This piece was written for Toasted Cheese’s Three Cheers and a Tiger contest which is a contest in which you have two days to write a complete story. Oddly, I don’t remember what the prompt was, but it was not included in the top three positions. Therefore, it is now available to the public as they chose not to publish the piece. Frighteningly, I totally forgot I had even written this piece… which partially made me sad. Either way, here is the submission that Toasted Cheese received:
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“Good, that’s nice, but we need a little bit more.” A squeak was heard as the doorway on an old wood-burning stove opened. From the small furnace, orange light was dancing upon the walls, and obliterated the work their eyes had done to acclimate to their surroundings. With both squinting, the daughter tossed an additional log into the inferno. Her mom’s face was dotted with sweat as she stood over a large cast iron pot. The mother patted the girl’s head and cooed, “Excellent—that should be enough for now.”
At her age, the girl had achieved her full height and firmness, “Mother, if you give me the recipe, I can handle it from here.” Her tone was laced with a pang of annoyance.
The older woman was frowning, “Kathleen Josephine James, you know how important this is, don’t you mother me.”
“Sorry ma”—the displeasure had scampered from her tone—“I know how important it is, but we lost Jessica—” The mother didn’t see a tear drop from her daughter’s face, but instinctively hugged the girl.
With the softness of only a mother can offer, she interrupted, “I know, that’s why you gotta take over. You’ll do just fine, I know you will.”
“I miss her.”
“She’s fine.” Jessica’s skills and fertility had made her a prime candidate for one of the scientific colonies. The fertility was a bonus, but it was her training that ended up getting her gig. With a push, the mother smiled at her daughter, nodded, and said, “Here are the instructions”—it was a freshly printed copy of an ancient recipe, a recipe from the twenty first century—“this is your first time, follow them perfectly!”
The girl nodded, a strand of hair fell from behind her ear, and a smile broached Kathleen’s face as she now expressed authority, “Don’t worry! I’ll make sure it goes perfectly.”
“That’s my little girl—”
“Mom, I’m an adult.” In these times, Kathleen was an adult; if it she had been born when the recipe was written, she would be considered a teenager.
“You’ll always be my little girl, just like Jess is still my little babe.” The girl was blushing but it didn’t show as long as the door to the furnace was closed.
“Go on ma, I got it!” With a pat on the head doled out, the mother moved towards the cave’s entrance.
Exuding confidence, the girl opened a tiny slit on the stove and from the slit came a beam of light. Dust particles danced – like ballerinas from the past – through the beacon, their existence disappearing and reappearing as they dipped through and out of the darkness that was the cave’s ambience. It took some time, but her eyes adjusted to the added light.
She smiled, on the top of the recipe was: “Property of Kathleen James”. It omitted her middle name, but she couldn’t hide her glee. In three seasons, she would be fully trained and an invaluable aspect of human survival, and it all began with this simple recipe for blueberry preserves, jam, or jelly. Note from me to you: the difference is in how you want your berries to be presented when slathered across a piece of toast, the recipe to make all three styles is the same no matter which style you choose. Within a moment, Kathleen was grabbing and weighing the ingredients by feel alone.
This was a function of her upbringing. As a child, her life had been one filled with tiny brass masses (each representing a different mass) and balls – the size of marbles – made from different materials. Every morning, afternoon, and evening was filled with these masses. All of her sisters and brothers had the same furnishings in their rooms: a balance scale an entire set of masses (for precise measurements), and the special marbles made from different materials. Using these three items, each child was capable of picking up an object and would – nearly instantly – know its mass in grams. Mass of an object was useful, but a lot of recipes were written in ounces for some odd reason. So, she knew that four hundred fifty-three point fifty-nine grams was exactly sixteen ounces. With these things memorized, Kathleen was a robotic cooking machine.
So, when she stuck her palm into a bushel of berries she knew it was exactly one hundred ninety-two and a half grams, or roughly six point eight ounces. Using this method, she eventually added three and a half pounds of blueberries to the large pot. But that wasn’t all, she could also get volume by converting from grams. Here it was difficult because she had to account for whatever utensil she was using. In this case she was lucky, it was a small copper cup – a gift from her mom – three hundred grams on the dot.
