This brings us to very recent days. Some absolutely genius men or women in our field of study have figured out how to combine the power of the oldest, the fastest growing, most powerful of all water based plants called algae, with the power of the fastest growing of all land based plants, bamboo. They then devised a way, and patented that process, which is ok, to add this newfound elixir into the currently most important food plant on the face of this rock, called corn.
Now in my opinion, to this point, everything was well intentioned, and a very good thing. If they make a bunch of money doing that, I guess that’s ok too.
Anyways, this corn grew even better than these people had hoped for. It was like a crazy tremendous success. All at once there was so much of it that it got cheaper to buy, so the farmer guys fed it by the trainloads to their chickens in their feedlots. As much as they could possibly eat. Which the chickens probably enjoyed, so I guess that that’s a good thing too. So, the chickens grew better and faster than the farmer guys expected, and got really huge. Something really weird happened though. Something I doubt that the farmer guys could ever have imagined. Somehow that patented elixir that the scientist guys had made for the corporate guys got passed from the corn, over into the chickens. The chickens’ skin began to turn gray/green as these new cells multiplied. A sort of instant evolution happened. The chickens’ feathers began to go away, so the chickens could get more sunlight on their skin. That kind of freaked people out for a minute, but the people at the High Command assured everyone that everything was ok, and eating these chickens and their eggs was actually even better for you. Which made people feel better, because they don’t like being weirded out. Eh. I kinda like being weirded out. It makes me think… Oh! Rabbit trail...
Well now, the chickens could eat everything that chickens have always eaten, but their new gray/green skin, all on its own, began using water from the chicken’s body, the carbon dioxide waste in the chicken’s bloodstream and what little sunshine that they could get, and turned it into gaseous oxygen and carbohydrates, in the form of sugars from its own photosynthesis plant, its skin. The chickens now had multiple fuel sources, and would be extremely profitable, as feed has always been the biggest expense for the farmer guys who raise chickens for a living. This would mean more and cheaper chickens and eggs for the sheeple in the grocery stores on the rock.
What I’m wondering if anyone else has thought of though, is that this new breed of chickens that now have multiple fuel sources have an evolutionary advantage over the old breed of chickens who can just eat with their mouth whatever they can find… It begs the question; “Should people really be messing with this if they don’t know what nature and evolution will do with it?” I dunno, that’s the kind of thoughts that bounced around in my head anyways.
Very recently, the farmer guys on the rock began to notice that the huge gray/green skinned chickens laid eggs that wouldn’t hatch. That led us forensic freaky geekies to discover that none of the gray/green skinned chicken’s eggs are ever going to hatch, because all of the gray/green skinned chickens are sterile. That makes us worry about the future of chickens in general. Worse yet, that makes us worry about other animals getting gray/green skin from eating the same corn, and then them winding up sterile too. Don’t feed your horses corn! Not the horses.
So, now for the creepy ugly part. To find out why the huge gray/green skinned chickens were all sterile, my colleagues and I did some pretty fancy forensic footwork. What we discovered is the lowest of low things. The evil of the human mind never ceases to amaze me. I mean, animals aren’t evil. They just do what they need to do to survive. And that’s ok. Animals couldn’t have done what we discovered though. I’m really pretty well certain that nature wouldn’t have done it. That means that some lower-life-form, piece-of-shit of a human being hid a terminator gene inside that patented elixir too, so nobody else could save seeds and regrow it, but they never recorded that anywhere. They knew it was wrong, and they didn’t want any paper trail leading back to them. Well guess what Corporate America and High Command? We’re going to keep searching until we prove which of you pieces-of-shit are responsible for this, and we’re going to tell the whole world!
Furthermore, and this might just be me being paranoid, and this is just me saying this part, not my colleagues, but remember the history lesson about the animals that ate the animals that ate the plants that were fed by photosynthesis? That peoples, scares the CRAP out of me. Well, not me exactly, because I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat animals, but HOLY SHITSKIS Batman, I eat corn! I think we might all be screwed.
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With the blog posted, Hannah relaxed a little bit and then made a couple of phone calls to see if she could get a daily sample of milk from the dairy lab sent to her. With that accomplished, she wrote a note for her research assistant, asking him to set up a series of studies, laying out a general outline of what she was looking for. It would be another week, if not longer, before that study could start, so she turned her attention toward trying to figure out a way to reverse the effects of the terminator gene.
Chapter 21
Washington, DC
Mid-winter 2020
White House complex
President James was not going to like what Rusty was going to have to tell him. The President’s “Feeding the World” program was one of his political babies. It had garnered him some extremely high poll numbers and helped his party secure a midterm election and control both the House and Senate. With control firmly in hand, President James was looking to be able to push through any programs that his administration proposed. The disastrous potential that was waiting just beyond the horizon might undo all of that.
