“We were trying to do a good thing.”
My mother’s main lab was in Shenzhen, and there was a bacterial leaf blight impacting indica rice in a nearby region called Zhaoqing. Mom wanted to genetically insert a virus into locusts so that these carrier insects would be able to infect the rice paddies with the virus, which we could program to bolster the plants’ blight resistance without otherwise changing the plant.
It’s one thing to genetically engineer seeds in the lab and charge outrageously for them. This held no interest for my mother. She was trying something far more ambitious—sending insects directly into the fields to somatically edit crops in real time. The potential applications went far beyond the Zhaoqing rice blight, to all of the world’s breadbasket crops.
We built several bio-contained greenhouses and released our genetically modified yellow-spined bamboo locusts on infected test plants within the containment facility. It worked. There was no chlorosis, or browning. The plants thrived.
“Were you closely involved with the experiments?” Aimee asked.
“I was helping where I could, but I’d only just finished my undergrad degree. I was there for the summer. Thought I was part of the team, but I know they all saw me as a tagalong who was only there because I was Miriam Ramsay’s son.”
I felt an ache in the back of my throat. It had been years since I’d talked openly about what had happened.
“The greenhouse phase was successful. The data looked great. We had the support of the Chinese biosafety board, so we released our carrier locusts into the Zhaoqing fields.”
I took a careful breath.
“It was a perfect, blue-sky day. The mountains were shining in the sun. The flooded rice paddies were this lovely, emerald green. I had a large canvas bag slung over my shoulder. We all did. I untied mine, opened it. I still remember the twinge of pride as I watched the cloud of our modified locusts fly away. Look at me, changing the world.
“The initial results were positive, but then the viral-control systems began developing mutations at an accelerated rate. In addition to emboldening the plants against the blight, it started knocking out genes essential for seed production. We tried to contain it, but…”
“The virus had generalized,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Miriam had engineered the virus to only target this specific strain of rice, but it developed cross-species virus transmission, made worse by new rounds of viral mutation and selection, infecting and targeting other food-crop species. Within a year, the vector locusts began propagating exponentially.
I said, “My mom died right around the time the effects were first beginning to be felt in the American Midwest.”
“The car accident?”
I nodded. But accident? Not quite. Miriam had driven her car off Highway 1, between Jenner and Sea Ranch, California, where the road runs highest above the sea.
During the next seven years, each growing season yielded less and less, and before the locusts were finally eradicated, China’s strategic grain supply was critically depleted.
The famine spread to every continent and affected every human being in one way or another. When you wipe out millions of hectares of crops, it changes where the rain falls. When you destroy rice paddies, you destroy everything that needs them to live.
Two hundred million people starved to death, but that number doesn’t come close to the total impact of the chaos we unchained. The downstream effect on economies, healthcare systems, entire species, and the biosphere itself was incalculable.
“Yesterday, my daughter told me she’s studying the famine in school. And…um…”
“It’s okay.”
I let the tears fall.
“It’s just a lot, you know?”
“It is a lot.”
“I’ve gotten used to not caring what the rest of the world thinks of me, but…”
“I’m sure your daughter sees you as the wonderful father you are.”
She handed me a box of tissues.
“Logan, when I look at you, I see a man who’s still very, very hard on himself.”
Something broke loose at the core of me. She was touching a wound that would never heal, which I’d wrapped in two decades’ worth of scar tissue.
“How could I not be?” I asked, my voice now barely a whisper.
* * *
—
Specks of snow flurried down out of the charcoal sky, and the wind coming off the Washington Channel was brisk and eye-wateringly cold. I entered the square exedra and gazed up at the thirty-foot pillar on the granite platform.
Though I knew it by heart, I read the inscription engraved in the rock:
IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES
AT HOME AND ABROAD DURING THE GREAT STARVATION
WE WILL NEVER FORGET
Officially, it was also called the Shenzhen Famine.
Informally, it was Ramsay’s Famine.
I took a seat on the granite bench beside the pillar. I came here several times a year, usually on the way home from work, when I knew the weather was bad enough to keep the tourists away.
It was dusk now and snowing hard enough to turn the mammoth profile of the New Pentagon into an ominous, featureless monolith.
The horn blasts of rush-hour traffic were dampened by the storm.
Footsteps approached.
I turned and saw a figure approaching, their face concealed by the upturned collar of a burgundy wool coat.
Fuck. I knew that coat.
Nadine walked over and sat beside me.
“Following me,” I said. “Wow.”
She shrugged. “Saw you heading this way when you left work.” And then, “I know you come here sometimes.”
“What do you want, Nadine?”
“You seemed upset earlier.”
“I had my final therapy session this morning.”
“Didn’t go well?”
“Maybe too well.”
She had never asked me directly about my past. Between us, there was just this quiet understanding. I know. And I’m here.
“We don’t have to talk,” she said. “It just made me sad to think about you sitting all alone out here. Getting snowed on.”
I watched the steady stream of delivery drones flying across the water into Arlington and Alexandria.
“Why’d you take this job?” I asked.
“I love guns.”
I looked at her. She smiled.
“I’m kidding. Policy creation was so damn ethereal. I wanted to actually do something, you know? It’s the difference between designing a house and building the thing.”
“I hate this job.”
“I know.”
“But I think I would hate not doing it more.”
Nadine said, “There are times I love it. Moments when it feels like we’re improving the world. I just wish they came more often.”
We sat in the cold, watching the lights wink on across the channel. I started to tell her what I suspected was happening to me—all the small changes that were becoming more impossible to rationalize away. But I wanted to see the results of the new genome analysis first, and asking her to keep secrets from the GPA wasn’t a position I felt comfortable placing her in.
“Buy you a drink?” she asked.
“I should probably get home.”
Nadine stood, rewrapped the scarf that had come loose around her neck.