Sci-Fi Stories - #4 The Taste of Traceability
Signal #4 Signal: “Society is not educated to think beyond individual needs (towards planetary problems)”* Writer: Damien Lutz
I scanned the bunches of bok choy individually wrapped with string and my AR lens identified them all the same:
Traceability: Quiet.
It’s become really important to know where your food comes from, ever since some radical initiated a taste-based traceability by injecting genetically modified enzymes into crops that weren’t sustainably farmed, or came from farms that didn’t treat people fairly, and make their produce taste bad, so consumers would know the producers weren’t sustainable.
The ’traceability enzyme’ was based on enzymes that reacted when they encountered a human digestive system by activating euphoric experiences in the consumer based on the historical data in the food’s genetics, which was meant to simulate its history.
Some say it’s like what dogs experience when they smell something—their sense of smell is so powerful they get an instant virtual mapping of the past of the thing their smelling.
(A microscope photography of the genetically modified enzyme)
The enzyme the radicals put in meat was worse, though. It didn’t hurt you, not physically, but it was LOUD. If you ate the infected meat, you’d start to think you were hearing the screams of the animals being slaughtered.
So biosecurity released a counteractive genetic modification treatment for all produce, but it turned out that once the radical enzyme was in the ecosystem, it was as impossible to eradicate as HIV is from human bone marrow—the treatment stopped the enzyme working, but the treatment diluted over time and the enzyme would reactivate.
So now a product’s use-by date must also reflect how long ago it was treated.
My AR lens found the bok choy bunch that I was looking for:
Dynamic Use-by countdown: 14 hours | Traceability: Quiet.
Plenty of time to get home, cook, and enjoy the taste.
The word 'taste' had come to mean both the physical taste and the quality of the produce’s traceability.
Some restaurants had capitalised on the modification phenomena, sourcing plants from pristine environments so they would taste amazing and were really quiet. But only the rich would know what that’s really like—some things never change, I guess.
(Seeing a bok choy salad through a AR Device)
It’s just easier to grow what food you can for yourself. But even then, you have to be careful where you get your soil from as the soil’s past can come out in the food, and some soil memories can taste nasty, like being poisoned or sucked dry into a husk.
And water—water from taps in certain areas can feel poisonous, too. When it enters your body, and its molecules mix with yours, the molecules have a fit of memories of all the times and ways they’d been recycled, whether by nature or humans. The taste would only last a second or two, but it could be a roller coaster of being elevated to weightlessness like a cloud, and then stung with poison and plummeting through the air to smack into the ground, to then finally dissipate like a gentle stream trickling away. Sometimes, when you’re out and about and your water bottle is empty, and you need to use a public water fountain, you just suck it up and hydrate.
Now, treating nature with respect, not polluting, and minimising chemical use are necessities, not afterthoughts. I certainly think twice about what rubbish and waste I create, for fear my actions will come back to haunt my next meal.
Anyway, this bok choy will go nice with the potatoes from my sweet little plot at home. I made it from soil I got from an organic farm, and most of the time the produce tastes pretty quiet, which is the best you can hope for these days.
At least I know where my food comes from.