[UA] Plot idea: genetically engineered rice

[Tim Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: Matthew Rowan Norwood <rowan at media.mit.edu>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 12:01 PM
Subject: [UA] Plot idea: genetically engineered rice


> Wow. A story from the Times today (that's the New York
> Times -- I'm American, dammit!) was a _great_ plot hook.
> A scientist in Germany who had spent part of his
> childhood starving on the streets after his parents were
> killed in WWII develops a strain of rice that can solve
> the problem of Vitamin A deficiency in much of the
> developing world. But due to anti-"Frankenfood"
> protests, the plants are kept locked up.

Actually, this was riffed on last night's Dark Angel.  A geneticist figures
out how to genengineer a full grown person, and transforms a premature crack
baby into a boy genius (over several years).  He's giving a paper on the
topic, when terrorists calling themselves The May 22nd Movement (after Ted
Kaczynski's birthday, natch) burst in to liberate the 'lab rat'.  The
scientist has an obvious love for the child, but the luddites want to check
the rampant spread of technology without ethics in society.  Meanwhile, Our
Heroine Max, who's genengineered her own damn self (just not flawlessly)
attends the conference and gets caught in the middle of this.  She's
interested in getting rid of seizures that are only dampened by
L-tryptophan, a substance that's hard to get in Post-crash America.  Also
attending the conference (as happens only in genre tv, bad novels, and
roleplaying games) is Lydecker, the man who oversaw Project Manticore, the
experiment that created Max and her sibs.  He doesn't recognize her (the
last time he saw her, she was ten years old), and in their conversation 1)
he tries to pick her up ("Who are you taking to the prom, Elektra?") 2) he
says he works with 'gifted kids,' and he's interested in what the geneticist
is offering because some of them came out with flaws (intimating that the
flaws are a little more severe than mere brain rattling seizures).

Now--in true postmodern fashion, the McGuffin (the professor, the reason why
all our characters are assembled) is taken out halfway through the show, Max
gets a chance to watch the bastard die, and rejects it (she wants him to go
down nastier than that), and Lydecker has the most amusing solution to
police brutality complains.  A tasty show, all in all.

"See, I don't get this whole 'crippled' economy thing.  There's a shortage
of toothpaste, but you can get all the peppermint oil you want.  What's up
with that?"


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