by Robin Sloan
“I was a subscriber,” I said. “I haven’t had it in a while.”
He grinned, unbowed. “It’s getting better all the time!”
Inside, the air was dense and smelled slightly sour. Every surface, walls and ceiling, was braided with pipes painted primary colors, some as skinny as my wrist, others fat enough to admit Jaina Mitra’s Tesla, all connecting an array of enormous vats marked with cryptic identifiers. It looked like a power plant or a refinery. In a way, it was both.
Klamath spun around and continued to speak as he led us, walking backward, toward one of the vats. This was not his first tour.
“Farmers in Fresno talk about yield per acre. That’s economic, not human. So what if you’re growing four tons of alfalfa per acre? Talk to me about people. How many people’s lives are you supporting? How many healthy lives?”
That seemed like a reasonable question.
“Slurry is one hundred percent vertically integrated here, so I can tell you, this unit”—he patted a mammoth vat affectionately—“supports two thousand people every week. Two thousand!”
Two thousand students lived in my college dorm. I imagined all of them lined up in front of the vat, bowls in hand, waiting to get their daily ration of dystopia.
“We put in just five thousand dollars’ worth of raw ingredients. As Dr. Mitra can tell you, it used to be a lot more. We’re making it more efficient. You know what my goal is? Everybody says this is crazy, but I say it’s physics. An average person uses about three kilowatt hours of energy every day. Just to live. You know the price of three kilowatt hours in California? Forty-five cents. That’s our goal. It ought to be just like plugging yourself into the wall.”
“That sounds pretty robotic,” I said. “And I say that as someone who likes robots.”
“I just want everybody to be healthy,” Klamath said. His bulldozer enthusiasm faltered; I detected a note of weariness. “We should be way past this already. I want people to have time to do the things they want, rather than work to make money to buy food, or scrounge around in the kitchen.”
He stopped, and steepled his fingers theatrically.
“But I know people don’t want to eat gray goo. I do. That’s why Dr. Mitra’s work is so important. That’s why we want to acquire Lembas.”
Ah. It came into focus.
Klamath was leading us through the vats, toward the farthest corner of the facility.
“Those fields you drove through? That whole system? It’s a dead end.”
It seemed like a rather large and vibrant dead end.
“Here, we can program a yeast to make anything. Gasoline. Heroin.”
Hummus?
“Not yet. But damn it, we are close. Dr. Mitra’s work is the key. Right now, I can get one organism going … a yeast, or a bacteria like E. coli. But we want more complex products. We need to assemble and train whole communities.”
Like Lembas.
“Like your starter,” Jaina Mitra said lightly.
Listening to Dr. Klamath talk, hearing him slam the old system, seeing the resources he commanded, it struck me: Was I speaking to Mr. Marrow?
* * *
THE VAT WAS THE SAME SHAPE as the one in Jaina Mitra’s lab, but ten times as large, a monstrous egg of shining stainless steel. A neat sign on the front read COMMUNITY PRODUCTION TEST, which sounded sort of nice. Healthy.
Klamath patted the vat affectionately. “It’s cute, right? We run our wacky experiments in these little ones. I want to give it to Dr. Mitra. And this, too.” He stepped over to a plastic-clad box the size of a mini-fridge—another flawlessly anonymous piece of biotech gear. “This is brand-new, which is why it looks like shit. It can build microorganisms from scratch. We hollow out a yeast, squirt in some new DNA, boot it up.”
I frowned. “You just hollow … out…”
Dr. Klamath gave the box a quick caress, let his hand linger. “It’s a printer for life.”
Jaina Mitra extended a finger to touch it, too. Their affection for this anonymous machine was palpable. “These are impossible to get.”
I looked up and considered the vat. It was bigger than my apartment.
“You can’t just feed my starter flour and water,” I said. “Not if you want to make this much. It likes King Arthur.” I paused. “You can get it online.”
“Or we could try feeding it Slurry,” Jaina Mitra said, and Dr. Klamath nodded gamely. Would the Clement Street starter eat Slurry? Possibly. Would its farts be as fragrant as mine had been? Probably.
