So when a rumor went around about a special meeting coming up, I was all ears. The affected employees had to sign a full non-disclosure agreement, on top of the multiple secrecy papers we already signed off on again at the start of every year. There were dire warnings about what would happen to anyone found taping, or filming, or even taking notes. We talked about it in the restrooms and around the water cooler, speculating on what could make the administration so nervous.
They held the meeting in our regular conference room, but the windows were blacked out. Once we were all in, the door was locked. A U.S. marine stood at either side of the door, weapons at the ready. All four senior department heads were there: North, South, East and West. There were a few local employees like myself, along with several representatives from the agricultural and chemical industry. And a slew of government officials, with buzz-cut scalps and chests full of metal.
Last to enter was the Surgeon General, who told us all to sit down while he made his opening remarks.
He explained that the birth rate problem among migrant workers had finally come to the attention of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), who’d contacted the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), who in turn had called in the NSA (National Security Administration). The security people then reached out to all the scientists under their command, demanding an answer that would ensure America’s continuing food supply.
The scientists were given carte blanche funding, and a few months ago they’d presented the NSA with a potential solution.
From there, it went to the Secretary of Defense, and then to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Finally, the National Security Council, who advised the President directly, were brought in. They informed the President of their conclusions. He, in turn, heaved a sigh of relief at such an elegant solution, and green-lighted it immediately.
After that, the army Chief of Staff took the floor. He reminded us of our patriotic duty. He said that while The Wall protected our nation’s borders, we were the human wall that stood guard over the rest. While we might not like it, we had to face the fact that stringent measures were needed. We had to safeguard our country’s future, not just for ourselves, but for our children. While the solution might appear drastic at first, he was sure we’d come to understand that it was all for the best in the end.
In closing, the Chief of Staff said “Let there be no confusion here. We will not take away anything that will be missed.”
Then he introduced a team of army neuroscientists, telling them with a grin to “keep it simple, keep it basic, keep it quick.”
The lights went out, and projections of human brains appeared on the walls. There were specific sections, colored pink and blue and green, labeled ventromedial prefrontal cortex, left anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala. The youngest in the group pulled out an old fashioned pointer, and proceeded to tell us what each area did. It was incredibly boring.
When the lights went back on, an older neuroscientist took over, explaining that thanks to government-sponsored research, they’d recently made some tremendous technological advances. For instance, they could now isolate precise regions of the brain. Not just over-all areas dealing with specifics like math, or speech, but the more fluid areas. The parts that governed free will. Happiness.
Sexual desire.
Operation MASS, or Migrant Attitude Selection Service, would ensure that only the most necessary areas of the brain were targeted. Husbands would still love their wives, and children would continue to love their parents. The only changes would be in their over-all happiness quotient, and their increased desire to “go forth and multiply.”
There were snickers all around when he said that, because any Sunday School student knew that the phrase from Genesis 1:28 was Biblically polite short-hand for “Get you some nookie, and fast!”
Under the guise of free dental check-ups, workers’ heads would be held still so x-rays could be taken. At the same time, a guided laser operating outside the detection range of the human eye would swoop in, destroying some bits of tissue, and exciting others. The patient would feel nothing but the dental plate clenched between his teeth.
As he droned on, the army people paying close attention, the rest of us were busy trying to figure out how this would apply to our own jobs. Sure, we’d be a necessary part of convincing the workers to go in for check-ups in the first place, but how exactly would that be done?
The obvious answer was to have some of the field supervisors volunteer to go first. That way, the migrants could see it was safe, and painless. They’d even be given the day off with pay, courtesy of a grateful U.S. government. The chemical companies would foot the bill for that, while the agri-business corporations would cover the cost of dentists, laser technicians, and mobile units.
Of course, the lasers wouldn’t be used on the supervisors. That was out of the question.
We all agreed that this was an incredibly elegant solution, and the meeting was adjourned. Except for me. I needed just a little bit more information, and the junior neuroscientist was kind enough to provide it. He even let me take a few notes, after I mentioned my parents’ positions and the length of their tenure.
