Chapter 1

I pretend to skim the contract in front of me for a moment or two, feigning contemplation. The slim woman behind the reception desk I stand in front of isn’t paying attention, diligently typing information into a computer, but I still want to appear sophisticated, considering where I am. Most of the verbiage goes over my head, much about nondisclosures as far as I can gather, not that it matters. Or that I care. Finally reaching the last page, marked near the bottom with a glossy yellow sticky tab is a line beckoning my signature.

“By signing below, I hereby acknowledge that I have fully read and understood the terms and stipulations outlined in this agreement, and agree to them as defined in this contract,” the paper reads.

Sure, I think to myself, signing the agreement. The fancy silver pen I was provided slides across the page much smoother than I anticipated, leaving a messy, barely legible scrawl in its wake. I give it a second to dry before flipping the pages closed and tentatively sliding it back across the curved desk toward the receptionist, half not wanting to disturb her seemingly important work. Reflexively, she accepts the bound pages with one hand, not looking, as she clicks the computer mouse a few last times with the other. She then checks the last page for my signature before throwing me a small smile, indicating all is as it should be.

“Perfect,” she says, perfectly manicured hands resting atop each other in a resolute way as she does so. Everything about her seems perfect, and in place. Her dark hair is pulled back into a neat ponytail with a full ‘50s curl, long enough to barely graze her shoulders without being disturbed. She wears what I assume to be an expensive blouse, pale pink with wrist-length billowing sleeves and just the right amount of sheer. Even her smile is perfect, and looking at her makes me suddenly self-conscious. “If you’ll take a seat…the director will be out in just a moment.” She gestures to the stylish seating area just behind me.

“Thanks,” I say, extending the pen I’m still holding back to her.

“Nope, you keep that,” she says with her hand raised and another smile, perfect pink lips spreading across a wrinkle-free face. “A souvenir.”

“Ah okay, thank you,” I reply with a smile of my own, before turning to choose somewhere to sit.

“My pleasure,” she says behind me, although she’s already turned back to the computer, typing away.

I choose a white, curved back upholstered loveseat to perch on, mainly because it faces the door I assume the director will emerge from, and I’m anxious to get what I’ve come for. I take in my surroundings as I wait. The waiting room is bright and light, with whites and soft pastels accenting the richly molded walls and light oak flooring. The ceiling is grandly pitched with supporting wooden beams that match the floors and frame massive skylights that fill the room with bright rays of sun. It almost distracts from the fact that there are no windows in the walls, only tasteful art and installations as decor, a decision I assume was made to maintain privacy. Understandable given the business. There’s no one else in the room.

After a few minutes one of the large French doors, behind and to the left of the poised receptionist, opens. From it steps out a tall, fit-looking man in an open white lab coat. Beneath it he wears a soft blue dress shirt and matching tie, with cleanly pressed gray pants. He presses through the doorway, pushing open the apparently heavy door with his shoulder. It closes with a clean, heavy click behind him. He walks up to the front desk in two long strides, where Ms. Perfect smoothly points to something on a clipboard without a word. He lightly raps the clipboard energetically and turns to me, making eye contact. Instinctively I stand, as if by silent command. He breaks into a brilliant smile, flawless white teeth on full display as he walks toward me with a hand extended out.

“Jamie Decker! Welcome to the Graisse Institute. I’m Dr. Hansson. We’re so glad you chose us for your needs.” He shakes my hand with a firm grip, his other hand coming to meet and envelop it as if to accentuate his words. I try to place his faint European accent but can’t make it out. He has a striking, objectively handsome face, softened by his deep dimples and round glasses. Up close, I see his lab coat is not white, but the lightest of pinks. His hair reminds me of Patrick Bateman, but longer and blonder, and his bright blue eyes look at me expectantly.

“Oh, I’m just grateful for the opportunity,” I respond. He releases my hand and puts his own into his pockets casually. “You’ve no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to this visit. Your work is impeccable!”

“Please,” Dr. Hansson says with a chuckle. He looks down in faux humility and smooths his already neat tie as he flashes another killer smile. “It really is a team effort. We’re lucky to retain such well-trained and talented facilitators, they make my job easier. Just like Ms. Gretten here.” He gestures to the receptionist behind him, who smiles warmly in response. “So, shall we get started?”

Dr. Hansson doesn’t wait for my response before clapping his hands together and heading back toward the door he came from. I follow his authoritative presence happily as I imagine what might be behind those doors. It has been nearly two years since I first reached out to the Graisse Institute, even longer since I learned of their existence, and it’s all I’ve been able to think about since. Their waitlist was unbearably long then, even longer now, leaving me with far too much time to fantasize and inflate my expectations, but worth it for the quality of their highly coveted Cossets.

