ELEVEN
I SHOUTED, “WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?”
Scrunching her eyes shut, her words all came in a rush. “Laila was part of the second phase of the autotrophs experiment, raised from the time she was a baby to develop the ability to self-feed. The scientists kept them in a room with artificial sunlight that they used to create nutrients. I didn’t know about it until she was nearly ten. They’d already been doing it for a decade.”
Laila gasped, and I dropped her hand. In a flash, I launched myself away from the couch, scrambling to get away from the girl, from Laila, whatever she was. Smacking my head on the corner of the nightstand, I ended up on the floor, smashed up against the bed. My heart pounded and I couldn’t say anything.
Laila had covered her face with her hands and was rocking back and forth, saying something I couldn’t hear. Then she curled up, facing away from me. Her breathing evened out until she seemed to be sleeping.
Dr. Emerson sat next to her, rubbing her back. “You don’t have to be afraid of her. She hasn’t changed, Mason. She is who she is.”
But she wasn’t … what I thought. Not just a girl. She was something else.
Words eked out. “How did that happen?”
Dr. Emerson swallowed. “As I said, it was the second phase. The first phase had … worked out a few kinks, and I came on board with the second phase.” She started to sound more excited. “But with the second phase, we did it. These children actually were able to feed themselves—”
“Hold on,” I interrupted. “Children?”
Dr. Emerson’s mouth was a thin line.
My confusion and bewilderment were overruled as I glared at her. “Where did you get the children?”
She held both her hands up. “It’s not what you think. They were all children of TroDyn employees, and their parents knew what they were doing. Those who didn’t want to participate were given the chance to leave.”
I thought back to what Jack had found on the Internet, the similarities between the ex–TroDyn employees, that they’d all had babies within months after leaving. Was that why? They didn’t want their children to be part of the experiment?
Dr. Emerson spoke slowly now. Maybe she’d figured out Iwasn’t going to completely freak. “The ones who left weren’t as committed, obviously. But the ones who stayed, they were deeply … passionate about finding a solution to world hunger. To them … to me, it was … is as real a challenge as curing cancer. Those scientists truly thought they could do it and it was worth enrolling their children in the project.” She looked over at Laila. “And keeping them in it.”
I leaned back on my haunches. “Why did you leave?”
“A disagreement in philosophies.” She raised her chin, seeming to gain strength as she talked about her defection from TroDyn. “I agreed with the concept, giving humans the ability to make their own food, not having to rely on weather or other humans for nourishment. And I believed it could be done fairly simply, giving the subject a normal life in the process. This is what the project looked like to me when I came on board.”
“The project?”
“It began when the children were babies. The head scientists weaned them from food nutrients and developed a process of garnering nutrients from the sun.” Her voice was firm. “As long as the amount of sunshine was perfectly regulated, the child maintained a perfect balance of nutrients, requiring neither food nor water.”
I didn’t believe it. “That’s it? Just sit the kid in the sun and they’re an autotroph?”
“It would seem that way.” A line appeared between her eyes. “I didn’t know all the intricacies of the process. Each of us knew only parts of the full recipe, just enough for us each to do our jobs. Mine was to monitor the children.” She rested a hand on Laila. “She was one of them. What I didn’t know was that as the children got older, they couldn’t maintain that perfect balance through adolescence. So TroDyn wanted to change the experiment. They wanted to add an artificial element to boost the anomaly. Artificial horizontal gene transfer.”
My stomach turned. I got it. Unfortunately. “They’re playing God.”
Dr. Emerson came over and sat down on the chair, smoothing her skirt under her. “The evolution was not going to happen on its own.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice took on that lecture tone. “There is a genus of lizard called Anolis that lives on a Caribbean island having varying geographic features. Scientists studying these lizards realized that even though the genus on the island was the same, the different habitats had caused them to develop different abilities.
“The species that lives near tree trunks in the rain forest developed longer legs for running and jumping quickly, while another, which lives on twigs in the rain forest, has short legs for maneuvering on the smaller surface. Over generations, more than 300 species developed, and they adapted to their specific environments. Evolution on a small scale.”
I made a face. “But that doesn’t just happen.”
“You’re right.” Dr. Emerson shook her head slightly. “Changes happen at the genetic level, and individuals inherit those new characteristics that give them more of a chance to survive. Around the tree trunks, longer-legged lizards were more apt to survive, and then they reproduced, creating lizards with longer legs, until gradually the entire population had longer legs, perfectly suited for their habitat.”
I said, “Natural selection. Survival of the fittest.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Adapt or die.”
I cleared my throat. “So is TroDyn attempting to adapt humans to a foodless planet?”
She nodded.
Amazing. “Because we couldn’t adapt to something like starvation. We’d die from it first.”
She said, “You’re right. And if we look at the history of species evolution, like the lizards, it will take more than a few generations to develop the true autotroph. Which is why they wanted to employ an artificial element.”
“Artificial?” Did I really want to know?
She explained, “A technological element combined with an organic one, to help regulate the self-feeding ability.”
