A short while ago, I wrote a piece entitled "Writing about Truth and Other Lies". In it, I explored the notion of “truth”: quintessential divine truth, individual truth, corporate truth and so on. I used the example of the recent controversy over Proposition 37 to label genetically modified products in California. I call it controversy, because a debate is raging on the Internet about the benefit of this action. A debate fed by self-interest, greed, and mendacity. Truth has little to do with it, as far as I’m concerned.
Julia's Gift will soon become one of nine stories in a collection that is coming out early next year with Starfire entitled “Natural Selection”.
Julia’s
Gift
I
inhale deeply to savor the freshness of the air and raise my face to the bright
sun bathing in an azure sky. I begin to climb the stairs, averting my eyes from
the thousands of people watching me. I falter and nearly stumble as my thoughts
sink like a stone in water to Julia and what she did: to that black day
twenty-nine years ago when her actions determined who lived and who died, and
to the day much later when she ended the curse she’d placed on herself as a
result.
Why did she do any of it? Maybe it was
because she was the middle child in our family. Psychologists like to say that
the middle child acts like an immobile bridge between roles of leadership and childish
irresponsibility. Able to see both sides of an argument, they usually make good
diplomats, but falter when faced with spontaneous decisions. Like a fish out of
water forced to breathe air, Julia gulped in leadership against her nature . .
. and destroyed herself.
How different the course of events might have
been if she hadn’t acted so boldly that spring day twenty-nine years ago. Would
I be here, walking up these steps now? Would Simon have survived? Would Julia
still have jumped in front of the tube-jet seventeen years ago? Or would we all
have died along with our parents that spring day?
Ï•
The blood-red dawn promised a warm day in
April. By mid-morning the smell of Montreal had dissipated. The sun felt like a
heat lamp on my face as I stepped outside the farmhouse, scrambling after my
older brother and sister. They were both tall and long of stride, wearing
functional bows and arrows slung over their warrior-like shoulders, while I
trotted behind like their pet dog. I didn’t mind. I was only ten years old and
Simon and Julia were my heroes. They took me on forbidden adventures in the
forest. Our parents didn’t allow us outside the farm property because of the
threat of stray revolutionaries, but Simon and Julia flagrantly disobeyed them.
It probably started on a dare that escalated out of hand. It was as much that
dare as anything else that ended up saving one life, sacrificing another and
damning the third.
We often spent the better part of the day in
the forest and fields beyond the farm property. It was only Simon, who usually
made the decision in the first place to stay all day, who had the presence of
mind to bring along food—which he seldom shared. During our journey Simon would
usually throw a glance back once or twice to make sure I was still keeping up
and rebuke my snail’s pace: “Hey dreamer, hurry up or we’ll leave you behind!”
Julia would snap at him in my defense: “Claire’s only ten, you idiot! So slow
down for the runt!” They would always argue. “Well, you slow down too, then!”
he’d shout back. “I slowed down for you already, slug!” she’d rejoin. On it would
go as they shoved each other until I caught up to them. They were less than a
year apart and I think Julia resented Simon being the eldest and the one who
made all the decisions. She wanted to make them but she never did, so she
always disagreed with his.
The day started pretty much like any other
day. Simon and Julia were arguing as usual by the time we reached the forest.
They’d overheard a discussion between Mom and Tante Lise about the revolution.
We moved to the country last summer to get
away from the fighting in Montreal. Mom and Dad lost their jobs because of the
Gaian revolution. The company they worked for, BioGen Technologies, went up in
smoke thanks to the latest rash of fire bombings and Mom got scared that the
Gaians would come after the survivors — mainly Dad, who was one of the head
honchos there. So we packed up and moved to my Oncle Pierre’s and Tante Lise’s
small dairy farm in the Eastern Townships, where the air smelled clean -- well, cleaner than the cities, anyway.
Mom and Dad met at BioGen in Montreal. She
was a junior microbiologist in “functional genomics” with unorthodox ideas, and
he was one of their chief scientists in nano-technology and transgenic
research. BioGen was supposed to save the world, but then one of Dad’s
“creations” got away from them and crashed the world’s wheat crop.
