Excerpt: WE EAT

 

 

 

Chapter 1  (Hendrik, 2042)    
    
    “What made you want to farm wheat?”
    “It seemed clear to me that we wouldn’t be able to farm outside like we used to, and staple crops were the last and hardest to move indoors.”
    “And you thought you could do it?”
    “I…yeah. I did.”
    “What kind of problem is it? Is it a genetic problem? Is it a technology?”
    “It’s about timing. When we grow in a controlled environment, we know everything about the plant. We are in total control. The variable is timing.”  
    “When to give the plant what?” the journalist asked.
    “Precisely. When to turn the dials and which to turn. It’s like raising a child, but chopping off its head every September and June.”
    The journalist laughed. She sat up in the chair, turned her face slightly more profile. Her TV smile stayed. “How many years do these children live?”
    “When we get it right, we think we can get ten. Our current perennial wheats, are two years-old. I think our next generation could go for longer. They’ll be a genetically improved strain.”
    “That’s the big difference?”
    “We’re pretty much doing everything else the same. The genetic revolution,” Hendrik said with subdued awe. “It’s been cool.”
    “What’s the scope? Are you planning on having buildings that are hundreds of acres large?”
    “The largest open indoor spaces in the world are about 100 acres. Those buildings are where they build airliners, space rockets. It’s about the size of half a small farm. At that size, we can produce at the yield of a large farm, one that’s a couple thousand acres. Or we can do much smaller.”
    “You can make it whatever size you want?”
    “To an extent. We can build on multiple stories too. Go up instead of wide. But yes, we can make a system anywhere from small enough to feed a small village to a unit that will feed a city.”
    “That’s why it’s extraordinary. What’s standing in the way of the wheat right now?”
    “Still working to get yield and cost to $13 a bushel. The market rate right now is about $20.”
    “That’s a low number. Is there any competition?”
    He shrugged. “Not much.”
    “What about traditional wheat farming?”
    “Outdoor farming?”
    “Yes. They’re the incumbent. They’re the only game in town at the moment, right?”
    He looked away from her, from the camera. “Their practice will soon be obsolete. For a while, they’ll have the scraps because we won’t immediately be able to feed the whole world. More indoor farming companies will spring up. I imagine all serious farming will move indoors in the next 20 years. Anyone trying to sell outdoors will be out-priced.”
    “Why go to $13? Seems like you just need $19.”
    “Because thirteen is possible.”
    “Simple as that?”
    “If I thought $12 was possible, we’d get to that. Someday it probably will be. At WE EAT, our goal is to bring the world food as cheaply as possible.”

                                                                                 *

    Hendrik always walked home from work. He hadn’t owned a car since he moved into the city. He walked on the track next to the small man-made river called the White Stream. There were lights buried in the banks, and they gave the water its signature white glow. Three lanes hugged the river. Walkers, joggers, bikers. Hendrik used his walk to plan what tasks he would complete when he arrived home: dinner, call Bangladesh, the software bug in the bee-bots.
    A couple sat in the grass on a blanket, eating their dinner next to the track. The man made eye-contact with Hendrik and looked star-struck.
    “We’re eating your lettuce and cucumbers right now,” he said, pointing to the woman’s mouth.
    “That’s great.” Hendrik smiled. “Is it good?”
    “Yes,” the woman said. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
    Hendrik still wasn’t used to people recognizing him. “I walk this path every day almost. It’s just me.”  
     “Are you still with Sandra?” the woman asked.
    “Diane,” the man said to her.
    “It’s okay,” Hendrik said. “No, I’m not.” He smiled with his answer, so the woman wouldn’t feel bad. “I’ve got to go. Have a nice evening.”
    He decided he’d eat the ravioli leftovers from Martino’s.
    Hendrik walked up the steep arc of the pedestrian bridge and took wind gusts to the face. There were blue lights at the tips of poles every twenty yards or so that Hendrik liked to look up at as he crossed the bridge. He blended in with the others walking home from work, black coat and a scarf. He didn’t carry a bag. He kept everything he needed for a day at the office at work.
    “Hey Hendrik,” someone shouted behind him.
    He turned back.
    It was a woman with a pistol pointed at Hendrik’s chest. “Nice to meet you.”
    For Hendrik, it seemed like the woman hesitated to shoot. It seemed like she was standing there for about three eternities, and Hendrik saw Sandra, Lennox, and the ravioli. He waited for a gunshot and only got a swish-sound and a burn in his chest. He fell back on the cement walkway. The smokey rip of a motorbike was the sound he heard.  

