STORYLINE

Lahaina Merchants Association Reopens Public Kalua Pits

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For the past 10 years you’ve counted on the Lahaina Merchants Association’s public roasting pits to provide a safe and convenient place to cook large meals for your friends and family. We understand that our kalua pits have become like a second kitchen for many of you, and you’ve come to trust the Association’s commitment to safeguarding this valuable public resource. This trust was tested recently, and we had to temporarily close down this important service. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. However, we are excited to announce that we have opened the pits to the public again, and have installed new safety measures and procedures to ensure your continued protection.

It is an accepted fact that cooking in a ground oven, or imu, produces some of the best tasting meat you can imagine. For thousands of years our ancestors have been using heated rocks and pit ovens to slow cook communal meals, and it has become a staple technique for traditional Hawaiian cooking. Unfortunately, like everything else, the fracture has made this style of food preparation dangerous.

Digging a properly sized pit can be a time-consuming process, and can lead to a lack of vigilance, making you an easy target. Gathering enough heating stones, and carrying them back can slow you down if you need to leave an area in a hurry. While there is no doubt that the smell will attract neighbors from far and wide, it can also attract many unwanted guests like Nightmarchers or Menehune. Our public kalua pits removed these concerns and had a flawless track record until last week.

There have been many rumors circling around about the exact nature of the incident that forced us to halt operations. Some of these rumors have been quite outlandish, so please allow us to set the record straight and explain precisely what happened.

As I’m sure you are aware, we have always had an “if it has four legs you can roast it” policy. Meals can be hard to come by, and we understand that sometimes your options are limited. The flaw in this policy was highlighted with a perfect storm of mishaps. A recently restored traveler decided to cook a tainted wolf in one of the pits and failed to cover it properly. This would have been bad enough on its own, but the individual also didn’t fully understand the process and used stones they had gathered themselves from a nearby stream. These stones shattered with enough force to spread radioactive wolf meat on everything and everyone in the area, forcing us to shut down.

Thanks to our quick and decisive action, nobody was injured or became ill, but it did show us that we can do better. We have permanently filled in the pit in question and have scrubbed the area of all lingering radiation. The picnic area now falls well within safe levels for long-term exposure. We have hired more onsite help to make sure everyone stays safe and the new rules are being followed. In addition, outside materials can no longer be used in the pits. We will provide complimentary stones and burlap for anyone using the imus. For all the traditionalists, taro, banana, and ti leaves are available for a modest charge.

Regrettably, we have had to put an end to our “four legs” policy. To help ensure the safety of others, we now allow only: pig, deer, fish, rabbits, geese and mea-moa pods to be roasted in the area. However, we are offering a wide variety of spices and flavorings for purchase, to help you kick up the flavor a notch without the potential of contamination.

Finally, we have installed a food testing station to help alleviate any lingering fears you might have. This is a free service for any customer using our imus, and is available to the public in general for a nominal fee.

We apologize again for any difficulty this closure has caused and hope that we can win back your confidence. I believe these new safety guidelines and offerings will only make our service better. We thank you for your continued support and patronage. It’s a dangerous world out there but we’re doing our best to make it safer for you and your family. I can’t promise that you’ll never be covered in the half-raw exploded bits of a radioactive wolf in your life again, only that it won’t happen around our kalua pits.

STORYLINE

New information about the garden attack that you should know

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Hello Dr. Binyan. I’m sending this message via your personal ceremplant channel since the information I have is sensitive, and I assumed you’d rather not have a copy of it stored by the company. You are no doubt aware by now of the attack on our gardens yesterday morning. A preliminary investigation has suggested that Gaia Guard terrorists targeted us because of the high-profile nature of the work we do here in the applied research division. That is the story news outlets have been reporting and the belief of every agent I’ve talked to in the past 36 hours. However, I have reason to believe that another party is responsible for the explosion and the loss of our intern.

As you know, my work here in Lahaina is focused mainly on producing food plants that can grow in poor soils and extreme temperatures. In addition, we experiment with ways of taking these hardy stocks and fortifying them nutritionally or giving them some other advantage over similar rugged strains. For the most part we’ve had great success. Despite the negative press, I believe our Kükenroot plant will be hailed as revolutionary one day. I had equally high hopes for our latest project, a tree we are calling the “King coconut”.