“Tante Lise shouldn’t call Dad Frankenstein,”
Julia grumbled. “He isn’t a monster.”
“It’s ’cause he made monsters, stupid.”
Simon snorted. “Frankenstein’s the name of the mad scientist, not the clone
monsters he made.”
“He’s not a mad scientist,” she defended.
“And they’re not monsters!”
“The Gaians say they are,” Simon quipped,
picking his teeth. “They say that BioGen’s just another multi-national company
that’s making too much money. They say BioGen’s technology is irresponsible and
that stuff Dad did is wrecking our ecosystems like diversity, evolution and
stuff.”
“What do the Gaians know. They’re luddites,”
Julia said with disgust, parroting what our father always said. I knew she
didn’t know what a luddite was. “Dad just made a little mistake once. Some DNA
escaped and went rogue on them. Part of the risk we have to take in GE crops.”
“Yeah, like widespread famine,” Simon
muttered, shaking his head.
Julia frowned with worry. “Tante Lise isn’t a
Gaian . . . is she?”
“Dunno.” Simon shrugged and absently raked
back his mat of straw-coloured hair with his hands. “She doesn’t like what Dad
was doing. Lots of people think it’s wrong. Even Mom.”
“Mom’s just scared they’ll find us,” Julia
grumbled. “She’s scared of everything,” she murmured more to herself than to
Simon, as if trying to convince herself.
As we stepped out of the cool dappled forest
into the warm sunshine of a small clearing, Simon announced that we should eat
some lunch. I was happy to comply.
“It’s only ten-thirty,” Julia objected.
“Well, I’m hungry. So it’s time to eat.”
“You can’t tell me when to eat,” Julia
said tartly. “Pig!”
“That’s because you only brought along some
crackers while I made three sandwiches for me! You’re never prepared,” he said
smugly. “And now you’re jealous!”
“I’m
not jealous,” Julia said haughtily. “I’m just not hungry.”
“You are.”
“Am not!” Her face went pink.
“Are too, dork!” He laughed, then promptly
sat down on a patch of matted long grass and swung out his backpack. Without
waiting for either of us to agree or join him, Simon fished out a peanut butter
and raspberry jam sandwich and bolted it down with gluttonous pleasure as I
longed in silence. He wasn’t a particularly tidy eater and left a smear of red
jam on his chin. I noticed that his cheeks were flushed already from the heat
and sweat glistened on his nose and forehead.
Julia stomped around then finally dropped
down and threw her arms against her upraised knees. She glowered at her older
brother. Even if she was hungry she wasn’t going to admit to it now. I
was ready to confess my hunger in hopes of receiving a morsel, but Julie glared
at me as if she’d read my mind. My shoulders drooped in defeat.
After Simon finished his first course of
lunch, we plunged back into the forest out of the burning sun. The deer flies
buzzed furiously around our heads amid wild arm waving and frustrated outcries.
Simon led us up a hill toward a large hemlock grove. He scrambled a steep
incline to a narrow long ledge that may have once been a path. The forest floor
was carpeted with dead needles and tiny fallen cones and dotted with young
maple saplings. Like a man who had found gold, Simon bent down and gathered a
handful of cones then darted behind a tree. Julia waited for me catch up before
she scrambled up, shrieking at the deluge of cones Simon flung at her face. He
sniggered as she practically fell backwards on top of me. She swore furiously
at him, her face red with embarrassment.
“Come on!” Simon said enthusiastically.
“Let’s play war!”
Eager to play, Julia ran for cover and
gathered her own arsenal of weapons.
“You can’t use your hands!” Simon warned just
as Julia was about to throw some cones at him. “You have to make a slingshot
using a tree like this.” He squatted over a young sapling and bent its branches
into a mutilated mess, fit a cone into his makeshift catapult, pulled the
sapling back than let it spring naturally towards Julia. The cone flew past her
head, barely missing her. Both participants shrieked with pleasure.
