Chapter 4

Jane, feeling humiliated, remained tied spread eagle on her bed. The only changes in her situation from the morning were that she was now sitting upright a bit with pillow propping her up and she was wearing an adult diaper. There is no way to maintain any dignity as an adult while wearing a diaper. She had asked Jack to cover her with a sheet but he had refused stating that he wanted to see her bindings.

When she had complained, he had reached over and pinched her nipple. He found her struggles to get off the bed entertaining. She was not amused and swore that if she got her hands on him that he’d die a slow and painful death. He was firmly convinced that she was serious about killing him.

Completing the picture of her infantile condition, Jack sat beside the bed with a bowl of soup in his hand. He dipped the spoon into the soup and held it to her mouth. She opened her mouth and accepted the soup. It was humiliating to be fed like some kind of infant. She kept waiting for him to spout some nonsense poem about opening her mouth to get fed.

Jack said, “One of the things that I like most about this time is the food. It is absolutely amazing.

“I remember eating my first hamburger after I had arrived. I had never tasted real meat before and I was kind of worried about eating it. All of the so-called beef of my time was actually flavored soy products. When I bit into that hamburger, I couldn’t believe the richness of the flavors that assaulted my taste buds. There was the bun, the pickles, the onions, the lettuce, the mustard, the ketchup and the hamburger patty.

“I was overwhelmed by the experience and nearly burst out in tears. I had never eaten anything so good in my life. I swear that I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

“I had hamburgers before coming back here, but I really prefer fresh vegetables,” Jane said.

“I never had a fresh vegetable until I came here,” Jack said.

In Jack’s timeline food was considered one of the basic rights granted a person by the government. In theory, the government provided free food for anyone who wanted it. In practice, getting the so-called free food often required bribing someone.

The government provided food was basically a square brick that was the same texture as a kitchen sponge. It provided the government mandated 550 calories. According to the labels on the packages, they came in five basic flavors: beef, chicken, pork, fish, and vegetarian. It didn’t matter which flavor one took ... they all tasted the same and required hot sauce to make it palatable. Rumor had it that the primary ingredient was recycled paper with flavors, vitamins, and minerals added. The nutritional quality of the food was poor enough that a person would basically die if it was the sole basis of a diet for a year.

One step above the government food brick was the stew. The stews had little in common with their ancestors, other than being comprised of chunks of mystery products floating in a thick paste like substance. Like all foods, one package of stew provided the government mandated 550 calories. It was expensive enough that the average employed person could only afford a dozen or so per week.

For special occasions, there was the TV dinner that was actually meant to be heated before being eaten. It even came with its own chemical heater although they tended not to work most of the time. These meals had little portions of soy products that were presented in unique forms that supposedly represented the flavors provided. After experiencing a military MRE, Jack came to the conclusion that the TV dinner was a direct descendant of the MRE.

TV dinners were exceptionally expensive. The average working person might be able to afford one a month. As an elite member of the FBI, Jack was among the privileged few who could afford two or three TV dinners a month while living the rest of the month on stews. It was only when there was nothing else available that he had to resort to eating one of the government bricks.

Unable to believe that anyone could go for a significant portion of their life without eating a fresh vegetable, Jane asked, “Why not?”

“They weren’t available. The balanced nutrition act of 2028 mandated that all meals be individually packaged, provide one quarter of the daily nutritional requirements, fillers to increase the basic weight of the food, and contain 550 calories,” Jack answered.

He gave her another spoonful of soup. She looked at him with a question on her face. He didn’t need to look at her to know what she wondered.

“It started when people born in the 1990’s started reaching their early thirties. Due to the fact that people were eating too much and obesity was on the rise, the incidence of diabetes shot through the roof. With the government in charge of health care the costs of treating diabetes became almost prohibitive. The answer to the problem was, of course, to put America on a diet. The only way this could be achieved was to regulate food. They wanted meals that were so filling that one could only eat four of them at most during a single day and low enough in calories that weight loss was virtually assured,” Jack said.

More than one political agenda was addressed when adopting this solution. The conservationists had argued that using up too much land for agricultural purposes was destructive to the planet. Fresh vegetables, meat, and dairy products placed an undue burden on the ecology of the planet. Grains and soy could replace all of the other forms of food provided they were formed with appropriate nutritional enhancements. This dovetailed nicely with the anti-fat groups who saw the availability of unregulated vegetables and fruits as a way of cheating the enforced diets.

“That’s horrible,” Jane said.

“There were no snacks, sweet beverages, or desserts. Eating responsibly was dictated by the government and you had no real choice about it. It was done for the public good,” Jack said.

“I couldn’t imagine that. I almost always had an apple in the middle of the morning and cookie in the middle of the afternoon,” Jane said.

“What did you normally eat for meals?”

“Meat and dairy products were pretty expensive to eat regularly. Most people in my timeline ate fresh vegetables for most of their meals with just a little meat added for flavor. Vegetables were cheap. Vertical farming methods became widespread so that locally grown fruits and vegetables were available year round.”

“What is vertical farming?” Jack asked.

“It is a method of farming in which plants are grown on racks that go from floor to ceiling. On one acre of land with a two story vertical farm they can grow twenty acres worth of vegetables at time. With year round production, they can achieve an effective crop production equal to sixty acres of flat land. Most vertical farms in my timeline were six or seven stories tall,” Jane answered.

The initial spread of vertical farms was a result of closing the border and higher energy costs. Large spread out farms required temporary cheap labor during all phases of the growing process. Vertical farms did not require a large workforce. With plants growing in well defined locations, robotic farming systems became feasible and economically viable. It became a new age in farming technology where tractors and other expensive pieces of farm equipment were replaced by robots.

With food being grown locally, transportation costs dropped significantly. It was no longer necessary to transport food from South American countries to markets in North America. Every large city had thousands of acres of vertical farms within two hours of the downtown area.

In addition to lower production and transportation costs, food quality rose. Crops could be picked at the peak of flavor and sold to customers the same day they were harvested. The longer time fruits spent on the vine allowed them to develop their full flavor and nutritional value. Peaches were once again nice and juicy rather than woody.