Our goal was to produce a coconut palm that was resistant to the fungal and phytoplasmal infections that have been so common in the native trees. Coconut trees are already able to grow in quite poor soil but we sought to boost its hardiness by engineering nodules in the fronds to store nitrogen fixing bacteria. This would boost the plant’s ability to generate the chemicals it needs for good health and accelerated growth. We experimented with a number of other hardy trees that have broad soil requirements and had the best results with Hura crepitans, commonly called the sandbox tree. We were slightly concerned at first that the hybrid produced trunk spines like the Hura crepitans, but in the end we thought it would provide a deterrent to animals who sought to eat the fruit. I now believe that the spines were the least of our worries.

Besides its hardiness and unclimbable trunk, the most noteworthy feature of the sandbox tree is its method of seed dispersal. The tree produces a number of small round fruits that explode once sufficiently ripened. Although the fruits are only a few inches long and around, they can launch seeds at up to 160 mph, spreading them out over 300’. A remarkable feat, but one that didn’t concern us since we had no intention to produce Hura crepitans fruit. As you know genetics is a complex science and our subjects rarely cooperate. It appears now that a couple of unexpected issues have combined into a perfect storm with the King coconut.

First, the nitrogen fixing bacteria have not stayed in the frond nodules but have moved inside the fruits themselves. I believe once inside the coconuts they are producing potentially dangerous amounts of nitrogen compounds. I don’t know yet which compounds or to what concentration because I’ve had less than 24 hours to investigate the issue. Normally this might not be a problem but another key structural feature inside the fruits have made it dangerous.

Somehow the coconuts have gained the same explosive dehiscence features of the sandbox fruit. Because the fruits are many times larger and wrapped in an additional meso and endocarp layer, the explosive power is far greater. So much greater in fact, that I believe the “attack” yesterday was actually the result of some of these fruits ripening and exploding. It is my belief that the pressure inside the fruit during the dispersal process is acting like a fire piston and reacting with the excess nitrogen compounds inside.

I’ve only been able to experiment with a few very young coconuts inside the lab as I didn’t want to raise suspicions. Even those immature fruits produced violent reactions when struck with sufficient force. I can’t begin to guess at the force produced by a mature fruit, but I believe it is clearly enough to take a life.

Considering the Kükenroot fiasco last summer, I assumed you’d have concerns about negative press coverage and morale. The employee caught in the explosion was an intern, so rest assured that our work flow should be uninterrupted. Also, he is from the mainland so his family is far away and unlikely to pry. I would be open to continuing my research, giving you some time to come up with a messaging strategy before releasing my findings. I’d also be happy to pass on my notes and samples to someone in the biological defense division. What would you suggest I do from here?

At this point I don’t believe the King coconut is usable for my purposes and would be happy to hand the project off. I certainly don’t have a problem with continuing the Gaia Guard narrative. They have undoubtedly been responsible for at least one of the unsolved break-ins here over the years. With their history of bombing attacks on the island, everyone seems happy to believe in their culpability. As far as I’m concerned we were overdue for a security overhaul here anyway. I look forward to your thoughts.

STORYLINE

Reports of broken ads might be something more troubling

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Hi Lisa,
Thank’s for reaching out to me. I’m willing to help in any way that I can. Like many here, I had a tough time after the Luau attack. It seemed like there could be another bombing at any time, and all the investigators asking questions kept everyone nervous. I was on edge most days, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’ve done a remarkable job at piloting us through all the fear and chaos. We weren’t sure that the company would come out the other end of this intact. Not only have we made it through those troubled waters, we’ve never been stronger as an organization. I respect you and the work you’ve done, that’s why I agreed to report to you directly if Dr. Oeming did anything unusual.

To be honest, I was very uncomfortable with your request at first. This was Eric Oeming: the inventor of veil travel, one of the world’s richest men, CEO of the world’s largest company, brilliant scientist, survivor of a bombing attack. Reporting on his actions while working under a roof that he had built seemed wrong to me. With all the rumors swirling around after his return and the media lockdown, I worried that you might be dragging me into something above my paygrade. Everything seemed fine for a while, but then I found Dr. Oeming in my office one morning with a request.