As Julia and Simon collected their cones, I, left
out of the game as usual, sat back like a dutiful and appreciative audience to
watch their creative entertainment. The warriors shot in earnest, sometimes
hitting their opponent with a victorious cry, other times -- most of the time -- missing widely. In the process the poor saplings they used were
swiftly demolished and they had to forage for a new catapult. During one of her
forages, Julia tripped on an exposed root and fell headlong to the ground with
a hollow thud. When she didn’t get up right away, Simon jeered, “Hey, clone
monster! Get up!”
She jerked to her feet. She wiped her head
and pushed back her thick mane of chestnut hair, tucking it behind her ears. I
noticed a cut on her dirt-smeared forehead. “Don’t call me that, you moron!”
she said, temper flaring.
“You’re the moron! You never do
anything on your own,” he bit out. “That’s ’cause Dad made you out of spare
parts back at the lab!” That line was usually reserved for me and I was used to
it. But Julia couldn’t bear the insult.
“You shut up!” she screamed. “I’m tired of
your snotty remarks about Dad. You can keep them to yourself --”
“Until he gets us all killed when they come
looking for ‘Doctor Frankenstein’!” Simon mocked.
Julia bolted at him, hands lashing out like
raptor’s talons. He jerked out of her clawing hands and tackled her. They
rolled among the dead leaves, hands swiping and legs kicking. I couldn’t tell
who was winning, but both were crying.
“Stop it! Stop it!” I pleaded and tried to
pry them apart. I finally succeeded but only after receiving a kick in the
stomach.
Simon stood up first, nose bleeding and an
eye already swollen. “You bitch!” he screamed down at her as she pushed herself
off the ground and wiped her dirty tear-stained face. “You crazy bitch! You
don’t care about Mom. You’re just like Dad: he should have thought about us
before he went and made all those monsters!”
“Go to hell!” she shrieked. “You don’t have a
clue what he was doing. He was feeding the hungry of the world!”
“Yeah? Meantime we’re polluting it so much we’re
killing everyone we’re feeding!”
“Can’t we do both?” I piped up. “Like the
plants?”
“What?” They both turned haltingly to me like I was an alien who’d
just uttered gibberish.
“Feed the hungry and clean up the
pollution,” I said. One day while my brother and sister were in school, my father
had pulled me out of class to take me on a tour of the BioGen facility and show
me their artificial photosynthesis lab: “How marvelous,” he’d exulted, “if we
could copy what chloroplasts do and plug directly into the sun without burning
a drop of oil. No more hungry people. No more fossil fuel and no more
pollution.”
He’d dropped me off at my mother’s lab and
she’d shown me holo-images generated through electron tomography of
mitochondria and chloroplasts. While my father had dedicated himself to feeding
the starving masses, my mother dreamed of a world where people no longer needed
to eat. The mitochondria and chloroplasts shared a common ancestry, she
explained to me. They both descended from earlier prokaryotic cells that
established themselves as internal symbionts -- endosymbionts, we now call them -- of a larger anaerobic cell. The similarities between these two
organelles were uncanny, my mother went on: for instance, they both contained
their own DNA and ribosomes; they divided by themselves and used the same
enzyme to produce energy in the form of ATP. The only major difference was how
they produced ATP. While chloroplasts used chlorophyll to capture the sun’s
energy, mitochondria broke down glucose in the food we eat. Inspired by my
father’s tools and my mother’s vision, I soared on a dream of people capable of
photosynthesis in a Ciamician world.
“Dad told me,” my words rushed out in a
torrent, knowing I had seconds before they ignored me again, “about a scientist
named Giacomo Ciamician who a hundred years ago dreamed of a world where
photosynthesis did everything for us--”
Julia took in a sharp breath and turned back
to rail at Simon: “You’re so narrow-minded, just like a Gaian, just like Mom!”
