Photo by _paVan_.

Lacy was bored. She was proud to work in food production — Mama’s reaction made the drudgery feel worth it when Lacy got home — but the low buzz of the drone and the sameness of the landscape lulled her toward sleep. She was sure that some of her colleagues gave up and drowsed. Lacy wasn’t sure yet how she felt about the group. It was a mixed bag — of races, genders, and hygiene standards — but at least a couple of them seemed nice. Lacy didn’t mind the diversity, per se, but she was uncomfortable around strangers and their strange habits. On the first day another girl had said, “You’ll be broken in quick,” but the routine still felt unfamiliar.

Lacy glanced out the drone’s windshield at the cricket fields in front on her. The creatures teemed on the ground, bouncing and burrowing and fucking and killing each other and feeding voraciously on their synthetic pasture. She looked back over her shoulder to check that the pheromone broadcast was working. A swarm of late-stage adult crickets rolled forward in the wake of the drone.

Lacy gripped her knees and swallowed nausea. She hated the insects. The protein was vital, of course. Mama wouldn’t have brought them to the city otherwise. Accessing the resource density of the metropolis changed their survival baseline. Lacy had gained fifteen pounds in a couple of months. Her little sister’s teeth were sound in her gums, and she could run so far on the game tread. Sometimes when Lacy got home from work, she loaded up Cath’s saved worlds, wandering through fairylands that were like hyper-saturated versions of the home she remembered as a little kid.

They had lived by a river.

Crickets didn’t need rivers. They just needed space, sprinklers, and miscellaneous food stuffs hauled in from other fields where other workers got bored in the drones. Or did anyone watch those farms? Lacy wasn’t stupid. She knew that this job was provisional — it would only last until the FDA regulation changed in a matter of months. Lacy was a Compliance Technician, according to her contract. When her supervisor interviewed Lacy for the position, he explained that a remote observer system was being put in place. He went over the automated footage analysis (assigned to a certified third party) that would ensure production was up to code. Then he sighed and admitted that he didn’t know where the company was going to move him after there weren’t any workers to interview, train, fire, interview, train, and fire again.

Lacy’s drone beeped softly and the computer’s androgynous voice intoned, “We are approaching the docking station. Initiate the checklist process.” Lacy leaned forward in her seat and started reviewing the figures on the dashboard screen. Number of crickets. Estimated protein values — both nutritional and market. Toxicity and contamination. The numbers always hit their targets.