Environmental Engineering Reference
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reversed, the breakdown of barriers making the predicament existential rather than
ethical: the pigoons stalk him as he goes in search of the food he needs to survive.
When a herd of 30 of them trap him in a gatehouse, they are described as looking
up at him through a window, seeing his head 'attached to what they know is a
delicious meat pie just waiting to be opened up' (ibid.: 322). This chilling vision
starkly inverts the model whereby humans plundered the Earth and its creatures;
now, Snowman is on the menu, and the pigoons are untroubled by moral niceties.
The wolvogs, splices of wolves and dogs, exemplify another aspect of the world
before the Crake-induced apocalypse—the need by corporations to protect the
products, such as pigoons, that their scientists create, from theft by their com-
petitors. Wolvogs also help protect the scientists themselves in a world growing
increasingly competitive and anarchic. The Compounds are patrolled by the brutal
and menacing CorpSeCorps, a security and surveillance force. CorpSeCorps has
commissioned the high-level Watson-Crick Institute, where the adult Crake works
in genetic engineering, to create a cross between a wolf and a dog with, as Crake
informs Jimmy, a 'large pit-bull component'. These splices will be put into moats
around the Compounds. Crake adds that the wolvogs are '[b]etter than an alarm
system—no way of disarming these guys. And no way of making pals with them,
not like real dogs' (ibid.: 250). Crake's work at Watson-Crick appears to show his
acquiescence to the prevailing system, in which the brightest scientists are co-opted
onto projects that, in the case of the wolvogs, bring in 'a lot of funding' (ibid.: 250).
At its entrance, the institute has a statue of its mascot, a spoat, 'one of the first
successful splices, done in Montreal at the turn of the century, goat spliced with a
spider to produce high-tensile silk filaments in the milk. The main application
nowadays was bulletproof vests' (ibid.: 242). The ChickieNob is another Watson-
Crick triumph, a freakish creature with no head, which grows chicken parts on a
massive scale for a ravenous market. 'This is horrible', says Jimmy out loud, the
narrator adding: 'The thing was a nightmare. It was like an animal-protein tuber'
(ibid.: 246). Horrible though it is, in a world of unrestrained consumption, such a
creature is both necessity and a financial goldmine. Jimmy's visit to Watson-Crick,
though, initiates a division between him and Crake. Seeing the wolvogs and
ChickieNobs prompts Jimmy to think: 'Why is it that he feels some line has been
crossed, some boundary transgressed?' (ibid.: 250). There is, in a cynical way,
recognition of such unease, a biotechnologist explaining that 'they'd removed all
the brain functions' (ibid.: 246) so that 'the animal-welfare freaks won't be able to
say a word, because this thing feels no pain' (ibid.: 247). And while Jimmy 'couldn't
see himself eating a ChickieNob. It would be like eating a large wart', he
immediately qualifies his disgust by acknowledging that if the experiment succeeds
'maybe he wouldn't be able to tell the difference' (ibid.: 247). A broader sense of
foreboding that incorporates a more physical notion of boundaries makes him ask
Crake what would happen if the wolvogs got out.
'That would be a problem,' said Crake. 'But they won't get out. Nature is to
zoos as God is to churches,' adding: 'Those walls and bars are there for a reason
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