions,” said the man. He took a step toward Kobi and paused. “I’ll need that knife, by the way. These tomatoes won’t cut themselves.”
Kobi felt a little foolish, brandishing the blade, but he wasn’t ready to give it up. “Answer me!” he said.
The man smiled, quite infuriatingly. “Very well. In answer to the first question: I’m Dr. Alan Apana. Second, we’re at my house. And third: what happened? Well, that’s rather a long story, and I imagine you’re hungry. Will you join me for some lunch?”
14
HE WALKED PAST KOBI, ignoring the knife still clutched in his hand, and began to hobble toward the house. Kobi’s legs felt unsteady, as if perhaps the ground itself was shifting.
Alan Apana. The founder of GrowCycle. The man who launched GAIA.
The man who thought he was god and destroyed the world, killing millions.
Surely he’s dead. . . . That’s what everyone thought.
Kobi watched the elderly white-haired man, very much alive, disappear through the back door.
He followed. Apana washed the tomatoes in the sink.
“You rescued me,” Kobi said.
“My drone saw you and your friends approaching. You’re lucky. Normally I don’t venture into the Waste-infected areas unless I really have to. Cutting that root away from your limb was pretty difficult, I can tell you. Had to use my chainsaw. Steady hand, Alan, steady hand! Don’t take off his arm! But as soon as I got one root away, another of the damned things grabbed you. They seemed to like the taste of you. Once you were dead, the Waste bacteria would have decayed your corpse in minutes. Your molecules would have become part of the clonal organism. When I finally got you in the jeep, you weren’t in a good way. I thought you might not make it. The Waste-spore poisoning is potent.”
Kobi felt sick, and Apana’s words did nothing to rid him of the nausea and confusion swimming inside his skull. “But . . . how did you get me out of the Wastelands?” Kobi asked. “Did you drive the whole way?”
“I didn’t get you out of the Wastelands,” said Apana, calm once more. He began to slice the tomatoes.
Kobi was a little confused. Why isn’t he being straight with me?
“What about the others? My friends?”
“They’re alive, at the moment,” said Apana.
“How do you know?”
“Hendrix has seen. Don’t worry.”
“Hendrix?”
“Seattle’s most famous son,” said Apana. “Jimi?” Kobi frowned. “Never mind.” Apana whistled, and a black shape floated up in front of the skylight outside. Kobi leaped back. It was the same disc-shaped drone that had hovered over the golf course. Green lights blinked along its side, and below them, blocky lettering read, “Property of GrowCycle.”
“You were spying on us?” said Kobi.
“I was keeping you safe,” said Apana. “Without Hendrix interfering with the air traffic signals, CLAWS drones would have grabbed you long ago. They managed to row back to the mainland, your friends.” His tone contained little emotion, as if Asha and the others meant nothing to him. “I admit, I didn’t have high hopes,” continued Apana. “Normally the island doesn’t give up its victims so easily.”
The way he spoke about the place, like it was a person, made Kobi feel uneasy. He remembered how he’d felt drawn there, almost compelled. How the island seemed like an entity in its own right, calling to Kobi and seeing into his mind. Asha had said she felt the presence too.
“I heard voices,” he said. “They made me jump into the water.”
“Really?” said Apana. “How fascinating. The clonal organism affects all creatures mutated by Waste, connecting with them through some kind of electromagnetic signals that influence the brain. Birds, fish, any mammals or reptiles that can swim. They enter the swamp in a sort of daze, then the clonal organism takes them. Thankfully it does not affect me, being clean of Waste. But it would sugg
est you have suffered mutations. And yet you look very healthy to me. So what are you? I wonder. . . . The plot thickens!”
“Is that what grabbed me?” asked Kobi. “A . . . clonal organism?”
“Indeed,” said Apana. “It covers almost the entire island, connected via an underground root system—my theory is that it needs its prey to survive. It feeds off them.”
“And it’s Waste infected too?” said Kobi.
“I think it’s the Waste in its purest form,” said Apana. “Which makes sense, don’t you think?”
Kobi swallowed. “I saw things too,” he said. “It seemed to know my memories, my deepest fear, I think.” And my greatest hope. Seeing Dad again.
Apana’s eyes gained a glimmer of light. “How interesting. What’s more interesting is that, somehow, you’re still alive. Someone with such prolonged exposure, at such high concentration—you should have died almost instantly. Which goes back to my previous question. What are you, my boy?”
