SFS2 - Science Fiction Short Stories: 10 Science Fiction Short Stories (7 page)

“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.

NEAR FUTURE

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.

Once people realized that the announcement was for real, the pre-orders broke records. They were pre-ordered more than iPhones. Meatu had an expected growth of more than 50% in the next quarter's revenue.

They started shipping on the promised date. Since there was a high volume of orders, Meatu faced a lot of shipping delays. Many countries banned the product and didn't allow pre-orders.

Urgent Board meeting in Fleshd

“How did we miss this. We have to remedy this. We need to introduce human meat as well, but what will be the difference maker for us?”

An analyst for the company spoke up. “We underestimated them as simple copycats because they never introduced new things before. Some fresh people gave them this idea. Maybe we need fresh minds to compete with them?”

“Well, we can also book a famous actress or model and introduce human meat,” suggestion a couple of board members.“No, that won't do. We don't simply copy our competition. Who has another idea?” asked the CEO.

Silence.

“Listen. I invited a new person. He's joining us as the Vice President of Creative Endeavors. Let's give him some time to analyze this problem and bring a great idea to our desk that we can discuss at the next meeting.”

After a few minutes of conversation a guy in his thirties entered the room.

“This is Robert Maxwell, the new VP of Creative Endeavors.”

The board didn't expect him to be so young. They weren't impressed with his appearance and most were wondering where he came from. Why was he important enough to give a top role in the company to?

He introduced himself

“Hi. As he said, I am Robert Maxwell. I worked for Meatu for five years. During that time I gave them a lot of valuable ideas but they were content with copying your company. I'm here because I know that Fleshd can destroy Meatu in the marketplace. This is where we will form the new ideas that bring us into global dominance of the artificial meat market.”

“Thanks, Robert. Alright everyone, let's meet again in a few days. Cathy will let you know more tonight about the schedule. I think big things are happening and we're going to come out on top, especially with the help of Robert.”

“How about now?” asked Robert.

“What do you mean, now?” said the CEO.

“I have an idea now. Is it alright if I pose it to the group?”

“Sure, why not?” replied the CEO

The board was surprised that he already had an idea.

“Listen, we can't go buying up every actress or celebrity like Meatu has. And there's not enough rare animals in the world to supplant human meat in the marketplace. It's a big seller, there's no doubt. The only meat that can compete with human meat is, well, human meat. If we were to go get a celebrity, they're going to want a lot of money because now they realize how big their endorsement would be. Then Meatu buys someone, then we buy someone and celebrities make a ton of money off of us. Are we here to make celebrities richer?”

“Certainly not!” shouted an older member of the board.

“Exactly. We're here to make ourselves richer. The only solution left is crowd sourcing.”

A few of the board members nodded in agreement but the rest looked lost.

“Let me explain. In crowd sourcing, we get ideas, a product or a service from people in a crowd. For example Apple has the Appstore with more than a million apps. Apple could never develop this many apps on their own. It's all developed by the Apple developer crowd. The AppStore revenue is a billion dollars every year. It's not because they sell hardware. It's not because they develop software, it's simply a facilitation mechanism. Apple took a lion's share of the profits and shared some with the developers as well. It's a win-win situation. Apple doesn't need to buy the apps or develop the apps and they still get paid.

“Similarly, we will launch the “Meat Store,” so anyone can sell their meat. Before they can list that meat they have to send their tissue and get medical clearance from us. We keep all the tissue in the storage center and they can upload details for it. Whoever is interested in buying the meat can order it through the website, mobile app or by phone. We will grow the tissue and fulfill the order. On demand processing. We share some royalty with the person who gave the tissue and we're good to go.

“In this model, people who sell their tissue get a recurring income for a one time tissue collection. They market themselves. We don't need to pay any upfront cost. Celebrities will come to us. Actresses will come to us. They'll all want a piece of the action.”

The board members were very excited with this. They immediately set the plan into motion.

Six months later, Fleshd's revenue increased by 200% and thousands of celebrities were part of the Meat Store. And they were rapidly adding more people. Human meat was now the trend. And food habits were categorized not as vegetarian, or vegan, but by whether or not someone ate human meat. Humanitarians and non-humanitarians.

PRESIDENT'S OFFICE

The President and Home Minister sat on opposite sides.

“What did you want to discuss so badly?” asked the President.

“It's about the Fleshd Meat Store.”

“Yes. I know about it. I ordered some. Shipping is somewhat slow, but the product is exciting, isn't it?”

The Home Minister was surprised because he thought the president was a non-Humanitarian.

“Do you eat human meat, Mr. President?”

“Sure, why not? The whole country eats it nowadays.”

“There's concerns though. A lot of college kids are on the Meat Store. It seems like we're going back to the old stone age days. Humans eating humans. This is the reality of the situation.”

“Who's dying from it? It's only artificial meat. It's not real. You can donate your hair to Locks of Love. You can donate your blood. When you die you can even be an organ donor. Or heck, you can donate a kidney when you're alive. It's their own choice to be part of the Meat Store,” replied the President.

“Sure, sure. It seems to be under control now, but the future will not be good. Or Future Prediction software predicts that there will be alterations to that. Things will go badly.”

The Home Minister opened up his laptop and logged in to the government's Future Prediction Application. He selected hot trends and chose the future of the Meat Store. It displayed the following report:

1. People may start to see other people as food.
   
2. Some may feed human meat to animals and the animals will develop a taste for it.
   
3. It encourages racism. No longer does Chinese food come from China, it is Chinese people. Some say that certain people are dark meat or white meat and argue about who tastes better. There's already been tension.
   
4. Over 80% of the world will consume human meat.
   
5. Human meat will illegally spread to countries in which it is banned.
   
6. If someone doesn't have their meat in the store, someone might forcibly take a tissue sample from them to see what they taste like.
   

“As you know, our Future Prediction software is 80% correct. It may not predict every possibility but most of those will come to pass. We need to ban human meat immediately and recommend other nations to follow suit.”