She retrieved her bow, scattered arrows and quiver. “Come on, Claire.” Julia
took my hand with a last glare at Simon, who was brushing off the mess from his
shirt and pants. “We’re going home.” Without waiting for me to decide, she led
me at a brisk pace back to the farm.
“Do that!” Simon yelled after us, and sat
down on a rock to sulk. I turned my head for a last glimpse at him as Julia
tugged me hard down the hill.
“Shouldn’t we wait for him?” I asked
innocently when I lost sight of him.
“He can find his own way home,” she muttered,
tugging me harder. “He led us here, didn’t he?”
I staggered over the rough terrain to keep
up, secretly praying that Julia knew the way. It wasn’t Simon I was worried
about. The sun disappeared behind carbon-coloured clouds. They scudded overhead
like prey, chased by a biting wind. It howled and sent the Trembling Aspens
thrashing above us. Their lanky poles clanked like bones to the moaning wind as
the leaves hissed a mad chorus.
“What if we meet a bear?” I asked, starting
to feel unsafe.
“There aren’t any bears in the forest,
Claire,” Julia said shaking her head sarcastically at me. “Besides, I have my
bow and arrows.” She tapped her quiver and bow smugly. She was right, I
thought, pacified by her confidence. She was good with that thing and I was a
little surprised that she didn’t remind me of the four rabbits and two coyotes
she’d killed while all Simon had managed to do with his was wound a single
rabbit.
We broke through the perimeter of the dense
forest that lined the farm as rain pelted us like missiles, instantly drenching
us. As if the stinging rain had warned her, Julia gripped my arm to stay me. I
saw her eyes harden as she threw swift glances to the open garden gate and the
greenhouse whose door was ajar--
I squeaked in surprise as she clamped a hand
over my mouth. “Shhh! Hold still!” she whispered, glaring at me under streams
of wet hair. Then she let go and I couldn’t stop trembling while she snatched
her bow and loaded it with an arrow. As if in response to her move, the front
door of the farmhouse creaked open and a large unshaven man with unwashed hair
and eyes glinting of malice lumbered out. He carried a loaded sack in one dirty
hand and a blood-covered knife in the other. The man spotted us and I hitched
my breath, stiff with terror, not daring to blink the rain off my eyelashes. He
grinned, baring yellow teeth, and stomped toward us. I scrambled behind Julia and
clutched the leg of her shorts.
Julia glanced from the man’s churlish grin to his knife and raised
her bow. He laughed at her. Without hesitation she drew the bow back and let
the arrow fly. It sunk into his chest and he inhaled sharply, eyes bulging in
disbelief. Then he charged us. I cringed and wet my pants. Julia stood like a
statue, her arm a blur of reloading, and struck him with two or more arrows
before he staggered and fell dead on his face only meters from us.
Gruff laughter from the side of the house
warned us that there were more men. Julia seized my arm and dove for cover in a
small thicket by the cherry tree just as Simon broke through the forest into
the clearing. I shivered, cowering in our wet hiding place as several armed men
marched past us toward the dead man. Toward Simon. Simon stood not far from
their dead colleague, hair hanging in his eyes and bow in his hand. They made
the logical conclusion.
He must have made his own rightful conclusion
and his eyes fleetingly strayed, searching hard, beyond the thugs to where we
huddled behind them. Did he see us there? I imagined that he did. But before I
could see more, Julia shoved my face down into the dirt. What I didn’t see I
could only imagine as my heart slammed up my throat: Simon’s and Julia’s eyes
locking, their anguished message of agreement. The rest I heard through the
hissing rain: a slashing sound, a clipped gasp and a thud. I was choking but
didn’t dare struggle. Hot tears stung my eyes. Julia’s firm hand, now shaking,
kept me down for an eternity of smelling dirt and rotting vegetation. Of
feeling the wet prickle of soil and leaves against my face. Of listening to
men’s grunts and shuffling steps dwindle to a constant sizzle and plopping of
rain.
I was young, but I knew perfectly well what
had just happened: Simon took the hit for us, and Julia let him. The first -- and
last -- decision they’d made together was one made in complicity.
