To get my mind off of whatever Cyrus is doing to the platform, I take a walk around Utopia. The rest of the building is unchanged, except for the new companies whose logos adorn the walls. The latest one is Freud, a matchmaking service that asks people real questions about who they are instead of random ones about what books they like and whether they prefer skydiving or streaming. Freud’s questionnaire is like this:
Would you call your mother a） loving and largely present, b） loving but largely absent, c） unloving but largely present, or d） unloving and largely absent?
They have a small following （who wants to look at the painful stuff?） and a shocking success rate.
In the stairwell, I run into Rory. He’s holding a tiny metal box with great care. “Is that an engagement ring?” I ask.
“It’s much better than that.”
“Yeah, diamonds are not a girl’s best friend.” I follow him downstairs while monologing about the absolute terribleness of diamonds.
We’re at the entrance to his lab, and to my surprise, he touches his finger to the pad and invites me in.
Rows of long benches frame a large open area. Although we are in the basement, there are solar tubes bringing light from aboveground, and bright LEDs directed at the plants. One breathtaking wall is a spectrum of green, from pale moss to dense, bluey emerald. “This is our Popeye Project,” Rory says. “Lots of companies are trying to wean the world from its dependence on meat. We support all of those because, really, whatever it takes. What differentiates LoneStar is that we’re trying to increase the nutrient density of the entire food chain.”
He brings me over to another area, where there are three raised soil beds. One contains cabbage, another a tangle of tomato vines, and the third, he tells me, has potatoes growing underneath the soil.
“We can gene-edit the most eaten plants in the world and increase the protein content of those vegetables by fifty to a hundred percent without altering the taste.”
“Superfoods.”
“Yes, but that term has been hijacked by the upmarket food industry. With LoneStar foods, people can subsist entirely on a plant-based diet without purchasing expensive meat substitutes.”
“Wow. So I can eat a whole plate of french fries and it’ll be like I just inhaled a bowl of raw kale?”
He tilts his head and I realize he doesn’t know I’m joking. “Not exactly,” he says.” All foods will never be equal. But we can substantially increase the nutritional qualities of a vast majority of vegetables.”
I am reminded of his plastic-free commune and feel a surge of tenderness toward him. He’s a geek, just like me. “So what’s in the little box?”
“If I tell you,” he says, “when they come to arrest me, you can’t claim you didn’t know.”
I awkwardly laugh. But again, he’s not smiling. Is it because he doesn’t know how to smile or because he’s actually serious? Then I think, It’s very possible this man is part human, part machine, and that train of thought makes me sad all over again because if I had just gone ahead and built my Empathy Module, then all the robots would be able to smile realistically.
“I’m not afraid,” I say.
He opens the box. At first it looks like it might be empty, but in the corner, I see a tiny insect that looks like half an ant.
“This is the LoneStar tick,” Rory says. “If it bites you, you can never eat meat again.”
I pause. Is this a biological weapon? “Wait, did you engineer this thing?”
“No, it already existed. We are just making them more effective and less lethal.”
“Less lethal?”
“It gives you an allergy to meat-based products. We genetically modified it so that you also become unable to eat dairy, honey, or eggs. But whereas some people react to an allergen by going into anaphylactic shock, the bite from this tick just makes it so that meat makes you very, very sick.”
“Sick as in cancer?”
“As in diarrhea.”
I’m not sure what to think. On the one hand, Rory is insane. On the other, his version of changing the world is way more radical than my version of changing the world. I’m having changing-the-world envy. Rory is looking right at my mouth instead of generally in the direction of my face, and I wonder if maybe he’s leaning in to kiss me, so I jerk my head back because God that would be weird, and thankfully, before either of us tries to register what’s going on, I get a text from Jules. Come to the meeting room now pls. I bolt up the stairs, but by the time I get there, the design review is over. Destiny, Gaby, and Jules are huddled together around the conference table looking wilted and gray.