I RECANT

OK, so maybe I was wrong about GMOs. In my defense, all the available research stated that GMO foods were safe AS FAR AS WE KNEW. Now I know differently but I fear that knowledge comes too deep in humanity’s twilight.

If you’re still alive to read this, I wish you the best. It’s too late for me but I task you with carrying on and rebuilding society. Don’t repeat our mistakes. Man, in his hubris, flew too close to the sun and his waxen wings of knowledge melted, plummeting us down to....wait. They melted? Seriously, that’s how the old myth goes? Um, it gets colder the higher you go. If anything the thinness of the atmosphere would make winged flight unfeasible at a certain altitude, making it nigh impossible to generate lift by traditional means. Maybe if we tried some type of sub-orbital ramjet powered by compressed knowledge and solid fuel.........

ANYWAY, mistakes. Yeah. Don’t make them. GMOs are bad and dangerous and we shouldn’t be playing God like some type of....uh....god.          

Moving on.

Like most scientific endeavors, it began with the altruistic urge to improve the world and advance humanity. And get girls. Mostly that last part. The idea was simple: increase the yield of a common vegetable and make it scream in pain while being eaten. I’m not the first to visualize that selfless ideal but, sadly, I may be the last.

While selecting traits for size and acoustic volume I strictly adhered to common genetic engineering lab practice. To wit, I threw a dart at a chart depicting different species. Ah, how I wish that projectile would have landed anywhere other than Ursus arctos horribilis. At the time however, I was caught up in the zeal of scientific discovery and, to be fair, the mainland grizzly bear is known for it’s large size and loud vocalizations. I should have hypothesized that tragedy awaited by mixing bear DNA with that of the most vicious and terrible denizen of Brassica oleracea. You may have once known it as broccoli but forever more we shall lament it as destroyer of worlds.

It is with no small glimmer of pride I report the experiment worked better than I could ever have expected. DNA was successfully harvested from “Bobo the Breakdancing Bear” and introduced into a stalk of young florets culled from a local Whole Foods. The growth was immediate and violent. In that moment I knew we had scienced so hard that mankind would never be the same. Oh, the irony.

All too soon the horror became clear. The growth went out of control. The teeth! The claws! The farty smell of steamed broccoli! It was terrible.

Before I could react the bearcoli lurched free from the garden bed. Snarling and waving furry flower heads, it advanced upon clawed stalks. Don was slower than I in realizing our danger and I will live the rest of my short life with his anguished screams ringing in my ears. It was his meaty bulk that allowed me to escape the lab.

Events are a blur from that point onward. The flight from the remote castle where we had set up our clandestine genetics lab. The first reports of missing villagers and horribly mutilated remains. The initial disbelief then late-dawning realization of the world’s governments that the vegapocalypse was upon us. The smug condemnation of the vegans.

I don’t know who or what is left. I found shelter in an abandoned missile silo but I haven’t been able to make contact with anyone by wireless. Worse still, the bearcoli has found me. I can hear the leafy shuffle of it’s tread outside the door. It’s musky scent wafts through the air vents. My time has come. If you get this message, please heed my warning. Genetically modifying foods is not worth the destruction of society and the inevitable maulings at the stalks of a nutritious terror beast.