First Date

"I'm a genetic engineer at Bremis. You heard of the Hyperion oceanic station? That's the kind of stuff we

do."

"You make like two-headed goats and that kind of stuff?"

"I don't think there's really a market for that, but that would be biological systems design. GenEngs do work on that kind of stuff, doing gene expression and protein design, but I'm primarily focused on algal stock. Splicing in nutrients and stuff. Bremis is contracted by phi ser, so if you've ever used like a Tylenol, it was most likely formulated in Bremis algae."

"Oh. So did you work on the lunar food project?"

"Not personally, but I know a lot of the people who did. I've been working on the Hyperion Ocean Installation. It’s all tied up in NDA's and that shit, so I can't go too much into it (in case you're a corporate spy), but it’s a UN backed climate change initiative."

"The UN is initiating climate change? That's some conspiracy shit."

"No-l-it’s an ANTI climate change. Capture all the carbon and stuff like that. Basically, just taking a couple petagrams of carbon out of circulation to go back to the carbon volume of the 1880s."

"I knew that. I'm just trying to be funny."

"Yeah."

She leaned forwards and took the straw between her lips, spreading a little pink smudge onto the saliva coating the upper shaft of the straw. Brown bubbly liquid pulsed up the tube as she took a sip.

"Did you make anything that's in this soda?" She gasped as she looked up from her drink.

"When I worked in stock algae, we were only contracted by fuel, plastics, and livestock companies. It would be more likely that the chicken that's in your sandwich was fed with algae than soda. It’s still cheaper to get soda additives from other sources."

"So chicken is fed with algae?"

"Yeah. We specially design the protein expression and glucose ratios of certain blooms to match the dietary needs of the livestock. You know-the sediment under Hudson Bay is probably a mad house of random gene expressions."

"That stuff doesn't get into the wild, does it?"

"Some engineered genes do get out. But think about it: random genes pop up all the time. The only difference is ours are targeted and beneficial. So, if a little cross breeding makes some north Atlantic seaweed make some more thymine, is that really a bad thing? Nature is resilient. And maybe cod like thymine. Who knows?”

"That seems reckless. I'm sure the oil people said the same thing about atmospheric carbon, and your job is fixing that. Maybe in 1OO years someone's job will be removing all the manufactured genes."

"This is not even close to oil. Those people were looking for profit. We're looking to better the world. It's hardly a comparison."

"Yikes."

"Nevermind. If you let me, I'll talk about my job for hours. What about you?"

"I oversee logistics for Maersk. Mostly the north Atlantic lines."

"That's pretty cool."

"Yeah. It's really stressful. We manage over ten million tons a day. I'm like right at the level where I’m not directly controlling shipping, but the upper managers still yell when stuff goes wrong."

"Tough."

"Yeah."

She took another sip of her drink. The man sat still; eyes fixed at a point just to the left of her face.

"So." He started, his voice holding the sound as he scanned the road.

"So." She echoed as she watched a man stumble through the wind across the street.