Sexual Chemistry and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, short stories, biotechnology, biology, evolution
ISBN: 9781434443472
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE FURNITURE OF LIFE’S AMBITION

“Jesus, Jude,” complained William Morris to his wife one night, as they lay cuddling in bed, “I’ve got to get out. I’ve just got to.”

Judy Morris strangled the sigh that rose unbidden to her lips, as it did every time William had one of his moods. She loved him dearly, but he could be very tiresome. She opened her cornflower-blue eyes and passed a tired hand through her silken blonde hair.

“You don’t mean that, dear,” she said. “You’ve just had a bad day, that’s all.”

“Bad day!” said William. “Bad day! Jude, we’re on the threshold of a whole new scientific revolution here. Our entire technological repertoire stands to be transformed in the space of a single lifetime—my lifetime. But all Plasmotech care about is meeting consumer demand! You know what they want me to work on now? Fish, that’s what! I’ve been summoned to see Curtis and Wilberforce tomorrow, and I know exactly what they’re going to say. They’re going to talk about cod fillets and caviar, and make stupid jokes about Moby Dick. It’ll be kids’ stuff, Jude, a five-year-old could do it. It’s just one bloody supermarket novelty after another. Is this the future, Jude? I mean, Jude, Jesus!”

Judy knew that she must at all costs avoid making jokes about loaves and fishes. William, as his finely-chiseled, delicately pre-Raphaelite features implied, was rather oversensitive, and was prone to overreact to any slight, real or imagined. As a child he had been spoiled dreadfully because of his marvelous intelligence and stunning good looks, and in adult life he remained petulant, horribly jealous and prone to outrageous tantrums. Those who loved him had to learn to handle him very delicately.

Most people were willing to learn. After all, one has to make allowances for genius, and William was certainly a genius—possibly the best geneswitcher in the entire world. His employers at Plasmotech were aware of this, and were careful to pay him a very handsome salary. Judy knew it too, and she adored him as much for his fine and reckless mind as for his remarkably beautiful features and lissom body. William was absolutely certain of it, and saw himself as a combination of Albert Einstein and Thomas Alva Edison, without peer as theoretical scientist or practical man.

Plasmotech dealt in factory-produced food: meat and dairy products manufactured biotechnologically, without the aid of animals. Geneticists of an earlier generation than William’s had figured out how the genes in an animal egg-cell provided the blueprint for the structure of a mature animal, and how genes were selectively switched off in different kinds of specialized cells to produce organs and tissues. These discoveries had opened up a scientific Klondike for the geneswitchers whose business it was to design useful organic structures and then to control the switching of genes in developing embryos so as to produce those structures.

It was no longer necessary, in William’s day, to allow a cow’s fertilized egg-cell to develop into another cow, which would have to graze for years in open fields in order to produce milk or beef.

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