Pork Chip

After slaughterhouses were outlawed — along with any other sort of agriculture — people cheered and kissed, and for a moment, we felt the most human we’d ever been.

Humanity’s dependence on food had become a thing of the past; rising CO2/Methane levels and dying soil had not. Outlawing agriculture and food production became the clear next step to our salvation and evolution. It would be a kinder, less-wasteful future, or so they said.

Environmental innovators had invented a marvelous little device to end humanity’s dependence on “external nutrition,” Manducare Chips. Once implanted, these chips manufactured thousands of nano-bots, which flood the host’s bloodstream to convert excess carbon molecules into every sort of vital nutrient. Each chip optimized itself exactly for the ideal health of its host.

I taste aluminum every time my chip kicks in, something the doctor told me was an unfortunate and rare side effect. It is very unfortunate.

The invention of this technology had several immediate effects:

1. It eliminated our reliance on industrial farming and brought down carbon emissions by 80 percent.

2. It ensured no person would ever go hungry or starve, not as long as they were implanted with a Manducare Chip.

3. It eliminated my position as personal chef to the president of the United States.

The president’s last meal before food was outlawed: 2 lobster tails, a fist-sized cut of prime rib, 6 strips of bacon, half a grapefruit, and an entire block of cream cheese. He ate quietly and quickly, didn’t leave a single morsel behind. Then he patted his mouth with a napkin, stood up, and told me I had served my country well and to leave my security badge with the front desk.

I taste aluminum.

*

They used to say that, if you lived in Washington DC and weren’t in the business of writing legislation or building monuments, then you must be in the restaurant business. It was true, it was true.

I lived in a neighborhood full of nothing but fine restaurants, $150 a plate and up. It was considered Washington DC’s high-end restaurant district, feeding politicians of every party and background except Libertarians. ;)

After I lost my job and food was outlawed for every citizen of the US, things in my neighborhood took a turn for the worse. Seven restaurants burned down in the first year. Whispers of arson and insurance fraud abounded.

One such restaurant burned down right across the street from my apartment. I came home one night to find Charlie’s Bistro engulfed in flame. It was like the other restaurant fires, except this one was unlucky enough to spread to two other buildings around it. Not everybody made it out. An elderly couple asphyxiated in the smoke.

I used to love Charlie’s, made the best bruschetta I ever had.

I taste aluminum.

*

Then the crime came. It started with small thefts. Smashed car windows. Stolen bikes. Stolen cars. Robbers started growing out of the street cracks like weeds.

I suspect most of them were ex-restaurant people, like me — bussers, waiters. People that had built their lives around serving a good meal.

During this time, I was once mugged at the point of a Zwilling JA Henckels Mungsten chef’s knife. They used to retail at over $2,000. I handed the thief an empty wallet, which they discarded into a gutter, or so I imagine.

After long, I, too, was hard up in the cash department, and I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to build a monument. The first time I mugged someone I brandished a Japanese steel boning knife, one of the finest in the world. My victim noticed it and complimented me. He said he was sorry for my situation and that I must have been one hell of a chef.

I was.

*

Property values were the next thing to go. I once counted seven moving trucks on my street alone. The upper class was in exodus. In their wake, they left empty apartments, which was great for me.

I traded my one bedroom studio for a penthouse suite. $800 a month, one-third of my original rent. “Better occupied than burned to a crisp,” is what I told the landlord.

We weren’t the only ones taking advantage of the economic change. Restaurants and high society had pushed people out of this area, and now they were coming back.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

Indeed.

As I was watching television one night, I heard an anchor refer to our neighborhood as “Hell’s Diner.” It was a fitting name for an evolving neighborhood. The anchor went on to say that the area was becoming a haven for brothels, drug dens, artist lofts, and libertarian campaign offices. ;)

Their words were accompanied by video footage of a well-dressed man and a scantily-clad woman being pushed into the back of a cop car.

I taste aluminum.

*

I first heard the rumors about underground restaurants while I was working at a gas station — pumping fuel into nondescript government vehicles. It was just a whisper, something about a small menu with cheese stuffed mushrooms and arugula salad, if you could believe it.

Where on Earth did they get the milk for the cheese? I wondered.

Then something more: a Vice news article about an underground pasta ring that had connections to tomato fields in Mendocino, California.

