The Day We Said Goodbye to the Birds

“Genocide Joe” is a marked man.
Once a highly respected corporate microbiologist, now the scapegoat for a GMO-caused ecological disaster that’s turned San Francisco Bay toxic and poisoned thousands, Joe has lost everything: his career, his reputation, his wife, his home, and most of his friends. All he has left is his 18-month-old daughter, Daphne, the clothes on his back, and a chance to start over again, in a new town, where no one knows his face.
To take that chance, all he needs to do is catch the bus out of town. But an unexpected transit outage has dumped him in Oakland, so now he needs to get to the next station on foot, while pushing a baby stroller.
And hoping to pass unrecognized through a city where everyone hates him, and a lot of people want to kill him…
Eco-fiction; hard science fiction; hopepunk; all-too-near-future science fiction.

Also included is a short essay on the science underlying the story and another one on the real-world events that inspired it.