The director hovers a keycard over the small RFID reader mounted next to the doors, then releases it to return to the retractable lanyard clipped to his waistband. An audible beep sounds, along with that of the heavy door unlocking, and Dr. Hansson pulls it open, gesturing for me to walk inside. I’m greeted, rather anticlimactically, by a hallway not dissimilar to the waiting lounge. The same oak floors run lengthwise down the long hall and the ceiling above is glass, bathing the hall in light. Sconces are placed at equal intervals on either walls, with doors and turns to perpendicular hallways in between. At the very end, however, is a large set of arched, dark pink (almost red) double doors. I stare at them for a moment, their bold color a sharp contrast to the plain white of everything else. It’s clear that’s where the important stuff happens. Dr. Hansson breezes past and turns around to face me, walking backwards as he speaks.

“Now, before we get to what I’m sure you’re dying to see,” he raises his eyebrows and grins knowingly. “I want to show you a few things. We take pride in what we do here and want to be sure that you understand the efforts and lengths we go to that justify the ‘impeccability,’ as you so kindly put it, of our product…and the costs.” He says the last part with a soft laugh as he spins back around to walk forward. I open my mouth to reply but he resumes speaking before I can.

“Everything starts with the lab. It’s core to what we do, research. The application is important, sure, but that wouldn’t even be possible without the unprecedented cellular reformulations my team and I have spent decades perfecting, which can be born only out of the extensive research and experimentation we perform here. It’s without a doubt the most important part of the Institute. Or perhaps I’m a bit biased, being a molecular biologist and all.” He looks back briefly and reveals the same smile that never seems to leave his face. “And here it is! My most favorite spot in the world.” He stops abruptly and scans his keycard at another set of doors, these ones made of frosted glass with a steel frame. A small sign to the side reads ‘Nils Hansson Lab.’

He opens the doors to reveal a large laboratory with white polished rubber floors and white painted walls. The space is separated by long, steel island benches with white resin countertops, many home to complicated looking lab equipment. At first glance I find it unsystematic and overwhelming, but upon closer inspection the vertical shelves hold neat groups of labware, from culture supplies to bottles of reagents, all aligned and orderly placed. There are a few technicians and biologists milling about, and they all seem to straighten up and make themselves busy as Dr. Hansson walks in. I suppose I’m not the only one who recognizes his imposing nature. He walks up to a young Asian woman hunched over a small rack of tubes, a mechanical pipette in her blue-gloved hand.

“Jamie, this is XJ— rather, Dr. Liu.” He lightly touches her shoulder as he introduces her, other hand behind his back. She looks up and straightens, removing her safety glasses and setting them on the benchtop. She gives me a slight wave but doesn’t extend her hand. I say a sheepish “hello” back, feeling slightly anxious around all the expensive equipment.

“Dr. Liu, why don’t you explain to our guest what you’re up to?” Dr. Hansson asks.

“Uh, sure! So in this pipette are altered adipocytes induced from pluripotent stem cells which were, like, originally generated from another type of somatic cell, in a type of forced transdifferentiation, or whatever. But can you really call it that if you start with lipocytes in the first place?” She and Dr. Hansson laugh lightly at the joke I didn’t seem to catch. “Anyway, in our version of this cellular reprogramming, a more accurate but general term for the process I guess, we really aren’t trying to erase or even alter any of the epigenetic codes, as is often the purpose of such a process, but enhance them. Think of it like…a super cell or something. We can edit them to behave anyway we like and even perform cellular reproduction, a characteristic not possible with its unaltered phenotype. All of which is benign, of course.” She shakes her head briefly as if to jumble her thoughts back in place. “But like, yeah, to address the original question, I’m just preparing these samples for the ultracentrifuge so we can take a look at the individual cell components and compare them to our control.” She gives a closed lipped smile before turning back to her work. I look at Dr. Hansson blankly. He chuckles.

“Don’t worry, Jamie! Understanding the science is not a requirement, of course. But we do want you to have a bit of background on the advancements that make everything possible.”

“Yeah, I see that!” I let out a breathy laugh. “Not gonna lie, I don't think I quite comprehend all Dr. Liu said just then but it does seem rather important and um…foundational.”

“Foundational!” Dr. Hansson throws his hands up and then points at me. “What a great way to put it! It absolutely is.” He clasps his hands behind his back and nods as he scans the room contemplatively. After a moment he smiles, as if remembering himself, and spins on his heel toward the door. “Come! Let me show you something else, just as fundamental to our practice.”

