As Jane was 80 percent sure this was some kind of computer virus, she avoided clicking on the screen. Instead, she unplugged her computer, plugged it back in, and then turned it back on. Her mobi buzzed. She reached into her pocket and slid it open. The same seal and message greeted her. By now her computer had restarted, and unsurprisingly, the White House seal was the only thing that came up on the monitor.
Jane sighed. They couldn’t afford IT support anymore, so she’d have to figure this one out herself. She went into the main lab and checked one of the lab computers: normal. So she pulled up the network on her workstation and isolated her office computer, making sure nothing could infect the rest of the lab. The last time a virus got loose in the lab network, it had taken days to recover all their data. She wasn’t going to risk that again. Then she went back to her office and clicked on the White House seal.
A woman in her mid fifties appeared on the screen. She was sitting at a desk in a room not unlike the oval office, her hands clasped lightly in front of her. She had a stern and imperial look, with strong prominent features on her face and a grim expression that bordered on being a frown.
“Dr. Ingram. Sorry for the intrusion.” She did not sound sorry at all. “My name is Dr. Fran Forrester. I have been chosen by the President to form a special government agency, the details of which I am not at liberty to discuss with you at this time. To get right to the point, your grant proposal was forwarded to my office by the Department of Energy, followed by Transportation, Homeland Security, the FDA, and many others. It seems you have been rather,” she smirked, “prolific in your search for funding.” Well, Jane was certainly glad they hadn’t all just ended up in the trash. “Though I am skeptical as to your credentials, some of my colleagues believe your work to be,” again her lips pulled back slightly, “highly interesting. I am well aware of your current financial woes. If you have any interest in the continued existence of your research, you will meet me at my office in Washington D.C. at 10AM sharp tomorrow morning.”
Jane drew a sharp breath. She couldn’t get to Washington by tomorrow morning. Her last trip had taken a week and a half to plan. How did she know this was for real?
Dr. Forrester continued, “All the necessary arrangements for your travel have been arranged. You will receive them as well as authentication of this message following its completion. I look forward to meeting you tomorrow Dr. Ingram. Do not disappoint me.”
The message disappeared, leaving no trace of its existence. Jane pulled out her phone. The seal was gone from there as well. Jane stared blankly at the screen. Could she have imagined it all? Then a high priority message landed in her inbox, making the mail icon dance for attention. Several more high priority messages followed in the next few seconds. At $10 each, it was rare to get high priority email. Jane opened the first message and scanned it.
The message was a receipt, showing the details of an air ticket from San Francisco to Dulles airport, just outside Washington D.C., paid for in her name. Jane wondered how that was even possible. You couldn’t just buy someone else an air ticket anymore, not after all the security clampdowns. She glanced at the price of the ticket and nearly choked on her own tongue. Air travel was certainly not cheap.
She opened the next email. It was a certified message from her bank. It said simply, “This validates the contents of an anonymously sent message received at 15:24:02 by Dr. Jane Ingram.” She clicked through to the next email. It was an identical email from her online security vendor. The next email was from the franchise tax board with the exact same message.
The final email in her inbox was an itinerary sent from the Rockstem Travel Agency. It showed her airline tickets for tonight, her accommodations in D.C., lunch and dinner reservations with unknown parties, and her limo validation credentials while in D.C. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head as she read the last line. Her flight was scheduled to leave in an hour and a half. She quickly pulled up the train schedule on her computer. She would have to get to the train station in ten minutes in order to get to the airport on time. It seemed impossible.
Jane touched her lucky pendant again. She could save the world, and this was a good place to start. She grabbed her purse and her data and took the elevator down to the lobby. Then she took off her heels, and she ran.
************
Eleven hours later, Jane was still in a daze, but this time mostly from exhaustion. Getting to the airport on time had been stressful, but she had made it. She was in such a rush at the airport that she ran headfirst into a large Asian man on the way to her gate. The man was almost seven feet tall and completely bald, seemingly impossible to miss, and yet apparently today was the day for doing the impossible. Surprised to find a petite blonde in his chest, he hastily apologized and practically ran away from her. Jane did notice that a surprisingly large number of men were intimidated by her.
Her flight had taken off at 7:30PM PST. She had a good eight hours on the flight, but she hadn’t been able to sleep a wink. There were just too many questions running through her mind. Who was Dr. Forrester? What was this new government agency all about? Consequently, when she stepped off the plane at 6:30AM EST, Jane was completely unprepared to argue with the driver who had come to pick her up.
He met her right as she stepped out of the gate, not at the arrivals hall outside of security, but right at the gate. He didn’t hold up a sign with her name written in capital letters either. He just walked up to her, took her bag, and asked her to follow him. Now that she thought about it, he didn’t really ask. Before she knew it, she was in the posh backseat of a black Lexus, looking forward to freshening up at the hotel before her big interview.
Jane pulled out her mobi to check how far the hotel was from the airport. Her mobi told her that her hotel was 20 minutes from the airport and that they were currently traveling in the opposite direction. “Excuse me driver,” Jane said, knocking on the glass separating her from the driver. The window lowered, allowing her to see the back of the driver’s head. “We’re not heading towards the hotel.”
