I am perhaps the only professional artist to ever be hired for a job at a scientific research firm. The offer came in the form of an email from my high school friend Damaris. \u201cI need my right brain,\u201d she\u2019d written as the subject line. That was our high school joke. She was the left brain to my right. She wielded science, I wielded paint.<\/p>\n
Damaris had been working at Baltra Laboratory, located on some off the grid island in the middle of nowhere. \u201cSo remote, the scientists are becoming despondent. I need you to come here to brighten this place up,\u201d she\u2019d written. The job also included the first respectable wage I\u2019d been offered as an artist.<\/p>\n
So I said yes. She arranged for me to take a plane to the coast to hitch a ride on the regular supply ship. Damaris met me onboard. \u00a0The ship brought us within a half mile of the shore, and from there, we lowered a dinghy into the water and rowed the rest of the way. I made a crack about a tough commute. We really were in the middle of nowhere.<\/p>\n
We tied the little boat off at the single company dock with minimal struggle and made our way up the small, rocky slope to the shore. We walked inland for fifteen minutes or so before I could see a small building up ahead, glass on all sides, the only interruption in the barren landscape. I thought it looked far too small for a sophisticated lab and said as much to Damaris. \u201cTip of the iceberg,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n
Sure enough. The glass building jutting out of the rocks housed nothing more than an access elevator. The rest of Baltra was underground.<\/p>\n
After Damaris swiped her ID card three times and entered as many passcodes, the elevator started moving and brought us to a long, bright hallway. Damaris chose one empty lab at the very end of the hall to show me. It was unlocked, and when we entered, it seemed abandoned. There were a few chairs, a long chrome lab table, and a large window looking into another, smaller room, also empty.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve cleared this one out because this is where you\u2019ll start the mural,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, what kind of mural did you have in mind?\u201d I asked her.<\/p>\n
She sighed, almost longingly. \u201cSomething that brings the outside in,\u201d she said. \u201cJane, we live and work underground, and sometimes it seems like we\u2019ll die down here too before our work is even close to being finished.\u201d She stared off for a minute, lost in thought. \u00a0\u201cWe need something beautiful to look at. We\u2019re all depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
We decided I\u2019d wait a little while to start, live underground with the depressed scientists and see what I most wanted to see splashed across the cold, white walls.<\/p>\n
I tinkered around a few days, walked the monotonous underground halls, and met some scientists. I didn\u2019t learn much about what exactly went on at Baltra Labs, just that the twelve scientists employed there all seemed oddly young to me. It could have been their sullen manner.<\/p>\n
By the fourth day underground, I was itching to leave and unsure I could really take it for the next six months. Of course these people are depressed, I thought. It\u2019s only a wonder they haven\u2019t all gone mad. They could take the elevator up and go outside\u00ad\u2014that was permitted during daylight hours if you had the clearance and the passcodes. But the truth is, with the ocean sprawled out in all directions, there just wasn\u2019t much to look at up there. I stopped wanting to go outside after those first few days. It only made me feel more trapped, and I didn\u2019t have clearance and always needed to be escorted anyway. Thomas, another Baltra scientist, was always willing to join me outside, but after a while, I realized I was more content with the artificial sunlamp Damaris had given me for my residence room.<\/p>\n
I started painting on the fifth day when I\u2019d decided that what I needed to see most was this stretch of desert road we\u2019d driven when I was a kid. The Apache Trail it was called, and it snaked through the Sonoran Desert with the sun bearing down almost violently and wild cacti growing on all sides. In this underground waterlogged world, I most needed to see the dry, hot desert.<\/p>\n
I moved from room to room that way, painting whatever I wanted to see next. I gave Damaris four days\u2019 notice before I finished a mural in one lab. Then she would have someone prep the next one for me. For weeks and weeks this went on. Paint and brushes got shipped in with the scheduled deliveries. Some of the scientists started popping in while I was working, complimenting my pieces and telling me it was really starting to make a difference to them to have something more to look at. Damaris seemed really pleased too, and that put me at ease. She had never been one to offer false compliments. I kept working.<\/p>\n
I was working on a mural of an autumn country road when I met Olivia. She walked in so quietly, I almost fell off of my ladder when she said, \u201cIt looks familiar to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I recovered myself enough to reply, \u201cIt\u2019s Route 2, heading into the Berkshires. You know it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been down here so long, I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019ve seen in person and what I\u2019ve only dreamt about,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n