“I’m immune,” said Kobi. “To the Waste. It doesn’t affect me.” Apana set down one plate in front of Kobi, then another. “You don’t seem surprised,” said Kobi.
The old man shrugged. He took out two glasses from a cabinet and filled up a water jug from a sink. “I’d come to the same conclusion. I hope you don’t mind, but I took some of your blood while you were unconscious. I had a hard time getting the needle out.”
Kobi did mind, but since the man had saved his life it felt wrong to complain. “I heal. Fast. It’s a mutation from the Waste.”
“Of course.” Apana held the water jug still, lost for a moment. “The Waste never ceases to amaze me.” His detached tone brought Kobi a spark of irritation.
The people it killed didn’t find it so amazing. The people you killed!
“The equipment I have here is hardly up-to-date,” said Apana, opening a jangling cutlery drawer, “but from the experiments on your blood, it appears you carry antibodies that neutralize the Waste. I’d like to run a few more tests—”
“I’m done being prodded at,” Kobi said. “I need to go back to the island. The key to a Waste cure is there, in a lab somewhere: something better than a Waste cleanser, something permanent.”
Apana dropped the fork he was setting by Kobi’s plate. “Cleansers? A cure, you say.” Then, strangely, he chuckled. “Yes. I would say you, my boy, could provide that. In theory, your blood could be synthesized and—”
“We’ve already tried that. The cleansers only work for a bit.”
Apana ran his hands through his thin hair, fingers trembling. “Fascinating.” But the sparkle in his eyes dulled like he had suddenly been brought back to reality.
“Hales said what we needed for the cure was on the island, I think at a GrowCycle facility. You must know where it is,” Kobi insisted. “You have to help me.”
Apana seemed to ignore the last statement. “Hales?” he whispered, the deep lines of his forehead folding. “Jonathan Hales? He’s alive?”
“He was,” said Kobi quietly. “He died about six months ago, helping me escape from CLAWS.”
Apana let out a long breath. “Who exactly are you?” he repeated.
“Can you get me back to the island or not?”
Apana threw a towel over the bowl of sliced tomatoes. “Lunch can wait a few more minutes,” he said. “Let me show you something.”
They went back up the stairs, and Apana stood in the door of the bedroom where Kobi had woken up. In the warm glow of the afternoon light, Apana’s face looked only more wrinkled, a network of deep, scarred shadows.
“My grandson’s room,” he said. “It seemed the most appropriate for a”—he looked Kobi up and down—“well, a boy, I suppose.”
He walked along the hall, then reached up for a hatch in the ceiling and pushed it. A mechanism sprang the hatch open, and a handle appeared. Apana pulled down an extendable ladder leading into a loft. He climbed up gingerly, and Kobi could hear the creaking of his joints. “Watch your head,” said the old man.
Kobi followed and found himself in a large attic space lit by two skylights and outfitted like a lab. Apart from the biohazard suit hanging outside, the room was the first sign of modernity he’d seen, with workbenches covered in circuit boards and wiring and various diagnostic tools with screens. A silver device like a small football lay on the desk, a control panel open on its side. There was a primitive hologram projector also. Along one wall a huge glass panel sealed off a smaller portion of the room, with its own air lock chamber. Inside were several specimen tanks plus racks containing vials of various fluids as well as an array of biology equipment like a microscope and a centrifuge. Apana opened one of the skylights and beckoned Kobi closer.
Kobi stared out the window, trying to work out what he was seeing. Beyond the hedge that circled the yard, he could see a vast black landscape: a decaying mass constantly slithering and moving, the air thick with spores. Trees shooting up to the sky before rotting in an instant. The clonal organism . . . how? A layer of mist hung over a lake beyond. Peeking through, many miles away, Kobi saw the familiar skyline of Old Seattle, with skyscrapers like silhouettes. It couldn’t be an illusion.
“We’re still on Mercer Island,” he mumbled. “Still in the Wastelands. How?” But before Apana answered, Kobi remembered where he had seen this yard before, and everything began to fall into place, piece by piece, into one mesmerizing whole. He had to say it out loud, one step at a time. “This is the yard from that GrowCycle commercial for the launch of GAIA. I thought it was all just computer generated. But it was real. This greenhouse and yard are fertilized with GAIA, the real GAIA—it worked. You said it was supposed to filter pollutants out of the air. . . . GAIA filters out the Waste too, doesn’t it? It keeps you safe here even though you’re in the middle of the most contaminated place in the world.”
