‘You must be very proud of the work you do. Free lunch, for every child. A remarkable achievement.’

‘It shouldn’t be. Adequate nourishment is essential to academic success.’

In a cafeteria kitchen, in a public elementary school, two women walked side by side: Public Health Inspector Mina Shelley and lunch lady Gladys Kraft. Mina nodded her assent. 

‘Maybe so, but it’s not just lunch. You serve three square meals a day, every day, to every student, free-of-charge. That’s front-page news, but nobody talks about it.’

‘Inspector, we here do not hunger for publicity or renown. To us, the service we provide is its own reward, and when you’ve served as long as I have, it’s hardly breaking news.’

Mina nodded her assent.

‘Maybe so.’

Gladys fidgeted with her cane.

‘May I presume my humble kitchen has passed inspection?’

‘Everything appears up to code.’

‘Marvelous. Well, if there’s nothing else, I will see you on your way.’

Mina came to a stop.

‘I’m not finished. Your kitchen is flawless. I can confidently say it’s the most efficiently-run cafeteria I’ve ever inspected. I searched top-to-bottom. Not a single violation. Not a hairnet out of place.’

‘Do I detect a but forthcoming?’

‘But it has not passed inspection. Not yet.’

Gladys furrowed her brow.

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

Mina drew a quick breath.

‘You may not remember me, but I was a student here, once, and I always wondered how you did it. It’s why I chose this line of work. So that, one day, I might return.’

‘And have a little peek behind the curtain?’

Gladys grinned an impish grin. Mina’s face betrayed no emotion.

‘I did some digging. Crunched all the numbers. It doesn’t add up. I want you to tell me. How does one little cafeteria, at a school this size, serve every student, for free?’

Gladys grimaced.

‘And if I demur, you’ll shut my humble kitchen down. You would do that, despite it being up to code? Threaten the continued nourishment of these children, my children?’

‘Gladys, put yourself in my shoes. I’m not threatening them. I’m protecting them.’

Staring off into space, Gladys seemed far away, lost in thought.

‘Wilhelmina Shelley. At lunch, you would always ask me for one extra gingersnap. Just one. And always so politely.’

Gripping her cane, Gladys leaned in close, her voice barely above a whisper, its tone conspiratorial.

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I really do. Please.’

Gladys smiled broadly.

‘Then come with me.’

With two taps of her pearl-handled cane, Gladys turned on her heel and escorted Mina to a walk-in freezer. It opened at her approach, seemingly of its own volition. Once inside, Gladys pulled a lever beside the rear wall, cleverly disguised as a stack of canned peas. With a pneumatic hiss, the wall descended from view and revealed a secret passageway. Dense clouds of smoke-like fog billowed out, blanketing the floor. Blinding white light shone from within. Mina squinted, shielding her eyes. Beckoning her to follow, Gladys stepped through the portal. 

They emerged on a balcony, overlooking a sprawling, subterranean lab. Below, the lab was bustling with lunch ladies. Dozens of them, wearing hairnets, safety goggles, and face masks, rubber gloves, white aprons and white lab coats. They worked in silence, clustered around a series of workbenches, arranged in a massive grid. Mina’s eyes widened. She struggled to maintain her stony disposition, but made no attempt to hide her skepticism.

‘Gladys, just what is this?’

Gladys wagged a finger.

‘That would be telling, Inspector. Better I should show you.’

She guided Mina to an elevator platform. As they descended, Mina marveled inwardly at the clandestine spectacle before her. Gladys exited the platform and seated herself in what appeared to be a small vehicle. Shiny and white, it was shaped like a teardrop and glided noiselessly along the floor. If it had wheels, Mina couldn’t see them. Gladys sighed with relief.

‘Much better. Now, remain close at my side and I will give you the grand tour. This is the workshop, where our work begins. Tell me, Inspector, are you familiar with the concept of cultured meat?’

‘I’ve read about it. Meat, made with animal cells, taken from muscle tissue.’

‘Very good. A painless procedure, done with no harm to the beast. Our process is… similar… if somewhat more advanced. Observe.’

Gladys glided to the nearest workbench. The lunch ladies clustered around it parted. If they took any notice of Mina, they gave no indication. On the workbench beside her, Gladys gestured to a petri dish containing a clear, amber-colored fluid.

‘Here we have a cluster of animal cells, invisible to the naked eye, immersed in a nutrient-rich medium. A simple mixture of salt, proteins, lipids, that sort of thing. We need only add a catalyst…’

Gladys took up a dropper beside the dish, filled with a clear liquid.

‘A clever concoction of growth-factors, all naturally-occurring, to accelerate cellular proliferation.’