We let that hang in the air for a few minutes as I wiped my brushes off and climbed down from my perch. \u201cHow long have you been here?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know. Four years I guess, but this year is my last. I\u2019m heading home to Oregon. I\u2019ve had as much as I can take.\u201d<\/p>\n
I told her I couldn\u2019t blame her for wanting to leave. I\u2019d already lost track of how long I\u2019d been at Baltra, and even as I painted murals of familiar, beloved places, I couldn\u2019t tell if I\u2019d gotten them quite right. I couldn\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the setting,\u201d she said, \u201cat least, that\u2019s not the whole problem. Has anyone told you what we do here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething about\u2026 trying to understand evolution?\u201d I asked. The truth is, the only information I\u2019d gleaned about the activities at Baltra had come to me by way of Damaris, and I knew her well enough to know that I shouldn\u2019t ask too many questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s take a walk,\u201d Olivia said suddenly. \u201cFollow me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I walked beside her in the hallway, slightly nervous and more or less bewildered. She was a strangely intense woman. She couldn\u2019t have been more than thirty-three or thirty-four, but she carried herself like she\u2019d lived decades of hardship and suffering. I chalked it up to the depression that had been going around. The Baltra Blues.<\/p>\n
She stopped at an unassuming door at the end of the hall, swiped her ID card, and punched in her code. She swung the door open, and it was empty. But the lights were on, and there was a window opening into a smaller room, like all of the other labs.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see, Jane, we already understand evolution. That\u2019s not the point now; it\u2019s not enough for anyone. No, we\u2019re trying to spontaneously create<\/i> evolution to see what could happen in the next one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand years.\u201d<\/p>\n
She led me over to the window, and I peered through. Inside it looked like some sort of a marshland habitat with a manmade pond of mucky water and herbaceous plants growing along the sides.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t believe it, I thought. Here I was painting nature scenes for these people to look at, and all along, they\u2019ve been growing their own in a giant petri dish.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cSo what am I looking at?\u201d I asked Olivia.<\/p>\n
\u201cA fully functioning, true-to-life marshland.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe marshlands are in trouble,\u201d she explained, though I knew that much already. They were being drained, developed, and destroyed. Man\u2019s legacy on earth. She went on to explain that there are a lot of species of animals, especially birds, native to the marshlands that will have to adapt as their habitats are wiped off of the face of the earth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe point is, we don\u2019t want to wait to find out what these birds can do to ensure their survival,\u201d she explained. \u201cIn this particular experiment, we\u2019ve spliced together a blackbird\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve spliced together a blackbird?\u201d I exclaimed. \u201cWhat do you mean by that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe created a blackbird which has certain genetic enhancements,\u201d she said calmly. \u201cThere\u2019s a bird nesting in this room that can analyze its environment, and, we\u2019re hoping, alter itself or its behavior immediately in the same way it would gradually over time if its environmental conditions persisted for thousands of years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re hoping?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t always work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re saying you can make one little change to its environment, and it\u2019s like that change has persisted for thousands of years, and the bird is supposed to instantly evolve?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is what I\u2019m saying. Tomorrow, we\u2019re going to start draining this marshland to see what happens with our little blackbird.\u201d<\/p>\n
By that point, my head was spinning, and I badly needed to lie down. I politely thanked her for the quick tour and asked her if she\u2019d swipe her card so I could get back out of the room. She smiled at me sympathetically as she opened the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t feel bad, Artist Jane,\u201d she said. \u201cI had the same reaction at first, and I understand the science.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the next few weeks, I kept my head down and continued painting in silence. I went out of my way not to talk to anyone, Damaris included. I worried that she might be angry that Olivia had told me about the blackbird experiment, and I also worried that she would tell me more about what went on at Baltra Labs. Something inside me knew that it didn\u2019t stop at draining marshlands.<\/p>\n
A few weeks after she\u2019d shown me the experiment, Olivia came to my room after I\u2019d quit for the day. \u201cMay I come in?\u201d she asked. \u201cI won\u2019t stay long, but I thought you might be curious about our blackbird.\u201d<\/p>\n