Without much mathematics involved, the water and lemon juice joined the blueberries in the pot. Then came the honey – since the climate shift, honey was easier to find in comparison to sugar – about five heaping cups (one point fifty-seven kilograms) of the sugary goo. With everything needed for the preserve, she added the pectin – harvest from the peels of citrus – to give the concoction its firm texture. Then she stirred, stirred, wiped sweat from her brow, stirred, stretched her muscles, and stirred some more.
A quick taste of her creation and she exclaimed for no one to hear, “Perfect!” She crouched down and reviewed the instructions. Reading aloud, “If the taste is perfect”—this was added to the recipe by her mother—“begin the canning process. Boil the mason jars, lids, and caps.”—she tossed all the items into a boiling pot of water—“fill a canning pot with two inches of water… that is done, where was I”—her hand crossed her forehead and pulled away dots of sweat—“and bring it to a boil, alright guess I just wait now.”
Inside of her head, she reviewed the rest of the instructions: add fluid to jar within five millimeters of the rim, stir jar with sterilized utensil to remove air pockets, place seal and cap onto jar, hand tighten, place in one to two inches of boiling water for fifteen minutes, remove and let cool overnight, and enjoy at your leisure. Once the water was boiling in the new pan, she followed the instructions flawlessly. The only tough part, was the fifteen minute minimum. For this, she had been trained in two songs: one was a minute long and the other was five minutes long. Lucky for her, she only had to sing three times – she hated her singing voice.
With the cans cooling, she sat back and maintained the fire. She cleaned out the pot she used to make the jam and prepped it for their next dish. Eventually, her mother returned with bushels of tomatoes, garlic, and basil. It was less than the usual amount.
Kathleen was alarmed, “Why so few?”
“So few what?”
“Tomatoes! The other stuff is frivolous.”
The mom set down her bags, bushels, and tried to push a finger to the girl’s lips – she missed and almost hit Kathleen’s eye. The mom answered with a slight giggle, “Sorry about that, did I get you in the eye.”
“No, but why so few!” She had backed away and almost into the iron stove.
“The season ended earlier this year.”
“No!” Sweat – not from the stove’s heat – began to pour from each of Kathleen’s pores.
“Yep, I saw the lemon trees fade first. A strong storm must be in the Atlantic, I’ve never seen it come this soon.”
“So, it’s all dead?”
“Like every season, all the fruits and veggies are gone for the season. It’s alright though, we have stores from the last couple of seasons. We’ll just have to be more careful in the future. You know, begin harvesting daily sooner.” Kathleen was sobbing. Her mother tried to console her, “It’s alright! We will be fine.” Kathleen moved away and a yelp filled the room. Her mom was now used to the small amount of light; she grabbed her daughter’s hand, pulled her forward, and cupped her against her bosom. She kissed her head and cooed, “It’s alright, don’t worry, this isn’t the first time. We’ll be fine.” The wisdom poured from the mother, “None of that, let’s get this all cooked up and head home. It will take some time, but it will be here soon… if that happens, we won’t have any tomatoes.”
Kathleen fought the fatalism, “We should move the stove into the fields!”
“Honey”—said her mother—“you need to understand. Now a days, we have electricity and could have gotten more tomatoes into more jars if we did this in the fields.” Knowing Kathleen was going to interrupt, the Mom continued speaking with only short pauses, “But this is training and you need to learn the original ways! When everything went south humans lost everything and well, they moved wood fire stoves into caves like these. See, the caves buy time for the cooks because it takes time for the Atlantic winds to push through all the twists and turns. Only recently could we create “clean” rooms for cooks at facilities, but, if, well, if we lose that electricity and no one knows about these hidden stoves, how to way recipes by hand, or the process of stoking a fire humanity could be fully wiped out. Either way, we’re talking too much and it will get here soon, we need to get to work.” Kathleen’s Mother began cutting a tiny X on the bottom of each of the tomatoes to make the process easier.
“What are they?” Why they did what they did was not part of the children’s education. Technical skills were more vital than the why. Once they could handle all the important aspects of life – securing food and preparing it for long storage – the children would be taught why this process was paramount in human survival.
