The Possessor Wars

Ah synthpaste-the food everyone loves to hate. Produced by the Sumptuous Synthpaste Corporation (company motto, "If it isn't Sumptuous, it isn't worth eating" (yeah, I think it's lame too)), synthpaste is what people eat in the 28th Century.

What exactly IS synthpaste?

Well, molecular recombination, a technology that was invented as a result of Hubert Einstein's discoveries, enabled people to build new substances that they could never build before. Specifically, it made it possible to take the raw materials that food is made from-like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and more-and build food in a factory molecule by molecule.

Normally, we get food from plants. Plants take raw materials-our friends carbon, hydrogen, oxygen again-and they build things we can eat. An example of this is a banana tree. It makes bananas by getting carbon and oxygen from the air in the form of carbon dioxide. It also gets other elements through its root system. For instance, it brings in water (which is composed of oxygen and hydrogen) through its roots. It also uses its roots to pull other nutrients from the soil. The lowly banana tree is actually a miracle of manufacturing. It has ways of getting everything it needs to build a banana one molecule at a time.

Well, molecular recombination lets humans do the same thing in factories. In the 28th Century, humans can gather all of the raw materials they need from space. They can then use molecular recombination to turn those raw materials into anything they want-including food.

At first, the Sumptuous Synthpaste Corporation was called Europa Science Foods because they were based on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. They made their artificial food in a way that resembled real food. It was hard to tell the difference.

As population pressures grew and the Solar System filled with people, it became important to have a good supply of cheap food. So Europa Science Foods released a less expensive form of its artificial food that was mostly just a chunky paste. You still had to cook it, and it tasted pretty reasonable, but it wasn't as nice as things like synthmeat and synthbread.

But about the time Jeff was born, the economy started to struggle. So Europa Science Foods came out with ready-to-eat synthpaste. It didn't taste very good and it didn't need cooking, but it was edible and cheap. About that time, they changed their company name to Sumptuous Synthpaste Corporation. I guess they figured that if they called their product sumptuous in their company name, people would believe it really was sumptuous. 

No. They really didn't believe that at all.

In fact, everyone stops eating synthpaste as soon as they can afford another food source. It's the ultimate in processed food. In fact, the Sumptuous Synthpaste Corporation can't legally call it food. They call it a "food-like nutritional substance" on the label, but they write that part in VERY small letters.

Chad

The Possessor Wars

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