He wanted to have all the data for 2 specific nights of transports. I told him that it would be no problem and I would make sure he had it by the afternoon. Then he said that he also wanted anything we had from customer’s ceremplants for those same nights. I started to explain that we’d need a court order to review that data, but before I could finish he became very agitated. He complained that he didn’t have time for paperwork, and that there was a time that “employees just did what they were told.” He must have seen the shock in my eyes because he calmed himself and said that any help I could provide would be appreciated.

I never worked with Dr. Oeming before but I had heard people say he was a different man after the attack. They said he hardly talked anymore and insisted on working alone. I didn’t think much of it to tell you the truth. I can’t imagine what losing my family would do to me. I don’t see how escaping a bomb attack couldn’t change who you are. He looked so earnest in my office, like some part of him really needed this information. So, I thought I’d look into it personally. I’m turning everything I found over to you because I don’t really understand what’s going on, but I think Dr. Oeming is involved somehow.

We get complaints about our veil ads all the time. Most are about some sort of technical issue: blurred images in the stream, ringing in the ears during the ads, that sort of thing. We take detailed reports from everyone who has an issue, but we get so many that they often get lost in the shuffle. I started looking at the two nights in question and didn’t see anything unusual at first. There was a slight uptick in complaints about ads but nothing that seemed notable until I started to read the customer narratives. This is going to sound strange, but a significant number of customers those nights report seeing things that aren’t ads in our inventory.

A number of travelers on the night of September 27th reported seeing an ad for an unknown war movie. A few complained that they didn’t recognize any of the actors and that they never saw a title. However, most of the complaints that night were about the graphic nature of the ad. In particular, a mother claimed that her children were traumatized by witnessing a soldier being hacked apart. I had assumed that another bad ad had slipped past our quality control team. Upon closer review, I discovered we didn’t have any movie ads in the rotation, let alone anything that graphic.

Then on the night of September 29th, there was a similar uptick in ad complaints. This time the issue wasn’t graphic violence but rather another question about messaging. The reports say that customers saw fields of plants as far as the eye could see. It was the description of the plants that caught my eye. Dozens say that they saw fields of short plants with reddish pods that looked like chicken wings. That reminded me of something. Do you remember last year when we lost that flat of Kükenroot seedlings? These reports seem to describe a field of Kükenroot. Then I noticed the dates.

Wasn’t Dr. Oeming’s daughter born on the 27th and his wife on the 29th? After some digging I found that we experienced numerous little power surges throughout those nights too. Nothing large enough to raise an alarm but big enough to show up in the daily reports. I went through employee records and discovered that according to his badge, Dr. Oeming never left the lab to go home those nights. I’m not really sure what all this means but thought it definitely met your criteria for “anything unusual”. I hope you don’t think I’ve been reading too many tabloids or running down a hole of conspiracy theories. There’ no doubt something odd is going on, and I’m hoping you can clear it up, whatever it is. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do.

STORYLINE

We Need To Find Our Lost Kükenroot Seedlings

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This is my 4th communication with you about this issue and frankly, we are sick of getting the runaround. Again, I’m writing on behalf of Dr. Adler Walters about shipment VAW-235-3946. We had sent 4 sheets of seedlings for contribution into your Progress Repository and you say that you only received 3. At this point, we are not interested in assigning blame or making a claim for damages. We simply want to find the Kükenroot (KR) seedlings and make sure that their spicy buffalo goodness is secured for future generations by inclusion in the repository. These plants are very hardy and can be incredibly invasive. It is in everyone’s best interest that they are found quickly.

You’ve no doubt heard about Dr. Walters and his accomplishments. Despite the recent unpleasantness, we believe that his work has the potential to end worldwide hunger. The fact that the KR was accepted into your program should tell you everything you need to know about its importance.