He leads me out of the lab, and I can’t help but feel a bit of relief, as if I'd been holding my breath the entire time there. Back in the hallway, a few employees, or facilitators as Dr. Hansson called them, walk the halls. They wear different shades of pink polos with the Graisse Institute logo (a script ‘G’ over a double diamond) on the breast, the hems tucked neatly into tan slacks. I wonder if the shirt colors mean anything. A few nod to Dr. Hansson as we pass, and he greets each one with a smile and nod in return, a ‘good to see you’ here and a ‘hey how’s it going’ there. More and more emerge from various doors and halls in the handful of moments we walk by.

“It’s about time for a role switch,” Dr. Hansson explains. The chatter increases as more facilitators enter the halls. The director raises his voice slightly in response. “All of our facilitators are trained in each and every one of the roles and positions we have here. We find it makes them overall much more informed employees. They perform each of the duties on a weekly basis as well, putting their learned skills to practice and keeping them sharp.” He pauses to greet another employee before continuing. “It also creates a sense of equality, no one person is more valuable to our efforts than the others. Of course, there are more specialized jobs, can't train them all to be scientists, haha! But otherwise it's all very egalitarian. At the same time, we want to be able to recognize loyal employees, great for morale and such, which we can do by making their salaries, which are quite generous by the way, commensurate with experience. Naturally, longer standing facilitators take on a mentorship role for new hires so it’s only fair, really.”

That must be what the different shirt colors mean, I think to myself. It’s an interesting concept, all of it is rather interesting, but I can’t help but start to feel a bit impatient. The looming red doors and my curiosity surrounding them don’t help either.

Dr. Hansson and I take a right turn through a large archway framed by plaster corbels on either side. Through it is a small dining hall. Well, small in comparison to the overall size of the facilities. It is decorated in much of the same white-on-white style consistent throughout the rest of the Institute, with tulip tables and matching chairs arranged in what is no doubt a precise pattern or grid in the generally open space. There are quite a few employees sitting and eating, some chatting with one another or grabbing freshly prepared bento-like lunches from the manned food counter in the middle of the room. The counter is round, a full circle, with two servers in the middle who prepare the lunch boxes as they’re picked up from various directions. We walk toward the back wall, past the relaxed-looking diners and the smiling servers, where there are two sets of doors. Glass ones lead to a small courtyard where more facilitators eat lunch at bistro tables or sit on benches in the sun. We pass by this exit and instead, Dr. Hansson swipes his keycard once again to unlock steel doors just adjacent. We emerge into the corner of the largest commercial kitchen I have ever seen, in real life or on screen. Rows and rows of gleaming stainless steel counters, ranges, prep benches and hoods make up the space, with bright overhead lighting that bounces off every surface, even the polished floors. Dozens of cooks in light pink chef jackets and chef’s beanies bustle around and yell to one another over the sound of pans clanging, food searing, and water rushing or boiling. If the lab appeared chaotic, the kitchen truly is. I am immediately overwhelmed by the noise, movement, and the overall contrast to the comparatively calm and quiet dining hall. The chefs’ expressions are tense and focused as they scrunch up, faced with flames or flipped food. Some run around with hot pans or laden platters, yelling “behind!” as they pass through. Others are more calm, meticulously plating various dishes or pausing to taste and consider their creations.

“Speaking of specialized jobs, our chefs!” Dr. Hansson holds out his arms in a grand manner, proudly gesturing to the riotous room. Unlike in the halls or the lab, no one looks up or even acknowledges the two of us, the chefs are fully immersed in their cooking and shouting. “Obviously the cellular modification technology we employ with our Cossets greatly contributes to their superior and fully customizable physical makeup, but I’d be remiss to not highlight the nearly as important role that the food they eat plays as well.” The director is practically shouting over the noise, instinctively leaning in to ensure I can hear him. “I’d even go so far as to say that they work in tandem with one another, the science and the food. It’s of no revelation to you, I’m sure, that different foods are metabolized, digested, even stored differently by the body, that itself is unique from person to person. At the micronutrient level as well you have natural vitamins and minerals that are in no way insignificant, not just in their necessity to bodily health but in how they can interact with even artificially derived or manufactured substances. Think of grapefruit inhibiting the efficacy of various medications. Our chefs don’t just cook, they relentlessly consider all the science of the body, the food, our lab work, and how all of it works together, down to even the milligram of sodium in something like, oh I don't know, chicken stock. An ingredient of an ingredient. In fact,” he motions with his hand to follow him as begins walking the length of the enormous kitchen, close to the side wall, far out of the way of the cooks. “We’ve even begun to literally merge science with food, conceptually rather. I’ll show you what I mean.”

We walk past the chefs cooking a wide variety of dishes. I see pierogies, salmon, and a carefully stacked double cheeseburger being prepared in just one glance. I don’t have to think hard to know where it’s all going.