Some time ago, before the dissent, our great country and planet was nearly unified. We ate together, we loved together, prayed together, and ate together some more.
Sickening endeavours of strength and passion would embroil a nation toward greatness against another.
Now we barely see each other.
Today is meal day, where everyone joins together in a banquet hall, one by one, each arriving precisely 5 minutes from one another, to sit in their private cubicles.
These cubicles, a bright, cheery pink tone, were hiding their inhabitants. Outside of them was a pressure system which limited the number of pathogens moving around in the banquet hall, and each five minutes was sprayed with a sterilizing agent just before the next occupant would join the festivities. Music played, ancient stuffs of strings and bangs, turning this into a truly jovial occassion.
I was waiting in the back room in my private kitchen, slowly slicing the farmed salmon with the grain, slowly slithering my knife from front to back, and once again to slice the fish into bite-size pieces. Vinegar and rice and water rested and cooled to my nearby left. The sous chef, me, walked from one end of the seven square feet of kitchen to another. I began to prepare a traditional root puree, vivid green and pungent.
Travelling from one place to another along this great continent proved quite easy. Bumping into people was an unreasonable hazard, no one wanted that to happen these days. We aren't sick, and we'll stay that way; that was the motto.
I finished rehydrating the farmed seaweed, and lay it flat, gently pressing it flatter in spots, while I slowly dabbed the green wasabi paste along a few quadrants of the leaf. Then I placed various items within the wrap: bits of shrimp, vegetables like celery and cucumber and carrot. I rolled until all you could see was the sticky rice hidden beneath the floor of seaweed, and it stuck end to end until creating a long tube.
---
Sometimes you could hear a shuffle in the cubicle next to you, only a foot away. I'll never know what kind of things went on in those next to me, but my imagination would run wild none-the-less. Maybe they were naked. Perhaps there were more than one in each, like a clown-car of old. Something would always stifle my enthusiastic imagination, the possibility of all of the cubes being empty.
---
As I had taken my time with this roll, now came the moment of truth, where the fresh fish would be placed upon the roll, the roll sliced into more bite-sized pieces, and served immediately. Before I knew that I was placing the fish, I was finished, and my food was immediately shuffled into a tiny cube on stand-by. This cube left my own through a small hatch at the top, where I can only hope it was shuttled to the occupant who ordered it.
My job was done, and so I cleaned up, taking a seat in my corner until another 'ding' of an order was heard in a few hours.
Cubicles surrounded my own, larger than that of the banquet hall, and each containing a chef for each of the banquet guests. I liked to imagine that this was a test, who would prepare the best of the food, or the fastest. Competitions such as these were frowned upon, although culinary integrity was certainly a must in these dismal, albeit boring times.
---
The possibility of the cubicles surrounding me being empty, or the occupant no longer living, was a very high possibility. Though our race was beginning to live past 120, our population was exploded beyond repair. Cubes stopped travelling after the occupant was still for over 24 digital hours. That concept was hard for me to grasp, the sunlight barely made it to the interior membrane of these cubes. Digital readouts told us about what was happening outside. My food cube arrived, and attached to the side of my own, a hatch opening-- the swath of scent entering my vicinity, as if I had a taste of the outer world.
---
Outside, beyond the food cubes, the personal cubes, the chef cubes, the office cubes, and city cubes, were stacks of more cubes. Sun rose and set along the scenery of tree-less, life-less, motionless cubes strewn along the horizon. As if a huge warehouse, cubes stacked upon one another, so very space efficient.
Occupants would never know if the wind blew. If the sun shone, or when.
Occupants wanted safety overall. The cubes saved them from disease, from attacks, from free radicals, from each other.
---
My food, a fish roll of some sort, was enthralling to my senses. The green paste and white beads and orange pearls all melted in my mouth in a cacophony of emotional tumult. My tongue was assaulted. I cried. I drooled, mouth gaping as a I chew. I am brought to the present. I can see my food for what it really is, a sort of art. Never before this moment have I ever experienced the radical experience of taste, smell, and sight all intermingling beyond my control. Digital read-outs note my present blood-pressure rising.
I cannot contain myself any longer. My young hand reaches for the seal of personal cube to food cube, prying at it, a small whistle heard as my finger is lodged between the two which are sealed via pressure.
---
"You are born in a cube. You live in that cube. You die in the cube.
You will not worry in the cube. You will not wonder. You will not leave."
---
A kaleidoscope of color is blinding me as I rip the seal wide, as if butchering something living. The pink wrinkles and slits flapping wildly as wind enters my personal cube. As I leave safety.
The food cube, no longer sustained by pressure, falls limply to the ground below as if a dying parasite.
I am dying. My digital read-outs are shouting at me, scolding me. I still press on, shoving myself through the square-foot cube-dock, birthing myself into the world.
---
My steak was lovely, just enough flavor to sate my cravings. As I basked in the moments after eating, that is when I heard the noise. It's been years, my dear, so forgive me if I don't remember it wholly. Do, give me your hand.
The girl was probably your age, only 20 perhaps, such a young thing. She found me, and I found her. With a kick to my food cubicle, and a sudden, shocking suction of pressure exchange, she poked her head into the opening. I was startled, of course, fearing for my life as the digi-reads were screaming for pressurization. I waited to die.
Nothing happened, of course. Here, finish this cookie I've made. Your father was saving the last for you.
Now I know you don't believe me. But just go look outside again, you know it's true.
---
Her daughter went to the window as she did on a daily basis, disbelieving that the hills of toppled cubes of so many sizes were now grave yards, grown over with kudzu and melon vines. Some cut open like circus tents for inhabitants.
"But what happened to her?" her youngling asked.
The Community Mother began to braid another child's hair before responding to the group sitting before her of nearly fifty Community Younglings:
"She lived, and gave birth to us all. She is of course our Eternal Cubic Goddess."
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