Oryx and Crake

“With us,” said Crake, “you wouldn’t have to die first.”

“You’ve really done it?”

“Not yet,” said Crake. “But think of the R&D budget.”

“Millions?”

“Mega-millions,” said Crake.

“Can I have another drink?” said Jimmy. This was a lot to take in.

“No. I need you to listen.”

“I can listen and drink too.”

“Not very well.”

“Try me,” said Jimmy.

Within Paradice, said Crake—and they’d visit the facility after lunch—there were two major initiatives going forward. The first—the BlyssPluss Pill—was prophylactic in nature, and the logic behind it was simple: eliminate the external causes of death and you were halfway there.

“External causes?” said Jimmy.

“War, which is to say misplaced sexual energy, which we consider to be a larger factor than the economic, racial, and religious causes often cited. Contagious diseases, especially sexually transmitted ones. Overpopulation, leading—as we’ve seen in spades—to environmental degradation and poor nutrition.”

Jimmy said it sounded like a tall order: so much had been tried in those areas, so much had failed. Crake smiled. “If at first you don’t succeed, read the instructions,” he said.

“Meaning?”

“The proper study of Mankind is Man.”

“Meaning?”

“You’ve got to work with what’s on the table.”

The BlyssPluss Pill was designed to take a set of givens, namely the nature of human nature, and steer these givens in a more beneficial direction than the ones hitherto taken. It was based on studies of the now unfortunately extinct pygmy or bonobo chimpanzee, a close relative of Homo sapiens sapiens. Unlike the latter species, the bonobo had not been partially monogamous with polygamous and polyandrous tendencies. Instead it had been indiscriminately promiscuous, had not pair-bonded, and had spent most of its waking life, when it wasn’t eating, engaged in copulation. Its intraspecific aggression factor had been very low.

Which had led to the concept of BlyssPluss. The aim was to produce a single pill, that, at one and the same time:

a) would protect the user against all known sexually transmitted diseases, fatal, inconvenient, or merely unsightly;

b) would provide an unlimited supply of libido and sexual prowess, coupled with a generalized sense of energy and well-being, thus reducing the frustration and blocked testosterone that led to jealousy and violence, and eliminating feelings of low self-worth;

c) would prolong youth.

These three capabilities would be the selling points, said Crake; but there would be a fourth, which would not be advertised. The BlyssPluss Pill would also act as a sure-fire one-time-does-it-all birth-control pill, for male and female alike, thus automatically lowering the population level. This effect could be made reversible, though not in individual subjects, by altering the components of the pill as needed, i.e., if the populations of any one area got too low.

“So basically you’re going to sterilize people without them knowing it under the guise of giving them the ultra in orgies?”

“That’s a crude way of putting it,” said Crake.

Such a pill, he said, would confer large-scale benefits, not only on individual users—although it had to appeal to these or it would be a failure in the marketplace—but on society as a whole; and not only on society, but on the planet. The investors were very keen on it, it was going to be global. It was all upside. There was no downside at all. He, Crake, was very excited about it.

“I didn’t know you were so altruistic,” said Jimmy. Since when had Crake been a cheerleader for the human race?

“It’s not altruism exactly,” said Crake. “More like sink or swim. I’ve seen the latest confidential Corps demographic reports. As a species we’re in deep trouble, worse than anyone’s saying. They’re afraid to release the stats because people might just give up, but take it from me, we’re ru

“How do you figure?” Maybe Jimmy shouldn’t have had that extra drink. He was getting a bit confused.

“Fewer people, therefore more to go around.”

“What if the fewer people are very greedy and wasteful?” said Jimmy. “That’s not out of the question.”

“They won’t be,” said Crake.

“You’ve got this thing now?” said Jimmy. He was begi

It was an elegant concept, said Crake, though it still needed some tweaking. They hadn’t got it to work seamlessly yet, not on all fronts; it was still at the clinical trial stage. A couple of the test subjects had literally fucked themselves to death, several had assaulted old ladies and household pets, and there had been a few unfortunate cases of priapism and split dicks. Also, at first, the sexually transmitted disease protection mechanism had failed in a spectacular ma

Needless to say, Crake continued, the thing would become a huge money-spi

Jimmy said the thing sounded very interesting. Provided its shortcomings could be remedied, that is. Good name, too—BlyssPluss. A whispering, seductive sound. He liked it. He had no further wish to try it out himself, however: he had enough problems without his penis bursting.

“Where do you get the subjects?” he said. “For the clinical trials?”

Crake gri

“Where do I fit in?”

“You’ll do the ad campaign,” said Crake.

MaddAddam

After lunch they went to Paradice.

The dome complex was at the far right side of the Rejoov Compound. It had its own park around it, a dense climate-controlling plantation of mixed tropical splices above which it rose like a blind eyeball. There was a security installation around the park, very tight, said Crake; even the Corpsmen were not allowed inside. Paradice had been his concept, and he’d made that a condition when he’d agreed to actualize it: he didn’t want a lot of heavy-handed ignoramuses poking into things they couldn’t understand.

Crake’s pass was good for both of them, of course. They rolled in through the first gate and along the roadway through the trees. Then there was another checkpoint, with guards—Paradice uniforms, Crake explained, not Corps—that seemed to materialize from the bushes. Then more trees. Then the curved wall of the bubble-dome itself. It might look delicate, said Crake, but it was made of a new mussel-adhesive/silicon/dendrite-formation alloy, ultra-resistant. You’d have to have some very advanced tools to cut through it, as it would reconform itself after pressure and automatically repair any gashes. Moreover, it had the capacity to both filter and breathe, like an eggshell, though it required a solar-generated current to do so.