Singer did his post-doctoral work in microbiology at Yale. He was bullied by his supervisor, an irascible Nobel Laureate, and, at his first opportunity, departed the university laboratory for private industry. The bio-engineering firm that employed him specialized in industrial gene-splicing – that is, modifying the DNA of microbes so that they would produce useful substances. Singer’s firm had a contract with the paint manufacturer Sherwin-Williams. Singer’s role was to work with research and development at Sherwin-Williams to develop microbes that would produce pigments so that paint surfaces would continuously regenerate color. The idea was to embed pigment-producing microbes in the company’s paints so that a color, once applied, would remain perpetually fresh and vibrant, a quality achieved by colonies of living microbes photosynthesizing light into color. “If this project succeeds,” Singer told Sherwin-William R & D, “you will be putting yourself out of business. No one will ever need to buy new paint.” The client’s director of R & D replied that they would cross that bridge when they reached it.
Singer’s team selected several species of cyanobacteria for study. Cyanobacteria is ubiquitous. The microbe flourishes everywhere – it can be found growing in ice at the North Pole, between grains of sand in the Sahara, thriving symbiotically with algae in all seas and lakes, and, of course, blanketing living organisms. Some sloth in rain forests have cyanobacterial algae darkening their fur to the color of moss – but this is just an exotic example of a condition that is ubiquitous. Human beings are coated in the stuff as are all other living creatures. The microbe is easily cultured and studied and so Singer’s research group set to work genetically engineering the bacteria to produce pigment.
Cochineal is a bright red substance secreted by certain beetles originally found in Latin America. These beetles (dactylopius coccus) are soft-bodied insects that live primarily in prickly pear and agave cacti. The insects convert the sap of cactus fruit and flower into carminic acid, a bright red fluid. (The acid is thought to be bitter-tasting and deter predators.) Singer acquired several thousand cochineal beetles, raising them in terrariums with small bulb-shaped nopal plants. A Zapotec-speaking technician was recruited to manage the beetles. Singer was astonished at the brilliant color resulting when he crushed one of the beetles under his thumb. The insect burst when he pressed on its abdomen, flattening into a purple puddle. The flat of his thumb was dyed bright red. The technician told Singer that the beetles were sacred because they were fat with blood and blood is the substance of life: “The ancient people thought the gods required blood to sustain the world and these creatures symbolized that relationship.” Singer replied that this was very interesting and could be used to market the paint.
Singer extracted the gene sequence correlated to the red in the beetles. With his team, he spliced the cochineal DNA into the genetic code for the cyanobacteria. As expected, petri dishes cultured with cyanobacteria turned bright red. Singer, then, applied the mutated bacteria to panels prepared with an adhesive film. Again, the experiment was successful – a micro-film of cyanobacteria producing carminic acid colored the panels. The pigment seemed to be both durable and capable of regenerating itself if scratched or marred.
Larger scale tests were conducted at the Weatherization facility near Cleveland. Several test panels colored with the pigment, code-named Erythros, were set on steel brackets installed in a pasture behind the laboratory. Stanchions supporting the test panels were set in a circle facing outward so that the paint samples would be weathered in all exposures. Cameras set for time-lapse photography surveyed the experiment.
On the fourth day, driving rain scoured the test panels. Some of the pigment dissolved and ran down the metal post to form a puddle at the foot of the stanchion. The puddle was about the size of a man’s fist. A weekend intervened. When the technicians returned to the site, the red-colored blotch on the meadow made a gory-looking footprint about the size of semi-trailer. The stain was spreading and so the technicians used a roto-rooter to score a trench around the red patch. The next morning the furrows of dirt were all suppurating with red slime. The crimson cyanobacteria had leaped across the ditch and the trees in the adjacent wood-lot were spectacular with red veins creeping up their trunks and coating the undersides of leaves.
Singer reported to his boss that the pigment had become a sort of infection and was spreading rapidly. The company’s lawyers were consulted and a liaison with the local pollution control agency was established. The use of powerful anti-bacterial agents was proposed and several tanker trucks of cleansing agents were ordered to the site. But the pollution control agency enjoined spraying the anti-microbial solutions on the scarlet meadow and forest. The effects of that remedy had to be studied and there was concern that the cleansing agents were kill insects and birds in the terrain. Wearing a haz-mat suit, Singer went to the site of the experiment. When he trudged through the oozing woods, he stirred a dozen starlings, all of them red as cardinals, and the birds flew off-site, across the freeway to roost in the trees of another small maple grove. Singer was alarmed and asked that the company’s Board of Directors meet. Another few days passed and trucks and cars coursing over the freeway, now slick with red bacterial, carried the contagion into Cleveland. Several skyscrapers turned red and the Cuyahoga river was dyed the color of blood. The beaches on Lake Erie were now scarlet and huge veins of pigment were reaching out into the water like the outstretched fingers of a great red hand. At the board meeting, the directors of the company saw that the water in the pitchers had become pale pink. The meeting was long and contentious. By its ending, several of men had red beards and a female director’s eyelashes were scarlet.
The situation was now desperate. Singer stood on a hillside and watched bulldozers gouging huge ditches between the infected and uninfected land. Tanker trucks sprayed lysol into the ditches. The chemicals made Singer’s eyes water and he choked on the fumes. It was a grey day with pulpy-looking black clouds overhead. As the lysol filled the moat, Singer looked into the distance and saw that it was raining. Columns of water pouring from the cloud were bright red. Several of the clouds had bright pink underbellies.
Leaves painted red couldn’t photosynthesize and crops failed. The Earth’s albedo was altered and ice caps melted. Purplish-red seas rose and flooded coastal cities. Abandoned carmine skyscrapers stood half-drowned in red lagoons. There was famine and pestilence; family members killed one another over cans of food. Great migrations clogged the highways, but, as people died, their cars and trucks blocked the way and, finally, no one could travel except on foot. Ragged red shadows haunted the deserts where there were still patches of rock and sand not colored by the erythrotic infection. Flash floods poured down from mountain heights where the glaciers were melting and salt basins that had once been gleaming white were sunk beneath level wastes of stagnant red water.
With his family, Singer had fled to Nevada where some traces unpigmented stone and dust remained in remote basins. A bird the color of a clot of blood hovered over the desolation and, when Singer looked back over his shoulder to the way that he had come from his fuel-less abandoned vehicle, he saw that his footprints, and those of his wife and two small children, were visible as red tracks in the sand. Ahead of them, Singer saw an oasis, a small round pond in a chalky sinkhole. The water reflected the sky and tufts of brown and green sedge encircled the pool. Some fat brushy palms with green fronds flaring above greyish bulbs of vegetation were crouched over the water like exotic crested beasts come to drink at the spring. As they staggered toward the spring, Singer saw that a reddish film was slowly spreading across the still surface of the water. The cattail tips of the reeds were like rubies. The sun was hot and Singer sat down in the shadow of a boulder that looked like it was made of corroded iron slag. The mountains were red and crested with gruesome oozing wounds. The more remote hills were the color of sunset and, the far away, the scarlet ridges and valley softened to the color of porphyry and agate.
A billionaire who had made his fortune selling electric cars boarded a rocket and fired himself into space. A fleet of other space craft followed him. Nine months later, the rockets touched down on Mars. A year passed. If Singer had turned his telescope on Mars, he would have seen a livid stain on the quadrant of the planet where the billionaire had landed to found his extraterrestrial colony. If he had watched night after night, Singer might have observed the dark red abscess on Mars spreading. But Singer was no longer alive and, indeed, there was no one left on Earth to observe the gradual ruination of the red planet.
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