The Agri Lake: A Short Story: Anderson Lake

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The book opens on Anderson Lake, he stands in an open street market in Thailand inspecting the various fruits and vegetables for sale until he happens upon an entirely new fruit that he doesn’t recognize. This is important to few and far between, unless you are an economic hitman and a representative for the agribusiness giant, AgriGen. Anderson Lake owns a kink spring factory in Bangkok that is attempting to mass produce a completely new model of spring that will store an enormous amount of gigajoules of energy compared to the old model. The factory is a mere ruse for his true intentions for being in Thailand, which is discovering the location of the Thai seedbank so, AgriGen will have fresh DNA to manipulate. Anderson’s factory is nearly destroyed internally by a rampaging megodont (a genetically modified elephant used to run the power train of the factory). One of the many things destroyed includes algae baths, which are a crucial piece in the manufacturing process of the kink springs. The cost to replace this vital part is extremely high, and must be smuggled in on a dirigible. Anderson orders Hock Seng, a yellow card refugee from China that assists in running the company, to repare the factory as soon as possible, and in hopes of hurring him, threatens the loss of his job. Hock Seng’s job is made even more difficult by the fact that he has not bribed the customs officials because he has embezzled the bribe money given to him.
The story then shifts over to the vantage point of Emiko. Emiko is what is known as a “windup girl,” (they call themselves “New People”) which is a humanoid genetically modified being that is used as a slave, and genetically programmed to obey a master. Emiko was abandoned in Thailand by her Japanese ma...

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...nt Ministry. He also opens up Thailand to the farang and grants AgriGen access to the seedbank. Kanya, reluctant at first, realizes that these decisions are not for the well being of the people and decides to make an uprising and overthrows the tyrannous reign of Akkarat and moves the seedbank, along with the help of the monks, to a much safer location. She then proceeds to destroy the levees that were keeping the city of Bangkok from flooding due to rising ocean levels as a result of global warming.
The plague that started in Anderson’s factory has now gotten him too. He disease slowly kills him, and Emiko soothes him through the pain and agony. Emiko finally stands alone in the flooding city when Gibbons approaches and makes a promise to her that he will use her DNA to engineer an entirely new race of New People, fulfilling her dream of living with her own kind.

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