Short Story- EATING PEOPLE

The official statement by the Malvorian government is that the harvesting of human spinal fluid is vital for both Malvorian health and the upward growth of the economy.

The Malvorians conquered the earth with ease. They were so evolved and so advanced that we never noticed our demise until it was too late. Our collapsing environment, our failing world economy, and constant war kept our attentions away from the invaders. Consumed with our own inner struggles, we failed to notice the unfathomable threat that slowly crept out of the shadows of space. It was quite the surprise to everyone when we woke up and noticed that our nations had become holding pens and our cities had become slaughterhouses.

The Malvorians took earth because of the real estate, but it wasn’t long before they became much more interested in the rich source of nutrition that lay within the human nervous system. Cerebrospinal fluid turned out to contain a high concentration of certain chemicals that the Malvorains valued immensely. It made them live longer, it encouraged their muscle growth, and—most importantly—it was delicious if spread over bread or congealed into milk.

Naturally, we were rounded up and contained within the walls of our cities until we’d reached the prime tapping age of 19, and then we were taken to facilities where they placed us on conveyer belts and then shoved thick needles into the bases of our skulls. The process was sudden, and mostly painless. After a few decades, however, the Malvorian elite began to discover more cost efficient and streamlined ways of harvesting human spinal fluid. At age 10 we were taken to the facilities, where we were kept in sterile stasis tubes until our spinal fluid was ripe. We were kept conscious during these intervening nine years, as they did not wish to tamper with the natural development of the nervous system throughout the teen years, and the lack of muscle movement kept our spines and brains undamaged and tender. Over the centuries Earth became the center for Malvorian economy and business, spearheaded by the ridiculously lucrative market of human cerebrospinal fluid.

But then a Malvorian woman calling herself an activist exposed the practices of the, quote, “Big Fluid Corporations” to the general public. For the first time, images of humans being grown in stasis tubes and having their brains siphoned of its juices were shown to the Malvorians at large. This bothered Malvorian society. They preferred not to think of where their Sweet Spinal Syrup came from, and to show children that their Fluid Pudding was processed by draining the skulls of animals was just monstrous. The public rallied behind the Malvorian activist, if for no other reason than to find a justification for their own consumption of the juicy fluids. Human tapping is inhumane, they accused. Human beings are living things, too, and just as sacred as Malvorians.

The Malvorian government refused to budge on the subject of harvesting. It was the right of Malvorian businesses to harvest their product however they deemed best. To deny them that would be an affront to the Malvorian constitution. Furthermore, human beings were just animals. They only had four lobes in their brains, and they couldn’t even perceive the fourth dimension. They saw time as linear, for godsake. To argue that humans deserved the same rights as the highly evolved Malvorians was absolutely ludicrous.

The Big Spinal Corporations argued that natural selection had favored the Malvorians, and that the only reason for humanity’s continued existence was because of industrial spinal tapping. Would these so-called “human-rights activists” really be in favor of the complete cessation of HSF harvesting, thus ensuring the extinction of the human race?

Tensions rose and the Malvorian political climate turned hostile. Petitions were signed, businesses were boycotted, and tapping centers were burned down and their confused, underdeveloped human stock were freed into a world that no longer supported them. Eventually the activists won out public support after the release of a documentary entitled “Eating People” was produced. The Malvorian government had no choice but to enact strict regulations on the treatment of live human stock and the harvesting of HSF. For a few years the Big Spinal Corporations were deeply financially wounded, but eventually they were able to adapt to the new trends and reform their slaughterhouses and tapping centers into once again profitable businesses.

We no longer live in stasis tubes for ten years of our lives. We are given twenty-five square feet of mobile environment per individual (the metrics that Malvorian biologists determined humans need to thrive), and we are granted a two by three window that looks directly into the sky, thus calming our natural urge to roam and breath the air. We are no longer fed the ground up, fluid-drained corpses of others of our species as nourishment. We are fed rich grains and pesticide-free plant matter. Our teeth and hands are still removed from us at birth, of course, as that is for our own safety. Humans have the strange tendency to lean towards the suicidal in captivity. And, most importantly, the Malvorian activists can sleep soundly at night knowing that they made a difference, and feel vindicated and proud when they wake at night for a midnight snack of environmentally-conscious, humanely grown human spinal fluid.