Copernick's Rebellion

by Leo A. Frankowski

  She had just been promoted because she was an absolutely ordinary person. She was pretty without being inordinately beautiful, intelligent without being intellectual, and hard working without being too aggressive.

  And the men hi charge at NBC had wanted someone for a daytime talk show, someone who could relate to the “average woman,” the sort who bought soap and deodorants because of their television commercials. Patricia, of course, didn’t know this. For her, this promotion was a just reward for the five years she had spent at NBC—her entire working career.

  Primly dressed in last month’s fashions, a gray velvet tights suit printed to imitate used potato sacks, she rode the ancient subway from her dingy apartment to the studio. She didn’t notice the grime and shabbiness around her, for Patricia lived in her own world of blue skies and infinite possibilities.

  She was out to get the best ratings in her time slot, and she was going to do it by getting at the issues that really counted. Things like political corruption and homosexuality and tree houses.

  “This is Patricia Cambridge with The World at Large! Today on The World at Large we will be covering an issue vital to the entire housing industry, the genetically modified tree. On my right we have Burt Scratchon. Mr. Scratchon is president of Shadow Lawn Estates, Inc., and a leader in the mass housing industry. Mr. Scratchon’s book, The Death of an Economy, is climbing the bestseller lists. On my left we have Dr. Martin Guibedo. Dr. Guibedo is Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry from Dallas State College and the inventor of these trees.”

  “What do you mean, inventor of the tree? Trees have been a long time around. I only showed them how to grow all comfortable on the inside, so we ain’t gotta chop them down no more.”

  “Uh.” Patricia glanced at her list of question “Dr. Guibedo, I understand that you have never written a paper on your genetic modification technique, nor have you applied for a patent. Is it your intention to keep this new science entirely to yourself?”

  “Well, the science was all figured out five years ago. What is left is the engineering. I never wrote a paper on it because genetic engineering has been banned for five years. Nobody would have accepted a paper if I had written one.”

  “Banned?” Patricia asked. “You mean it’s against the law?”

  “Not exactly. But anybody working on it has a hard time getting a job later. A journal that published an article on it might lose its federal subsidy. And, of course, trying to get grants to work on genetic engineering is like trying to get money to find out the causes of aging. Impossible. The big shots have a lot of ways of pushing people around.”

  “So you’re keeping this to yourself out of spite?” Patricia asked.

  “Not spite. Nobody hurt me, but nobody helped me. I did this myself, with my own money. The results and the responsibility are mine. Patty, you gotta understand that this genetic engineering thing could get out of hand. If I let just anybody do it, some big shot would start making himself an army! Better I keep this whole thing quiet.”

  “Quiet?” Scratchon exploded. “You’ve given away two hundred of the things and they’re already breeding like maggots!”

  “Maggots don’t breed, Burty.” Guibedo’s thirty years of teaching showed. “Maggots are the larval form of the adult housefly, which does the breeding. My tree houses don’t breed, either. Asexual reproduction maintains the purity of each strain so that—”

  “Technicalities have nothing to do with the economic impact of free housing, without even government supervision, on a free economy. Already housing starts are down four percent compared to last year. The building trades are facing massive layoffs, and the mortgage market is in a slump. This will have repercussions throughout the entire economy. The stability of the nation, of the entire free world, is being threatened by your hideous weeds!”

  “Dr. Guibedo, you brought some photographs of your latest creation?” Patricia was a moderator intent on moderating,

  “Sure, Patty. I brought a whole bunch. These first ones are of Ashley, where I live in.”

  “But the rooms are so huge!” Patricia said.

  “Eight thousand square feet all together, Patty. It didn’t cost anything to make it bigger than a regular house. I had an acre of land, and I figured I might as well furnish it good. This picture is in the living room. The furniture is all grown in—”

  “There goes the furniture industry!” Scratchon said.

  “—except the fireplace. This one is the bedroom. By the window is Laurel. She’s gonna be a honey, that one. Growing here is the bed and the cupboard. Hey! There’s my suit. I was looking for it!”

  “You keep your suit rolled up in a cupboard?” Scratchon asked.

  “Drawers are hard to grow. This is the bathroom. The absorption toilet was the hardest part. Keeping roots from plugging up the sewer pipe is tricky when the sewer pipe is a root. I finally solved it by having the house grow a new toliet when the old one gets plugged. You see, the tree needs human excrement to—”

  “Is this the kitchen?” Patricia asked. Toilets indeed!

  “Sure. This is the table and chairs. You don’t need a stove and refrigerator because in these cupboards Ashley makes all my food.”

  “My God!” Scratchon interrupted. “You’re attacking the food industry, too! Isn’t it enough to threaten the job of every carpenter and dry-wall installer in the country? You’ve got to starve out the fanners, too?”

  “What starve? It makes food, not takes it away. Anyway, them farmers got nothing to worry about. I mean, the sukiyaki is pretty good, but the crepes suzette are only fair. And the sauerbraten! Ach, the sauerbraten. My mother would be ashamed.”