“Yes. You’ve got it, my boy.” Apana went to the cabinet and took out a small vial with a deep green liquid inside. “This is pure concentrated GAIA. Just a tiny sample of this liquid, less than a hundredth of a milliliter, and my yard was the result. My own Eden, enclosed within a hell of my own making.”
Kobi’s skin felt electric as the true force of the discovery and what it meant overcame him. Suddenly he understood why Hales had wanted him to come here. The pieces of the puzzle all came together in his head. “This is it! The cure. The cleansers can neutralize Waste in people’s bodies, and the GAIA can cleanse it from the environment. It will stop people from getting reinfected. I thought the cure would just give us a way to improve on the cleansers, create a real vaccine. But that’s not it at all.” Kobi shook his head, confused. “But, wait. . . . Why did GAIA only work here? Why did it become Waste everywhere else?”
“It didn’t,” said Apana, returning the vial to the cabinet.
Kobi thought of the folder Hales had found in the Grow-Cycle lab, the one labeled “2.0.” The other folder Kobi had seen in the lab, labeled “1.3,” had described testing on a chemical that had toxic and mutagenic effects—the Waste. “The version of GAIA that got released, that was an old kind. Version 1.3. You never meant to use that one. You knew it wouldn’t work.”
Apana’s face looked completely impassive, like a statue’s. “Yes,” he whispered. “That is what happened. It doesn’t matter now. It is done.”
Kobi could hardly believe it. “How? How did the wrong version get released?”
Apana sank into a chair. His broad chest heaved with breaths wheezing through his nose. His face remained cold and flat, like a funeral mask. “We’d been testing versions of GAIA for months, and every time the trial began well before failing dramatically—as with version 1.3. I worked day and night, trying to find the key to a successful formula. And I did it. GAIA 2.0. I used it in my yard. I brought clients here: heads of corporations from around the world, NGOs, governments who bought GAIA and distributed it on the day of the launch to farmers—to use to reforest the Amazon, to provide food to famine-stricken countries. I thought we were going to
save the world.” He paused a moment. “Melanie Garcia thought differently.”
A chill split Kobi’s shoulder blades, and a well of horror filled his stomach. “She caused the disaster.” He looked up into Apana’s eyes. “Everyone thinks she tried to stop the launch of GAIA. They think you’re to blame, and Melanie has become the most powerful person in the world. CLAWS took over all of GrowCycle’s resources after the catastrophe. Melanie said she was the best person to lead the fight against the Waste. She turned CLAWS into the biggest corporation in the world.”
Apana stared up at the sky. “Ah, Melanie. Always the opportunist. Yes, I keep up with the outside world sometimes. I listen on my radio. I know what she’s become. I know what they think of me. The devil! The destroyer! The fool! The arrogant, evil breaker of the world.”
“But why did she do it?” said Kobi. “How?”
“Melanie wished to make GAIA profitable,” said Apana in a detached matter as if reciting a report. Kobi wondered if the only way the man could bear to recollect was to remove all emotion. “To price it high, make money. She was like a daughter to me in many ways. She was an orphan, you know? Quite brilliant. Always ambitious. Rebellious, foolish. She was never involved in the research and development side at GrowCycle, only business. She, Mischik, and Hales were the brightest students at Seattle University when I lectured there on bioscience. I took them under my wing. Mischik and Hales were my protégés too but declined my offer to work at GrowCycle. Only Melanie accepted. She and Hales were romantically involved. But I know they drifted apart as Melanie was consumed by her work.”
Kobi felt a shock but realized he wasn’t entirely surprised. Something in the way Melanie had talked about Hales suggested she knew him well, that they had a history.
“She had such great plans for the company,” Apana continued. “She saw GrowCycle becoming a global corporation, the most powerful, diversifying into every field. She didn’t understand my vision. GAIA was the world’s savior. It should not be sold to consumers and corporations like any common product. We had no choice but to let her go. We were lining up a replacement for her. We hadn’t told her yet, but she must have gotten wind. Melanie always took things rather personally, and the way she dealt with her enemies had always been ruthless. I never could have guessed what she was capable of though. I do not know if she fully understood what would happen when she switched the formula sent to all our production labs. I think—I hope that she just wanted to ruin me and the reputation of the company by sabotaging the launch so that it was an anticlimax. Not ruin the world by unleashing an international bio-disaster.”