All I could think about was the rough texture beneath my fingers. That grainy, almost porous clay surface of grey matter. A substance infused with proteins, and nutrients, but with no flavor other than that of a flat, metallic sensation.

I’m so sick of this: the war. Not only for the deaths, but for the geographical consequences of it as well. With most of our natural food sources depleted or extinct, the government in their last act, before it disbanded and became the Homelance Alliance, was that of ensuring our food,

So he I am, again. In my head hating the memory of it. The white plasticky paper that I had to take the grey matter out of in pieces. The light faucet warm on my hands as I held the matter to it, letting the light clean it as best as possible before I continued on with its journey.

This particular memory, I made beef with it. After the HA started governing what was left of America as it used private militarized organizations to fend off the foreign invaders, they came out with flavor packets. We still didn’t have any other reliable sources of food, but finally we could taste something, anything, other than the dirt in the air.

Anyway, as I held the matter, I tore off pieces about half the size of a marble, and placing it inside a metal pan, did so until a fair sized pile had emerged. After which, I had placed the pan under the stove, and let it cook. Just enough for the outsides to be firm yet sticky. I mushed the ‘meat’ together once it had cooked and in this process added the flavor. There isn’t much that one can do with grey matter. Yes it sounds like that one term for tissue that makes up the brain, but that’s what it was, wasn’t it?

Not ever knowing about the stance of the war, the alliance would just send out flyers and posters requesting more and more volunteers, but we never saw any of the them after 7 years from the fall of the American Government. We learned to rely on the crates of grey matter that would somehow magically appear in the towns stores. We hated, yet craved for the next shipment, becoming a salve to our unseen Alliance.

M

But of what I can remember from the matter, is that it was somehow almost wet to the touch the course, yet how matter what you did with it, your mouth was always drier than it was before. And that texture didn’t always go away though sometimes it did. When it wasn’t like sandpaper to your tongue it was like clay. And the flavors only helped some, and those eventually stopped showing up. There was a single meat flavor, carrots, potatoes, corn, and bean flavored packets. Each an over stated phenomena with hardly any effect.

Now though, I do not need for it. That grey matter. For things are not as they once where, and I for one, am now an old man. A man who every time he takes a bite of food, is taken back in surprise by how much flavor it contained, and how peaceful it is to eat.