Ï•
Julia and I made it out of there, after she
confirmed that Simon was dead and found our parents and relatives murdered
inside the house. We had a difficult journey but were eventually taken in by a
kind family, where we rode out the remaining years of war until the Gaians
established a new government and peace was reinstated.
I found a calling in micro-biomimicry -- the Gaian’s answer to aimless technology -- at Concordia University in Montreal. Julia
never returned to school. She got a job as a waitress and helped me through
university. I met André, a med student, and eventually married while Julia
wandered like a nomad from one relationship to another. We saw less and less of
one another, until I started to think she was avoiding me. When she committed
suicide I was shocked. But not surprised.
Had she been running the same thought loop I
had? How it might have played if she hadn’t killed that Gaian and run instead.
Had she needlessly killed a man -- albeit a murderer -- and needlessly caused Simon’s death? If we’d run instead would
they have chased us or let us go? They were paid assassins, after all, on a
mission to ‘take out’ our father. Not child murderers. Maybe Simon would still
be with us and Julia wouldn’t have destroyed herself out of irreconcilable
guilt for her inaction in Simon’s murder—on account of her initial violence—to
save the two of us. . . .
Or had she tapped into some divine providence
when she let the arrow fly and saved my life the only way it could have been
saved . . . at Simon’s expense . . . and consequently her own? . . .
Ï•
I turn to the audience and spot André and our
two children. They blur through my tears. As a scientist I understand that one
cannot know the future or one’s destiny; but my heart tells me differently.
Like most things for him, my brother’s choice was clearly laid before him. For
Julia, as always, it was not so simple. And yet, that spring day she became
more than she was and with fluid motions enacted her part in the cruel miracle
that brought me here today.
The heaviness in my legs lifts as I take the
last steps to the podium in the open-air auditorium that celebrates our clean
air. I am finally ready to accept my Nobel Prize. And I know at last what I am
going to say:
I’m here today accepting this award for the
creation of photosynthetic symbionts in human mitochondria, because of my
brother and sister. I share this honor with
them. If not for their heroism on a day long ago, I would not have survived
with the burning motivation and tenacity to pursue a lifelong dream: to serve
the human race and the planet with the gift of an alternate and clean source of
fuel and food -- a way for humanity to directly harness energy from the sun . . . Julia’s gift.
~ The End ~
Post Script:
As a postscript to the subject of genetic engineering,
which formed the basis for the premise of this short story, I must report that
Proposition 37 (to identify all foods that have been genetically altered), was
defeated through a vote by Californians. I am appalled and dismayed that
otherwise intelligent citizens would choose to vote against their own and
others best interests: the simple right to know a characteristic of their food
product. It's not unlike making the choice between food that was grown a
particular way vs. another (e.g., eco-friendly vs. not, or fish that were
processed in one way vs another). Voting "No" to GE labeling is like
saying "No" to labeling. It's like saying, "I don't want to know
the expiration date of this luncheon meat I'm buying or that it has
peanut-residuals in it that might not affect me but might affect little Billy
down the street."
The FDA has decreed that there's no difference between
genetically engineered and non-engineered plants. That's ridiculous. Of course
they are different: one is engineered and the other isn't. It's that simple.
So, why the great big fight then? Why did those huge companies like Monsanto,
Dupont, Nestle, Coca Cola, Conagra, Kellogg, Dow, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta and
others spend millions to defeat a bill that just asked them to label their
oh-so-not-so-different product??? What are they afraid of?
We could chalk one more for the bullies ... likewise, we could chalk another one for a surrendered freedom ... Or, citizens can choose to learn something from it. And do our own labelling, based on the companies that chose against disclosure.
Here's my verdict and decision: I've chosen NOT to purchase anything by any company that chose against disclosure. Why? I no longer trust them. It's that simple. Thanks for revealing yourselves.
What does this have to do with "Julia's Gift"?
Nothing ... Everything ...
Nina Munteanu is an
ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and
essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the
University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.