Dr. Klamath squared himself to me. “Here’s the thing. Before I give Dr. Mitra the go-ahead to get this revved up, we need some legal protection. No big deal, just something that says you give us the right to exploit this biological IP that you control, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve got the contracts ready. I want to make it worth your while, and give you a stake in the outcome of this project. If you have questions, that’s why we’re here. I hope you find this as exciting as we do.”
Jaina Mitra’s face grew solemn. “My deal with Mr. Marrow was that he got twenty percent of Lembas. If this is as big as Dr. Klamath thinks it can be … that could mean millions of dollars for the Marrow Fair.”
Hearing that sum, Dr. Klamath made a face as if he’d just eaten something bad. “We’re not playing for pocket change here. We’re playing for the whole future of food.”
But was this deal exclusive?
Dr. Klamath rolled his eyes. “What? No. Keep baking. It’s great. I mean, I don’t eat bread, but Dr. Mitra says it’s great.”
Walking back toward the lobby, I considered the vastness of the facility. If Jaina Mitra’s work was successful—if she used whatever talent was hidden in the Clement Street starter to stabilize and support Lembas, to make it viable—it was possible that all of these vats might be turned over to its production.
This was scale.
It was two thousand people sustained by a single vat.
For the Clement Street starter, it would be a conquest unimaginable.
* * *
ON THE RIDE HOME, Jaina Mitra explained that if I agreed to license the Clement Street starter to her, I would receive fifty thousand shares, or five percent, of Lembas Labs, an LLC set to be acquired, soon, by Slurry Systems of Fresno, California.
“Those shares could be worth a lot of money,” she said.
There was my nineteen million dollars. I could split it with Beoreg—his reward for sharing the starter—and his restaurant could have very nice tables, indeed.
I thought about it all the way through Madera, Patterson, Tracy, and Livermore, and when Jaina Mitra pulled her Tesla onto the airfield in Alameda, I had my answer.
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Her face crumpled. “Were we not clear? You have something very, very important.”
“I just don’t feel like it’s mine to give. In fact, it’s the other way around. You don’t understand, because you haven’t worked with it. And I heard a story about it—a warning.” I paused. “I’m going to get rid of it.”
“Please, please, please don’t do that.”
I cracked the passenger-side door. “I’m sure you’ll find another way to make your stuff work. A better way.”
“Let’s keep talking about this!” Jaina Mitra called as I stepped out of the car. She was reaching over, her seat belt cutting into her shoulder, her expression pleading. “Keep that starter. Keep it alive!”
THE ISLAND OF THE MAZG
THAT NIGHT, I SLEPT ON MY FUTON on Cabrillo Street, satisfied with my decision. There were paths ahead that didn’t require the Clement Street starter. I still had the Vitruvian, and I had become possibly the world’s leading expert on the use of robot automation in kitchen processes.
In the morning, I was startled awake by a bad dream that melted away as soon as I tried to remember it. It was dark outside. I decided I would go to the Marrow Fair and make my peace with the starter. It felt like it should be a private affair.
I rode my bike to the pi
er and waited for Carl to arrive. The atmosphere was close and clammy, heavy clouds hanging low. Some days, working in the Marrow Fair, I missed the sky, but this would not be one of them. It would be cooler down in the depot.
The Omebushi approached the pier, chugging merrily. Aboard, Carl’s mood matched mine.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” he said, his voice still sticky with sleep. “People said you were spending the night.” He poured us both some coffee and launched his boat again.
We cleared the Bay Bridge and rounded Yerba Buena Island on the way to Alameda. Then, we both saw it at the same time.
Ahead, the silhouette of the island had changed. A hazy bulge loomed in the center of the airfield. There was a new structure there—vast, round, and somehow built overnight.
Was this part of Mr. Marrow’s grand opening?
The Omebushi brought us closer.
Though it was as large as one of the hangars, it wasn’t a proper structure, but rather an organic form with a swollen, gaseous look. It might have been a rising hot-air balloon or a crashed dirigible.
Or, as I considered it, an enormous panettone.