  “Dr. Guibedo,” Patricia said, “do you mean that the food comes already prepared? That would take a lot of the fun out of housekeeping. Don’t you think so, Mr. Scratchon?”

  “I think that this sawed-off runt’s head is as fat as his belly! Don’t you realize what he’s doing? Can’t you understand that when construction, farming, and banking fold, the entire country will go down the drain, too? Businesses by the thousands will go bankrupt. Millions of men will be out of work, and we sit here debating!” Scratchon folded his arms, fury in his eyes.

  The twinkle left Guibedo’s eyes, and the smile wrinkles on his face smoothed. “Yah, I know. A lot of changes will happen. And I’m sorry if they make some people unhappy. Change and progress have always hurt some people, but the net effects have been good for humanity. The Industrial Revolution, for example, wasn’t very nice for the people who had to work in those old factories. And the old nobility didn’t like what was happening, either. But without it, the three of us and them guys with the cameras would be out digging potatoes with a stick to eat. So changes will happen, but I make a promise. Anybody who wants a house, I will sell him a seed. No matter what happens, everybody can have a nice place to live and plenty of food to eat. I’ll even get the sauerbraten right.”

  “Bare sustenance!” Scratchon said. “That’s all you’re offering. Good men don’t work for food and minimal housing. People work for status, for prestige, to make a contribution to humanity and to provide security for themselves and their loved ones. People have spent their lives building the industries that you’re trying to collapse. Worked then-hearts out so that their children and their grandchildren could live decently. And you’re trying to wreck it all!”

  “Ach! You’re just saying that there won’t be so many big shots. And maybe that’s not so bad. Maybe we’ve got too many big shots pushing people around. But decency? You can be just as decent as you want in a tree house. You just got nobody to look down at, because they can live just as good as you!”

  With all of the art of a true real estate salesman, Scratchon shifted gears.

  “I think you’re trying to sidestep the major issue here. The modern home is the product of thousands of years of refinements, the collective work of humanity. These tree things are basically untried and unsound. No one knows if they’ll last.”

  “A
ch! You got a brick as old as a redwood?”

  “Our homes are symbols of our status, of our contributions to society.”

  “Big shot,” Guibedo muttered, but Scratchon continued uninterrupted.

  “Oh, the idea of living free of charge sounds okay at first. There’s a little larceny in all of us.” Scratchon gave the camera a toothy smile. “And the idea of living in a tree might bring out a childish romanticism in some. But to give up our solid, modern homes, full of modern conveniences, to live like apes in a tree? The whole concept is absurd. Personally, I wouldn’t live in one if you gave it tome!”

  “I would give you one if you would live in it,” Guibedo said. “All you have said, you have said from ignorance. You don’t know how nice they are. Try for yourself. You will love them like I do.”

  “Get serious, Guibedo. I’d be the laughingstock of the neighborhood. Anyway, I’ve got a business to run. I don’t have time for gardening.”

  “I’ll plant if for you, Burty, and I’ll take care of it. We put it in your backyard, so you and everybody can compare it with your old house.”

  Scratchon thought about the comparison between a tree house and his $450,000 Tudor brick home in Forest Hills. Yeah, he thought, and with the economy being what it is, Shadow Lawn Estates, Inc., can use all the publicity it can get.

  “Ms. Cambridge, if I go through with this stunt, would you give it proper television coverage?”

  “Why, of course, Mr. Scratchon. An experiment like this would make a wonderful program.”

  “Plant your tree, Guibedo.”

  “You’ll give it an honest try? Promise to live in it for a year, or at least six months?” Guibedo said.

  “You’ve got a deal, Guibedo. We’ll show people what living in a tree is really like.”

  Chapter Two

  SEPTEMBER 20, 1999

  GETTING RICH is easy. It just takes a lot of work.

  The average person spends fifty-six hours a week sleeping, forty hours a week making money, and the remaining ninety-two hours in the week spending money. If you work one hundred hours a week, you have two and a half times the income but only thirty-two hours a week to spend it in.

  It helps to get in on the ground floor of a new industry, as I did with medical instrumentation. It usually helps to be a bachelor. And being crippled results in having fewer distractions. But the important thing is to get yourself into the habit of working yourself to your very limits.

  —Heinrich Copernick

  From an address to the Chicago Junior Chamber of Commerce

  April 3, 1931

  Heinrich Copernick sat in front of his biomonitoring console. A thin plastic tube, red with his blood, ran from his left thigh to the machine. A similar tube ran from the console back to his leg. But the blood it carried was discolored with the chemicals that had been added to it.

  “The calcium level is a bit low again,” Copernick muttered to himself as he typed in revised instructions to the mixer.

  The white numbers on his panel were generated by a Cray Model 12 computer in the next room from a complete analog of the biochemical reactions taking place within his body. Even with the algorithms developed by his Uncle Martin, the program had taken more than two years to write.

  Below each white prediction number was a status readout of his actual biochemistry. These were all green except for calcium, which was still in the yellow.