The first thing I did when I got home was apologize to Gabe for nagging him about the migrant workers. I admitted I’d been wrong. They deserved his attention, and our support. I was going to speak with my parents and the head of LICE about it, particularly about Hector. There had to be some way to give boys like him a chance to escape the vicious circle their great-greats had left them in.
Next, I apologized to Gabe for taking my sexual frustrations out on him. After all, he was my husband, not my boy-toy. He deserved to come home to welcoming arms and a supportive spouse. I’d do better in future, but for now, just to even things up a bit, any first moves would have to come from him. The look of relief on his face almost made me ashamed of what I planned to do, but fortunately, it passed.
We made love a couple of times that week, and I reveled in it, while reminding myself that it could end at any moment. I would never let that happen again.
The free dental exams were first announced over loudspeakers on the water trucks. Then came billboards in English and Spanish, as well as bi-lingual flyers. They even left bags of candy out for the children, with dates and times of the upcoming examinations written on the wrappers. It did my heart good to know this was happening all over the country, even in cities like New York, where the trucks were rolling through Chinatown making announcements in Mandarin and Cantonese.
The day before the check-ups were to begin, I suggested to Gabe that he attend them incognito. “Dress like one of the workers,” I said. “Let another supervisor go first, and you spend the day among your friends, reassuring them. They won’t believe the other bosses, but they already trust you. After they see you came out looking the same as when you went in, they’ll feel a lot better about things.”
He praised me for being so compassionate, and got up the next morning to put on the clothes of a campesino. I even accompanied him to the mobile station, though of course I couldn’t stand with the migrant workers—as much as he’d told them about his gringa wife, I might still engender mistrust. So I watched from the sidelines as he went in, and waited until he came out.
He was smiling, pointing to his mouth, opening it wide and saying “Ah-h-h-!” to the children. He gave out sugarless chewing gum, reassuring everyone in Spanish. There was much back-slapping and many looks of relief all around.
For the rest of the day, Gabe and I stood and watched as they filed into the mobile units with their families.
When it came time to go home, I looked at him and said “What would you like to do now, dear?” and he said “I don’t know, mi esposa…but for some reason, I’ve never felt happier in my life. What would you like to do?”
It’s been two years now, two years that feel like a constant honeymoon. The workers are content, and as they say, “breeding like rabbits”. There are babies underfoot wherever I look; the fields will soon
be full of children earning their keep.
Meanwhile, Gabe is content to go to work, eat his meals, and make love whenever and wherever I ask. We even managed a quickie in a two-person kayak one cloudy morning. True, he isn’t terribly pro-active about it, but so long as I remember to tell him what I want, he comes through like a champ.
Sometimes I knock off early and sit on our veranda, watching him in the fields. The children love him, and the adults all tip their hats. Once in a while, he gets down in the dirt with them, yanking and pulling and lifting the baskets high over his head as he leads everyone toward the waiting trucks. Beads of sweat collect at the nape of his neck, then run down his back in rivulets, sparkling like stars on the Rio Grande.
AGNOSIA
J. M. Sidorova
May 31, 2019
From the cover page of a grant application to Tristate Pacific Blue Health by Drs. Valerie Jordan and Brad Schulz. *GRANT AWARDED
Project Narrative (describe your research proposal in up to three sentences using lay terms):
Amyloid precursor protein is the protein that, when aggregated in a wrong way, accumulates in our brains to cause diseases like Alzheimer’s. We want to understand what it is used for in a healthy brain and why this protein is so important that it remains a must-have component of our brain cells despite its propensity to trigger unintended negative consequences of neurodegeneration.
Relevance to public health: The new knowledge obtained in this project may help fight neurodegenerative diseases.
Is this a competitive renewal of a project funded before 2018? NO
Have you previously applied for Federal or Red State funding for this project? YES
Years of applications: 2017, 2018, 2019
Was this project funded? NO
For Red state applicants: Attach a one-page justification for seeking out-of-state funds.