Carl muttered a curse. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he dug in the compartment beneath his seat, produced a pair of binoculars, and tossed them into my lap.
Through the binoculars, I could make out the texture of the structure, and a sick feeling bloomed in my gut.
The forgotten lemon I’d discovered in my explorations of the depot’s dark corridors—I had picked it up, only to discover that the bottom was fuzzed over with fungus, velvety to the touch. Out of sick curiosity, I’d held my breath and peeled the lemon’s skin away to discover that the fungus had padded its interior with airy filaments.
Through the binoculars, I saw that, but huge.
The billowing surface looked velvety like the underside of the lemon, and in the softness there was a pattern of ridges and depressions, and in that pattern, there was the unmistakable swirl of faces.
I put the binoculars down.
I knew those faces.
The Omebushi bumped roughly against the tiny pier. “Better get in there and see what’s happening,” Carl said.
I waved my bone-key token in front of the bay-side door. It called me skinny and unlocked, but when it opened, there was no depot.
Instead, I stared at a wall of the same material that bloomed on the airfield. Pale, creamy, billowing, and patterned with familiar faces. They were variously ecstatic and anguished and accusing and calm.
Up close, the smell was overpowering. Banana and gunpowder.
For a moment I was hypnotized. Then, tentatively, I extended a finger and poked at one of the faces. The substance yielded like foam.
It had the consistency of Lembas.
It was Lembas.
Carl was at my side, holding an oar. “Careful there,” he said. He prodded the ballooning substance with the butt of the oar and it fell away; behind the Lembas was more Lembas. The depot was full of it.
* * *
AGRIPPA’S GOATS WERE CLUSTERED at the edge of the airfield, clearly perturbed by the apocalyptic puff pastry that had invaded their domain. Their keeper stood among them; he looked more placid.
“Agrippa!” I called. “How did this happen?”
“Don’t ask me,” he said. “The goats woke me up. They were freaking out.”
“Have you called anyone?”
“Nope.”
I wanted to sputter in protest. I remembered who I was dealing with.
I ran to the control tower, descended the spiral staircase, and waved my bone key. The door opened—STILL—TOO—SKINNY—revealing the concourse.
Just inside, my workstation was safe, unaffected. The Vitruvian wobbled apprehensively. The Clement Street starter was quiet in its tub. But farther down the concourse, where Jaina Mitra’s lab had been, the Lembas had formed a massive trunk that reached up to grip the ceiling. There, it splayed out in a dramatic many-fingered star, and one of its fingers had found the skylight above the lemon grove and pushed its way through to form the base of the bulbous structure rising on the airfield. Below it, the lemon grove had been consumed entirely. A few dark leaves were suspended in the Lembas like feathers on the nose of a cartoon cat.
The great bloom of Lembas blocked the skylight, so the only illumination came from the grow rooms, which cast their pink glow across a rippling scene that also had a soundtrack: Chaiman’s album was playing, and not the spare overture but the later tracks, the ones in which he had accelerated the songs of the Mazg and overlaid them with rising sirens, bursts of noise, and a driving oonce-oonce-oonce.
It was a fungal party hellscape.
The Lembas was not finished. Around the absorbed lemon grove, it was growing in hungry surges. Was it obeying the oonces? I watched it bulge sickly in time to the music.
Then a figure darted into view. It was Horace: wielding a wide book, charging forward, poking at the Lembas, slashing it, gaining ground.
Just beyond the grove was his library.
Horace was holding the Lembas at bay.
His shouts echoed. “Back!” he hollered. “Back!”
I kicked at the brakes on the Vitruvian’s wheeled base, spun it around, and pushed forward. We coasted together down the yellow-tape road, the arm’s momentum almost overbalancing it as we caromed into workstations and refrigerators before reaching the place where Horace was making his stand. He had his heels set, swiping with the book as the Lembas encircled him, oonce by oonce.
I locked the Vitruvian’s brakes and grabbed at Horace’s shirt. “Let the arm do it!” Then, all my scorn for the programmers on Interface drained away as I shouted, “Arm, change task! Say hello!” and the Vitruvian began to swing in a wide, slow arc. Where Horace’s book had been making scratches, the arm made great gouges. It was tireless. The Lembas could not pass.
