for future industrial production. This early success had made real the possibility that all manner of previously rare and expensive therapeutic drugs could in future be grown cheaply and in bulk by genetically altered micro-organisms. The investors piled in with more money than Genix knew how to spend. Five months down the line Hudson was running a team of fifty and racing Eli Lilly, Smith Kline and Johnson & Johnson all the way to the US Patent Office. By the time he picked up his share options he figured they’d be worth more than ten million dollars.
Beneath the ice-blue desert sky, in this brand-new city where anything felt possible, Hudson marvelled at how close he had come to letting his dreams slip away. Back east, his vaulting ambitions had seemed more absurd and delusional with each passing year, but out here in Scottsdale, ‘The West’s Most Western Town’, nothing short of shooting for the moon was expected of every single employee of the new biotech businesses that were taking root in this burgeoning oasis. It had been a long sixteen-year journey with several false turns along the way, but one year into the second half of his life, Hudson believed that he was about to arrive; and he wasn’t just going to become a big name in the science of gene technology: he was going to change the world.
The Mercedes’white-walled tyres (a little splash of exhibitionism he had allowed himself, along with the $200 sunglasses) made a pleasing squeal as he swung the car round to the exit and turned out into the light, pre-rush traffic heading for route 101. He had fifteen minutes to make the journey to McDowell Elementary, where his daughter, Sonia, was about to play in her first softball match. In the past, his wife, Louise, had taken care of school events, but now four months into studying for a doctorate in political science at Arizona State, she had started to insist he share responsibility. Hudson secretly resented the fact that his wife’s focus had shifted outside their home, but he had to concede that she had made more than her share of sacrifices to facilitate his career. They had been students at Brown together, but as soon as they had married, her ambitions had taken a back seat. While he scaled the corporate ladder, she had bottled up her intellectual frustration and made do with a series of part-time teaching jobs. The move west had been the final catalyst for change. ‘This isn’t just going to be about you or the money,’ she had declared, ‘this is my time, too.’ ‘Sure, sweetie, it’s time we both stepped out into the sun,’ he had said, and at that moment, he had even meant it.
He followed the 101 due east for several miles towards the mountains, the land either side of it one huge construction site: entire neighbourhoods were going up as fast as the sunburned Mexican labourers could build them. Scottsdale was on the move. Businesses were flooding in. Thanks to the domestic air-conditioner and vast water-capture schemes, a town which in the 1950s had only a handful of residents had mushroomed to over 100,000. Just like the microorganisms he had spent his professional life studying, human beings had an uncanny knack of bringing life to the most unlikely corners of the planet.
Hudson recalled some of the pot-smoking humanities students at Brown talking about ‘life force’as some abstract idea drawn from mystic Eastern philosophy, but to him, a microbiologist studying living things in their most elemental form, life was a measurable physical force just like any other in the universe. But whereas light or heat would penetrate indiscriminately wherever it was able, in accordance with fixed and unaltering constants set at the beginning of time, the force of life was strengthening and accelerating. There was and always would be the same amount of gravity in the universe, but while the conditions remained to sustain it, life was relentlessly increasing in complexity, ability and ambition. Viewed from
Beneath the ice-blue desert sky, in this brand-new city where anything felt possible, Hudson marvelled at how close he had come to letting his dreams slip away. Back east, his vaulting ambitions had seemed more absurd and delusional with each passing year, but out here in Scottsdale, ‘The West’s Most Western Town’, nothing short of shooting for the moon was expected of every single employee of the new biotech businesses that were taking root in this burgeoning oasis. It had been a long sixteen-year journey with several false turns along the way, but one year into the second half of his life, Hudson believed that he was about to arrive; and he wasn’t just going to become a big name in the science of gene technology: he was going to change the world.
The Mercedes’white-walled tyres (a little splash of exhibitionism he had allowed himself, along with the $200 sunglasses) made a pleasing squeal as he swung the car round to the exit and turned out into the light, pre-rush traffic heading for route 101. He had fifteen minutes to make the journey to McDowell Elementary, where his daughter, Sonia, was about to play in her first softball match. In the past, his wife, Louise, had taken care of school events, but now four months into studying for a doctorate in political science at Arizona State, she had started to insist he share responsibility. Hudson secretly resented the fact that his wife’s focus had shifted outside their home, but he had to concede that she had made more than her share of sacrifices to facilitate his career. They had been students at Brown together, but as soon as they had married, her ambitions had taken a back seat. While he scaled the corporate ladder, she had bottled up her intellectual frustration and made do with a series of part-time teaching jobs. The move west had been the final catalyst for change. ‘This isn’t just going to be about you or the money,’ she had declared, ‘this is my time, too.’ ‘Sure, sweetie, it’s time we both stepped out into the sun,’ he had said, and at that moment, he had even meant it.
He followed the 101 due east for several miles towards the mountains, the land either side of it one huge construction site: entire neighbourhoods were going up as fast as the sunburned Mexican labourers could build them. Scottsdale was on the move. Businesses were flooding in. Thanks to the domestic air-conditioner and vast water-capture schemes, a town which in the 1950s had only a handful of residents had mushroomed to over 100,000. Just like the microorganisms he had spent his professional life studying, human beings had an uncanny knack of bringing life to the most unlikely corners of the planet.
Hudson recalled some of the pot-smoking humanities students at Brown talking about ‘life force’as some abstract idea drawn from mystic Eastern philosophy, but to him, a microbiologist studying living things in their most elemental form, life was a measurable physical force just like any other in the universe. But whereas light or heat would penetrate indiscriminately wherever it was able, in accordance with fixed and unaltering constants set at the beginning of time, the force of life was strengthening and accelerating. There was and always would be the same amount of gravity in the universe, but while the conditions remained to sustain it, life was relentlessly increasing in complexity, ability and ambition. Viewed from
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