 

 Chapter 2 (Sandra, 2042)


    Sandra was at the driving range watching Davey Salinger hit 7-irons in tight white pants when Hendrik was murdered.
    Davey had summoned the range attendant to bring her a table with an umbrella and chairs from the pool area, so she’d be comfortable as she watched. She admired the rich spectrum of the color green around a golf course. The roads for the golf carts were a sharp black. The only dents were the brown divots between the players’ legs. She was finishing her cafe latte and enjoying the warmth of the sun. No phone. No book. She didn’t golf. She was taking time to enjoy herself and Davey. He hit 100 7-irons then returned the club to his bag and unzipped the head cover of his driver.
    “Spyglass has a few holes where I need to be hitting driver off the tee,” he told her.
    “You’re going to need to get your confidence then,” Sandra said. “How many are you going to hit?”
    He signaled to the attendant that he’d need another bucket of balls. “At least one-fifty.”
    “Do one-fifty and then you have to hit fifteen perfect shots in a row before you’re done. We’ll stay here all night if we have to.” She put her feet up on the table.
    He pointed the driver at her. “I love you.”
    “You say that too much.”
    “I love you,” he was singing it, swinging his club with the tune. “I love you. I love you.”
    “Hit your balls.”
     The attendant returned. “There’s a phone call for you, Sandra.” The world had found her.
    The attendant, ‘Chad’ his name-tag read, brought her into the cramped shed/office the driving range attendants worked out of. She worried for her Gianvito Rossi high-tops. She was the cleanest thing in there: papers on the desk, dust, grass, dirt on the floor. The mechanic was there refilling the grease gun, and he’d left grease on the door knob. Three other attendants were hanging around the phone on the desk. One was sitting in the chair.
    “Get out of the chair, Timmy,” Chad said.
    The red phone was off the receiver.
    Sandra didn’t sit.
    “Hello?”  
    Chad shooed the other boys out the door.
    “Is this Sandra Arnot?” the voice on the phone asked.
    “Yes.”
    “This is Detective Carl Rose with the Cedar police department calling in regards to your husband.”
    “Okay.”
    “I’m sorry, ma’am, but he’s been killed.”
    “Oh my god.” She wished those weren’t the words she said. She didn’t believe in god, grit her teeth at cliches, and knew this call would be recorded and likely leaked. Her breath had been taken, lack of oxygen to the brain and out came something so fake.
    “We need you to come to the police station,” the detective said. “Do you need a ride over?”
    “No. I have my car.”
    “Are you sure you want to drive?”
    She couldn’t feel her legs. She was numb and woozy. She’d already left Hendrik, though not legally, but Hendrik, she thought, poor Hendrik. Her son’s father. She began to cry.
    “Yes, come get me,” she said.
    “I’m on my way.”
    She hung up the phone and felt like the world was turning the wrong way.
    “Sandra?” Chad asked as sweetly as he could. He was in the doorway of the hut, the other attendants piled up behind him. “Can I get you a refreshment?”  
                                                                     