It seemed ridiculous: They were building eco-cyborgs? Impossible. “There’s no way…”
“Exactly. It’s purely theoretical. I mean, I saw sketches.” She lowered her head. “Although they couldn’t have seen it through, just the thought of it was…” She looked down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap.
“The thought of what?”
She sighed before meeting my gaze. “Basically, they give the subjects a root system, made up of half organic material and half technological device, an advanced chip, designed to mutate the genes on a cellular level while connecting each of the children to each other, forming an artificial symbiosis that works like the real thing.”
“Wait.” I made myself take a deep breath as what she said sank in. “They wanted to put computerized roots in them?”
Dr. Emerson tucked some hair behind her ear. “That’s a layman’s way of looking at it. The technology would work with the organic material to speed up the change in the genome, rewrite the structure of the gene, so that it could then be inherited by the very next generation.”
I let my breath out. “Evolution. They wanted to force evolution.” My hands were trembling and I sat on them. Her silence told me I was right. And I thought of Laila when she went into her trance, talking about that other place. Could it be true? Had she been remembering? “What did the kids do there?”
“They were educated, highly so. I’m sure they learned more than you ever learned in school.”
There was no comprehending any of it. “But why educate them if they’re just subjects in an experiment?”
Dr. Emerson sighed. “That’s another place where I had issues. They weren’t just part of the experiment. They were being groomed to work at TroDyn. Which I suppose I understood. It’s not as if they could have worked on the outside, and TroDyn couldn’t have hired new scientists at that phase of the experiment.”
“Wait a second.” It just seemed so ridiculous, all that going on in Melby Falls. “Then how can they bring in people for internships and jobs if they can’t let anyone know what is going on?”
She smiled. “Believe me, TroDyn is so big you could work there for years and never guess the autotroph experiment was even happening. It was always the corporation’s other pursuits that funded this experiment. They still do, which is why TroDyn is always in the news for its work with global warming, new technology to deal with oil spills and nuclear reactor incidents. And why they will always need more employees. Those employees just won’t ever have access to a major part of the facilities.”
“Why didn’t you stay and work with one of those?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t stay there, knowing what I knew. I couldn’t have stayed away from the kids, I guess. I had to leave.”
I wondered what was supposed to happen when the kids grew up. “If it takes a few generations to adapt…”
She nodded. “This was another place I disagreed. Because in order to truly evolve, each Phase Group would have to mate among themselves to produce the next generation. Like the lizards with the longest legs mating to produce lizards with longer legs. And I thought that … well, it went beyond any scientific method I had ever heard of.”
I felt as if I might be sick. “And experimenting on kids is so moral?”
She straightened up. “For the greater good, I say it was. Their parents had the right to decide for them.”
I kicked the ottoman. “You make it sound like they were deciding whether or not to let them go on a date! Hello, they gave up their children!”
She folded her arms in front of her and shut her eyes. “It wasn’t that simple at all. I know it sounds … strange.” She opened her eyes. “But to be able to fix a universal problem that’s only going to get worse? I mean, look at me. I travel the country trying to convince people to plant their own gardens and quit driving gas guzzlers. And we’re too late for it to work. Changing our behaviors now is not going to save the planet. But the autotroph program was skipping a few steps; we were doing something that mattered. It was a sacrifice, but it was the needs of a few against the needs of the many. The needs of the many will always be more important.” She held out her hands, palms up. “Don’t they have to be?”
I stood up and walked over to the couch, then knelt in front of Laila. “What about her? What kind of life is it for her?”
Dr. Emerson dropped her hands and met my eyes. “That’s exactly why I resigned. I saw where it was going. Ididn’t see how they would achieve the results they wanted while staying in moral boundaries that I could live with. And the…”
Her moral boundaries seemed a bit lax to me. But her trailing off made me intrigued. “And the what?”
She shook her head a bit. “Nothing.”
“You can’t stop now.”
“It’s just…” She scratched her cheek again, like in the car. “A faction of the scientists had higher aspirations. Financial pursuits.”
I couldn’t imagine Walmart offering autotrophs anytime in the near future.
She saw my puzzlement and explained. “The military would have paid big money. Can you imagine? Perfect soldiers that need neither food nor water.”
I almost groaned. Hogan had called it that day in biology. “But they didn’t do it?”
Dr. Emerson shook her head. “Still, it will always remain a possibility. Especially for one of the lead scientists, who was hell-bent on the idea. And I couldn’t live with that. Monitoring those children just so they could grow up and be soldiers.”
“And TroDyn just let you go? No problem?”
She smiled a little, as her eyes narrowed. “There’s always a problem. No one just leaves TroDyn scot-free. Among … other things, I signed a confidentiality agreement. I agreed to never work for a competing company in the same area.”
“That’s it? No blood oath?”
She laughed. “No.”
I asked, “Did you have a kid?”
She shook her head. “No.” She looked for a long while at Laila. “They had become my children in some ways. Being with them all day. Teaching them, learning from them.” She sighed again. “I couldn’t bear to see what they were going to do to them in order to get the results they needed.”