The mom smiled. She spoke as she began blanching the tomatoes and pulling their skins, “They aren’t a they; they are an it.” The girl helped with the peeling process but couldn’t handle the tomatoes as well as her mom. The mom continued her diatribe as she worked, “A long time ago, there was a lot more land we used for farming. But, as with all planets, the climate shifted”—she lowered her tone—“even to this day people argue about our involvement… my mother told me we didn’t help the process.” Her comforting tone popped back and the story became less ominous as she continued, “Either way, this is where we are. And we’re fighting something, an it. Some believe it is an ancient bacterium, insect, or virus that had been frozen and then released from the poles. Whatever happened, it spread across the land. The first time, we weren’t prepared and it ate all of our fruits and vegetables… for some reason, it always starts with the citrus. Doesn’t harm animals or anything, but the first couple of times it popped up we had people dying of scurvy because we hadn’t prepared. So, now we make sure to have all of our fruits and vegetables canned.”
“Why don’t we just purified the air and grow everything in sealed rooms.” Again, Kathleen refused to accept the natural order of society. Humans were still smart and trying to solve the current problems of the day, even if they were mostly dead. Kathleen wasn’t privy to these attempts to find a solution.
A laugh from the mom as she began squeezing the tomatoes with her bare hands in the pot, “Where are you going to get the electricity to power that?”
“We just need enough people on the bicycles.” Power was generated at facilities through bicycles… if you weren’t important to survival, this was how you paid for your food. The population was still growing but they hadn’t been able to access coal or oil reserves for some time. So, human generated power was the easiest means to an end.
Another laugh as the mom began adding whole garlic cloves, “Then who is going to prepare the food?”
“We will.”
“And who will power our gardens?” The mom added a ton of cans, lids, and caps to a giant pot of boiling water.
“We will?” She was beginning to see the issues with limited resources and switched her reasoning, “We could get some people to donate their time.”
“Then they will need more food, because they will be spending so much time powering the bicycles. What happens if it costs more food to keep them working, than they produce? Then what?”
Kathleen licked her lips, “Well, we have to try something.”
“We are.” Basil was added and the magma red sauce continued to bubble ferociously. With the addition of more wood to the fire, she sighed and pointed out the current plan, “We are using wood, sparingly because we don’t know how long we will have to use it to power our research facilities. Once those scientists figure out the issue and our food production is stable, then, we’ll begin donating resources to other means.”
“Oh, so other people are working on other things, things that aren’t food production?” The sauce was boiling and the mom tasted it. She smiled and nodded to her daughter – a wooden spoon full of boiling sauce was extended to the daughters lips.
The mom answered as Kathleen tasted the sauce, “Yes, right now, we’re small and sustainable. We have a few projects to get a continual power stream up and running, but our process is safe for now. What we do is vital to allow the other projects to go on. After your training, you will sustain an entire facility on your own, so learn this taste. That means you have the perfect amount of spices in your tomato sauce. Once you can cook this sauce, can it, and move it without any issue, then you will be able to look at solving other problems.”
“That tasted different than the stuff we eat at home.” The mom pulled cans out with tongs and began filling them with sauce.
“It isn’t aged. Once we can them, it will be at least a year before we eat them. So, during that time, all the flavors blend and blend, until they are perfect. But, that is what it tastes like before all that time. Now sing for me.” After three songs were completed. The mom pulled the cans from the boiling water and put them on a shelf. By the time the jars were cooled and could be transported, the outside air would have reached deep into the bowels of the cave. With everything cooling off, the mom began pressing the tops of the lids and whispered, “Perfect.”
“What’s perfect?”
“The lids don’t have bubble in the middle, they are staying flat and inflexible.” The mom turned and walked towards the cave wall. She pulled blankets from her pack and laid them on the ground. Once she was done, she crawled under them and invited her daughter, “Why don’t we get some sleep?”
“Why not go home and sleep?”
“Because I’m tired now.” The mom patted the floor next to her and Kathleen obeyed.
With sleep on their horizon, Kathleen drowsily asked, “So, why”—a yawn—“did you push the tops of the lids down.”
“If they aren’t down, then air is getting in as they cool. Just means, I canned properly… and… that means”—her voice was getting softer and softer—“means, the food… is, safe…” Then a slight snore popped from the mom’s mouth.
Kathleen’s eyes were wide open and drowsiness was pushed from her body. She slipped from her mother’s protective embrace and crawled to the cooling jars of blueberry preserve. With her index finger, she pressed the middle of the first can – it was flat. She continued down the line, until she hit her second batch – a metallic tang filled the room as she pressed down on a bubble in the lid.
Her mom’s slight snore was drown out by sobs as Kathleen covered her face with her hands. She just kept crying and saying, “Why wasn’t that in the recipe!? Why wasn’t that in the recipe?!”