                                                            *
    
    “Just a coffee,” Sandra told Detective Rose.
    “You got it. Cream and sugar?”
    “Soy milk if you have it.”
    There was a big round table in the center of the police station’s kitchen, blue chairs neatly pushed under it. Sandra felt suffocated by the floor to ceiling, tan wooden cabinets. The coffee machine was one of the big ones that a diner would have; one carafe had an orange rim, the other brown. Detective Rose scooped coffee grinds into the white paper filter.
    “Do you all have any idea who did this?” Sandra asked.
    He smiled instead of answering. He set her coffee down on the table in front of her. He sat in the chair across from her and kept smiling. “Sandra, you know how we all get our genetic sequence run when we’re born?”
    “Yes,” she said impatiently. She sipped the coffee.
    “Well, I’m something of a tea leaf reader, learned it from my grandma. I took a look at Hendrik’s sequence, and by my calculations — grandma’s — he was poised to revolutionize the world. Should have happened in the next couple of years.”
    “I don’t think you can tell that from genes,” she said.
    He smiled again, now with restrained embarrassment. She had to remind herself that some men take offense when pretty girls don’t believe them.
    “Let’s get to the business then,” he said. “How have things been between you two?”
    “You don’t read the news? I hadn’t seen him in months.”
    “You share a child. You don’t see him when you exchange?”
    “The au pair does it. We’re separated.”
    “Amicably?”
    “Are you questioning me?” She didn’t let him answer. “I’ll wait for my lawyer.”
    “All right.” He stood up. “Let’s go into the interrogation room then. Shall we?”
    She didn’t move. She thought about whether she really needed her lawyer. She had an air-tight story. “I was with Davey at the golf course when it happened.”
    Detective Rose sat back down.
    “You even called me there,” she continued. “I’d been there all afternoon. Davey was getting ready for Spyglass.”
    “Davey Salinger?”
    “That’s right.”
    “You two are a thing now?”
    “Maybe you do follow the news.”
    “That’s news?”
    “Believe me, I didn’t have anything to do with this. Hendrik and I have a child together. We still love each other in some ways. We did.” She fanned her face.
    “Sandra.” Detective Rose laid his arm down and let his fingers stretch on the table. “I don’t think you killed your ex-husband. I think whoever you were meeting at Allies last Friday night probably did.”
    Allies was a dark bar, no cameras, no tracers. Human eyes only. They swept the place once an hour. Sandra had invested some money in the business, so the owner always gave her a private room.
    She wasn’t sure if the detective expected her to tell him who she was with or if he already knew and was testing her. “I thought you all had cameras covering every inch of the city,” she said. “Could identify anyone. You don’t know who I was with?”
    That smile of his was back, more confident now. “As I frequently say, our best intelligence often comes from people like you.”



Chapter 3 (Hendrik, 2039, Brooklyn)

    In the strawberry room, a robot with a large block for an arm and forty syringes hanging off, buried forty strawberry seeds into soilless foam containers all at once. A walking bot pulled the foam raft across the water tray and out of the light. The two worked together in perfect synchronization because they were programmed to do so. They were aligned workers. They could report to their human superior inefficiencies they’d observed in the other one, and do it without malice or fearing retribution. They would drain their battery working, and a human would plug in a charged one.
    Hendrik walked past them as he entered the blue-lit room. His mind was on the wheat. Antoine had called him saying there was some problem in the strawberry room. He was behind the computer in the back corner with Javier.
    “What’s happening?” Hendrik asked.
    “The bees are dying,” Antoine answered.
    “The CO2?”
    Javier joined them behind the computer. He was a highly advanced bot that assisted Hendrik and Antoine.
    “Could be,” Antoine said. “Javier thinks it might be the lights.”
    “There’s been no research done on bees under blue lights for this many hours,” Javier said. “I can see it interfering with their vitamin D production.”
    “Or the CO2 is poisoning them,” Hendrik repeated.
    “That is a possibility too,” Javier said. “How are the robotic bees coming along?”
    “Slowly. They keep tearing the flowers. We’ll get the programming right. It’s live with bees for the foreseeable future.”
    “I’d love to lend a hand with the programming,” Javier said.
    Hendrik had watched Javier re-write the code for how the robot workers. Bots know bots. He looked to Antoine, pointed at Javier. “You don’t need him?”
    “You can take him.”
    “Do you want me to reduce the carbon dioxide or change the lights?” Antoine asked.
    “CO2,” Hendrik said and started walking for the exit. “If they keep dying after that, it’s probably the lights, and we can’t afford to switch the lights. Can we change the genetics of the bees?”
    Antoine nodded. “Probably.”
    Hendrik left the strawberry room and walked to the other end of the hall, back to where his perennial wheats were going to grow. Hendrik sincerely believed indoor wheat was the world’s future, and indoor perennials were WE EAT’s future. You could grow all the strawberries and leafy greens you wanted. If you’re not growing cereals, especially wheat, you’re not getting to the root of the problem.
    In [Brooklyn], Hendrik finally had his hectare. That’s what he always told himself when they were growing in the cramped abandoned subway. Give me a hectare. One hectare of perennials, and I’ll prove it. I’ll figure out how to grow it at the right cost, and we can repeat that all over the world. He’d gotten what he wished for. Lights were up, HVAC and plumbing in, dirt was trucked in from Iowa. It was proving it time.



