Child Food Storage

They cheered the obsolescence of the refrigerator with wonder and abandon.

“The day of the spoiled food is over,” one news anchor announced.

On a windy, overcast morning, the TeleQuantum Research company demonstrated the power of their new ‘FoodSave’ line of machines. From as small as a rolling cooler to as large as a shipping container, these rectangles demonstrated a world-changing ability: they could prevent food from changing in any way, provided the chamber remained shut and the power on.

“We will demonstrate the power of the FoodSave,” CEO Russell Chamberford declared. The device had started its journey in India, where a five-course meal from the finest restaurant in Mumbai was placed piping-hot into the chamber and the power activated. Planes and drones provided constant footage to prevent accusations of fraud. The white-and-bluish-gray rectangle faintly buzzed over the hiss of the Chicago wind. The truck deposited it on the platform by the podium.

Russell pressed a command on the keypad and the chamber opened. Once employees placed the items of food on a table. Reporters and journalists each sampled the food.

“This is remarkable,” a reporter for the Sun-Times said, taking a bite of biryani with plastic fork, “it looks and tastes just like it did at the start of the footage.”

Six more public experiments were conducted. Foods easily spoiled by room temperature and ambient air went into the chamber. Strawberries came out after weeks looking fresh. Roast ham was still hot after a month. After scientists got ahold of the device, and took it apart to analyze, they found they could verify each of the results.

Overnight, refrigerator production went from common to niche. Food shipment revolutionized, with no wastage over long distances. Better yet, it required only as much electricity as a laptop running 4K video. Medicines could travel anywhere without risk. The most vulnerable materials could be taken from one lab to another without the slightest change.

Only Shawn Rumenkin didn’t cheer the discovery.

Shawn celebrated his fifth birthday eight months before the announcement. On his fourth birthday, his parents had discovered their boy had a remarkable gift. He could pause time in a small area.

His parents, a welder and a tailor, hadn’t expected a visit one morning from Russell Chamberford.

“Mister and Missus Rumenkin,” the CEO had said, “your son has a remarkable ability. I’d like to pay for his services.”

They’d scarcely believed the offer. The company would pay one million dollars in company stock if little Shawn would visit the offices of TeleQuantum and let them scan his brain.

So, the parents, desperate to escape a mountain of bills and a minefield of an economy, accepted.

“Is this our little champ?” the lead scientist, an elderly Japanese woman in protective gear, said.

“Uh-huh,” Shawn said. “You wanna look at my brain?”

“With our scanner,” the woman said.

So, walking on jittery legs, the four-and-a-half-year-old climbed into the chamber, took a seat, and a complex series of overlapping electromagnetic fields passed over him. They asked him to use his power, and he did. His hair stood on end. He felt tingly all over. A bit of laughter and it was over.

The family went home, put their child to bed, and life in the Rumenkin household went on. Sixteen weeks after the fateful demonstration, the company stock hit a high of eight hundred dollars a share. The Rumenkin’s cashed out their stock and moved to Los Angeles.

The world experienced an unprecedented boom, the company crowded out its competitors, and life was good for a while.

The boy went to school, played with his fancy toys, and grew up, but never got over a nagging feeling in the back of his head.

“Mom,” he said, at the age of eight, “I’m feeling kinda funny.”

His mother, now a fashion YouTuber, took him in her arms. “What way?”

He scratched his head. “I don’t know.” He sighed and tilted his head one way then another. “It’s like I’m in more than one place, but I’m here.”

Medical scans turned up nothing, and psychologists and psychiatrists found themselves unable to make this feeling of his go away.

“Explain it,” one Doctor, a middle-aged black woman, said.

Nine-year-old Shawn breathed in, concentrated, and opened his eyes. “I feel like I’m in one spot, and I can’t see or feel anything, then I come back to me. It’s all the time. I’m bouncing back and forth.”

She took notes. “And this, I assume, is a major distraction?”

“Yeah,” Shawn replied. “Sometimes I can ignore it.”

“Unfortunately,” she said, “there’s nothing physically wrong with you, but I believe you are experiencing something.”

TeleQuantum, predictably, wasn’t helpful. They offered the parents to search through their documentation. Both parents took them up on this offer and discovered nothing. Lawyers found no wrongdoing, investigators found nothing incriminating. Shawn, though, was becoming more and more convinced the company had something to do with it.

University of California Berkley had their science department examine the machine under the tightest of scrutiny. Professor John Turnington, professor of quantum physics, stood puzzled. “There definitely is a connection at the quantum level between your mind and these machines, but it isn’t outputting enough energy in either direction to make you feel the way you do.”

No one in government wanted to touch the issue, because the FoodSave had become the backbone of modern transportation. After TeleQuantum was bought by Industrial Cosmos Machines, the FoodSave became the FullSave, with applications for all kinds of goods. So much money was made and so many lives touched that Shawn went about his life with constant distraction in the background. Every so often, he’d feel like he was somewhere else, somewhere sightless and soundless.

He moved on, learned to deal with it, took medication, and went to college.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Shawn Rumenkin.” The girl seated next to him in Animal Biology had long, auburn hair and a pale complexion where he had short, red hair and a tan complexion.

“I’m Tina Gallborn,” she said.

They went on three dates before she went to his place.

Lying on the couch, wrapped up in her, he told her his secret. “I can pause time.”

She scoffed. “What, like the FullSave?”

He pushed the TV remote off the table and it froze midair. “It only works in a nearby area, but yes.”

She gave a mischievous grin. “I can read your mind.”

He raised and lowered his eyebrows. “Really. What am I thinking?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. I have to make a connection, it takes time.”

“Maybe you can find out what’s causing this weird feeling I’ve had since I was a kid,” he told her.

She wrapped her hands around his temples. “Give me a minute or two. It takes focus.”

He smiled as she massaged his temples, focusing. The grin on her face became a neutral expression. Then, she let out a shocked gasp. He pulled her hands off. “What?”

She stared at him. “You’re…everywhere.”

He stared dumbfounded. “What?”

She put her hands back on his head. “Let me see if I can show you.”

At first, nothing happened. Pinpricks appeared, one after another, and soon, his mind flooded with cascading impacts. Stabbing needles of thought crashed into him. It was him, thousands of him, all over the world, devoid of their senses, trapped in place, scared, frightened, and in pain.

“Oh god,” he cried, his tears pouring. “It’s me! I’m trapped!”

She realized it as he did. “Your mind is in the FullSave machines!”

“But how?”

His answer came one morning.

“This just in!” the anchor shouted, the news coverage filling every available screen. “FullSave machines the world over have stopped working!”

The stock market collapsed multiple times as international agencies rushed to bring traditional refrigerators into production as quickly as possible. Millions starved as food storage systems failed at once. By the time order was restored nineteen months later, the death toll was one point eight billion people worldwide, and the cost to the economy was in the tens of trillions of dollars.

It hit the world with such pandemonium, that no one noticed the death of Russell Chamberford.

He died in a car crash the day the machines failed. Rescue workers shoved him in a FullSave until he could get to the hospital.

He fought them the whole time, demanding they use old-fashioned emergency treatment.

His last words were, “I can’t keep the boys asleep if I’m paused!”