“A deadline? I hate deadlines.”
“Don’t you agree that this is pretty critical information? If you’re right about all of this, it has the potential to severely alter animal health and consequently, food production across the world, don’t you see?” He was hoping to motivate her to get her report written.
“Oh my God, you’re right. I have to write this up right now! Thanks, Dr. Greene. I’ll have it to you first thing in the morning.” She had already sprung up out of the chair and was pulling the door open as she spoke. Hannah, was on a mission.
Chapter 19
Saluda County, SC
Mid-winter 2020
County Extension Agent’s Office
Before Harvey Winters had stormed into his office a few months earlier, Gerald Davies’ biggest concerns had been avoiding Dot and helping out a few of the newer families with their 4-H projects. Since then, however, Dot couldn’t have caught up to him if she wanted to and nearly all of his 4-H kids were having some sort of problem or another. It had all seemed to be linked to the feeding of Walsanto’s GM/Hybrid corn. The document inside the manila envelope that he held in his hands was definitive proof from a private researcher. He swallowed the lump in his throat and opened the flap.
As he read the report, he had a sinking feeling unlike anything he had experienced in his tenure as County Agent of the small, rural South Carolina county. He reread the report’s conclusion three times, trying to digest its full meaning while his mind raced forward to the potential disasters that were waiting upon the horizon;
“The corn kernels have viable cells that contain the DNA of the bamboo, the DNA of the algae, as well as the terminator gene and a germination trigger gene. When the chickens eat the corn, the warmth and the wetness of the chicken’s stomach simulate the conditions for germination and the trigger releases its toxin. Because of the speed at which these cells divide and multiply, thanks to the bamboo DNA, they immediately begin working to outpace normal cell replacement/creation rates, thus begin increasing the overall percentage of the GM cells in the chicken’s body. The GM cells cause the gray/green skin and begin killing feather follicles. From 0% to 50% overall GM cell content, the chicken can still produce an egg that will hatch, but the resulting chick will be a gray containing 100% GM cells. As soon as overall GM cell percentage reaches 51%, all feathers are gone and the chicken is sterile, meaning its eggs appear perfect, but they will never hatch. The eggs also contain terminator genes.”
The note, paper clipped to the front page of the report advised that the researcher was engaged in studying a means of reversing the effects of the terminator gene and, in addition, was beginning a study of cow’s and goat’s milk in order to determine if the same genetic tendencies were being passed on to the next generation consumers.
The last statement stuck in his throat as he read it. He’d been around long enough to know that milk reflected anything that the cow ate. He remembered his father’s scolding when their milk cow had gotten into the onion patch. God. How many years ago was that? They couldn’t drink the milk for several days because it was so foul.
He picked up his phone and pressed the button to get a line out and then had second thoughts. He wanted a little bit more privacy to make the phone call that he had to make. Charlotte wasn’t necessarily a gossip and might not even hear him make the call, but if just one person happened to hear what he was about to discuss, he’d have Billy-Hell trying to keep the lid on things. He put the receiver back in its cradle, stood and reached for his hat.
“Out for the rest of the afternoon?” Charlotte asked when he stepped through the door of his office and closed it behind him. He suddenly remembered the open envelope on his desk. I better take that with me. He opened the door and went back to his desk, gathered up the envelope making certain that he hadn’t left any of the pages loose on his desk. Satisfied, he stepped back through the door and closed it behind him.
“Yes, Charlotte, I’ll be out for the rest of the afternoon,” he replied. It was nothing new.
“Okay. Have a good afternoon.” She paused when she looked up at him. Something wasn’t exactly right with his face. “Are you okay, Gerald? You look like you might be coming down with something.”
“I just need to get some air. It’s too stuffy in here.” It was the same phrase he used every time he left the office. He’d actually borrowed it from his grandfather. His grandfather had spent most of his life working in the open air and wasn’t all that fond of being cooped up inside. He remembered following him to the door where he took down a wooden keg with raisins inside.
