As they made their way north and got closer to Cambridge the traffic began to thin out. The motorway began it's curve west to circumvent the eight hundred year old city.

"I thought we were going to Cambridge," said Sam as he watched the city slide past Lyn's window.

"It's near here, not far," said Lyn. She checked mirrors and changes lanes in anticipation of the approaching exit. "It's in a town called Madingly, just a couple of miles away. There's an office park there which has a couple of biotech companies in it. We just say Cambridge because if I said we need to drive to Madingly you would have said 'where?'"

She smiled and changed lanes one more time.

Sam leaned forward and peered up at the sky. Backlit clouds were gathering overhead and the sky above Cambridge reflected the dull orange glow of the city streets.

"I hope this place has underground parking. I don't like the look of that sky," he said.

"It looks fine to me," said Lyn. "There's an umbrella in the back seat if you need one. Hey, do you want to eat before we collect the backups?"

"At one of the many fine restaurants along the M11?"

"Yes, at one of those. Or there's a Maccy D not far from here. Is that ok?"

"Sure, if there's no food around."

Lyn ignored Sam's good-natured jibe and pulled off the motorway. Less than ten minutes later they were in a crowd of customers queuing for burgers and fries.

"Why don't you find us a table?" said Sam. Lyn nodded, and went off in search of napkins and ketchup.

Lyn had a perfect view of Sam as he lifted the tray of food and carried it to their table, and a perfect view of his figure. His biceps shifted under his tee shirt as he lifted and set down the tray. He didn't have the photogenic body of a twenty five year old model, not a this age, but he carried himself as a man with the confidence to face any challenge before him. Even in a Mcdonalds.

"I never thought I would see you eat food like this, not after your medical results."

Sam threw a fry into his grinning mouth.

"I thought those results were confidential."

"Not to me. I just didn't expect anyone with your, um, figure to eat so much junk food in one go."

"I don't, usually, but it's things like this I miss when I am working abroad. I get sent around the world for my job. It's good to come home to something familiar, you know? Something that never changes."

"Where on earth do you go that doesn't have a Mcdonalds?"

He winked.

"Classified."

"Whatever," said Lyn, and unwrapped her burger.

"Isn't stuff like this full of genetically modified...things?" Sam said between bites.

Lyn nodded and swallowed.

"Sometimes. GMO foods are not in everything though. I don't think they use anything genetically modified in the UK. We're a cautious country when it comes to things like that. In the USA they use more of it than we do, but something like this," she waved a fry, "probably contains more GMO products in the cooking oil than in the potato."

"Isn't that the concern people have, though? That if food is changed, and we eat it, that there are risks?"

"Yes, but people worry too much about that. We've been modifing plants and animals for thousands of years through specialisation and breeding programs and cross pollination. You ever eat corn on the cob? Do you know what that looked like three hundred years ago? It wouldn't be worth your time. Now we have a plant that yields more than a thousand percent what it used to. It took us decades to make it the plant it is today but the world is better for it. It feeds more people, is less resistant to disease, or pests, keeps longer, and is easier to grow. The only difference between what farmers have done over centuries and what geneticists do is time and precision. We can do it faster and better, so what's the downside?"

Sam chewed his second burger slowly, thinking about what Lyn had said.

"Newspapers don't agree though, do they?"

"Tell me about it, Sam! I even did an interview with New Scientist which came out this week."

"Does that sound like something I read? I'm kidding, I know what it is. What was the interview about?"

"It was about Zoitech. It was a puff piece Alice had arranged to increase awareness of our work, but they were playing up the short sighted risks to commercial research rather than the treatments we can develop."

"Such as?"

If we give away our work for free, like in gene splicing or editing, it reduces the opportunities other institutions have of patenting their work, and if they can't do that it could cost them millions, or even billions."

"Well it makes sense they would not be happy about that."

"Who's side are you on? Anyway, what they don't see, or maybe don't want to see, is how shortsighted that is. By releasing our work to the world we increase the opportunities for further work and development. Yes, we might prevent someone patenting a gene editor today, but we will open up the doors to more treatments tomorrow."

"So it's like one step back to take two steps forward?"

"Something like that. There's more we can learnand do, but I believe by being too single minded commercially we will missthings. We will look at the highest return, the biggest profit, and not themost good or the widest knowledge. It's a miracle we can understand the worldthe way we do. We shouldn't waste it."