Cora first noticed it when the grocery shelves changed. It wasn’t sudden—at first, it was just the brands that disappeared. The trusted names, the familiar packaging. Then it was the prices, climbing higher and higher until only the wealthiest could afford fresh meat, real dairy, vegetables that actually came from the earth. And then, one day, the old food was simply gone.
In its place, there were the rations.
The Chairman’s personal food initiative, a brilliant new system designed to feed the struggling population in the wake of economic collapse. The Circle hailed it as a triumph, a perfect solution to a broken world. No one would go hungry, they declared. Not anymore. All thanks to the innovative minds behind Unified Nutritional Solutions, a corporation helmed by yet another one of the Chairman’s closest billionaire allies—one with long-standing ideas about depopulation and the optimization of society.
It started with the processed meals, vacuum-sealed packages handed out in ration centers, their ingredients a mystery, their flavors vaguely familiar but never quite right. The poorest were the first to depend on them. Then the middle class, once they could no longer afford anything else. Soon, the entire country was consuming the same mass-produced sustenance, all sourced from the same mysterious supply chain, all distributed by the same corporate overseers.
It tasted fine. It kept people full. That was all that mattered.
But rumors spread.
A viral video had surfaced, a shaky, panicked recording taken by a former factory worker. It had only lasted a few hours before it was scrubbed from the internet. In it, a man—pale, terrified—stood in front of an unmarked warehouse, his breath ragged, his words nearly incoherent. I worked there for six months, he had said, his hands shaking. I saw it. The trucks, the processing rooms. They’re not just feeding us. They’re feeding us… us.
The video cut to blurred security footage—steel conveyor belts, something large and pale being moved in pieces. A glimpse of a human hand, fingers limp, disappearing into the machinery.
And then it was gone.
The media dismissed it as a hoax. Officials declared it a terrorist fabrication, a ploy by the Chairman’s enemies to sow discord. The man in the video was arrested. His confession was aired on state broadcasts. He had lied, he said. He had made it all up. He was sorry. He would do better.
A week later, he disappeared.
Cora hadn’t seen the video herself, only the reactions, the murmurs, the brief whispers before the fear took hold and silence settled in. No one questioned anymore. No one wanted to end up like him.
She tried not to think about it when she opened her weekly ration, when she stirred the thick, protein-rich meal substitute into boiling water. The taste wasn’t bad. Just… off. Just enough to make her stomach turn if she thought about it too hard.
It was better not to think at all.
The Circle had already turned the poor into numbers, statistics on a screen, burdens to be erased. The wars were one way to handle them, funneling dissenters into the military machine, sending them to die on the front lines of conflicts that would never end. But this was something else. This was worse.
This was efficiency.
The Chairman had no use for those who couldn’t contribute. He had never hidden his contempt for the weak, the sick, the unwanted. He had always spoken in simple terms—They don’t belong here. They don’t deserve what you have. They take, and they give nothing in return.
It was easy, then, to stop thinking of them as people. To start thinking of them as something else.
And when the machine fed, it never stopped.
Cora swallowed the bite in her mouth and forced herself to keep eating.
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