Chapter 4 (Detective Rose 2041)


    Sandra Arnot was released without saying who she met. Rose knew who it was. She wouldn’t tell him even to help with the murder of her child’s father, her ex-husband.
    Fishy.
    Rose had to process it. He put his headphones on and listened to a Lakota prayer song. It was his way to install a powerful thought into his mind, make it part of his knowledge and context, and not be ruled by it. A few minutes into the prayer, he was cool and centered. He ordered a sandwich for dinner and ate it down in the cafeteria on the station’s first floor. Big dollops of mayonnaise hid in holes in the French bread and snuffed out the taste of the salami.
    Back to his office, the techies emailed him a package of CCTV footage from around the murder scene of Hendrik Arnot. Their message was, Two sets of clips are attached. The first is after the murder and the second is before the murder. For the after murder, there should have been two more angles: the camera watching the intersection of Jefferson and Garfield and the camera on the bridge. Both were down for maintenance. Someone smashed them both the night before.
    Fishy again.
    “After the murder” had three angles: the security camera from Golden Donut, the security camera watching the front door of the Hotel Carry Anne, and the front-facing camera in Mrs. Scofield’s car. Golden Donut’s and Hotel Carry Anne’s camera views of the bridge were blocked by two grey vans. The vans left at exactly the same time, 10 seconds after the murder.
    Mrs. Scofield’s dashboard camera had a view from Jefferson about to hit the T-intersection with Garfield. Its view was looking straight at the bridge, at the stream of people who’d just gotten out of work. The motorcycle came over the crest of the bridge, weaved between a few frightened pedestrians, and right as it hit the sidewalk it disappeared.
    Detective Rose blinked a few times. He rewinded the clip. Watched it again.
    He called in Salma Adullariz, one of the techies still on duty. He didn’t watch the pre-murder clips until he talked to Salma. She often impressed him with her honesty. She was born in Nigeria, came to the US at a young age, and wore scarves and a head cover that was always bright colors.  
    “Where’d the shooter on the motorcycle go?” he asked her once she got to his office.
    It took Salma a moment to respond. “We don’t know, sir. We checked other cameras further up the road on Jefferson and Garfield, and we couldn’t pick it up.”
    “I didn’t watch the pre-murder clips yet. Don’t tell me that the motorcycle just suddenly appears, does it?”
    “Yes, it does. About 10 seconds before the murder, it all of a sudden appears about five yards from the west side of the bridge.”
    “Appears?”
    “I know, sir.”
    “What is going on?”
    She tried to think of an answer and then gave up. “I don’t know, sir. That’s why we emailed it to you for review.”
    Rose’s mind searched for a profile to fit this criminal. Someone with technology he’d never seen before. The coroner’s initial impression was the wound was likely not made by a bullet.
    “What’s the word on the vans?” he asked.
    “They were both rented out from the U-Haul on 32nd Street under the name Dick Tracy,” she said. “Miguel is downstairs writing up the report.”
    “Dick Tracy. Fake?”
    “Most likely. The data team is still checking a few addresses.”   
    “Salma, do you believe that people with unique powers live amongst us here on Earth?”
    “Some unique powers, yes.”
    “I do too, and that’s why I’m worried about this one.”
    “Before we decide things can disappear, Detective Rose, let’s consider reality first.”
    “I like that. So what?”
     Salma didn't have anything to keep that going.
    “I know some reality,” Rose said. “Sandra Arnot has been meeting with Fletcher Wagner.”
    “Okay. Powerful people. Do you think that could be connected to Hendrik’s death?”
    He shrugged like it could be.
     “Their motive would be what?”
    Rose sucked in a long breath up his nose and thought. “That’s what I don’t know, and it’s for you and me to find out.”
    “Me?”
    “I want you to be my number two on the Hendrik Arnot case.”
    “That sounds great.” She wore happiness like it was a warm blanket.
    Rose was happy she said yes. This was going to get bigger than he could handle. “Work time.” He gestured to the chair across the desk from him. “Have a seat.”