“So you walked out on the children?” I couldn’t help myself.
Her eyes narrowed. “No, of course not. There was nothing I could do.”
“Still, you pretty much bailed.”
She looked down at the floor for a moment, and when she looked back up, her eyes were full of tears. She motioned toward Laila, but had trouble speaking at first. “These…” She swallowed. “These kids, like Laila? They were like my own. Leaving was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I couldn’t stay there and watch. I couldn’t.”
I asked softly, “What did they have over you?”
“Them. The kids. Like Laila. They said if anyone tried to stop the experiment, there would be nothing to find.”
“What would they do?”
“Whatever they had to.”
I was confused. “But they couldn’t hurt them. Wouldn’t that ruin the experiment?”
She raised one shoulder and dropped it. “Is that a chance you’d be willing to take? Because I’m not. But I had resigned myself to never seeing any of them again. And now…”
“What about the people with kids? The ones who didn’t want them in the experiment?”
“Same thing. Confidentiality agreement.”
I shook my head. “How did they guarantee you didn’t just go running around, telling the world?”
“The people expecting children knew what was at stake. Their children. They would never be safe if they didn’t stick to the agreement. And there was the compensation, of course.”
Compensation? “You mean, like a fund?”
She nodded. “Some employees were able to secure a monthly payment. It seemed like extortion to me, taking the money to keep their mouths shut. I didn’t need it, but some of them expecting children probably did.”
Yeah. I knew of one in particular.
“Did they think TroDyn would come after them if they talked?”
Dr. Emerson shrugged. “Again, who would be willing to take that chance?”
I saw her point. Laila was my age. What if our situations were reversed? What if our parents had made different choices?
How could our parents live with this knowledge and not do anything?
Dr. Emerson looked at Laila with true affection, even I could see that. My voice was almost a whisper as I asked, “And you’re sure they haven’t done what you were saying? Added the technological part?”
“Yes.” She frowned a little. “I mean, look at Laila. There’s no…”
“No what?”
She bit her lip as she got to her feet and walked over to me. She asked, “Have you seen her use the bathroom this whole time?”
I blushed. “I don’t know.”
Dr. Emerson asked, “And did she drink anything?”
“Yoo-hoo.” I shook my head. “No, actually … No, she didn’t drink any of it.”
“Did she eat anything?”
“She had donuts.”
She gasped. “She did?”
I looked down at the floor. “But then she threw up.”
In a strong, sudden movement, Dr. Emerson shoved me aside as she groped for Laila’s arms, repeating “They couldn’t, they couldn’t, they couldn’t” as she turned them over one at a time, squinting her eyes to scan every inch of them.
“What are you looking for?”
Laila moaned and woke up, pushing Dr. Emerson away as she pulled up Laila’s shirt, peering at her back. “Stop it,” Laila said, trying to scrunch herself into a corner of the couch.
“What are you looking for?” I asked again.
Dr. Emerson ignored me, continuing to analyze Laila’s skin. “I’m afraid…”
That didn’t sound great. I grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop what she was doing and look at me. “What? You’re afraid of what?”
She ran her hair back with one hand and glanced at Laila. “That they may have actually done it.”
Laila’s voice was loud. “What? Done what?”
Dr. Emerson sank to the edge of the couch. “I’m not entirely sure, but there would probably be marks or scars.”
Laila shook her head as she looked at me. “I don’t have any scars.” She held up her arms. “Look. Look for yourself.”
“Yes, you do.” My heart beat faster. “She has scars on the back of her legs.”
Laila’s mouth dropped open as she ran, stumbling on her weak legs, for the bathroom. She got the door shut and locked before either Dr. Emerson or I could grab her. With a flat hand, I pounded on the door. “Laila, open the door.”
Nothing.
Dr. Emerson was beside me. “Laila, please. You have to let me in.”
Silence.
“Please, Laila.”
Laila’s voice sounded small and scared. “If I have the scars, what will it mean?”
Dr. Emerson rested her forehead on the door and sighed. “Laila, just open the door and we can—”
“No!” Laila’s shout made me jump. “You tell me! Tell me what it means!”
Dr. Emerson sighed. “It might mean…”
I asked, “What? It might mean what?”
The doctor just shook her head and went over to the couch, where she sat down and put her head in her hands.
A few moments passed with no sound from inside the bathroom. Then a long, anguished wail.
“Laila!” I pounded on the door. “Open up!”
The lock clicked and the door fell open. Laila’s face was shiny with tears as she stood there in the doorway in her white underwear, her jeans around her ankles. “What does it mean?” She turned around, revealing the scars that began on the backs of her thighs and continued down to her calves.
Dr. Emerson gasped as she walked over to us.
Laila fell to her knees in front of Dr. Emerson, grabbing her skirt and burying her face in it. “Tell me.”
Dr. Emerson leaned over, her hands holding Laila’s face. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” She looked over at me. “It’s too late. They did it.”
I didn’t understand. “What? They did what?”
Dr. Emerson took in a big shuddering breath and said, “The Greenhouse. They rooted her.”