As Gerald walked out the door, his mind wandered back to those simpler times.
“You want a few?” his granddad would always ask. He’d pour a handful into his tiny hand, not big enough for more than a dozen raisins. His grandmother would come along to zip up his jacket and make sure that he had his hat on his head. If it was chilly, she’d wrap a scarf around his neck, which irritated him. Grandpa didn’t have to wear a scarf.
It was a time when you ate what you grew or traded with your neighbors. You bought flour from the mill, salt and sugar from the general store, and it wasn’t the highly processed stuff they sell in the supermarkets. Grandma canned fruits and vegetables and stored them in the root cellar. Potatoes and carrots were poured into the bins inside the cellar and covered with dirt to keep them through the winter. Steers were fattened on grass and hogs were fed table scraps mixed with skim milk. Chickens, ducks and turkeys ate whatever they could forage. He remembered helping his grandpa keep the fire going in the smokehouse to preserve hams and slabs of bacon. They churned their own butter, gathered their own eggs and milked their own cows, sometimes selling their surplus to folks in town.
“Things are sure as hell messed up now,” he muttered as he opened the door to the pickup and slid into the seat. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought, but he seemed to be having it a good deal more often over the past several weeks. Another thought he had started to nag at him as well. Maybe it’s time for me to hang it up. He turned the key in the ignition and backed out of his parking spot.
He had a spot already picked out for making the phone call and he directed the truck toward Red Bank Creek at the edge of town. There was a quiet spot under a live oak tree next to a fishing hole that he’d dipped his hook into plenty of times in the hope of hooking a catfish. He hadn’t really been the type to want to spend his “Golden Years” fishing, but he was beginning to change his mind. Another thought came to him suddenly.
There were plenty of wild fish in the rivers and lakes of South Carolina and plenty of saltwater fish on the coast, but what if the hatcheries had started feeding the corn. The whole damned thing could get out of control. He hoped to hell that Dr. Greene’s researcher was able to find a way to reverse it all before it got completely out of control.
He pulled off the highway and meandered down the wandering lane over the potholes and exposed roots of the trees on either side of the road. With the windows of the pickup rolled down, he could instantly feel the refreshing scent on the soft breeze. The lane ended a ways back from the creek bank and he got out, wishing he had the old bamboo pole and reel that had belonged to his grandpa and been passed down, still in mint condition. That was something else he missed.
People used to take responsibility for their stuff and for helping out their neighbors and community. It had continued in their small town and county, but little by little, as people became more and more adapted to an instant, throwaway culture, even those things had begun to die out in Saluda. Was he the one that was out of touch or had civilization simply rushed on by with little more than a wave out the window? He was too old and outnumbered to turn back the clock, but before he hung it up, he’d see if he couldn’t stand in the breech and protect the people of Saluda County one more time.
He searched his cell phone for the number that he needed, took a deep breath and pushed the button.
“This is Rusty.”
“Rusty. Gerald Davies down in Saluda, South Carolina.”
“Hello, Gerald. How are things in America’s heartland?”
“Fair to middlin’. Say, are you where you can talk?”
“You got the results,” his tone changed to a grave one. He’d seen it coming the moment that he heard Gerald’s name, but he’d been covering as he walked away from prying ears. “Give me about fifteen minutes and then I’ll call you back.”
“Alright.”
Gerald had been leaning across the hood of his pickup as he made the call. He’d spread several pages of the report out in order to quote from it as he made his report. Since he had a few minutes, he gathered them back up and put them back into the envelope. Wandering down to the lazy flowing river, his mind was fishing for answers. How are we going to fix this one?
Whenever people started screwing with genetics and altering secrets that, in his opinion, God had meant to keep secret, all sorts of bad things happened. It had only been a matter of time before someone ran across a genetic alteration which had the potential to destroy the human race entirely. Were they facing that already?