Enter the Just Divide tax ID for your institution and unit: *ID provided
Taxation statement: I agree to withholding at the Tristate Pacific Blue rate: *initialed
Public disclosure statement: I hereby acknowledge that if the grant is awarded, information about the project, its funding source, and the results it produces should be made available for dissemination to the public for the purpose of enhancing public understanding and interest in science and technology.
*SIGNED: Valerie Jordan, Ph.D., Brad Schulz, Ph.D.
January 7, 2021
From an article in The Brave New Scientist:
“Texas A&M scientists discovered a new type of modification enriched on amyloid precursor protein present in the neurons of the amygdala, our brain’s emotion processing center. It is as yet unclear how this modification affects the protein function. Unexpectedly, the study uncovered a link between the prevalence of the modification and individual’s political values. The study may shed a new light on the observations generated almost a decade ago, in which one’s political leanings were correlated with the size of one’s amygdala.” (click to read more)
Public disclosure: The study was funded by Tristate Pacific Blue Health, a program of the Tristate Pacific Alliance Health and Human Services.
February 13, 2021
From a transcript of an interview with Drs. Jordan and Schulz, conducted by Cat Sanchez, host of Your Morning Dose:
Cat: Brad, Valerie—welcome to the program. Tell us a bit about yourselves. I am curious how you two work together. It is a rare thing, I am told, two heads in one lab. Do you ever argue?
Valerie: No, never.
Brad (chuckles): We debate.
Valerie: We keep each other sharp.
Cat (laughs): Sounds like you’re a great team. I’m envious. So…tell me about your discovery. What is all this buzz about, this amygdala modification, this…curser protein?
Valerie: Precursor. As in a form of the protein that is parental to the form that we know as amyloid.
Cat: Right.
Brad: Look, Cat. It’s like this: imagine a protein is a body and a modification is like a tattoo in a particular place, for example on a shoulder. OK? Now. The protein we’re talking about is named APP, amyloid precursor protein, and—
Cat: A tattoo? On a shoulder of a protein named APP?
Valerie: I’d rather liken it to a lapel pin than a tattoo.
Brad: But tattoo works, too. Now, what we’ve discovered is that only APPs that reside in the area of the brain called amygdala have this tattoo.
Valerie: Well, um, it wasn’t quite that simple—
Brad: But it is a reasonable approximation. Amygdala is our emotions factory. It makes fear, aggression, anxiety, thrill, things like that. Now, what was most thrilling, Cat, was that when we compared brains of people who self-described as Patriocratic and those identifying with Multi-way, in the former the tattoo, the modification, was seen less often than in the latter.
Cat: In other words Patriocrats have fewer tattoos.
Brad: Um…so to speak.
Cat: That is thrilling, Brad. Tell us what it means.
Valerie: Typically, modifications are there to temporarily change the protein’s actions or make it easy to be recognized by other proteins. As a lapel pin would. Or a boutonniere. Or a handheld sign, “Hi, I am here to help”—
Cat: But you believe it affects one’s political values.
Brad: We don’t know that.
Valerie: Mind you, all we have is a correlation, not a cause-effect relationship.
Cat: How do you know?
Valerie: We know because we analyzed the numbers, and the confidence level for the correlation is extremely high.
Cat: Right…
Brad: In other words, we counted it, Cat. The modifications, the proteins, the people. The numbers speak for themselves.
Cat (chuckles): Okay. Tell us why it matters. Do you believe this—tattoo—causes dementia?
Valerie and Brad: No, absolutely not, not at all!
Valerie: These are completely unrelated functions.
Brad: What she means is that the APP modification we are talking about does not—and I emphasize it—does not contribute to brain disease.
Cat: Phew! That’s a relief (laughs). I’m glad you two agree on this. No need for the public to be concerned, then. Well, I’m no scientist…but it seems to me if you say it’s like a pin or a handheld sign, or even like a tattoo, you seem to imply that you can put it on…and you can take it off, am I right?