I opened the door and let her come in, offering her a seat at the small desk in the corner.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter we drained the marsh, the insects died off about a week later,\u201d she told me. \u201cYou see, blackbirds eat the insects; that\u2019s why they are marsh birds. Anyway, once he realized that the insects were all gone, he began to eat the vegetation. I let him continue for a few days, and then I tranquilized him so I could take some scans. His beak had become rounded. The entire lining of his stomach had changed. So that settles it. When the marshlands dry up, blackbirds will become plant eaters.\u201d<\/p>\n
I considered her words in a moment of silence and tried to understand what they meant. I couldn\u2019t see the point of going through all of the trouble, of building an underground lab thousands of miles from any kind of civilization, just to know that someday, thousands of years in the future, some marsh-dwelling blackbird may or may not begin to eat plants.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what does the research accomplish?\u201d I finally asked. \u201cDoes it serve to excuse environmental degradation? We can drain the marshes without guilt because the natural world will adapt?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everyone has a different reason for being here,\u201d Olivia said. \u201cFor me, this particular variety of blackbird may be able to survive for a long time. But there are millions of species out there, and some of them will not fare as well as the blackbird. That\u2019s what I\u2019m here to find. I want to be able to prove to the world that we\u2019re destroying things that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why are you leaving? It sounds like you have a lot of important work left to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
She initially seemed shocked by my question, but she quickly regained her composure. She shrugged. \u201cI\u2019m ready to go,\u201d she said. \u201cI can continue the research somewhere else, somewhere closer to home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weeks went by, and I didn\u2019t see much of Olivia. Damaris was almost nowhere to be found. I didn\u2019t see much of anybody, really. Looking back, I think I already knew something was wrong. I could see it in their faces. I would pass by Baltra employees now and then, and they\u2019d divert their eyes and keep on walking. Everything seemed suddenly too heavy for polite, social interactions, but I wasn\u2019t sure why. I ran into Olivia once when I was walking to the utility closet to clean my brushes. She was running down the hall though, and she didn\u2019t stop to say hi. Her face looked sullen.<\/p>\n
It was later that same night when I woke to heavy pounding on my door. I nearly fell out of bed and scrambled for the door, thinking there must be some sort of fire in one of the labs. I fumbled for the light switch as I fumbled for the lock on the door, my motor skills still asleep. When I finally got the door open, Olivia burst in, her eyes wild with fear.<\/p>\n
\u201cDamaris has done it,\u201d she was yelling. \u201cYou have to come with me right now! Thomas is going ahead to get the boat ready. You have to come now!\u201d<\/p>\n
Her fear snapped me awake, and I pulled my shoes on and followed her, running down the hall to the elevator. Damaris was there waiting for us. She made eye contact with me as I got to her, and her eyes looked empty, like she was in a waking coma. She calmly swiped her ID card and punched in her passcode for the elevator. I put my hand on her arm and tried to reach her, carefully avoiding the blood that also covered her arms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is it, Damaris? Tell me what happened. Why are we leaving?\u201d<\/p>\n
Olivia interrupted before Damaris could speak. \u201cI\u2019ll explain it all on the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
We got outside, and the cold ocean wind instantly pummeled us. We ran all the way to the dock with nothing but the moonlight to guide us. We hadn\u2019t stopped for a flashlight or any other provisions. We got there and Thomas had undocked the boat and was holding it steady in the rocky island shallows for us. We scaled down the slope to the churning water and climbed into the boat. Olivia grabbed the oars from Thomas, and we started moving out into the open, empty dark. I was relieved to feel some supplies tucked in by my feet. Thomas must have thought of that.<\/p>\n
It was late that first night when I found out why we were running. Damaris and Thomas had both fallen asleep, and I\u2019d just taken over the oars for Olivia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure what we\u2019re running from, so I\u2019m not sure how far we have to go,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t say anything for a few minutes, and we both sat listening to the oars slapping at the water and the water slapping at the boat.<\/p>\n
\u201cDamaris spliced together some humans,\u201d Olivia finally whispered. \u201cBioengineered, not really alive, but alive. It was her life\u2019s work, her obsession, and she finally did it. Three of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