She squeezed a pinch of it from the dropper into the dish. Instantly, a chemical reaction occurred. On the surface of the amber-colored fluid, pinkish-white bubbles emerged, rapidly growing in size and number, coalescing into a lumpy, gently-pulsing blob, no larger than a bottlecap. Mina watched in wonder as the pale blob continued to swell, throbbing as it spread.

‘That is meat?’

‘Chicken, to be precise.’

But her wonder soon soured into disbelief.

‘So you’re running a cutting-edge cultured meat facility, literally underground, with which you can feed every student, for free? And it’s all lunch ladies?’

Gladys shrugged.

‘Just us lunch ladies! The school is so pleased with our services, they seldom ask questions, if at all.’

Mina scrunched up her face and shook her head.

‘No. No way can this feed an entire school. Commercially-available cultured meat is still years away, at least. A chicken sandwich made from the stuff would cost ten times the cost of a normal one. It’s as impractical as it is incredible.’

Gladys sat up and puffed out her chest, brimming with pride.

‘Ah, but our methods are years ahead of those known to the wider world. At least. The process is fast and cheap, costing practically nothing. This chicken will continue growing at an awesome rate, until it is ready for the next stage of development.’

A lunch lady approached, carrying in her arms a transparent bioreactor the size of a barrel. Within it, a gaggle of raw chicken wings wiggled around in the same amber-colored fluid. Gladys picked up the petri dish and inserted it into a slot at the bioreactor’s base. The newly-cultured chicken floated up and joined the gaggle, already beginning to resemble its siblings in size and shape. Gladys rapped on the glass with her cane.

‘Gives new meaning to the phrase boneless chicken wings, doesn’t it? These pretties will be transported to the second stop on our tour, a place we call the nursery.’

Gladys glided across the lab to a circular doorway. Its sliding doors rotated open as she entered, with Mina at her side.

Unlike the brightly-lit workshop, the nursery was dark and shadowy, illuminated only by dim blue lights. Its dimensions were smaller, its ceiling lower. All was quiet, nearly silent. A gentle, soothing hum pervaded the air, coupled with a light pumping sound. Row after row of transparent bioreactors stood upright, mounted to the floor. Roughly the size of an oil drum, each bioreactor contained a bovine calf, nestled vertically and seemingly lost in a deep, tranquil sleep. But these calves had no flesh. They were composed only of muscles and sinew, suspended in that same amber-colored fluid. Gladys gave Mina a playful nudge, and whispered. ‘Quiet. We wouldn’t want to wake them. Just kidding. That’s one of our jokes. This is our latest batch of beef. Once phase two of the maturation cycle is complete, they’ll go to my favorite place and the next stop on our tour.’

One calf, the largest of those present, began to stir. Mina leaned in close, fascinated. It was mild as a newborn babe, and almost appeared to meet her gaze. The bioreactor opened beneath it and it was sucked out through a tube in the floor. Gladys bounced with excitement. 

‘Quickly now, let’s watch it come out the other side, in the aquarium.’

A circular doorway spun open as Gladys and Mina passed through it, into a brightly-lit chamber. Mina immediately understood where the aquarium got its name. The entire chamber was encircled by one continuous, transparent bioreactor. It looked just like an aquarium, but with that amber-colored fluid in place of water. Within the tank, which extended to the ceiling, Mina could see a menagerie of animate meat. To her right, hundreds of boneless, skinless salmon winnowed past, swimming in a school. To her left, a flock of meat-pigs went swimming by, as if in flight, their marbled haunches pumping and kicking together in concert. Almost happily-so. Gladys tapped the floor with her cane, giddy with anticipation.

‘Look there, it’s coming!’

Sure enough, a circular doorway within the bioreactor opened beside them. The calf from before was ejected into the aquarium, now fully-animate and nearly full-grown, free to mingle and frolic with its fellow wonders of meatcraft.

Mina felt she should be afraid. A part of her was. There she stood, at the intersection of food services and mad science. Lunch ladies patrolled the aquarium with clipboards, monitoring their creations and tracking their development. They were all round and cheerful, like her. Watching them work, Mina couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of belonging. As if her desire to return here, to this school, was somehow part of a larger design. It was almost as if she was… home.

The calf joined a herd of meat-cows floating in place, like muscly manatees. Gladys sighed contentedly.

‘I do so love when one of them finds its little group.’

Directly in front of Mina, a solitary meat-chicken drifted slowly past, looking genuinely perplexed.

