Krishna kumar Mani - SFS2 - Science Fiction Short Stories

“Hold on, Mary. Listen. They aren’t the parents. The problem isn’t even that they’re not ready to give up the baby. It’s just that once you know the truth, you won’t want him.”

“That’s not true! Whatever the reason is, it makes no difference! Is it a serious health issue? That’s no problem. We have insurance. I need my baby.”

The lawyer motioned to Stephen and asked him to follow him into the hallway and to talk about the fee for the visit to the clinic. Afterwards, Stephen came back into the room and spoke to Mary.

“We don’t need this baby,” he told his wife.

“How can you say that? He’s our son!” Mary screamed. “Please, I want my baby. I want my baby.”

“The baby we got was ordered by a research lab. Maybe a loving environment could change him but the DNA is based on a bad personality.”

“It doesn’t matter! No matter what he’ll grow up to be good. We’ll raise him right.”

Stephen interrupted her and began to shout. “Stop! Listen to me. I told you a lot of times that custom kids are not required for us we can have our own. You didn’t listen and now you are crying. Pretend this was all a dream.”

“How can you say that? It’s not a dream. I gave birth to him. He’s my son.”

“It’s not your dream baby though. You know who they took the personality from? God help us, they took it from Adolf Hitler.

Mary still cried for months afterwards but she never uttered the sentence, “I want that baby” again. In a few months they conceived naturally.

This story is based off of a real invention. It was invented for a benevolent purpose but if it falls into the hands of an evil man it might be used for terrible purposes.

Scientists had invented artificial meat which was created entirely in a lab using a very small amount of actual meat tissue. For example, from a small piece of meat they were able to produce more meat. And then from the artificial meat they could continue producing more artificial meat.

Due to the increased population and higher demand for food products, only rich people have been able to afford grains and vegetables. Fortunately, scientists have created artificial meat for the rest of the people to eat. This invention has saved the world from war and has kept the people eating. If not for this invention, surely there would have been a third world war. The whole world consumes artificial meat now. Even vegetarians who used to be against meat for cruelty reasons have started to eat it. Since no animal is killed, they believe this artificial meat is ethical.

To limit poverty, the government has instituted a price ceiling on meat prices at $5 per pound. It may be mutton, beef, chicken, pork or another type of meat. Five dollars per pound is the highest it can be sold for.

Soft drinks have long been dominated by Coke and Pepsi. The artificial meat market is dominated now by Fleshd and Meatu. Food is no longer a problem since anyone can get a pound of meat for $5.

First, Fleshd introduced ten new varieties of meat including rabbit, camel, horse and others. And then Meatu answered Fleshd by introducing wild animals such as deer, tiger, elephant and more.

Australia banned kangaroo meat and India banned tiger because they were the national animals. Meatu has added even more animals to engage buyers. Fleshd has concentrated on new bird meat as of late. Both brands have more than a hundred varieties of meat so far.

No one eats chicken or beef any longer. Those are boring tastes compared to tiger and emu. The World Health Organization has noted a rise in obesity and has urged both brands to do research on their meat before they market it, but little research has occurred for dieting. As both companies try to add rarer and rarer animals to their product lines, the fatter people become as they rush out to try the new types of meat. And both companies love this because they make extensive profits.

Fleshd just announced that they will soon release some types of dinosaur meat. Research has been completed and it’s under testing. They’ve started accepting pre-orders.

Their television ads have run. “Dinosaur meat: it’s a million years old, but it’s still hot.”

Meatu’s Board Meeting.

“In the last few months we’ve been simply copying Fleshd’s ideas,” began the CEO. “We need to introduce new products. Our revenue was lower than their’s last year. I want fresh ideas. Now they are going to add dinosaur meat to their product line. How can we answer them?”

“We will also add dinosaur meat,” said a senior board member.

“Excellent answer,” said the CEO

“Not dinosaurs, but some other ancient animal, perhaps?” said another board member.

“Alright, can you tell me the name of this ancient animal?”

“Let me google it and I will come back to you.”

“Let me ask you. Why are people pre-ordering dinosaur meats? It’s because they know what a dinosaur is. If you go and Google some ancient animal that no one has heard of, it will be a mere oddity. Some might try it, but if they have no idea what it is, it’s not going to cause a commotion like dinosaur meat has. Another issue is where would you get the meat from this animal? Fleshd got their dinosaur eggs in the Southern part of India and worked a miracle to get the meat from them.”

“What if we introduced flavored meat? Perhaps with different seasonings?”

“Once again, I have to teach the basics. The price of the meat is fixed by the government. We cannot go above $5 per lb. If we add flavors, that will increase our production cost. We want the highest profit margin possible. How can we add good flavor at a cheap price?”

For a long time no one spoke.

“I have an idea. We can introduce a new variety of meat.”

“Yes?”

“Human meat.”

“What?!” yelled nearly all of the board members.

“Sure. Why not?” said the young board member who stood up and started to walk around. “Listen, we’re not killing anyone . No one’s dying like they would be if you were a cannibal. Remember? We simply collect a small amount of tissue from someone perhaps with a needle and we can produce it in the lab. This will be a game changer. I guarantee it.”

Most of the board was against it. They thought it would be a press relations nightmare. No one would buy it. Who would want to eat a person?

“Alright. Do you think anyone would give their tissue to be eaten? I don’t think so.”

“Why not? It’s not that much different than donating blood for cash. In our case they have to provide a small piece of tissue. It’s not hard. But would anyone eat it? It depends on whose meat it is. If it were a sexy model, we could use that as marketing. Sexiness sells, guys. And a model is a lot sexier than a dinosaur.”

“I can’t believe I’m considering this. What if it doesn’t work?” asked the CEO. “How can we recover?”

“Well we’ll announce it on April 1st or what known as April Fool’s day. People will think maybe it’s a prank and they’ll warm up to it once they find out it’s real. Then we’ll have a pre-order. If we get a really bad vibe about it, we can just say we took the joke too far and of course there’s no such thing as artificial human meat.”

Finally they settled on the idea and secretly got to work. Based on a recent survey they had a shortlist of the three sexiest actresses and paid a few million to take tissue and choose one of them anonymously for the new meat product.

They consulted with their legal team and confirmed that there wouldn’t be any legal problems. But based on different countries and leaders, they may find that the meat would be banned. But other meats had been banned before which wasn’t such a big deal.