The driver didn’t shift his gaze from the road. “That is correct,” he replied.
“And why is that?” she asked, frustrated by his lack of explanation.
“I’m taking you to meet Dr. Forrester directly,” he added.
“Oh,” Jane said, confused. “I’d prefer to freshen up at the hotel first. I should have plenty of time to make the interview.”
“Your interview has been moved to 7:30,” the driver explained. “You look fine.” The driver rolled up the window, not waiting for her response.
Jane glanced at her mobi. It was nearly 6:50. This interview could determine the fate of her entire lab, and she did not feel ready. Jane straightened her clothes and tried to fix her makeup and hair in the tiny mirror she kept in her purse. Then she pulled out her mobi and flipped through notes on her research, trying to refresh her memory and get her brain cranking again.
Forty minutes later, the car slowed down and then stopped. Jane put down her mobi and looked out the window. Grass. She saw grass. There were no giant concrete buildings, no bustling crowds, and certainly no White House. “This isn’t Washington D.C.” she said, stating the obvious.
“No, we’re still in Virginia,” the driver responded. There wasn’t even a hint of a smirk on his face, but Jane imagined he was laughing inside. “Dr. Forrester is waiting for you outside. You can leave your bags here.”
Sure enough, the woman from the video was standing in the meadow, looking out at the line of trees in the distance. Jane stepped out of the car and looked around. Alongside the simple two-lane road, meadows stretched in both directions. There was no sign of human civilization anywhere, aside from the solitary road that stretched out to the horizon. As Jane walked towards her, Dr. Forrester turned to meet her.
“Ah, welcome, Doctor,” she said extending her arm in greeting. “May I call you Jane? Please. Walk with me.”
As they walked through the meadow,
Jane once again cursed the fates that had her wearing high heels on the one day she needed flats. She sank into the grass with every step she took.
“Thanks for having me, Dr. Forrester,” Jane started. “Or should I call you Fran?”
“Doctor or Director is fine,” Dr. Forrester responded.
“Yes, Director,” Jane continued. “I just wanted to -.”
But Dr. Forrester cut her off before she could continue. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “All my life, I have marveled at the magnificence of Mother Nature. The abundance of life, the diversity, the interconnection between all living things... It’s wondrous isn’t it?”
Dr. Forrester was leading her towards a grove of trees in the distance. The morning sun streaked across the meadow, reflecting off the glistening dew. The grass they walked through was wild and untamed, growing over two feet tall, almost unrecognizable compared to the carefully trimmed greens of golf courses around the world.
“I devoted myself to the study of nature,” Dr. Forrester continued. “I studied Biology, Botany, Ecology, and Genetics. But the more I learned about the mechanics of nature, the more I found our knowledge to be incomplete.” Dr. Forrester frowned. “And the more I realized that the consequences of our ignorance would be our own extinction. Do you believe we need to protect the Earth?”
Jane waited until she was sure that an answer was warranted. “Yes, of course,” she responded.
“You’re wrong,” contradicted Dr. Forrester immediately. “The Earth does not need protecting. It has been here for billions of years before man came, and it will be here for billions of years after we leave. Millions of years ago, the Earth was a carbon-filled inferno full of poisonous gases and extreme temperatures. Life existed. You see, it is not the Earth that must be protected, it is our Earth, the land that provides mankind with sustenance and allows us to prosper, that we must protect.”
Suddenly Jane felt like a student again, and she wasn’t the teacher’s pet.
“The world talks about carbon emissions, about poisoning the atmosphere and destroying the Earth,” continued Dr. Forrester. “But mankind is not creating greenhouse gases, we are merely releasing them from the fossils and the trees that store them. And we are not destroying the Earth. No, we are merely destroying ourselves.”
Jane heard a hint of sadness in her voice and didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t how she tended to start her fund-raising pitch.
Dr. Forrester spoke again. “I tell you this, so that you will have the appropriate perspective on our goals. I have been named the director of the International Climate Change Foundation, an organization created by direct order of the President.” Jane smiled upon hearing this. Despite all the rhetoric, a part of her had still feared some possible connection to the military. Who else had this kind of money?
Dr. Forrester continued, “It’s a fledgling organization, almost entirely domestically based, and that is why we are keeping a low profile.” She paused. “For now. In fact, until we go public, we won’t use the ICCF name at all. We’re known simply as Operation Visor. Over the next few years, we will work on building a strong international community backed by all major governments. Our most visible cause will be, of course, the reduction of carbon emissions on a worldwide basis as this is the overriding concern of this century. But I want to make it clear that our goal is not merely to reduce carbon emissions. Our goal is to understand how nature works and learn to control it in order to protect and improve our earth.”
Jane listened quietly sensing that Dr. Forrester wasn’t done talking.
“Everywhere around the world, Nature pummels mankind with droughts and floods and storms. You witnessed the great tsunami of 2004,” said Dr. Forrester. Jane remembered all too clearly and did not appreciate the reminder. “Contrary to many other potential disasters, that was something not influenced by mankind and a testament to the power of Nature, and the relative powerlessness of mankind in comparison.” Jane nodded. “The carbon crisis that we talk about today, it has the power to reshape the world, to create new droughts, new storms, and new deserts, but it is not our only problem.
