Y. 2083

In the mud, torn apart and rototilled, a new bacterial strain is formed. The product of lateral gene transfer between cellular populations at the ragged edge of invasive industrial agriculture.

A. capillata strain OXX552 is a nitrogen fixer living in cereal roots. In a bacterial contingent event (like a grain of salt in crystal solution), OXX552 epigenetically activates a long dormant gene, triggering an evolutionary timebomb, flicking a lycanthropic phenotype on, bypassing anti-carcinogenic bio-kill switches. In shared soil, soybean and sugarcane escape algorithmic predictions and burst into wild tangles of life.

Y. 2087

A cosmological-contingent bolide event. A 4-meter asteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere, its trajectory lining up with industrial agricultural plant AHEARN (latitude: 0.7893° S , longitude: 113.9213° E ). A graduate student working on a commercial attenuo-botany thesis records “intermittent pink rain over a period of 84 hours” following this event.

Burning up during the process of atmospheric entry, only a microscopic quantity of meteorite dust reaches soil. It remains un-recovered and un-processed. This dust contains extremophilic exo-lichen P. Siebert. Resuscitated by contact with soil, a fungal sub-system of the lichen proves a formidable biohacker and cordyceps analog, hijacking pollinators to slip through quarantine and contamination nets.

Y. 2059

Satellitic NGO operators deploy prototype soft robotics project p0llin8.tor : 3d printed and self-replicating, made from 100% compostable parts, mulch-silicate micro-fibers latticed together according to the hottest auto-fractalizing framework for synthetic hive systems.

p0llin8.tor gets to work. Deploying slick convolutional recurrent neural network software directly into crop ovaries, it induces pollinator-receptive behavior in crops with no history of pollination.

Y. 2058–2095

Nano-fractal trading algorithms, operating at incomprehensible speeds, predict a catastrophic drop in stock price of EVEA agrochemical roughly 40 years down the line. They immediately subcontract GMG eco-consultancy, who identify recently deployed synthetic pollinators as the most stochastically significant event. GMG subcontract Pairbank Genetics, who design a genomic re-patterning of an extant predator to selectively eliminate the pollinators. After filing for patent rights over the re-patterning, Pairbank Genetics subcontract AQQ precision bioscience (a subsidiary of EVEA agrochemical) to mass-produce the predator, A. Supergrand.

It has now been over 30 years since the potential stock crash was predicted, and it has disappeared from current best algorithmic predictions. However, $700 billion have now been sunk into the project, significant parts of which are public money. Results are expected. To keep costs in check AQQ lobbies to bypass a series of safety tests (citing a range of international climate emergency response law). The predators aremanufactured and shipped out. Due to a minor epigenetic mis-implementation, the incorrect chiral form of a key protein is produced in the re-patterned predator. Structurally identical, but rotationally asymmetrical, this error has a significant impact on the predator’s behavior causing it to primarily target the plants it was meant to protect. This results in a catastrophic drop in EVEA stock prices (as mis-predicted by the fractal algorithms). Two quality assurance workers at AQQ precision science are fired and face serious fines.