There were rumors about a basement butcher — this, I thought, was too outrageous. Get caught eating a vegetable, and it was a steep fine and up to a year in prison. Get caught with any sort of meat, and you were looking at 20 years minimum and a mob-style crucifixion in the media. Nobody had been caught at it, yet.

Let me clarify something, animals no longer needed to die long before the Manducare Chip. I understood this and was a firm believer in animal rights long before the invention of the Manducare Chip. I put it out of my mind. I didn’t yet know what I was capable of.

*

One night while I was walking home from my shift at the gas station, I was overwhelmed with the aroma of fresh basil. I followed the scent and found a panicked man dumping the contents of a stainless steel pot into a storm gutter. He tossed it and took off, leaving a marinara stained apron floating to the ground behind him.

This was my crossroads. I chose my own fate. My own decisions got me to where I am today.

It wasn’t hard to catch up to the man. I was in the best shape of my life. He was pushing at least 60 and overweight. When I caught him, he was wheezing something about how it wasn’t his marinara. I told him that if that was true, then it was a shame. I hadn’t smelled anything that good in ages.

I taste aluminum.

Fortunately, we were right around the corner from my apartment building. We ducked in and watched some pursuing police pass.

“Thank you. If you want, you can come by the restaurant. It’s not much, but if you like food, it’s all there is.” He smiled.

“I want more than that. I’m one of your new chefs.”

“Come on. You think we’re cooking for a full house or something?”

“You don’t have much choice. You owe me is the way I see it. Otherwise we can call those cops back, see what they have to say about it.”

He sighed. “Well let’s hope you know how to cook. Of course, if they get you, that’s on you. We change locations every night. You’ll never see the customers. You won’t be able to give the police anything to get yourself out of trouble.”

“Fine by me.”

*

He never told me his name. Didn’t need it. He gave me an address for a basement near the west edge of Capitol Hill.

It was the sound of the silverware I noticed first, that familiar sound of metal being hustled to tables. The kitchen was small but clean and well-organized. A woman was expertly hand cutting sheets of pasta. She lingered over me with a suspicious look and directed me to a prep station and a bowl of fresh tomatoes.

“Don’t tell me your name, and I won’t tell you mine. You’re in charge of the marinara. We can’t carry any dead weight. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you should leave.”

I removed an eight-inch Damascus steel chef’s knife from my handbag and plucked a tomato from the bowl. It was overwhelming, like holding the fallen sun, bright red and cool to the touch. Its fullness pressed back against my own. To this day, there hasn’t been a single more beautiful moment in all of my life. I put it against the cutting board and broke the law.

I cooked.

My lust grew with every new ingredient, with each new spice and smell. I sliced and mashed and tasted.

I tasted.

I knew that I could never go back. That was it for me. Cooking was in my soul. The fat man came in as the marinara started to bubble over the heat. He dipped a wooden spoon in for a taste.

“Not bad,” he said.

After that, I cooked every night. Every night a new place. Every night a new food. I never saw the customers. I never cared.

Mushrooms, baked zucchini, strawberry salad, green beans, cashew butter, and produce of every kind— each week brought something new. Still something was missing. Something I dared not utter. Then I did.

The first time I asked them about meat, they threatened to kick me out and never speak to me again. I kept quiet for a few months after that. Then, I asked again. I couldn’t help it. Something drove me. The man pulled me aside.

“I might have something coming up. I’m planning a meal for some powerful people. There are serious consequences for this sort of thing, you know?”

I nodded. He gave me an address and a time.

“Go to the basement when you get there.” He said.

*

He asked me to meet him much earlier in the day than usual. The basement was in the remnants of a burned restaurant. I knew it was trouble when I saw it, but something I couldn’t resist pulled me in.

I taste aluminum.

I walked through the rubble and down the steps. Burnt ruins transformed into a clean, subway-tiled space. Fluorescent light reflected off of the tile gloss, polished floors, and aluminum prep tables. You’d never guess it was there beneath that rubble. The fat man was there waiting for me, dressed in a thick rubber apron.

He pointed to an aluminum table, and we sat. He pulled out a bottle of pre-war Cabernet— rare even before it was illegal —and poured us each a glass.

For a while, we just sat there.