‘Gladys, I have to ask. Are they…’

‘Alive? Not in any real sense. This is not a slaughterhouse, Inspector. They have no nervous system, and so do not feel pain. They’ve no mind, and so cannot know fear. They are meat. Here, beneath this school, we lunch ladies have perfected a method of food creation that is entirely, one-hundred-percent, cruelty-free. Ethical and humane in every sense.’

‘And everything served above, in the cafeteria?’

‘Every bite of food we serve is synthesized here.’

Inside the tank, another circular door opened and one of the meat-pigs, the largest of the flock, was sucked into it. Mina watched it go.

‘Where to next?’

‘Once the maturation cycle is done, it’s on to the cutting room.’

As they entered, Mina looked up to see the meat-pig traveling through a transparent tube overhead, ending above one of several giant, transparent vats. Lunch ladies circled the vats on wheeled ladders, removing animal-shaped meats and placing them on conveyor belts. Outside their native medium, the meat-things were inanimate and flaccid, like marionettes with no strings. Along the conveyor belts, lunch ladies operated robotic arms on ceiling-mounted tracks. Some arms had spinning blades at the end. Others emitted a razor-thin beam of white-hot light. They used these implements to cut the meat with surgical precision. At the end of each conveyor belt, lunch ladies appraised every cut, poking the meats with cattle prod-like instruments. At the end of their appraisal, they used these instruments to zap the meats, leaving behind a distinctive mark: two interlocking circles in a vertical formation, one over the other. ‘Here the meats are dressed for consumption and receive the lunch lady seal of approval, reserved only for those cuts that have met our most stringent standards of quality control.’

Gladys sat back and admired the fruits of their labor from her gliding throne, queen of all she surveyed, but as Mina eyed this supposed lunch lady seal of approval, it left a sour taste in her mouth.

‘Gladys, no matter what seal you put on it, you are growing meat, unsupervised and unregulated, using methods hitherto unknown to the wider world. How can you know that any of this is safe to consume?’

Glady snorted a smug snort.

‘It was good enough for you, wasn’t it?’

‘Maybe so, but in the years since, the average height and weight of students at this school has steadily risen. You don’t think this could have something to do with that?’

‘I think about the National School Lunch Act. It was a direct response to the fact that many potential World War II soldiers were ineligible to fight due to malnutrition after the Great Depression. I am no more a fan of war than I am of hunger, but the increases you cite are the product of improved nourishment, nothing more.’

Now it was Mina’s turn to snort.

‘You speak of laws, but everything you’re doing here is against the law. By law, what you’re making here isn’t even food! And if it isn’t food, what is it?’

‘Are you familiar with a substance known as ambrosia?’

‘You mean like the potluck dessert?’

Gladys chuckled.

‘Someone needs to brush up on their third grade Greek mythology. No, ambrosia is the food of the gods.’

‘Is that what you think you’re doing, Gladys? Playing God?’

‘Nothing so grandiose as that. No. Rather, I fancy myself a sort of modern Prometheus.’

‘This one I know. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to the people.’

‘Likewise, I have stolen ambrosia, and given it to the children.’

Mina agreed, to a point. Gladys was a titan, truly larger-than-life, but there, she felt, the similarities ended.

‘With apologies to you, Gladys, the comparison is hardly apt. What Prometheus gave freely, you covet. Here you have the means to create limitless food, fast and cheap. Why not share it with the world? With your technology, you could end world hunger.’

‘It doesn’t take a fantastic cabal of brilliant lunch ladies to solve world hunger. The wider world already has the means to end it, they lack only the will to use them. Suppose we did share our gift? Would it be freely-disseminated to all, or hoarded by a selfish few to be monetized? Doing so would only endanger our ability to feed these children, and that is our first duty. They are our world, Inspector. When humanity learns to use the resources already at their disposal, then perhaps they will be ready.’

Mina nodded her assent.

‘Maybe so.’

Thoughtfully, Gladys weighed her cane’s pearl handle in the palm of her hand.

‘Well, Inspector, you wanted to know how we do it. We’ve shown you. Now I have a question for you: Can you keep a secret? Can we trust you to tell no one of what you’ve seen? Most importantly, do we have your seal of approval?’

Mina breathed a heavy sigh.

‘Gladys, you know I can’t do that. Regardless of how I feel, the food you create here is unregulated. I am a duly-appointed public health inspector, and I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t come forward. Honestly, I’m shocked that you would divulge such a clandestine operation so willingly.’

‘Because you know firsthand the good we have done.’

‘You are doing good, but you have to do good the right way. I’m sorry.’

Gladys nodded her assent.

‘Very well. I feared as much. Before you go, I have but one request. There is one more stop I would have you make.’

