Unforeseen Processes
by Laura O’Meara
The PR people are the first to invade Cassie’s lab.
“We need some more colour in here!” the one in front demands, head buried in his tablet.
“What are those liquids doing?” his assistant asks, pointing at the buffer stores. “Could we make them more engaging? Could they bubble? Spin?”
Cassie has endured enough of these visits to know not to argue. She instructs a lab tech to find some methyl blue dye and a magnetic stirrer.
“What about these lights? Can we get them any brighter?”
Next come a man and a woman dressed in suits pressed sharp enough to cut. They are strategic advisors for the Food Security Optics Commission. Or is it the Resource Harmonisation Board? Cassie was cc’d only at the last minute on the email chain and hasn’t had time to read through it all.
They don’t look at her. They blink in the now too-bright lights and check hair and/or lipstick in the nearest reflective surface. Eminent Professor Kettering is the last to arrive. Ten minutes late to his own invitation.
“Ah! You’re all already here. Excellent. Let’s get this started.”
He snaps his fingers at the remaining lab tech who, being well trained, springs forwards with the professor’s strictly ceremonial lab coat.
“This is Cassie,” Prof Kettering introduces, fumbling with the coat. “She’s the manager here.”
The suits animate as if Cassie has only just appeared. They smile and offer manicured hands.
“I’m Dr. Brian,” Cassie says, briefly handshaking with each. “I’m the Chief Scientific Officer of the Synthetic Protein Development Unit.”
The lab coat’s buttons strain to fasten over the professor. Interesting that he has to squeeze into it, if everyone is getting the carefully calculated body-proportional calorie rations.
“OK. Let’s just get a couple of photos here,” the PR lead instructs.
His assistant arranges the newly dyed, newly spinning buffers on the bench around the Professor. He waves a pipette around as the cameras click, suits smiling in the background. No one minds the lack of actual equipment in front of him.
“Now. If your technician could take us to where the synthetic meat is grown?” the PR lead asks.
“Cassie, please lead the way,” Prof Kettering directs. “I’ll follow on.”
Cassie opens the doors leading to the cultivation suite. Both her lab techs remain to peel Prof Kettering out of the lab coat.
The cultivation room is an antiseptic din: air filtration units hiss and click; clusters of bioreactors hum. Panels cut into their sides, photo-optimised, expose their various stages of production. The first units are almost empty. The just-seeded cells imperceptible on the scraped bones of the bioscaffolds. The last ones are bulging with dense, formless layers of tissue.
Cassie drones through her usual tour talk. She angles herself in front of the panels, hoping no one will look too closely at the edges of some of the scaffolds. Hard, demented whorls dull the meat’s sheen in the places where the growth has gone awry.
“That poor cow,” the lady suit says, placing a hand on a reactor. Her dark red nails match the tissue glistening beneath. The colouring might be a little heavy in the newer batches. A marketing advisor insisted that the flabby, pastel shades of the earlier versions would not be appetizing. “It just expected to be killed and eaten, and that was that. Now it’s just one endless burger.”
The male suit laughs and rolls his eyes. “Not sure that’s how it works.”
“Now, obviously, it’s never going to taste like the real thing.” Prof Kettering, freed from his lab coat, hair rearranged, rejoins them. “Not like those steaks we had at the Nutritional Innovation conference last week. But it’s good enough for mass consumption.”
“Let’s get some photos with the fullest one.” The PR lead herds them towards the last reactor. “We need it to look like meat. No one is going to care about your hypercarbon bridges or whatever.”
Prof Kettering laughs: “Of course not.”
Cassie hangs back while the rest pose in front of the equipment. Prof Kettering is videoed rambling: “Pioneering technique... Key step in getting the food-supply back on track... No more pulping up crickets into gritty burgers.”
When has Cassie last bitten into a steak or a chop or anything once hung from living bone? All she can remember are some stringy kale leaves from maybe three or four years ago. They had at least seen the sun. A wave tears through her; her entire digestive system spasms. It’s not hunger. No one is ever physically hungry any more. The rations are all perfectly calorifically balanced. It’s just the longing for something real.
An alarm sounds. The lab walls groan, floor trembling. The lights shudder, then give up, leaving only the red emergency glow to illuminate widening eyes.
