Abiotarians
Awhiles
back I read a blog discussing veganism and vegetarianism. I wrote in to say
that there are many entirely logical arguments for it (health, economic, etc.)
but the moralism around it is sentimental. I asked; why valorize animals over
plants? I called it “neurochauvinism”.
This got me to
thinking. Could it be possible to one-up the Vegans? Here’s my scenario:
The
Space Marines find a way to ‘live off the land’; namely, the Artificial Food
Machine. You feed it some dirty ice from a comet or an ice-moon; it processes
that into a bland fibrous nutritious paste. Fibrous for regularity, of course,
and it has every essential nutrient. The machine has no biological components;
for the admirals did not want their troops’ life-support system to itself need
a life-support system.
This
military technology is adopted by a cult of pacifists wishing to morally one-up
the Vegans. These “abiotarians” boast that they
don’t eat any living things at all;
not even cells! (1)
The
food machine produces a substance called “spoo”. (2) The Abiotarians tried to rename it ‘manna’,
but the rough spacer name prevailed. Spoo is white, wet, tasteless, and of
variable fiber content. Low-fiber spoo is like jello, high-fiber spoo like beef
jerky. Of course you can put in artificial color and flavor. If you roll high-fiber spoo into sheets and
bake it dry, you get a kind of crunchy cardboard called “matzoid”.
“Snarge”
refers to snail slime, and also the horrible bloody guck resulting from a bird
being sucked into an airplane engine. The artificial-food machine’s snarge is a
thick paste, like peanut butter or jam; it’s reddish-brown, oily, and smells
slightly like 3-in-1 oil. It’s
completely artificial; it’s just named
after the horrid animal-derived guck. Not the most popular of repasts, you see;
but you need an oily foodlike
substance to carry the oil-based vitamins. (A, E.)
If you
put spoo and snarge through a blender, then zap the resulting emulsion with
microwaves for a kilosecond, then it partially coagulates and polymerizes; and
that, my friend, is how you make Crottled Greeps!
Yum,
yum! And what do you wash this delicious meal down with? What but Tang?
I
think you’ll agree that the Space Marines and the Abiotarians show real
commitment, by living on this stuff. Talk about intestinal fortitude!
Footnotes:
(1) The natural role for Abiotarians is first-wave
colonists for terraforming. They eat rock, water, and nuclear power, and mix
their feces and urine with the planet’s regolith to create soil. So their job
is dirt-making; and they are therefore prone to sneer to vegans, “You eat from
what we shit!” Holier Than Thou strikes again.
These extreme militant pacifists rely
upon military high-tech, for some are former Space Marines. Soldiers have
turned monk before, as a cure for post-traumatic stress syndrome. They left
behind combat but kept the routine and the menu.
(2) “Spoo”, referring to a fictitious
food-like substance, has previous reference. There was a New Yorker
cartoon by Roz Chast in which “sppooo” is being prepared in a parallel world.
Also, in JMS’s series “Babylon 5” , spoo was a bland white gelatinous stuff
made from space worms.
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