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Mr. Bas. He looked startled for just a moment, but then nudged FP onto the floor with a shake of his head, and picked up his own plate.
    â€œSo really, Fisher, how was your day?” his mother pressed as she sliced herself a piece of chicken. Fisher shrugged.
    â€œAbout normal, I guess. Treated like I have a contagious disease and generally shunned.”
    She frowned. “Fisher, I hope you know not to buy into what any of those boys say. People your age aren’t usually as bright as you are, and sometimes other kids take that as a personal insult.”
    â€œI know,” Fisher said, “but it’s less than a month into the school year, and I just feel like everyone else knows where to go and what to say and I’m just wandering around trying not to get knocked over.”
    â€œEveryone has a tough time when they’re twelve years old. Bullies are just the people who deal with that frustration by taking it out on those around them. In a few years, they’ll look back and realize how childish they were being.”
    Fisher sighed and nodded, wondering if he could possibly last a few more years. This was why he didn’t like to talk to his parents about school; they just didn’t understand. They always told him that things would get better. But time was passing, nothing was getting better, and he was sick of waiting. Desperate to change the subject, he said, “So, what about your day at work, Mom?”
    â€œOh, we’re starting to see some progress with the artificial protein chains. I made a few tweaks to the sequence, and things look much better.”
    Helen Bas was a world-renowned microbiologist, biochemist, and genetic engineer, and much of her work involved efforts to increase food production around the world. As she went on about her day, she took a sharp knife and thinly sliced a tomato the size of a basketball— one of the runts of the patch. The properly grown ones would have had to come in through the garage door. His mother had spent many years genetically developing giant vegetables and was largely responsible for helping significantly close the gap in world hunger.
    â€œOne of my biggest problems now is industrial espionage,” she continued, passing a slice of tomato to Fisher that was as big as his dinner plate.
    â€œWhat, like spies?” Fisher said.
    â€œExactly,” Mrs. Bas said. Fisher choked on a tomato seed when she mentioned the spies. He coughed and the seed flew out of his mouth, landing in his father’s wineglass. His father, absentminded as usual, didn’t even notice as he took a sip.
    â€œThe formula I’m working on is very powerful,” Mrs. Bas went on, “and it could be very dangerous. We need layers of security to catch agents from other companies trying to sneak into our lab.”
    For about a year, Fisher’s mom had been working on a delicate and carefully guarded project. The government had approached her team with a revolutionary task: to develop a synthetic version of human growth hormone, the natural chemical that stimulates growth and healing in humans. This artificial version was intended to achieve the same effects as natural HGH, but at a much faster pace. His mother had named it AGH, for Accelerated Growth Hormone.
    She’d been more high strung ever since the project had begun, but she was determined to see the project through. If the AGH was perfected, it could start a revolution in medical technology. Some diseases could be wiped out entirely, treatments for others drastically improved. Surgery recovery times and physical therapy could be advanced far beyond anything the medical world had ever seen. Fisher just hoped all of these long days and extra hours would get her the breakthrough she was looking for.
    â€œWhy would someone want to steal your work?” asked Fisher, deliberately knocking over his glass. Intentional spills were actually encouraged by his parents to make sure the