In ancient civilizations, they would kill the person who brought them bad news. They no longer physically killed the messenger, but very often, the messenger became the scapegoat for whatever problem they discovered and consequently often suffered a slow and painful political death. Rusty wasn’t sure what was worse, being the bearer of bad news or watching the entire program come tumbling down around them.
Though he was not the architect of the program, he was the builder. He had been ignorant of the genetic makeup of the Walsanto GM/Hybrid corn, believing that it didn’t matter what was contained in the corn if it brought about the objectives that the President and his administration had desired for it to do. He had pushed it harder than any other project that he’d ever had charge of in his life. He’d been quite successful at making certain that every corner of the world had Walsanto seed available to grow. He had made certain that it was at an affordable cost, and he’d done such a good job that he had essentially eliminated all of the competition.
Rather than being able to celebrate his accomplishment, he was trying to figure out how to avoid disaster. He had never felt more alone. The intercom on his phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.
“Mr. Whitman, I’ve got Albert from the USDA on line two,” Ellen said after he pushed the intercom button.
“Okay. Thanks.” He pushed the blinking button on his phone and picked up the receiver. “Albert. How is everything?”
“Everything is going along just fine, sir. Thanks for asking.”
“Good to hear it. What have you got for me?”
“Well, sir, we ran another round of tests on the gray/green skinned chickens and the eggs as well. The results were similar to what we found before, but the nutritional values were a little bit higher. We were beginning to pick up some rumors that there might be something within the corn causing the animals consuming it to be infertile. The complaints are coming in to us from county agents and state research facilities. I went ahead and authorized a study to see if there is an actual link. I thought I should give you a heads up first, though.”
So there it was. It reminded him of a dam, holding back several thousand tons of water with some of it splashing up over the top. It would only be a matter of time before it finally surged over the top and crushed
the dam.
“Thank you for the heads up, Albert,” he replied.
Rusty hung up the phone and pulled the file drawer on his desk open. Inside were two bottles of Rolaids Ultra Strength antacids, one of which was half empty. He snapped open the top and dumped several in his hand and started chewing.
His job as Food Czar for President James had been stressful before, but it hadn’t reached the level that required the consumption of Rolaids like candy until he had discovered that what he had helped to accomplish had started to crumble down around him.
He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and made a tent with his fingers, placing them over the bridge of his nose while he chewed on the fruity chalk in his mouth. He’d never felt so alone in his life. He needed someone to talk to. He should have taken Gerald Davies up on the invitation to go fishing and gotten the hell out of the office. The problem was he still had to come up with a solution.
He punched a button on his phone to get an outside line. Dialing from memory, he punched in the numbers and waited while the phone rang on the other end.
“This is Jim,” the voice answered.
“Jim, it’s Rusty.” He was already feeling a little bit of relief simply hearing the voice of an old friend.
“Hey, Rusty. How are things in the world of the rich and powerful?” Jim was cheerful when he heard his friend’s voice.
“Nothing a couple of bottles of Ultra Strength Rolaids can’t cure.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Jim, I got a private research report back on the egg viability issue.”
“And?”
”It’s not pretty. The test results show, with a high degree of accuracy, that the GM/Hybrid corn is creating sterility in chickens.”
“Phew,” Jim Ward replied. “That isn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. I was suspicious of it, but…”
“Yeah, I wasn’t expecting this either.”
There was a long pause while each considered the implications that the news had on them. Rusty was spinning in circles, caught in a whirlpool of political consequences that were threatening to suck him down and Jim was searching for a way to explain what he had just heard to the people who were looking to him for a solution.
“So, what do we do?” Jim finally asked.
“That’s why I’m calling you. I’ve got one hell of a dilemma here. The Walsanto thing and the Feed the World thing are the President’s babies. Problems with them aren’t going to be taken lightly.”
“No, I don’t suppose they are, but what choice do you have, really?” Jim asked. “I mean, on the one hand, it might cost you your job, make the President look bad and put the US on some pretty shaky political ground internationally, but hiding the truth could destroy the future of an entire species or more. How far reaching is it? Is it only chickens or other animals as well?”
“They are doing some research into that part right now. There is some hope that there might be a way to reverse it.”
“That would certainly be welcome news. How probable is that?”
“I can only speculate right now.”
There was another long pause. What they were facing was weighing heavily on them.
“They’re going to want to cover it up, Jim,” Rusty blurted out the words.
“But this isn’t something that can be covered up. This will hit and hit hard!” Jim advised.
“I’m not saying that I want to cover it up, just saying that’s what they’ll want to do.”
“What are you going to do?” Jim asked.