Gladys looked to her left. There stood a doorway. Mina hadn’t noticed it before. It was rectangular and wider than the rest, with no doors, covered only by a translucent curtain of frosted, plastic strips. They fluttered gently, and Mina could feel a cool breeze emanating from the room beyond.

‘Once you enter that room, once you have seen what’s inside, you are free to leave, and to do as you see fit.’

Slowly, Mina approached the doorway. Through the frosted plastic, she saw a soft glow. In a way she couldn’t quite explain, she felt drawn to it. Steeling her resolve, she drew a steadying breath, parted the curtain, and entered.

The interior was sparsely lit, illuminated by only a dim blue light. A disquieting hum pervaded the air, coupled with a wet pumping sound. In the middle of the room stood a transparent bioreactor, fogged over with condensation, roughly the size and shape of an above ground swimming pool. It came up to her chest and, as she drew closer, she could see over the rim. The amber-colored fluid inside was shallow, no more than a foot deep. In the middle of the pool knelt a figure, humanoid in shape. It was lying face down, head partly submerged, its arms outstretched. Slowly, it rose to its knees and began crawling toward her on all fours, through the primordial broth, shrouded in shadow. A gasp caught in her throat as she instinctively backed away, carefully maintaining the distance between them. Upon reaching the bioreactor wall, it gripped the rim with both hands and drew itself up to its full height. Her height. To the inch. The figure did not need hair or skin, nor did it need eyes or teeth for her to know: it was her. A perfect, muscular facsimile. When she gazed upon its face, her own gazed back at her with empty sockets. She cocked her head in horrified amazement, mouth agape. It cocked its head in reply, with eerie synchronicity, its jaw slack. She wanted to turn, to run, and she would have, had she not, at that precise moment, felt another presence at her back.

‘We not are not a slaughterhouse, Inspector.’

Gladys filled the doorway, seated in her inaudible gliding teardrop. Behind her, a row of lunch ladies stood shoulder-to-shoulder, silent and still, stretching from one end of the room to the other.

‘We are not beholden to your laws. It is not you we serve. It is the children we serve, Inspector, the children of this school. We will serve them, as we have done since schooling began. None shall endanger their eternal nourishment. If we do not have your confidence, if you will not keep our secret… we will make you.’

The facsimile lunged at her, extending a muscled arm, grasping the air in front of her face. She was just beyond its reach, but only just.

‘We will have your silence, Inspector. Be it by complicity or duplicity, it will be gotten. You have a choice: to be substituted by the sincerest form of flattery… or to defect. To proclaim our humble kitchen up to code. Preserve that sustenance to which every child is entitled. Our mutual cause! Our rallying cry!’

The uncanny facsimile gurgled a reply. It began as a guttural belch, bubbling up from the back of its throat, spilling over onto its tongue. Rubbery gums and lipless lips sculpted the burp into speech. One phrase, two words:

‘…Free… lunch…!’

‘Free lunch,’ Gladys nodded, grinning broadly.

‘Free lunch!’ The ladies cried. They each raised a fist, punching the air as they chanted.

‘Free lunch! Free lunch! Free lunch!’

Mina could only watch in helpless bewilderment, her thoughts drowned out by their righteous shouts, their gnashing teeth, their pumping fists. But above the din, one image prevailed, a detail she’d previously overlooked. Below the wrist, on the inside of her left forearm, Gladys bore a mark. A birthmark. They all had it. The same mark, in the same place: two interlocking circles, in a vertical formation, one over the other. The lunch lady seal of approval, reserved only for those meats that have met their most stringent standards of quality control.  

‘What have we here? Grilled salmon, apple slices, chocolate milk, and two gingersnap cookies.’

‘Actually, Gladys, could I have three gingersnaps, please? If it’s no trouble.’

‘Hm. I suppose, Inspector, but only because you have asked me so politely.’

Mina gave Gladys a knowing smile. She carried her tray across the cafeteria and seated herself at an empty table. It had been a year to the day since her first inspection, the day that Public Health Inspector Mina Shelley experienced a change of heart. And a change of mind. She underwent many changes that fateful day, despite what all outward appearances would suggest. In fact, some would go so far as to say that Mina Shelley was a different person altogether. Someone more concerned with the spirit of the law than its letter. Someone who could keep a secret. Her inspection this year would not be nearly so eventful as the last, of that she could be certain, but she was grateful all the same. Grateful to have one day a year when she could return to her childhood elementary school, where the lunch ladies served the students with steadfast devotion, to the one cafeteria where no child would ever go hungry, where there truly was such a thing as a free lunch.