“We scamper to keep things from changing, thinking that avoiding change will solve our problems. We try to turn back the clock, but we cannot. The world will not return to a time when people lived in enclaves of subsistence farmers. No, we can only try to slow down the inevitable until we can fix the problem. Operation Visor must have that long-term solution as the driving force behind our actions.”
Now Jane was getting a little concerned. She thought Dr. Forrester was in charge of trying to stop global climate change by reducing carbon emissions. And now it sounded like she was saying that it wasn’t going to happen.
“Carbon is just a tool,” Dr. Forrester continued. “It is not the solution.” By now Jane had learned that she wasn’t expected to speak, so she just stayed quiet.
“We have created and used many tools to help protect ourselves from the fickle nature of, well, Nature. We have built dams and levees and put our houses on stilts. But these are not solutions based on understanding Nature. They deal with symptoms, not the root cause. Even removing carbon from the atmosphere is indirect. It is not necessarily carbon that we need to remove, it is excess heat from the sun which in turn changes the global weather patterns.
“Now imagine what we could do if we truly understood Nature and could design it. Imagine if we had a global thermostat and could dictate how much heat we let in, and that we could even control it differently in different places. Imagine we understood how to create ecosystems so that energy and water and air were all used efficiently. We would have no droughts and no floods, and instead of just slowing global warming down, we could actually stop it. In fact, we could even cure Siberia and make Africa fertile once more.”
“And you believe that my research could help mankind achieve that goal?,” broke in Jane.
“Don’t you?” Dr. Forrester asked. “Three years ago, in a paper you published in Molecular Scientist, you wrote ‘Though it is still early, lab results show that these methods can be used to create traits that have not been discovered in nature. Heavy investment in the perfection of this technique could lead to an entirely new area of research focused on creating fundamentally novel biological designs. The transition from biological engineering to true biological design could allow the creation of biological tools that could change the way we interact with our environment.”
“Yes,” Jane responded, surprised at Dr. Forrester’s astounding memory. “I insinuated that my research could change the world. I still believe that,” she added.
“And what have you done in the last three years?” prodded Dr. Forrester. “You are still at the same lab, working for the same pharmaceutical companies. After making the discovery of a lifetime, you have made no expansion of your research, spawned no new research centers, and have been rather quiet in terms of publications. Your ‘new area of research’ is nowhere to be found.”
“We have made some progress,” Jane said defensively. “Though not as much as we could with better support,” she admitted. “We’ve managed to isolate the bacteria phage, which we call ‘Mutagen B,’ and create self replicating cultures of the bacteria. We have also improved our understanding of its effects. After the host plant is incubated properly with Mutagen B, every cell of the host plant exhibits genetic mutations.”
“Now here’s the amazing part,” Jane said, now starting to speak more confidently. “As you know, in the medical field, mutation is usually looked upon as a negative event. Genetic mutation can be caused by irradiation, degeneration, and certain chemicals. These generally lead to negative traits such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. In fact, historically most mutations cause the cell to die. And yet the creation of good traits from genetic mutation is the foundation of evolutionary theory. A series of mutations over millions of years turned prehistoric apes into human beings.
“The hos
t plants that have been mutated by Mutagen B all remain healthy. We had expected that a large portion of the cells would be unable to function after the mutation, however all of them survived.” Jane shrugged. “We have some theories. Perhaps the mutagen is able to avoid necessary sections of the plant genome, focusing only on ancillary genes. Or perhaps cells that begin to lose the ability to function become more susceptible to the mutagen and mutate again and again until they becomes stronger. Either way, the end result is a wide variety of viable new genetic material. It’s like we’re creating ten thousand new plant species at once.”
“I see. And what is the importance of new species creation?” Dr. Forrester asked.
“Well, our real goal is to design plants using evolutionary principles.” Jane wished she had some of her diagrams with her, but it seemed like Dr. Forrester had no problem following her reasoning. She had read her grant proposal at least. “We have a stable source of a mutagen that creates new species. Then we introduce a selection criteria. For instance, we put the plants in an extremely cold environment. Only plants that have a mutation that allows them to survive at cold temperatures will survive. We take the plants that do the best and use their genes as the basis for more mutation and keep repeating this until we have a cold resistant plant. In fact, this is the very experiment we have been doing at the lab. We now have a soy bean plant that can survive temperatures 10 degrees below any other strain.”
Jane glanced over to Dr. Forrester. If she was impressed, it certainly didn’t show on her face. “What pieces are you missing?” she asked.
Jane took the question to be a good sign and answered excitedly, “Well, the key to any meaningful application of this process is speed and scale. Though Mutagen B seems to dis-proportionally create beneficial genes, we still need to create millions and millions of genetic variants in order to get the traits we’re looking for. This can be done with larger facilities, more manpower, and more equipment. These increased resources will also allow us to create better environments for selecting the traits we want.”