Free HOWLERS by Kent Harrington

and on his bald and shiny pate. He looked, Miles thought, slightly engineered himself. You would have thought he was talking about something truly important, the way he was swinging around the stage with excitement.
    PR spitting monkey.  A great hood ornament in hell, Miles thought .
       “And ladies and gents, these products will not spoil for exactly thirty days. Period. We guarantee it. Why? Because we have married two new exciting technologies: gene enhancement and irradiation. You go to the supermarket and buy one of our products, ladies and gentlemen, and we promise— NO, we guarantee you can store this tomato, in my hand, for a whole month before it goes bad.”
    “My wife could spoil it,” a reporter sitting behind Miles said. A reporter from Barron’s financial magazine, sitting next to Miles, snickered and nudged Miles in the rib. Miles didn’t smile back.
    Genesoft’s PR man stepped back, and using a red laser pointer, proceeded to shoot it at a list of the new line’s major selling points, the list projected on a large screen behind the man.

Genesoft’s new foods last twice as long as conventionally grown vegetables.
    Genesoft’s new line of food products taste just as good as their conventional cousins.
Lower percentage loss from bruising during shipping and handling.
Higher net profits for the retailer, and especially the fast-food industry, as R19-engineered products have a shelf life that is double that of conventional products.

    Miles got up from his seat, already bored.  Staying close to the wall, he walked to the front of the auditorium and out into the hallway. He went to the coffee cart set up for the journalists. I can’t do this, he told himself. He searched the pink bakery boxes for something to eat, but they were all empty. Tissue paper and napkins littered the floor. He hefted the PR handout the press had been given—32 pages—and debated leaving early. You could just go home. No one would be the wiser. He glanced again at the empty pastry boxes. A bubble-style-sounding telephone started to ring somewhere down the empty hallway. He wet his index finger and picked up a flake of sugar left in one of the boxes. He wondered what would happen if his editor found out he’d left early . He poured himself another cup of bad coffee for the road. How excited could you get about a tomato? Unless she’s wearing a yellow bikini. He smiled at his own joke, dropped two white cubes of sugar into his Styrofoam cup and looked for the exit.
    “Are you Mr. Hunt? The reporter?”
    Miles turned around and faced a young woman in a fashionable blue pants suit and high heels. She looked pale, like she’d seen something awful.
    “There’s something terribly wrong,” she said. “Here at Genesoft.” She looked him square in the eye when she said it. The young woman had her arms down at her sides, pressed tightly against her like she expected to be dragged off at any moment.
    “I know,” Miles said. “I think they’re out of cream.” He hoped the joke would change the look on the girl’s face. He tried smiling at her, but that didn’t work either. The girl in front of him acted as if she hadn’t heard him, her face a blank.
    “ Are you the reporter, Miles Hunt?” she demanded.
    “Guilty,” he said.
    “Everyone is getting sick,” the young woman said. Miles noticed that she wasn’t wearing an ID badge, something he knew was required for everyone in the building. The press had been issued security badges just for the press conference.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “It must be the speeches.”
    “Sick. Everyone is sick. There is something wrong with R19,” she said.
    It seemed funny to him. Something wrong with the tomatoes . How are things in Glocca Morra ? He saw the headline. REPORTER TRACKS DOWN VEGETABLE MESS .
    Miles looked down the well-lit antiseptic hall and wondered how he’d gone from being an A student at University of California’s School of Journalism to this moment. He