Кори Доктороу - Make Shift - Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future

They look okay, but the smell… it doesn’t lie.

I hurry back to Kushi, turn him off and stare at the mounds of koji before me. A sinking feeling fills my chest. I had so anticipated this moment, but now my smile’s faded and I face the reality of risks realized. I sniff in deep. There it is. That off-putting, lingering aftersmell. The koji was not sublimely “rotten,” as it should be, but just dreadfully so. I shake my head. I scoop up some koji and in frustration, let it drop through my fingers and plop to the ground. Decomposition gone awry.

I step outside, grab my sake bottle, and twist it open as I sit on my patio chair. I pour a glass and sip. I sigh, thinking about the mess. Another batch for compost. I stare out at the submerged paddy fields in the distance, the green tips peeking out of the surface, waiting to emerge into rice stalks. I just wasted so many of them—numerous rice plants destined for decay.

But no point in brooding. I’ll get back to my 3D graphs and charts again, crunching numbers for the formulas—like the cyclical nature of life, just as another harvest season will come and activity will blossom on the fields, I tell myself. That’s what Ena would say.

THE RHYTHM OF THE COUNTRYSIDE WAS IN CYCLES OF WORK AND GROWTH, ANDwaiting. Once the seedlings were all in and growing, our family waited. Come fall, we harvested the golden yellow stalks from the drained paddy. Mom made us beat some stalks against bamboo slats while drones next to us zipped through the threshing process. I invented some other faster methods, with gears and pedals, but Mom insisted this was the way for the sake—that we had to at least do some of the work ourselves to keep up the tradition. We milled and steamed the rice and mixed it with koji with our hands. Then we mashed it all and tossed in sake yeast. This was all done over a period of days—no machines, just arms pushing wooden paddles to get the shubo right.

Mom even skipped the adding of lactic acid that kept the unwanted bacteria at bay, saying she wanted it straight up old style, using the air’s natural lactobacillus instead of the Sokujo method.

“Fast is for the impatient,” she said.

She also quoted Thomas Edison at me—genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration—but she knew that for me genius is 99 percent impatience—and who knows what for the other 1 percent.

I couldn’t really disagree. I wanted things done fast.

She wouldn’t have it. She savored all the steps.

When we were finished making the sake, we streaked each drone with a fingerprint of the liquid, our own family ritual, in addition to hanging a traditional ball of cedar leaves that signified successful sake production.

And after more waiting, for the sake to mature, we took some bottles into our home and clinked cups and sipped under the warmth of the heated kotatsu. My parents only allocated one small ochoko’s worth of sake for me. I would nurse it for the night. While we drank, I harbored rebellious thoughts—dreaming up ways to hasten the fermentation process but keep the savory richness of the alcohol that passed down my throat like fire.

THE WARM TASTE OF YUZU AND SAKE FLOWS DOWN MY THROAT AND I LET OUT Asatisfying, “Ahhhh.”

I turn on my holovid and nod at my cousin Aimi. Ever since my wife passed, she has been my trusty taste-tester.

Aimi takes a swirl, letting the aromas fill her mouth. She then gulps, her eyes closed. “Too bitter. Needs something bright.”

“Mint?” I ask.

“Maybe.” She puts it down. She opens her brown eyes wide, taking in all the details of the drink. “Or maybe it’s the yuzu rind oversoaked. And this cloudy one? That’s next?”

“Yeah. Have a cracker first.” She bites, swallows, closes her eyes and sips. I turn off my holovid and sip, too. I don’t want her to see my reaction and get biased.

I put down the sake cup. This was my wife’s favorite tasting cup, with the blue underglaze. Ena was the best at tasting. I could see her now, her piercing brown eyes staring at me as she takes a sip from the cup. She had quite the appetite and love for adventure and gusto in her life. After her judo championships, she would down breaded pork chops and crispy pickled takuan alongside straight sake and some mixed drinks. Even with her athleticism, she had a delicate, discerning palate. She’d gulp sports drinks for the electrolytes but only after diluting them. Sports drink and alcohol companies led her through facility tours, trying to get her face for ads, but she refused, saying it was a conflict of interest with our bar establishment.

She was an eclectic drinker, sampling all kinds of drinks, until she lost her taste buds from the second ANVID respiratory pandemic and then passed away from complications while rehabilitating from the disease. Her lungs had been severely damaged, she had a stroke and problems with memory. It pained me to watch her change. She became weak, barely able to stand, let alone execute any judo throw, and at the end, drank only rice porridge. Sometimes she would nurse a bowl of porridge while watching judo moves, trying to recall technique names. The tubes they put in her for breathing even after removal disturbed her ability to swallow, so it would take her hours.

My parents felt bad for me during her illness, and served as my taste testers for a while, but they were never fond of trying my concoctions, since they thought the old ways were the best.

Aimi took over. At my wife’s holofuneral—virtual because of the pandemic—she heard about my need for a taster and offered. She’s a huge gastronomist.

“Okay, what about that one?” I pointed at the cup she just emptied.

“Pretty good. Nice and dry. Could use a touch of sweetness.”

I mark down her words. I enhance and focus in on her eyes. Sometimes her eyes gravitate to the one she likes best. Ena used to say to watch the eyes for intent. I see Aimi flash a glance at the cup with the “ka” katakana letter written on it. That was the one with the newest koji version.

She returns the vessels to the delivery drone, which packs and sanitizes them and flies off for the next delivery.

“Sure,” she says, wiping her hands on her skirt. “And so, which is the control, and which are the ones with the flash ferment? And what changes have you made?”

“Well, I can’t tell you that.”

She shakes her head. “I’ll just have to wait for the new line to come out at your bar.”

I smile. “Yes, will do. Here to please.” It’s true.

It’s why I opened the bar. All I want is for people to drink sake and be merry. But, the merriment hasn’t been so widespread lately.

MY MOM’S LOOK OF MERRIMENT AT SAVORING ALL THE STEPS OF SAKE-MAKING WAScontagious. Even when I was anxious to get the drones to do all the work, I saw her putting her full attention into all the details. She called it chanto suru, doing things properly, and it was part of ikigai, that which makes life worth living.

I responded that efficiency and alacrity are what make life worth living. Increased and swift performance as ikigai. She just shook her head and handed me the wooden mash paddle. “Go and blend.”

Blend I did. We made the fermenting mash moromi in three stages, adding hatzusoe (more rice, koji, and water), letting it sit as odori so the yeast can make merry, then brought in nakazoe and then tomozoe, all stages of adding rice, koji, and water. Everything was active, lively, and bubbly: starches becoming sugar, yeasts taking this sugar and converting it to alcohol and CO 2.

I had to admit, like my mom, there was part of me that savored the process of doing it “properly.” I enjoyed the sound of the liquids sloshing about as I mixed, my wooden paddle breaking the waves of this little ocean. Yet, even with that small joy, I always thought it could be done faster.