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Thing from the Future: Taste it, be grateful, and be surprised

Published onSep 30, 2019
Thing from the Future: Taste it, be grateful, and be surprised

Keywords:

ARC - Transform

TERRAIN - Agriculture

OBJECT - Plant

MOOD - Surprise

“Taste it, be grateful, and be surprised”

Lecture for 5th-grade kids, September 30, 2241

"You might have learned that people used to grow things in a very different way 200 years ago, but do you know why we have new varieties of fruits and vegetables released every year? Do you know why they never leak their flavors before the product announcement on September 30? Today we are going to talk about the history of the food we have everyday, and the great invention that saved mankind from starvation.

In 2209, the earth encountered a supernova from Canopus, which is only 310 light-years from the blue planet. The outburst from the enormous dying star brings overwhelming radiation, completely changed the climate on earth and wiped out almost most of the lives on earth. Human being managed to keep themselves safe and sound by hiding in underground shelter NOAH (or more commonly referred to as "the Anthill"), as well as some of the species. The Anthill, however, sheltered far more refugees than its designed capacity, and the density has left almost no room for agriculture. Not before long, people were forced to get back to the ground and cultivate.

However, the first efforts were met with good news and bad news. The good news is, plants can still grow even under the strong radiation from the supernova, while the bad news is that the radiation was strong enough to breakdown the DNA of the plants, so they never yield the products as they did before the supernova. For a short period, people could only keep them grow in radiation shielding greenhouses, and the prices of these food products were often, if not always, unaffordable.

The shadow of starvation never really left, until we have Dnilasor Eisle Nilknarf, who published her ground-breaking research result on how to cultivate on earth surface without building costly greenhouses. "We should engage the battle with the environment bravely with the technology we have, we will be forced to if we don't choose to," she says, "it is about survival and not about challenging the god."

Prof. Nilknarf's team discovered a method to find productive crops that can grow on the earth surface. They took the gene from normal crops, chopped them into fragments, shuffled and combined these fragments to create a considerable amount of variations. These cells were nurtured into explants and preliminary selection will be done by AI. Promising explants were brought to the ground and, some of them thrived in the harsh environment.

With this method, the variety and yield of crops rapidly increased. As the plant is created from gene fragments, the harvested hybrids bring us full of surprise. This is why we have watermelons growing like grapes but in the size of apples, while tasting like cucumbers; we have cucumbers whose sections are like tomatoes, and the seeds can sometimes be very spicy.

On September 30 of 2219 when Prof. Nilknarf released their first harvest, they asked the audience to bravely try the taste of the hybrids and give reviews. Everyone was so impressed by the variety and abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables the brought, and it became a tradition since then. This is why we keep the flavor of the new products in secret and ask the guests to try them on the announcement."

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