He’d been onboard with the idea of feeding the world and allowing countries where the growing season or other adverse conditions had prevented them from producing enough food to keep their people fed. It had been a noble idea and his hat was off to President James for pushing forward with his Walsanto plan. However, as things turned out, the world’s food supply was potentially in jeopardy.
His thoughts were interrupted when his cell phone rang. It seemed a little soon for Rusty to be calling back. He pressed the button and answered the call.
“Hey, handsome.” He recognized Dot’s voice almost immediately. How the hell had she gotten his cell number? One of the boys at the feed store, enjoying a lark at his expense, no doubt.
“Hello, Dot.” He tried to sound businesslike and uninterested.
“Gerald Davies, don’t sound so grumpy. I’ve got a proposition for you.”
“Oh you do?” He tried a friendlier tone. After all, Dot was one of the few people who could truly relate to the same experiences and memories that he carried around in his head. If she wasn’t so damned pushy and flirty, he might be able to enjoy her company.
“How does fried chicken and the fixins after church on Sunday sound?”
It actually didn’t sound too bad, but he’d been so used to running from her that he wasn’t sure that he was ready to let her trap him with it just yet. He’d laid his wife to rest a half dozen years before and he wasn’t sure that he was ready to take up the company of another woman.
He had a quick out. “Dot, I’m waitin’ on an important phone call. Can I call you back in a little bit?”
“All that I need is a yes or no, Gerald.”
“Well, could be this phone call will affect that answer,” he lied. At least it would buy him a little time to come up with a good excuse.
“Well, alright, if you promise that you’ll call me right back? Don’t you make me have to bug you.”
He felt it was highly unlikely that anything he did would stop that. “Okay, Dot, I promise to call you back in a little bit.”
“Okay, talk to you in a few.” She almost sounded like she was singing as she said it.
“Bye now.” He ended the call. Dot was alright, whenever you got right down to it. He probably should just tell her that being friends was okay, but he didn’t want to get romantically involved with anyone. Hell, at his age, romance didn’t come as easily as it once had.
His phone rang again.
“This is Gerald.”
“Gerald, Rusty. What have you got?”
“I can tell you that the research looks pretty damned bad, Rusty. Not the quality, that looks to be as high quality as it comes, but the results are to say the least, damned frightening.”
“Alright, give me a rundown.”
“Give me a minute to get back to my truck and I’ll read some of it to you before I pass it along.”
“Just give me the rundown and hold onto it for the time being. Where’s your truck?”
“It’s right here. I just drove down to the creek bank away from prying ears.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah. That bad.”
“God. I haven’t sat under a shade tree behind a stream with a rod and reel in... hell, I can’t even remember when.”
“Well, then, come on down and I’ll bring the bait.”
“If things are as bad as you’re hinting at, I may have to come down there to escape the lynch mobs.”
“Alright, I got it right here,” Gerald said as he retrieved the envelope and once again spread it out on the hood of the truck. Rusty Whitman listened quietly on the other end of the line as Gerald read portions of the findings and then all of the concluding statement.
“Phew.” was Rusty’s response when Gerald had finished.
“I don’t have to tell you that it’s damned grave, Rusty. Hell, if that milk study comes out the way that I think it will and this is widespread into other livestock. Well, hell, I don't have to spell it out for you. A few minutes ago, I even got to thinking about the fact a hell of a lot of the fish hatcheries and catfish farms feed corn, too.”
“You’re probably a little more in touch with the science than I am. What do you think about there being a fix? Is our researcher just overly optimistic or is there at least a chance?”
“I’m not really on top of genetic engineering and modification, Rusty. I really can’t give you a straight answer to that. I’m damned hopeful.”
“You and I both. Alright. Thanks for taking care of that. Let me know when the other report comes in and I might just take you up on that fishing offer one of these days.”
“Y’all come on down and see us.” Gerald used the euphemism with an exaggerated accent.
“Alright. Talk to you later.”