I continued rowing, trying to hold the boat steady, trying to keep some sort of course without an instrument to guide me.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe did the first experiment this week. We were all there for most of it, all twelve of us. Overpopulation, that\u2019s what she was testing. So she put the first specimen in a room and gave him plenty of food and water and let him stay there alone for a few days. Then she introduced another specimen but scaled back the food and water. That went on for a few days. They got competitive; they tried to manipulate the other into taking less food. It was interesting, actually. But then she introduced a third specimen yesterday, and she took almost all of the food and water away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here Olivia started crying silently. I didn\u2019t push her to finish; I just waited for her to tell the rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took only a few hours,\u201d she said, her voice wavering in the dark. \u201cJane, they started tearing each other apart, limb from limb. They were cannibalizing each other right in front of us. You could never imagine anything so gruesome. \u201cYou see the way they understood it, there would only be enough food for one specimen at a time to live on for the next ten thousand years. It was too competitive. They snapped.\u201d She paused, still in disbelief it seemed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know who moved in first,\u201d she continued, \u201cbut we all rushed in there, just trying to stop them, just trying to make it stop. But we couldn\u2019t stop them. I think we are the only ones left, now\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
I continued rowing, trying to understand how blackbirds eating herbaceous plants had led to this, trying to understand the implications.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re telling me that ten thousand years from now humans will become cannibals to curb overpopulation?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m telling you that it\u2019s already happening, back at Baltra,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m telling you to keep rowing because we have to get as far away from this place as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sun started to come up. Damaris woke maybe an hour later, and she took over the oars. I went and sat by Thomas, who was also coming out of an uncomfortable sleep. Olivia stared off into the distance, her eyes bloodshot, her face drained. Nobody said anything for hours.<\/p>\n
Near what I guessed to be late morning, Damaris stopped rowing. \u201cI think this is far enough,\u201d she said. \u201cWe should wait here. The supply ship will come, they\u2019ll find us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not due for five more weeks,\u201d Thomas said. He moved to take the oars from Damaris and began to row.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it\u2019s all suddenly so clear to me,\u201d he said as he heaved the oars across the water. \u201cOne of the specimens probably survived. Spliced or not, it\u2019s genetic code, you know, survival of the fittest. One of them survived and is feeding on all of the others. And when that supply of food runs out, he\u2019ll find something else, he\u2019ll adapt. Trouble is, he\u2019s caught on that godforsaken rock. There\u2019s not enough there to support anything. There aren\u2019t even any seasonal birds passing through for him to trap. Nothing grows there, it\u2019s just dead rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what does that mean?\u201d I asked. \u201cBesides, isn\u2019t he trapped in the lab? I mean, it\u2019s not like you gave ID cards and passcodes to your experiments. So he\u2019ll starve to death soon. Not that I\u2019d wish that on anyone, or anything<\/i>, but, in this case, isn\u2019t it a good thing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo\u2026,\u201d he said. \u201cNo, the specimen won\u2019t starve. And he\u2019s not trapped. I suddenly see it so clearly. He\u2019s capable of evolving instantly. He\u2019ll find a way out of the lab, and when he does, he\u2019ll find a way to eat. And if the rock itself doesn\u2019t sustain him, which, let\u2019s face it, it probably won\u2019t, he\u2019ll evolve to be able to swim great distances or great depths. He could develop gills in a matter of hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re saying he could, at any moment, develop the capacity to come out here and find us and cannibalize us?\u201d My question seemed too small to me even as I was asking it.<\/p>\n
Thomas kept rowing. We said nothing else for a long time.<\/p>\n
For days we rowed and nothing happened. We strictly rationed our food and water, but it was becoming clear we would run out. It was also becoming clear that Thomas and I were the only two left with the desire to speak. Damaris and Olivia were physically there, but they were silent, gone. I talked about rowing back to the island, trying to signal for help, or at least getting some more supplies. In the end, we agreed it was too dangerous.<\/p>\n
So we floated.<\/p>\n
Weeks went by. I was not sure how many. We all came in and out. I dreamed, but I was never really sure if I was awake or asleep. Every few days, Thomas talked about the supply ship. It never came.<\/p>\n
The food and water ran out. Thomas used a kitchen knife to carve some wood from the hull of the boat. We used it to fashion four straws; one is shorter than the rest.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll wait as long as we can, and then we\u2019ll pull our straws. Three of us will have to eat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am perhaps the only professional artist to ever be hired for a job at a scientific research firm. The offer came in the form of an email from my high school friend Damaris. \u201cI need my right brain,\u201d she\u2019d written as the subject line. That was our high school joke. She was the left … Continue reading Baltra<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3604,"featured_media":857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6854],"tags":[],"issue":[6874],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","issue-6874"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/env-greenfieldcc-dev.kinsta.cloud\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}