Generator [v4] ghosts of reality

advantage of the opportunity, intending to use the skills she acquired from her education to some day return home again and to create a better life for her people.

It turned out that the years of study had determined the direction her future would take. She was hired to manage a greenhouse immediately after her term of study, and remained behind the glass ever since. Margarita is a practical woman, and is pleased to have a successful career, but she carries with her a sense of regret, and disappoint‐ ment that she has not been able to pursue her altruistic endeavors. Her friends and family she grew up with are still outside the walls, and she is aware of what their lifestyle is like, and how it contrasts her own. Yet, perhaps she really was making a difference, she thought to herself, by creating new forms of plant life adaptable to current conditions, that would be able to feed people all over the planet.

Rural life had substantially changed around the globe, even in the few years that Margarita had been conducting her research. Small, local farmers were becoming extinct. Larger and more centralized farms, larger food processors and larger chemical companies had gained control of over half the world’s food supplies. Over 60 percent of farm profits go to as few as 50 major corporations. In other areas of the world the soil has deteriorated to a point where it is no longer agriculturally viable. Larger popula‐ tions, pollution, erosion, and overuse have drained them of nutrients, to the point that to improve the soil of India, or many other countries, would take 50 - 100 years.

Her partner, John is a young American scientist that is strictly interested in the genetic modification of plants. He has little regard for the effects that this development in agriculture will have on the social or economic structure of the region. He is interested in his work, and the possibilities of creating new forms of life. It is an abstract challenge to create successful variations. He is isolated inside the artificial environ‐ ment, and has lost some of the connection to the real world, and the ultimate conse‐ quences of his work. For John, even though it is his first time outside of the USA, he never wanted to take vacations. He enjoyed the environment inside the greenhouse; where he could work in the gardens, and play with his label designs. Nothing else really interested him.

John is very excited about several species of plants they had been given the honour of raising inside their greenhouse enclosures. They are experimenting with breeding ancient and rare plants that are being prepared for the Sun King himself. The seeds are guarded as carefully as precious gems. The plants themselves are grown in a very limited edition to preserve the rarity which makes them valuable. The atmosphere is charged with suspense and fueled by the intense dedication of the workers to pre‐ serve the high-level of secrecy surrounding the project. It is a secrecy John is willing to exchange for his life in order to preserve.

To the untrained eye these plants appear similar to members of other plant species, but to those in the know, the value is recognized. These plants are among the most prized-possessions in the Sun King’s collection; part of his genetic legacy of preserv‐ ing examples of plants and animals on the verge of extinction. The Sun King, as an act