Gerald ended the call and pushed the papers back into the envelope. He’d done his part to try to stem the tide that was rushing toward them. Whether or not it would be enough, depended upon forces that were beyond himself. He’d wait until he’d heard back on the other results from the researcher before he put in his retirement notice. He had already made his decision. He just hated to saddle some new college boy with the likes of what he was facing and what it meant to poultry and livestock producers throughout the county. They would need Gerald’s stability to make it through.
With thoughts of retirement on his mind, the prospect of a fried chicken dinner with all of the fixins didn’t sound all that bad. He could tolerate Dot for that long. Hell, if he’d just be upfront with her instead of running, she’d probably even settle down a bit and be a decent friend. Gerald punched the button on his cell phone to call her back.
Chapter 20
South Carolina
Mid-winter 2020
Clemson’s Forensic Genetics lab
With the report written and delivered to Dr. Greene, Hannah was ready to start into the milk study as well as the study for reversal of the terminator gene. However, before she was able to put her full concentration into those projects, there was something weighing very heavy on her mind and she simply couldn’t ignore it; the irresponsibility of the person or persons who risked the lives and health of animals all over the world by placing the terminator gene in the GM/Hybrid corn.
Her restless night of sleep had left her feeling on edge and leaning towards being grumpy. Though it wasn’t entirely due to lack of sleep, but from the myriad of potential threats that she could see bearing down upon the food industry in relation to the existence of the terminator gene. She understood proprietary safeguards, but this terminator gene went well beyond that. What she wondered was if the person knew what the result would be and placed the gene into the corn maliciously or simply hadn’t weighed all of the possibilities of his or her actions.
She had developed the habit of writing draft segments of her dissertation in her personal blog. In addition, she also poste
d comments and her personal viewpoints for the benefit of her colleagues. Because she was severely stirred up over the terminator gene, it was nearly impossible for her to concentrate on anything else until she had the opportunity to blow off steam. Her blog was a perfect outlet to serve that purpose.
Forensic Geneticist Daily
Friday, Oct. 2, 2020
by Hannah Withers
Dear fellow forensic freaky geekies,
Today, I had the distinct displeasure of reporting to the High Command evidence of something truly wonderful that my colleagues and I have uncovered, along with evidence that that same wonder was perverted and RUINED by the thoughtless greed of the two most powerful organizations on the face of the Earth, corporate America and the United States government, who saw fit to conspire against nature herself. Allow me to explain…
Let’s go really basic here for a moment. Let’s talk about like the most uncomplicated, limitless source of food and energy on this entire rock we call Earth. The very thing that changed the atmosphere surrounding our rock three and a half billion years ago from a dead carbon dioxide rich cloud into the oxygen rich air that we now breathe. The original source of everything any living creature has ever eaten. The source of the very soil that we so take for granted, made from the composted remains of organisms that it feeds. PHOTOSYNTHESIS.
Yeppers, three and a half billion years ago there was a single celled organism called algae floating somewhere in a sea of liquid water. It had the ability to use the water below it, the carbon dioxide around it, and the sunlight from above it to sustain itself. The waste that it produced was oxygen in a gaseous form and carbohydrates in the form of sugars. Those single celled organisms eventually became multi-celled rigid organisms that we call plants that carried with them the ability to do what the algae did. They created their own sustenance by photosynthesis, which means literally created from light. They eventually enhanced their own environment further by the composting of their own “bodies”, which created the soil, and they slowly spread across the entire face of the rock. They mutated to adapt to their immediate surroundings and the climate as they gradually changed it. Eventually, animals ate these plants for sustenance, thus being fed second handedly by the power of photosynthesis. Then came carnivorous animals that ate the herbivorous animals that ate the plants, and they were fed third handedly by the power of photosynthesis. They were the top of the food chain, making use of all generations below them that were fed by the energy of photosynthesis.
The Rise of Walsanto (Self-Inflicted Series Book 1) Page 11