The Crest

“I’m happy to say the National Seed Bank in Fort Collins has survived.” Danielle stood in front of two-thousand scientists and staff for her last address in the old Sandy auditorium.

The crowd screamed in excitement. The first piece of good news in months.

“It’s a relief. The Antisis has moved on from the city. The Fort Collins enclave rallied to save the seed bank. There is hope my friends. I am not thrilled to report that the Ames research station has fallen and Pullman is under siege, and we must brace for the worst here.”

She held her shaking hand. Today she felt weak, her long work days and lack of sleep catching up to her. After the attack in the greenhouse, she trembled a lot and she rarely exercised. Her weight dropped. And yet today, she was the bearer of even more shocking news.

She gazed out at the audience. “This may be my last briefing for a while. Our intelligence suggests that a force of ten to twenty thousand Antisis are moving our way. I’d like you to understand what we’re up against.”

The audience grew quiet, their faces distressed but not terribly apprehensive. She wanted to scream at them, Defend FORC, haven’t you been following the fucking news? Can’t you see what is going to happen?

“They will be here soon. There are thousands of them and they want to destroy this facility. They want to finish us. If you want to leave, now is the time to do it. There is no shame. Go back to your families in the enclave if you desire. We are scientists, not warriors, but remember, without defense, there is no science. The time has come to pick up a weapon. I ask for every physically fit volunteer to stay and protect the center. Females know the risk of staying. We are the last research institute in the Pacific Northwest. If we go down, I think you know what this means to civilized society in the Pacific Northwest.”

She vacillated. How much should I tell them? Will they take up arms? Will they fight to the end?

“When will they attack FORC?” someone asked.

“The Antisis are already here, a few inside, but many outside our gates. The question is how many will join them. A thousand, ten-thousand, twenty-thousand, maybe more than that.” She looked out on the nervous crowd.

“Intelligence suggests they are regrouping and headed here to FORC. This will be an epic battle for our survival and soon.”

The crowd grew hushed. “We will need every man and woman up on the battlement and down here defending the facilities and the nursery if they make it that far.”

She took a deep breath. “This is nothing new, throughout history, the anarchists have always gone after intellectuals. You should know that we are back in those days, once again. We don’t have to go back very far to find attacks on science. Of course, there was Vavilov in Leningrad, but before that, there was the Armenian genocide with 2000 intellectuals murdered by the Ottoman government. More recently in Kampuchea, where intellectuals were forced to the countryside where they died.”

Danielle paused. “The enemy is a morbid group, an anti-science cult; they are survivalists, anti-Mendellian thugs, rapists, looters with nothing left to lose.”

The auditorium grew quiet, she gazed out and recognized every face in the audience. They were lab techs, analysts, nursery workers, biologists, and researchers.

“But rest assured, they are a large well-armed militia composed of thousands. These are sophisticated soldiers, they’re not carrying bows and arrows, and they're organized. Over the past three years, hundreds of universities have been burnt to the ground. Their faculty killed. Make no mistake, FORC is next. Make no mistake, they will kill our men, enslave our women, and take our supplies. We will be no more.”

The nervousness among the crowd was tangible.

“I’d like to tell you a story of the destructive potential of an anti-science cult. There lived a Russian scientist named Vavilov, one of the greatest botanists in the world. I want to revisit Nikolai Vavilov’s story, right here, under these circumstances to help you understand bravery.”

“Nikolai Vavilov expired in January of 1943 in a Soviet Gulag under Joseph Stalin. Stalin at that time adopted the pseudoscientific views of a man named Lysenko. Stalin was deceived but what happened next was inexcusable. Vavilov questioned the fake science of Lysenko and was tortured and died in the bitter Siberian winter. Some say he was thrown in a pit of lime.”

She paused to think about the excruciating pain of a pit of lime. Her chemistry knowledge engaged. Ca (OH)2, calcium hydroxide, a pH of 12.5. A pit of lime would chemically burn the man to death. She gazed at the stunned audience.

“The story of the death of Vavilov is the same story taking place out there in the void of our former homeland.”

Danielle drifted for a few seconds; she wondered if she was connecting. Even if they all volunteered to fight, what were their chances? she thought to herself.

She refocused and came back to her audience. “Lysenko claimed he changed spring wheat into winter wheat in just a few years. But we know that was impossible because spring wheat contained two sets of chromosomes and the winter wheat held three. But apparently, that didn’t matter to Stalin who backed Lysenko. Soon after, this fake science led to catastrophic crop failures in 1932 and 1933 and thirty million deaths.”

Danielle thought about the millions already dead from the Shift. At least thirty million dead here in the west. Who knows how many more died in the rest of the former sovereign states of America? she thought.

“Yet it was Vavilov who collected seed from over 250,000 seeds, roots, and fruits from around the world. I tell you the story of Vavilov because during the 28-month long Siege of Leningrad, during World War Two, the scientists at the Hermitage Museum, protected these seeds, roots, and fruits stored in what was then the world’s largest seedbank. They relocated them to the safety of the basement and refused to eat the seed, even though many of them died of starvation.”

Danielle gazed out at the audience, they seemed intrigued.

“By September 1941, the German forces began their siege of Leningrad, choking the food supply to the city’s two million residents. Then groups of scientists at the Hermitage Museum, took shifts protecting those seeds. Can you imagine? They barricaded themselves inside their vaults to protect seed. They were skin and bones, they hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks. Yet, they wanted to save the greatest seed collection in the world. I tell you this story because we have five million seedlings to protect here at FORC. These seedlings are important for the survival of mankind. These seedlings have the potential to ameliorate our local climate, and they are adapted to survive in our radically altered environment. Above else, we must protect these seedlings.”

She raised her voice abruptly. “We have the shortest of time left before the fight. I urge you to remember those brave scientists who protected the seed in that Leningrad Museum.”

She paused and bent down to take hold of her rifle. She raised it with one hand above her head.

“We must defend FORC. The Antisis will be upon us in two, maybe three days’ time. Time is of the essence now. You, the 2,000 plus members of FORC will organize yourselves into platoons and you will practice shooting your weapons. You will defend your assigned quadrants and you will take up arms to defend the bastion called science, defend the seedlings, and defend FORC!”

The crowd rose to their feet and screamed in support.

She shook her rifle to the passionate crowd. They began to chant, “FORC, FORC, FORC.” The words echoed out of the Sandy auditorium and into the nearby foothills.

The executive director walked off the stage, wondering what she had unleashed. She had no choice. Her mission was no longer research, her mission was defense.

God help us, she thought.