Rex's Memoir -- Garden Planet, ©Bryan Root.

Dermoplaster®, Biolume®, Cytostrux®, and other self-healing biotechnological building materials

Pretty simple really. Essentially a redux of the now-extinct sea coral, which formed huge reefs over thousands of years off the coasts of various continents and gave home to hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of equally extinct sea critters. They crossed it with some extra-terrestrial protoplasm and passed it under the noses of a few hundred architects and engineers, gave it a nearly-lethal dose of amphetamines and “voila!” CYTOSTRUX®. It sounds like grinding glass while it’s growing–a high-frequency whine that could have been the microscopic screams of tiny monsters becoming self-aware and not-at-all happy.
And it was so prevalent you could hear it from space.

“Why wait for a construction company when you can design your building, dig a foundation, dump in a couple million gallons of CAD-seeded Cytostrux® starter, amphetamines and a slow drip of effluence and sit back and watch your dreams become real? And it literally lives on human waste!”

With radiation levels being what they were after Space War One and the ten year blackout, there was a big demand for airtight, photosynthetic structures all over the world. It was a no-brainer. The face of the planet changed completely in a period of ten years. Space stations, condominiums, sky scrapers, retirement facilities, airships, space elevators, wireless phones and furniture–the biotech age made it all possible with just a few little hiccups:

A pernicious disease, we called it “creeping death” attacked the bio-engineered building materials and spread very quickly.

Cytostrux Incorporated went belly up. Whole city blocks collapsed.  Space stations lost pressure and people died. Ten years of massive global growth was at stake. But then Fat BabyFood LTD came to the rescue with their amazing Cyto Remedy®–a fiercely guarded proprietary formula that you could only buy from them.

A politician named Charlie Widenour claimed he had evidence that Fat Baby’s own engineers had developed the Creeping Death and it’s remedy side-by side, in a successful bid to monopolize the biotech market. Wasn’t there Sino-American Occupational Commanders involved? Gordon Upick? Secretary Overshaught? Some sort of back room deal? Can anyone remember? No? Me neither.

But we do remember the last memerec of Charlie Widenour,  whose star was rising out of the Cytostrux® debacle, hurrying through a throng of reporters with his head down, making a bee line for his limousine after the extra-marital sexual and financial allegations were made. We remember him proclaiming his innocence. But the Consortium of Multinational Corporate Spooks’ hit job had marginalized him, like THAT and it was just a matter of disappearing him and his junior secretary to Bogota or Buenas Aires—who remembers which? — to an implicated retreat into adulterous, homo-erotic sin and a quick fade-out of the public eye.

“Now waitaminute!” you said, “What HAPPENED with that Cytostrux® scandal?” and  “OH SHIT, I’m late for work!” Hurry hurry hurry!

We had all long since given up politics in favor of maintaining our personal status quo. The multinationals were brilliant at keeping some, if not all of the people, running after prosperity long after they should have dug in their heels and said “Enough!” It was the special power of the Quango’s then-chairman Sum Chat Fat, to promote an idea of prosperity that was directly proportional to the American capacity to forget.

With layoffs and foreclosures yawning like sinkholes in the old neighborhood, who’s got time to ponder poor old Charlie Widenour?

And what if he really is just holed up down there in Butt Fuck City like they said? It’s not like we were paying particular attention back then either. Who would we believe? How long would it take to get the facts for ourselves? And what if, after we fact checked the whole story, at a tremendous expense to ourselves and at the possible risk of our status quo, we discover that there IS no answer? Maybe the facts are just not there? It’s possible that there is NO STORY.

People die, they move on, they fall into big holes and get extruded elsewhere. The whole planet is a living breathing single organism that is just starting to get aware of itself – us people are just the messengers, the RNA, the enzymes, the little buggernuts that fizz through the tiny tubes we build ourselves, never really knowing why or what it all means. Meanwhile there’s new worm holes opening up in space, and the far eastern creationist suicide bombers, and a new single by Dick Taytor that you can’t stop humming…

Deep down, we all knew Charlie Widenour was dead. And his little dog too. So was the civil suit, so was the popular vote. So, it would seem, was American Democracy. A year later Fat Baby Food LTD took over and the American Quango became a what it is today: a ventriloquist dummy with Sum Chat Fat’s iron fist up it’s backside, working it.

–Richard (Rex) Flynder.

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