“What’s happening?” the PR guys shout, hammering at their suddenly blank screens.
“Cassie!” Prof Kettering howls, clutching at the nearest reactor. “What do we do?”
“Nothing,” Cassie says, remaining still. “It’s just the wind. We’re right on the edge of the compound here. Sometimes the gusts are too strong for the generators. It’ll be all right again in a few minutes.”
The lights return before the next round of panicked protests.
“Obviously, we have continuous emergency power for issues like this,” Prof Kettering assures the suits while smoothing himself down, “so the culturing is completely unaffected.”
He looks back at Cassie, waiting for something scientific to support him. “Right, Cassie?”
“Right,” she agrees.
Once everyone has recovered their composure, she points ahead. “Just the processing chamber left to see.”
“Good. We need to hurry this up.” The PR lead paws at his resurrected screen. “The hydroponics sector tour is booked at half past the hour. Then we need to get all the way across the compound for the Division garden party.”
The potential of post-tour drinks propels the male suit onwards. Prof Kettering trots after him.
“Apparently, the Division Director managed to get some actual chicken for later,” Cassie hears him whisper. Volume control was never his forte. “And some bottles of Malbec a scavenging patrol unearthed a few weeks back.”
The suit raises his eyebrows, runs a tongue across gleaming teeth and hurries along. Fake tissue hanging off plastic bones can’t compare to the wine discovery.
The processing room needs little explanation. The mass of mature meat oozes out of one end. Like a headless slug peristalting out of a hole. Infinitely far from the cartoon cows frolicking with butterflies on the lab’s current logo. The floor yawns open in greeting. Wheels and grinders flash, tearing the meat up into easily packageable parts.
“It’s better as mince,” Cassie explains over the whirring. “The texture isn’t right otherwise. It’s collected below and then shipped off to the various canteens.”
“Wonderful. Very insightful.” The male suit is already itching to be off to the garden party. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
The lady suit hangs back to shake Cassie’s hand. “Such an interesting tour,” she says, pressing with real warmth. “And very refreshing to see a woman in charge for once. We need more of us at these things.” She rolls her eyes at the men fussing ahead.
Cassie nods and whispers thanks.
A panel in the processing chamber flashes complaint. An obscure error signal. Cassie sighs. These power cuts have been happening more and more often. What’s the use of all the meet and greets with the uppers if it isn’t getting them better lab space?
“Nothing to be concerned about,” Prof Kettering assures, while a shrill beeping pulses in time with the lights. “I can sort this out. You all go on ahead.”
He unlocks the door, pausing for an in-action photo shot of stepping into the chamber, then directs the visitors back up towards the main lab.
“Just a quick reset of the control panel here,” he calls back, in case anyone is still listening.
His face contorts as he steps farther inwards, chunk after chunk of unprocessed meat sticking to his non-regulation shoes.
“Do I just press these buttons, Cassie?” he asks, more quietly, hovering at the panel. “Is there a code, maybe?”
Cassie can’t see from so far away. She’ll have to wait another few minutes, until the others are out of eye- and earshot, before going to help him.
More wind rages and shakes the room. The lights staccato. The chamber door slides back and crunches, relocking itself. Prof Kettering swings around. His shiny patent-leather shoes are unsuited to surfaces slick with matter; they slip, and he topples over. To pull himself up, he scrabbles at the control panel, pounding at all those very sensitive buttons.
A thrumming starts. The floor grins open once more, the bladed wheels beneath it already spinning.
“Cassie!”
Prof Kettering staggers forwards and slips again. Heavy clumps cling to his suit, mat through his hair, clot at the corners of his stretched wide mouth. “Cassie!”
There is an override button, of course. One that will stop the machinery and release the door. Cassie hovers her finger over it. Then imagines her name being put on all the grant documents and invitations. Her evenings spent lounging in the garden terraces. Fibres from real chicken stuck in her teeth. Stains from sun-touched wine darkening her lips.
The suits and PR people are back up in the main lab. The soundproofed doors of the processing chamber are sealed shut. Cassie steps back from the control panel and prepares a scream that will come a minute and a half too late.
Copyright © 2026 by Laura O’Meara
