Lou went back to his smartphone. “It says GMO is pretty common now in the corn business. In fact, it’s the rule more than the exception, but mostly because the ears have engineered resistance to the pesticides that are sprayed on them. Same for most agricultural plants. Whatever it is, it certainly seems as if this Frankencorn isn’t the result of some superfertilizer like Chester claims.”

“But if GMO is so common,” George asked, “why would Chester lie about it?”

“That’s what I’m asking myself,” Lou said. “Why would he lie?”

Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

Sebastian Bachmeier donned a pair of safety glasses, then released the top button of his meticulously pressed lab coat. His unshaven face was sunken from lack of sleep, but his ice blue eyes sparked with excitement. Though he was a strapping German, standing six-foot-three or -four, Sebastian looked pocket sized when compared to the massive array of scientific equipment crammed inside his laboratory.

He was standing in front of a long conveyor belt that at first glance appeared to be painted gold. But a closer inspection would show it to be covered with kernels of corn. The belt zigzagged like an amusement park ride throughout the enclosure. When Sebastian spoke, his deep, accented voice reverberated off the steel walls of the underground facility like the cries of a lost spelunker.

“This is experiment number seven-thirty-eight in our efforts to create an effective biolistic delivery mechanism to transfect gold particles coated with the DNA plasmid we have code-named MB45R directly into the corn seed. This represents the final set of experiments before certifying the process we have dubbed RAPTURE for commercial readiness. Though the outcome of RAPTURE will obviate the time-consuming and resource-intensive sexual process for creating hybrid corn seed, rest assured, this transformative technology cannot be extended to human reproduction.”

Sebastian chuckled at his own humor. His giddy mood resulted from years of seventy-hour workweeks that were about to pay off to the tune of a multibillion-dollar technologic breakthrough. Sebastian paused here, mesmerized by the significance of the moment.

“Soon, farmers the world over will be able to custom-order corn seed with the unmatched yield potential of our TruGrow genetics. I am now going to demonstrate the process used to make the TruGrow corn seed. This technique not only delivers the holy grail mark of three hundred bushels per acre, but also dramatically speeds up the time to market by using actual kernels instead of the widely accepted tissue-culture process.”

Sebastian approached a gleaming stainless steel apparatus suspended directly above a section of the conveyor belt. A long bazooka-like tube extended downward from the apparatus, its muzzle about an inch above the corn kernels.