Moonchies Radio: David Zilber

David: He-hello? Hello? Is the communication line open? I…I’m not sure if the entangled quantum feed was stable. There have been pirates trying to break the encryption code for months now but you know, if I’m coming through, well that gives me some hope. This is David Zilber coughs food manipulator, what people used to call a chef, fermenter, microbes are the key to my long life. The year is 2131… and I’m on the Moon.

D: Not going to lie, it’s been lonely. I’m camped out in the sea of serenity, near the moons equator. The Gravitational Collapse has caused me to, well, drift away from our tightly locked geo-synchronised orbit around the planet that humanity used to call home. There’s not much going on up here I’ve got to say. I have my poly tents, my underground water extractors, there’s a lot of dissolved hydrogen and oxygen for me to extract water out of the soil and moon dust but, as far as entertainment goes, I mean…it’s rough, it’s really rough. You know, a year into this Great Gravitational Collapse, you don’t know what’s up, what’s down, what’s left, what’s right. But looking back through the old photo albums about what life used to be like on that blue-green marble, it was remarkable. To be fair, there is still life down there, just no form of it suitable for human inhabitable-ness. Inhabitability? The words jumble, I haven’t talked to anyone in eighteen months, it’s a goddamn disaster. But yeah, even though average temperatures on the planet that I still orbit, scorch at some forty-five degree Celsius, there’s all sorts of weird things evolving down there, none of which are edible but I mean life’s ticking on in a weird old fashion. I guess I’ll have to make do with my moon potatoes.

D: Yeah… well… I mean let me just wipe the tears from my eyes, just for a moment. The sound of another human voice, more than one at that sobs sorry, I’m just overcome with emotion. Well, in 2102 Apple released the hyper adaptive i-communicator 78, with plugins that allow me to communicate directly with microbes in my environment. I don’t actually eat the potatoes directly myself, I farm the carbohydrates that are able to grow in the lunar soil and then feed them to my flights of microbial communities that live among me. My communicator allows me to directly interface with their G-Nomes via viral splicing and chromosomal methylation. That means that I’ve been able to override the behaviours and direct evolution, so I have a pile of slime molds in the corner to the left of me and some zoogleal mats with multiple communities of some seventy-two hundred members to the right. A weird fungi that I didn’t actually have any part in growing likes the lactides. But you know what, they offer good insulation so I’m not messing with it. By allowing them to feast on the potatoes, it gets me to eat soups of bacteria and that kind of offers me some sort of dietary diversity. Time to time I can even have them draw faces in the sand, memories of people I used to know. They can’t communicate with me but at least I can, for a minute, paint images of my mother and father.

D: Unfortunately, I can’t give you the methods behind this form of microbial control that is keeping me alive and sustaining me in these dire, uncertain times… because if I did, I would create a paradox and erase myself from existence. To be honest, I don’t know what ways the transmission of such information backwards in time might bifurcate the time stream. Maybe we could prevent the climate disaster if that were the case? Maybe we could get people on Earth to stop eating... what were they called? Cowooos?... and start eating other things in their stay. But, I can tell you that I’ve recreated the flavour of the famous Big Mac from your time with my microbes. I can recreate pretty much any flavour from simple organic molecules. Texture though is something that I am sacrificing in my solitude, I will say that. Single celled organisms don’t do much in the way of creating fiber or anything really worthwhile chewing on. It’s all just kind of a sliming mash that sticks whilst it’s going down your throat. Half of it entering your stomach while the other half is still wrapped around your tongue. It’s a bit gross but you know what, beggars can’t be choosers. I’m here, drifting on a satellite that I’m sure is going to end up orbiting the sun as the Earth’s gravitational collapse furthers into chaotic decay… but… well… here we are.

D: Maybe I’ve been away from people for too long but this ancient practice of…cannibalism…was that the word? This is something I’ve seen in my history texts. Anthropologists documented it all over the world, especially in your post COVID times of 2032. I don’t remember how long it lasted, it might have been outlawed within a decade there after but, for a while it was an effective means of population control. I mean, you were feeding people and getting rid of people at the same time, it really lightened the load. Barring that because, I’m a pacifist, and I feel bad eating my microbes. The bottom line is I don’t recommend it but, you know, the idea that you could eat plants, that seems like a pretty cool one. I would die to eat anything other than microbes and potatoes. The thought of having a salad blows my mind. I can’t even fathom what a mango must taste like, no less a pawpaw. There’s so many wondrous fruits and vegetables in your time that we haven’t had here in the future. It seems ridiculous that you would squander it and waste all of that precious verdant beauty back in the day.

D: I am switching it on now.

D: The Hologram Manifester Pod is powered, please send me beans, my microbes need them, I need them. They say the more you toot but… to be honest… tooting in zero G is an effective means of saving fuel to get around.

D: Yes, to the people of the past and those who have come before me, be good stewards whilst you still have your feet on the ground and clouds in the sky. Because, nothing lasts forever and the secret to eternal life… as I found in the future even though I’m too late to experience it for myself is…