“My father was a butcher,” he said as he swirled a glass in his hand. “He is the one that gave me my passion for food, but he always made sure I was aware of the sacrifice involved. Do you understand?”

I didn’t. I felt restless and uncomfortable. I felt like leaving. I knew I should have.

“I have to know that I can trust you before we do this next meal. I have to know that you understand sacrifice.”

He walked to a door at the end of the room and opened it. A pig walked out. He put a boning knife into my hand, very similar to the one I’d used to rob a man several months prior.

It was funny—I’d used this tool in every aspect of cooking. It was more familiar to me than any instrument in the world, but in that moment, it felt as foreign to me as a hand grenade.

The man explained to me what must be done. Lay it on its side, he holds it, I stick the knife three inches into its neck and slice down.

It. That word unsettled me.

I felt my grip tighten around the knife handle. I’d never killed anything in my life. I’d handled a million pork chops. I was personal chef to the most powerful person in the world. I’d never killed anything.

I watched as the pig wandered the room, sniffing the ground.

“It’s time.” He said.

Stick the knife three inches into its neck, slice down. Its. Its neck. My mind stuttered.

I taste aluminum.

He tugged the pig over to where I stood and turned it on its side. It struggled against him and made unbearable squeals. I just stood there, watching. I felt like telling him to let the damn thing go. The squeals got louder.

“God damnit, do your job before someone hears.” He said.

Stick the knife in three inches. Stick.

My body turned to pure mechanics, functioning not feeling. I knelt near the head of the pig. Its eyes looked up at me, and I knew it was alive. The light in its eyes was almost as beautiful as that first tomato. Almost.

I taste aluminum.

The knife plunged smoothly, and I watched as the world dissolved from its gaze. My hands shook, and I couldn’t help but feel that I too had been cut and was bleeding. That’s when the police kicked down the door and plunged my head into the blood-soaked ground.

“Congratulations, ass hole,” a voice said behind me. “You just made yourself famous.”

They placed me into the cop car and shut the door.

*

Manducare - Latin for the verb “to eat.” I rolled the word silently around in my mouth as I sat at the interrogation room table. It was a small room, fluorescent-lit, with an aluminum table. It could have been a kitchen, if it wasn’t for the two-way mirror and the locked door.

A staunch man with a humorless face walked in and sat across from me.

“So, you’re the guy the press is going to eat alive, pardon the expression. I don’t know what’s worse, the prison time you’re facing or the rain of public shit that’s coming your way. You’re going to be the center of a seven ringed media circus you poor, dumb bastard.” He said, shaking his head.

“I really only have one question. Who was the pig for?”

Without hesitation I answered, “The president of the United States.”

He laughed. “Keep that sense of humor up. You’re going to need it.”

Then he threw me into a holding cell packed with junkies, vagrants, and libertarian politicians. ;) I stayed awake for what seemed like an eternity before they came and got me.

I thought I would be taken to a different cell, but instead I was walked out the back, uncuffed, and put into a black vehicle with blacked out windows.

I taste aluminum.

*

To my surprise, the car took me to the White House, where I was escorted to my old kitchen.

There he was: my old boss, the president. Next to him stood the fat man.

“I heard you sold me out to the cops,” the president said chuckling.

“It was a joke. I— I joke sometimes.” I replied.

“I also heard from our friend here that you did well in the basement, is that true?”

“To be honest sir, I never realized I was a hypocrite until I became a killer. I’m still not sure which is worse.”

“How would you like your old job back? All under the table and protected, of course. You’d cook for me and a small select group of others.”

“Will meat be on the menu?” I asked.

“It wouldn’t be a good menu if it wasn’t.” He said.

“Will I have to— will I have to slaughter the animals myself?”

“I’m certainly not going to do it.” He said. “You’ll continue to learn the trade from our friend here until you can take it over yourself. I don’t want to have too many cooks in the kitchen, if you know what I mean.”

I hesitated. I remembered the pig, the way it looked at me, the feeling of the knife in my hand, the warmth of its blood spilling onto the floor.

“Of course, if that’s too much for you, you can always go back to the cops. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get a lenient judge, but I doubt it.” He said.

I said what anyone facing 20 years in federal prison would say. I said yes.

“Welcome back to the side of the hypocrites.” He smiled.

I taste aluminum