“There isn’t an easy answer, Jim. This could completely destroy all trust in the United States. This could even start a shooting war. America's sons and daughters might die because of this and it’s my fault. I pushed it.” He suddenly felt the urge to just spill it all out. “I convinced countries all over the world to buy the seed. I encouraged livestock feeding operations and poultry producers to start enhancing the quality of their production. All along, I was doing nothing but destroying them. What if this destroys the entire food supply? Have I committed mass murder here?”
“Hey, now, Rusty,” Jim interrupted. “Slow down a little bit. You haven’t committed murder or anything like that. You can’t take all of this on your own shoulders. There are some other people responsible for creating this problem and there will be others that will help you crawl out from under this mess, too. Don’t go blaming yourself.”
“Maybe there are others involved, but I pushed it. I was ignorant of what I was pushing and ignorant of the harm it would do, but I still pushed it.”
“Look. Why don’t you wait a few days? Let some of the other research come in, maybe the reversal will be found and the problem can be fixed. Hold off a few days, that’s all.”
“The President is going to want an answer.”
“Is he going to want a partial answer without a solution or a complete answer with a way to fix it?”
“I’m sure that he’d prefer the latter,” Rusty sighed.
“Then hang on a few days and get all of your answers first.”
It was good advice. There would be some pretty stressful days while he waited, but at least he might be able to present a solution along with the problem. That was always a better approach when bearing bad news.
“You’re probably right.”
“Have you ever known me to be wrong?” Jim chuckled. When Rusty didn’t respond, he started in again. “Why don’t you take a few days off and forget about this for a while? It couldn’t hurt. It might even make you think more clearly.”
“You’re probably right again.”
“Well, I’m not the Food Czar, but I’ve been known to make a decent decision now and then.”
His other line was blinking and he knew that Ellen had someone on hold.
“Jim, I’ve got another call. Thanks for listening.”
“Not a problem. That’s what friends do. Take care.”
“Talk to you soon.” Rusty punched the button to disconnect the call. The moment he did, Ellen pressed the intercom button.
“Michael Lawson from Walsanto,” she said briefly.
“Hey, Mike,” he said into the receiver after connecting the call.
“Rusty,” came the reply, “How are things?”
“I’m keeping my head above water.” He couldn’t admit the truth to the CEO of Walsanto Seeds.
“That’s why you’re making the big bucks, right?”
“Right,” he laughed. He was making some decent money, but suddenly, it didn’t seem to be all that important. How much money did a person need to survive a disaster? How much would the lawsuits cost him after he was thrown under the bus?
“Hey, I just wanted to let you know that we have released two new seed products onto the market. They roll out next week. We’ve already got orders for our wheat and oat seed from all over the world. If they do half what corn did, we’ll be making an enormous impact.”
Rusty suddenly wanted to vomit. He’d forgotten that Walsanto had been working toward the production for the new seeds. The news of their release only added more fuel to the ulcer that was threatening to eat him up from the inside out. How the hell was he supposed to respond? There would certainly be an enormous impact. Did he come out and tell Lawson that the terminator gene that they were putting in their seed products was making chickens sterile? The moment he did, he’d have to face the entire political force of President James’ Administration and everyone around the world who had bought into the Feed the World plan. He wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
“That’s great, Mike.” He tried to say it with a cheerful voice. He hoped that it didn’t sound fake. “What do you want me to do?” He hoped nothing.
“I think that the momentum that was already generated will do just fine.”
Rusty was glad that he wasn’t going to have to make some sort of speech to push the new products, at least for the moment. No doubt he’d be called upon later. If later came. He wanted out of the call quickly.
&
nbsp; “Thanks for keeping me up to date, Mike. Just let me know if you need anything from my office.”
“Sure will. Thanks again.” Evidently Mike was busy and didn’t have time to chat much longer.
Thankful that he didn’t have to continue the uncomfortable conversation, Rusty reached for the Rolaids again and then leaned back in his chair. Jim had been right. He needed to have complete information and a possible solution before he spoke to President James. Rusty was also right that he needed to get away, get some rest and try to see things more clearly.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and punched the speed dial number 3.
“This is Gerald,” the voice answered.
“Hey, Gerald. Rusty Whitman, how’s everything?”
“Not too bad, Rusty Whitman, how are things on your end?”
“Well…” he began. “I have to say that I'm a little shook up since our last call, but I'm trying to get some perspective on it all.”
“That’s a pretty tall order in this case.”
It was nice to hear the voice of someone who was equally in the loop. In a lot of ways, Gerald reminded him of his grandfather. He was much too young, but his easy manner and simple wisdom took Rusty back to something he’d missed for a very long time; simplicity.
“It is indeed,” Rusty agreed with a sigh. “Say, do you think that you could make arrangements for me to meet the private researcher? I think if I could see things a little bit more in perspective and have a conversation about the probability and whatnot; it might help me get a better handle on what I’m going to tell the President.”
The Rise of Walsanto (Self-Inflicted Series Book 1) Page 12