PR spitting monkey.  A great hood ornament in hell, Miles thought.

   “And ladies and gents, these products will not spoil for exactly thirty days. Period. We guarantee it. Why? Because we have married two new exciting technologies: gene enhancement and irradiation. You go to the supermarket and buy one of our products, ladies and gentlemen, and we promise—NO, we guarantee you can store this tomato, in my hand, for a whole month before it goes bad.”

“My wife could spoil it,” a reporter sitting behind Miles said. A reporter from Barron’s financial magazine, sitting next to Miles, snickered and nudged Miles in the rib. Miles didn’t smile back.

Genesoft’s PR man stepped back, and using a red laser pointer, proceeded to shoot it at a list of the new line’s major selling points, the list projected on a large screen behind the man.

Genesoft’s new foods last twice as long as conventionally grown vegetables.

Genesoft’s new line of food products taste just as good as their conventional cousins.

Lower percentage loss from bruising during shipping and handling.

Higher net profits for the retailer, and especially the fast-food industry, as R19-engineered products have a shelf life that is double that of conventional products.

Miles got up from his seat, already bored.  Staying close to the wall, he walked to the front of the auditorium and out into the hallway. He went to the coffee cart set up for the journalists. I can’t do this, he told himself. He searched the pink bakery boxes for something to eat, but they were all empty. Tissue paper and napkins littered the floor. He hefted the PR handout the press had been given—32 pages—and debated leaving early. You could just go home. No one would be the wiser. He glanced again at the empty pastry boxes. A bubble-style-sounding telephone started to ring somewhere down the empty hallway. He wet his index finger and picked up a flake of sugar left in one of the boxes. He wondered what would happen if his editor found out he’d left early. He poured himself another cup of bad coffee for the road. How excited could you get about a tomato? Unless she’s wearing a yellow bikini. He smiled at his own joke, dropped two white cubes of sugar into his Styrofoam cup and looked for the exit.

“Are you Mr. Hunt? The reporter?”

Miles turned around and faced a young woman in a fashionable blue pants suit and high heels. She looked pale, like she’d seen something awful.

“There’s something terribly wrong,” she said. “Here at Genesoft.” She looked him square in the eye when she said it. The young woman had her arms down at her sides, pressed tightly against her like she expected to be dragged off at any moment.

“I know,” Miles said. “I think they’re out of cream.” He hoped the joke would change the look on the girl’s face. He tried smiling at her, but that didn’t work either. The girl in front of him acted as if she hadn’t heard him, her face a blank.

“Are you the reporter, Miles Hunt?” she demanded.

“Guilty,” he said.

“Everyone is getting sick,” the young woman said. Miles noticed that she wasn’t wearing an ID badge, something he knew was required for everyone in the building. The press had been issued security badges just for the press conference.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It must be the speeches.”

“Sick. Everyone is sick. There is something wrong with R19,” she said.

It seemed funny to him. Something wrong with the tomatoes. How are things in Glocca Morra? He saw the headline. REPORTER TRACKS DOWN VEGETABLE MESS.

Miles looked down the well-lit antiseptic hall and wondered how he’d gone from being an A student at University of California’s School of Journalism to this moment. He looked back at the girl. He would excuse himself and leave. He wasn’t in the mood for gene-splicing conspiracy nuts, even attractive tall ones with great legs.

“The colonel’s recipe off?” he asked.

“Goddamn it, this isn’t a joke! People are horribly sick, a lot of them.” They both watched another reporter slip out of the auditorium and head toward the bathroom. The girl waited, not speaking again until the hall was clear. “Will you come with me, please?” she said and walked away.

He watched her rear, the pants suit pressed against some fancy underwear. He decided to follow only because she was pretty and he was bored.

You’re a hopeless sleazebag, he told himself, who is engaged to be married.

“My name is Susan,” she said. “I want you to promise not to use my name.” She picked her name tag up off her desk and pinned it to her jacket. “Susan Crown.”

“Okay, tell me all about it, Ms. Crown,” Miles said. She’d closed the door to her office.  Miles looked around. The office was in keeping with the Genesoft collegiate esthetic.

“I called the paper. They said you were going to be here. They told me what you looked like. That’s how I knew who you were,” she explained. Miles picked up a photo of the young woman dressed in a military uniform standing by a mud building somewhere.

“Okay, what’s wrong with the product?” Miles asked.

“We all—” Crown closed her eyes and broke down.

This wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he followed her. He put his cup of coffee down on a file cabinet.

“Susan, why don’t you take a deep breath and then tell me what’s going on, and I’ll try and help you,” Miles said. He tried to sound reassuring.

“We all had some of the new product at a company party a week ago. That’s when they started sending the R19 line out to supermarkets.”

“I thought that they were starting shipping today?” Miles said.

“No. No, they started shipping a week ago. The irradiation unit has been working on R19 for three weeks. The irradiation plant is in Sacramento.”

“But they said this morning that they’d just gotten approval from FDA to ship?”

“No, the FDA approved the line last week.” Crown sat down in her desk chair. “I get dizzy. I’m sorry. The investment bankers were here a month ago—JP Morgan, their top brass showed up here. JP Morgan convinced management to release early. The bank had our IPO to launch. That’s where I work, investor relations. They wanted the next quarter’s report to reflect the R19 line’s earnings. They wanted to ignore the hold-up with the FDA so they got approval, somehow. The bank has people inside the FDA who they said they could use to make sure we got approval and not to worry. And they did.”

“You’re saying they bought an FDA approval?”

“Yes. But something is wrong with the R19 line of products. I’m sure of it now.”

“How do you know all this?” Miles said. He noticed that there was a wash of sweat on the girl’s pretty face.

“My boyfriend works in executive row. He’s sick too. A lot of people who ate R19-treated food are sick. You’ve got to warn people. I can’t. I could lose my job.”

“What do you mean sick?”

“Acting strange. Not normal. That’s why I want you to come with me.  I want you to come see my boyfriend. I want you to write about what’s happened to my boyfriend.” She got up from her desk, a little wobbly, and grabbed for her purse. “We can go now. I want to take him to the hospital, but he won’t let me,” she said.

“You said half the people here were sick? How do you know that?” Miles said.

“You didn’t notice? Look outside. It’s Tuesday morning. We are supposedly launching a hundred-million dollar product line all over the U.S.” She went to the window and pulled open the blind back, angrily. “Look! Look at the parking lot. Look!”