I heard a howl and turned to see Stephen Agrippa emerge from the depot’s vehicle ramp. He was running, Hercules the alpaca beside him, and all the goats a pace behind. Agrippa urged them forward with feral hoots and yips. Hercules spat.
The Lembas was vast but brittle; where its growth had slowed, it left an airy matrix, like the crumb of one of my loaves but scaled up massively. So, when we struck it—the Vitruvian with its great fist, Hercules with his hooves, Agrippa and I taking swipes with fingers curled into claws—it broke away in ragged chunks that tumbled and bounced to be consumed by the ravenous and, frankly, terrifying goats.
The goats feasted. The Lembas shrank. I reached out, gently now, and brought a sliver of the substance to my tongue. It didn’t dissolve into slime or stick to my teeth. This Lembas was a light, crispy bread with a deep well of flavor.
It was … really good.
Horace was still swinging with his book, enraged, protecting his archive. I unlocked the Vitruvian’s brakes and pushed it slowly forward on its base. Its great swipes sent chunks of Lembas the size of beer kegs arcing slowly through the air.
At last, it was too much. The Lembas could not hold. A thin crack crept up the trunk, then spiderwebbed out, and it all began to fracture, glacierlike, huge slabs coming unstuck. The giant top, deprived of its foundation, came tumbling down—but gently. I tucked my chin into my chest, covered my head with my hands, and held my breath. The collapse was nearly soundless; just the whisper of a Rice Krispies Treat moving against itself.
I peeked. I was covered in the stuff. Everything was covered in the stuff. The smell of bananas was overpowering.
* * *
LATER THAT MORNING, the people of the Marrow Fair surveyed the damage in a deep, padded silence. Sometime during the scuffle, Chaiman’s album had reached the end of its ooncing and the playlist, mercifully, had not been set to repeat.
The Lembas had filled much of the depot, and Agrippa was going corridor by corridor with his insatiable goats. Hercules, however, had reached his limit. The alpaca was sitting in the ruin of the lemon grove, apparently asleep.
Horace had succe
ssfully defended his archive, and the cricket farm had resisted the Lembas without assistance; there, the wave front stopped abruptly, ragged-edged, gnawed to a standstill by thousands of tiny mouths. The crickets chirped contentedly.
I looked around the depot and for a moment I saw it with Agrippa’s eyes. These were the ruins of a glittering, overnight civilization. There were aeons packed into those hours.
More people were milling around the depot now and the spell was breaking. I heard cries of alarm and dismay, and then, increasingly, laughter. Vendors dug out their workstations, checked to see what had been wrecked and what was intact. Our bodies were all coated gray-green with a dusting of Lembas. We might have been made of Lembas ourselves.
Lily Belasco arrived, her lips curling in disbelief that such a disaster could have unfolded on the day before the market’s public launch. She conscripted Orli and me to help Naz excavate the coffee bar and return the espresso machine to operational status.
“Quick,” she urged. “Quick quick quick.”
* * *
WE ALL WORKED TOGETHER, hauling the Lembas away in slabs, piling it up like firewood. Finally, we reached the epicenter, and there we found Jaina Mitra, who had scratched out a little cave for herself. I’d expected panic. Instead, she was exultant.
The bioreactor told the tale. The metal twisted apart in a wicked pucker. It had been breached from the inside.
Through the broken skylight, I heard sirens on the airfield.
“You used the starter,” I said. “You just took it.”
Jaina Mitra nodded, unrepentant. Her eyes flashed white and wild beneath a mask of Lembas dust.
* * *
THE FIRE DEPARTMENT blocked off the airfield and set up a perimeter around the control tower, clearing us out of the depot, but there was a languor to their efforts. The bloom was quiescent. In its great leap into the world above, the hybrid Lembas and Clement Street starter seemed to have burned itself out.
The firefighters stood around, not sure what to do. A helicopter hung low overhead. I waved.
“You can eat it,” I heard one firefighter say to another.
