Two: Dinnertime

I looked for a convenient place to sit and decided on a fallen two-wheeler. I daintily dusted the thing and sat down.

I had to laugh at that. I mean, dusting where I was sitting down. Ingrained behavior one picks up from a civilized former life. It’s a wonder I didn’t tuck a little bib in my jumpsuit’s collar before having supper. Supper… heheh. That still sounds funny – supper implies family around a table and talking about their day while they enjoyed a meal together. At least to me. And this was not the case now…

I put the utility backpack down and pulled out the two access drawers near its bottom. The backpack was actually what military people and survivalists called a solar powered “food resequencer.” My old cellmate, an ex-Special Forces Marine called these resequencers the “best thing since sliced bread,” and it would allow a Marine to survive anywhere almost indefinitely. I don’t really know how it worked. All I knew is that it made food.

The pack’s “drawers” were actually the food resequencer’s containers where any organic material I put into the receptacles on top would be “resequenced” into thousand-calorie meals in each of the drawers, each being about two pounds max.

The food produced would depend on what I set in the pack’s computer. I was lucky enough to have, ummm, “liberated” a model with about a thousand programs loaded into its memory, giving me a choice of a thousand different meals, and it would take care of simulating the meal with the necessary nutrients, carbohydrates, faux fiber, minerals, et cetera, with the same texture, taste and color. I would regularly put a couple of drops of my saliva or sweat onto a little plate before activating the thing, and the machine would tailor the food according to what it thought I needed in terms of nutrients.

Amazing device, actually. Also extremely expensive. But then again, I didn’t really pay for it.

The pack also produced drinkable H2O, also extracted from the organic material I fed into it, and could produce about 2 CC of water per minute, which it kept in a built-in two-liter bottle clipped to the back. It couldn’t replicate coffee, though, or beer or juice or whatever – just lukewarm water.

Yeah. I failed to pick up a pack that could produce hot and cold meals and drinks, so I had to make do with cold meals and just plain, lukewarm H2O.

But beggars can’t be choosers.

I sat down and tucked into my dinner. Each of the containers was less than one third full, but that was fine. Because, if they were full, I’d have had to divide each into three portions so that I’d have enough to eat for the rest of the day: the pack could only produce a max of four pounds of food per day.

Anyway. I had an excellent meal of cold meatloaf in one container (with what looked like carrots and green beans embedded into it), and very tasty, but cold, mashed potatoes laced with really tasty gravy in the other container. The pack provided one – just one – utensil, which I think was called a “sfork.” But that was good enough to comfortably tuck into my meal.

My meal wasn’t really meatloaf or mashed potatoes, but for all intents and purposes, they were the closest to being the real thing. And, just as tasty, too.

While I was finishing off my meal of faux beef and faux potatoes, I decided on my next two. I looked through the menu and selected spaghetti and meatballs, and the other fresh fruit – maybe apples this time. I took a mouthful or water, rinsed my mouth and smeared some of my saliva on the silver plate near the top. I then activated it, punched in my selection and, by tomorrow morning, I’ll have my imitation spaghetti and fake sliced apples ready for breakfast.

I put back the containers, stuck the sfork into its little slot, and started the cleaning routine. I then pulled out the remaining organic material that was wrapped in its own little cellulose package the pack made just to keep the residue in, and threw it over the side of the roadway.

“Not to worry,” I said to no one in particular, “completely biodegradable and ecology-friendly.”

It wasn’t that funny anymore, but at least I could still chuckle a little bit.

I then grabbed handfuls of grass, weeds, pieces of wood or whatever organic material I could find, stuffed them into the receptacle where the waste organic material used to be until I couldn’t put in any more.

I then settled my pack on my shoulders and started walking. This time, my walk was a lot more leisurely since I wasn’t worried about being chased for the moment. There was still a little light left so I might as well make use of it and get some more miles under me.

The direction I was walking was towards what I saw in a wall mural several weeks ago as toward some sort of “space center” (the complete name was hard to make out except for the words “space center”). My hope was, when I got to this space center, I’d find something that will help me get off this godforsaken dead planet and back home. Or at least back to civilization.

My obsession about getting home was growing. Sometimes, I would even catch myself thinking that maybe I’d turn myself over to the cops just so I could get back to civilization, even if that meant going back to prison. But, hopefully, my resolve would hold up long enough that I won’t do that.

‘Kay. Let’s start walking!