Brad: You are right, Cat. Well done for a non-scientist. Yes, in theory. But let me tell you—
Cat: These are foundational values, though. Aren’t you being a little…high-handed by even suggesting such a thing?
Brad: Look…this was your suggestion, not mine, first of all—
Cat: I only asked the question—
Brad: And second, this is a purely hypothetical scenario, an unlikely possibility among many others—
Cat: Of course. Only a thought experiment. Will erasing the—tattoo—change one’s political identity?
Brad: Not if—
Valerie: Cat—if you want to know if we can change it by giving a person a pill, the answer is absolutely not, we can’t and we won’t. But does it mean it cannot change at all—no. Of course it can change. That’s what matters. What if one’s political identity is not a fixed personality trait? Not hard-wired before birth or in early childhood as they would have us believe. What if? Maybe you can change it just by thinking about it, right now. A thought experiment, like you say, Cat. Right?
(A long pause.)
February 14, 2021
An email thread:
Valerie Jordan to Brad Schulz:
What the hell?! That was an ambush. Our PR man had said not to worry—what was he thinking? O! M! G! I will never, EVER agree to ANY public outreach in the state of Texas again. Did you not see it, what this Cat was doing to us?
Brad to Valerie:
Valerie,
As a matter of fact, I did see it and did all I could to prevent it from flying off the handle.
Valerie to Brad:
And yet your choice of words…I would not have used a culturally charged reference such as tattoo.
Brad to Valerie:
My choice of words? First you freeze and speak in impenetrable scientese and then she baits and you take it. We both know you shouldn’t have said what you said. And you hold me at fault for a tattoo metaphor?!
March 1, 2021
Select headlines:
Scientists Say Your Core Values Are Like a Tattoo on Your Forehead
National Interest
She-Scientist Valerie Jordan Wants to Do a Thought Experiment to Make You Vote Blue
The Well-Informed Man
Blue State–Funded Scientists Want to Vaccinate Your Children Against Patriocratic Values
Patriot Watch
Only Demented Degenerates Vote Patriocratic, Scientists Say
Daily Outrage
March 24, 2021
You are evil and the cause of all evil. You, the American Imperial academia, disdain and despise us who are fine people and only the rest of this country that used to be great, exceptional, and a shining city on a hill supposed to lead the whole world into freedom, democracy, and equality but then you let Jews, Blacks, and Women into our colleges and you teach them fraudulent sciences how to brainwash our babies and shove poison down our throats and that there is no truth only a matter of schooling. My wife she died yesterday of your Oldstimers disease she would of liked to give you her piece of mind about how you shredded the Constitution and your whole Just Divide that is nothing but your conspiracy to bleed the Red drop by drop because people like you don’t give a flying fuck about cures just about more money to prove the blues are better. This letter is a bomb.
May 12, 2021
Our Lady of Mercy Rehabilitation Center, College Station, TX Case history:
V.J. is a 37 y. o. left-handed female with no history of hearing or cognitive impairment prior to hospitalization. She was employed as an academic professor. V.J. sustained a severe penetrating traumatic brain injury to the right hemisphere on 3/24/21 as a consequence of receiving an explosive in the mail. The patient scored 6 on Glasgow Coma Scale when found, and continued to require management and sedation post-operatively. She had increased muscle tone and hyperreflexia two weeks after surgery. Second attempt at extubation was successful. The patient continued to improve in the following month. She was able to reach and squeeze staff’s hand, and produce simple sounds. The patient was able to ambulate with assistance and perform routine hygiene tasks at 6 weeks post-injury. Speech was limited, poorly articulated, and often perseverative (e.g.: “bray bo, bray bo, bray bo…”). The patient demonstrated inability to follow verbal commands but showed comprehension of written words and was able to answer simple written questions regarding her name, age, and personal data.
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