I'm Starved for You by Margaret Atwood

Author:Margaret Atwood [Atwood, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781614520252
Google: GRDfT88MKrcC
Goodreads: 13515663
Publisher: Byliner
Published: 2012-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Lunch completed, Stan has a brief rest in his cell; then, once the chicken dumplings have settled, he works out in the weights room, concentrating on his core strength and his love handles. Then it’s time for his shift at the poultry facility.

Positron has four kinds of animals—cows, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. It also has extensive greenhouses that stand on the sites of demolished buildings, and several acres of apple trees in addition to the outdoor market gardens. These, and the soybean and perennial-wheat fields, are supposed to produce the fresh food, both for Positron and for Consilience at large. Not only fresh, but preserved, and not only foods, but drink: soon there will be a brewery. Some items are brought in from outside—quite a few items, in fact—but that state of affairs is viewed as temporary: in time, Consilience will be self-sustaining. Except for paper products, and plastics, and fuel, and sugar, and bananas, and …

But still, think of the savings in other areas. Such as chickens. The chickens have been an unqualified success. They’re plump and tasty, they breed like mice, eggs roll out of them with clockwork regularity. They eat the leafy leftovers from the vegetables, and the table scraps from Positron, and the chopped-up remnants of slaughtered animals. The pigs eat the same sorts of things, only more of them. The cows and the rabbits are still vegetarian.

But Stan has nothing to do with the cows and pigs and rabbits, only the chickens. These live in wire cages, but are let out for a run twice a day, which is supposed to improve their morale. Their heating and light are run by a computer inside a little shed, which Stan checks periodically: there was a malfunction once that almost resulted in roast chicken, but Stan knew enough to be able to reprogram and save the day. The eggs are collected via ingenious chutes and funnels with a digital program counting them, so Stan doesn’t have to bother about that part. Mainly he spends his four-hour shift supervising the afternoon outing, breaking up the squabbles, and monitoring the combs for poor health.

It’s a make-work job, he knows that. He suspects that each chicken has a chip implanted in it, with the real supervision done that way, in a roomful of automated chicken snoopers recording numbers on flow charts and graphs. But he finds the routine soothing.

In earlier days—during the semi-reign of the run-amok criminals, and before the authorities had felt the need for spyware cameras overlooking the poultry facility—Stan got daily visitations during his shifts from men inside Positron, his fellow prisoners-for-a-month. What they wanted was a short time alone with a chicken. They were willing to trade for it. In return, Stan would be offered protection from the gang thuggery that was then running rampant.

“You want to what?” he asked the first time. The man had spelled it out: he wanted to have sex with a chicken. It didn’t hurt the chicken, he’d done it before, it was normal, lots of guys did it, and chickens didn’t talk.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.