Short Fiction
Solving World Hunger in a Lab
Fiction Thursday
“I did it!!!”
“You did not,” said Jim in disbelief.
Mack smiled, tight-lipped, inflating his chest with superiority through his widened nostrils.
It was not too long ago when Mack had told Jim over beers he was working on a device that would solve hunger — like “literally” world hunger. Jim nodded out of politeness as Mack draw scribbles of various equations and formulas on a bar napkin stained with red sauce. Mack knew Jim didn’t believe him, but it didn’t bother him. It never did.
“So how does this work,” asked Jim swirling his chair to face him. “How do you do it?”
“It’s a long story, but first look,” said Mack, as he delicately put a brown sheet in front of Jim.
“I don’t get it,” said Jim as he peered closely, “This is…”
“Yes, it is,” cut short Mack as if Jim naming it would take away the credit from Mack.
“This is the first edible mirror ever!” almost yelled Mack.
Jim said nothing, as he continued to look carefully at Mack’s creation.
“We can have this created at the cost of gummy bears and distributed to everyone, like everyone in the world!” bubbled Mack with childlike excitement.
“You know, we worship ourselves. No one is going to eat that? That will be like eating ourselves, which is… sacrilegious,” said Jim with a puzzled look on his face.
“So there were two ways of solving hunger. One was to increase food production, and another was to…” said Mack through his puffed up nostrils.
“… kill people’s appetite,” said Jim, completing Mack’s sentence.
Mack was too busy looking at his creation, admiring himself to hear Jim.
