Isaac Peaches wore khakis and button-downs even on the weekend. He never ate or drank too much. He made it a priority to get a solid eight hours of sleep and always had a mild smile on his face and took pride in trying to look on the bright side of things. When his head of blond hair began balding in his early twenties, he was relieved at the money he would save on shampoo and the time he would save combing it. When his girlfriend from college said she liked him—she would always like him, he was impossible not to like—but he was too submissive to feel any passion for, he said he understood and then considered how he might take up a hobby like hiking or woodworking with his newfound freedom.

He was hired out of college as a genome engineer for a major agrochemical company, and for ten years it never occurred to him that he could do anything else. He made good money, though he was never sure what to spend it on. He had great benefits, though he rarely got sick and didn’t dream about retirement.

Then the sky fell, and normal didn’t make sense anymore. He watched the news with increasing alarm and wasn’t sure whether the planet had dodged a bullet or swallowed one. He started thinking more about the life he had built for himself. A safety-padded, seat-belted, air-conditioned routine. He built programs that genetically modified seeds for a massive corporation. His bosses often clapped him on the back and occasionally treated him to happy hour at Buffalo Wild Wings for creating antifungal and low-hydration strains of seeds that defied drought and increased growth yields. Superseeds, the admins called his inventions. He was the Superboy of superseeds.

Sometimes he wondered if he ought to ask for a raise, given all that he had accomplished within the company, but the thought of asking made him so uncomfortable that he decided he was paid more than enough.

Then one day he came home from work to find an SUV parked in front of his house and a woman with a big head of hair and a powder-blue power suit waiting for him. She held out a hand—perfectly manicured and glimmering with rings—and said her name was Annabelle Ricketts and that she was terribly interested in his work.

“Are you a scientist?”

“No. But I help scientists. I fund them and I coach them, I suppose you could say.”

“Where?”

“Ostensibly I work for the Department of Defense.”

“Ostensibly?” he said.

“Let’s put it this way—they decided we deserved our own corner of the office. We’re a special program, and I’m one of the regional directors.” Her eyes were unblinking, her teeth a marvelous white, and her voice was honeyed with a Southern accent when she said, in this time of need, they could very much use someone like him.