  The phone rang. Copernick had disconnected the video section before he started his self-modification program.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Copernick? This is Lou von Bork.”

  “Hello, Lou. How goes it in Washington?”

  “So-so. You know that bill to put tree houses under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration? Well, I fixed it so it will die in committee.”

  “Great! Old Anne Cary will spit nickels when she hears about it.”

  “Yeah. I just hope that I don’t get in range. She’ll be at it again next year. And then she’ll have the banking people behind her, besides the construction unions.”

  “Then we’ll just have to lick them again.”

  “What do you mean ‘we,’ Mr. Copernick? I’m out here with nothing but a smile and a shoeshine.”

  “And you are doing a fine job. You and your six technicians and nine million dollars worth of equipment. Now what’s the bad news?”

  “HEW. They just passed a ruling that discriminates against people living in your uncle’s tree houses. Not through Congress. A departmental ruling. Not a thing that I could do about it.”

  “Just what did they do?” Copernick asked.

  “Cut in half the welfare benefits of anybody living in one. Think we should fight it? In court, I mean.”

  “Sounds pretty expensive. Let’s let this one pass. A guy with a tree house can still live well on five hundred dollars a month.”

  “You’re probably right, sir. Anyway, odds are the welfare types will do the suing for us.”

  “And doing it with the government’s lawyers. Anything else?”

  “Oh, the army is talking about using them for barracks. The National Real Estate Board wants to make them illegal. And the State Department is thinking about donating a few million seeds to the Africans. But I don’t think that anything will come of any of it.”

  “A government purchase? Sounds nice. We’ll get a good price out of them,” Copernick said.

  “Like I said, don’t hold your breath. Say, when are you going to get the video on your phone fixed?”

  “You know the phone company. Hey, how’s your old friend Beinheimer?”

  “Wonderful! When you guys replace a fellow’s glands, you don’t screw around!”

  “No, but our clients do.”

  “I’ll say. Moe’s been making up for twenty lost years! I know his heart won’t go, but I worry about his backbone and pelvis!”

  “Enjoy. Keep me posted, Lou.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr. Copernick. Take care.”

  His calcium status was back in the green. Copernick started to type in the day’s modification. The straightening and rebuilding of his legs had been fairly straightforward, little more than an adjunct to the rejuvenation process. But he was getting into major genetic modifications, alien ground where he had met with more defeats than victories.

  “Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better.” He chuckled, getting his nerve up.

  He was adding a virus to his own bloodstream, one that had been tailored to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. It was supposed to cause the cells in his cerebral cortex to reproduce, expanding his memory and intelligence. It had worked on experimental animals. The computer said that it should work on him. But a computer analog is only a model of reality, and models are never perfect.

  An hour later he leaned back, stretched, and disconnected himself from his machine.

  “So much for the joys of do-it-yourself brain surgery.”

  Copernick ate a lonely supper, looking often at his watch. She was late. He considered calling the airport, but changed his mind. If she was to grow up, she had to be allowed to make her own mistakes. He felt like a worrying parent. In a way, he was.

  An incredibly beautiful woman rang the doorbell.

  A big woman, she was six feet tall and full bodied. She was dressed in a precise, finishing school manner that accented her glorious red hair and freckles. Her clear green eyes held a curious combination of intelligence and vacancy. She looked to be about twenty.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought that this was the Copernick residence.”

  “It is. Welcome home, Mona. I’m Heinrich.”

  “Oh. You look so different.” Her smile wasn’t artificial. But it was somehow empty.

  “I know. I’ve spent this last year mostly working on myself. Please come in.”

  “You look very nice, Heinrich.”

  “I’m glad you approve. I only wish Uncle Martin did.”

  “Will you let me meet him now?” Mon
a said.

  “In a few months. He still doesn’t know that you exist.”

  “I wish you were more proud of me, Heinrich.”

  “It isn’t that, Mona. I’m very proud of you. It’s just that my uncle has some old-fashioned concepts of what morality is.”

  “And your other friends?”

  “I don’t have many friends. Those that are left haven’t seen me in six months. Mona, please try to understand that we must not let the world know about what we are doing. If the authorities found out about us, they would shut me down tomorrow.”

  Mona was silent.

  “Come on, darling. Let me show you around our new home.”

  “Is this one of those tree houses? The girls at the finishing school talked about them, but none of us had ever seen one.”

  “It is. And Uncle Martin designed it especially for us.”

  “You mean especially for you,” Mona said.

  “Now don’t start on that again. Homecomings should be pleasant occasions.”

  “Yes, Heinrich.”

  “The kitchen is this way. Have you eaten?”

  “They fed us on the plane.”

  “Oh. Well, there really isn’t much to taking care of the kitchen. The end cabinet is a dishwasher. It works continuously, so you can just leave the tableware in it. Most of the other cabinets grow food. I’ve labeled things so you can find your way around.”

  “Everything is so huge.”

  “Bigger than you think. The house and all the gardens around it are one single plant. It’s five stories high.”

  “But why so big, Heinrich?”