The Doctor’s work at Vereserum is well known and our gardens here in Lahaina have been the subject of numerous documentaries and news reports. His ability to combine animal DNA with plants to produce viable crops is groundbreaking. The Kükenroot is the world’s first complete food source. The starchy bulb contains a daily allowance of vitamins and minerals and is a reasonable potato alternative. The meaty wing-like pods contain high levels of protein and B vitamins. Best of all the plants can be grown anywhere, and are 127 (Unbiseptium) sequestering. In fact, the root systems have been shown to actually pull the element out of the soil and store it in nodules. In nutrient-poor areas, the plants could get several months of food by slipping one of our booster pellets into the KR’s supplement canal. Hungry people could grow these plants in gravel if they had a bag of booster pellets. It was certain that we were on the verge of a farming revolution, then the trouble began.

I won’t say the Kükenroot was perfect. Some people had a problem with the color and consistency of the pods. I will admit that the “meat” produced in early strains could be a bit soft and stringy. However, we made some adjustments and not only improved the general appearance to make it more wing-like, but also improved the texture. While early focus groups expressed a certain “yuck-factor” with eating greenish meat, even if it tasted like buffalo chicken, we believed that familiarity with the product would solve the problem. In fact, we proved that 8 in 10 people in a blind taste test could not tell the difference between a KR “wing” and a traditional buffalo wing. The flavor was never an issue. There was also the complication of aphids clogging the supplement canals, but again, that was an easy fix. It was the media hit job that shelved our project.

“Questionable Science: Vereserum’s Feeling Fruit” was such an ill-informed and nasty bit of writing that we thought it would never catch on, but we were wrong. They completely overstated the extent to which our hybrids could respond to stimuli, and their capability to feel pain. They lied about the noises produced by the supplement canals due to digestive processes. I can assure you that the KR’s do not “hum” in happiness when fed or “cry” when the pods are picked. It seemed like we couldn’t get a media win until we were contacted about donating some samples to your Progress Repository.

Being recognized by a company as big as Veilcorp began to turn the tide for us. Having the Kükenroot identified as an important step in farming technology was a big shot in the arm. To think that Dr. Walters’ work would be part of the collection at your arctic facility was amazing. Alongside vitamin-producing rice, and seedless fruit, the Kükenroot would take its place among some of the most important modified plants in history. If anything cataclysmic happened to the Earth, survivors could not just grow plants, but plants that had already gone through years of scientific study and innovation. That’s why it’s so important that we find this missing tray.

The last thing we need is for news to get out that our much-maligned plants were lost in the veil. As I mentioned before, the KR can spread rather quickly and we have some concerns about someone planting them in their garden and having them take over a whole neighborhood. We need to get ahead of this problem!

I’ve heard numerous excuses at this point: An unusually strong storm might have affected the transport, that increased 127 production has made the system “glitchy”, and that we simply counted wrong. It would be ludicrous to say that we’ve never made a clerical error before, but I assure you, we can keep track of 4 items. The problem is that you don’t seem to have that same capability. I’m sure you don’t want stories circulating in the public that weather and an abundance of fuel might make veil travel less than reliable. All we want is for you to find our plants so we can give the media a different tale to tell, and have a happy ending to this story.

Brian Talsma
Assistant to Dr. Walters
Vereserum Labs, Lahaina

STORYLINE

HealthCare Professionals and Parent Groups Start Petition Seeking Ban on Taste-T App

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Taste-T, the app designed to help you like the taste of foods you normally don’t care for, may be the biggest Ceremplant hit of the year, but not everyone is singing its praises. A coalition of healthcare professionals and parent groups have started a petition to have the popular app banned, and raise awareness to the “real and serious dangers of using Taste-T.” The app’s creator says the technology is safe, and poses no danger when used as released. Ceremplant officials say they are looking into the matter.

Alex James is no stranger to ceremplant users. His “Emotional Compass” (EC) app took the Ceremplant world by storm back in 2034, and still remains one of the most popular apps for users of the ubiquitous implants. Taste-T has sold twice as fast as EC in its first year. “I got the idea from my nephew who famously hates the taste of peppers. He wouldn’t touch anything with peppers in it, no matter how delicious. I wondered how hard it would be to train someone to associate a flavor they didn’t like with a flavor they did. I started investigating if you could transform a “bad flavor” reaction in the brain with a “good flavor” reaction, targeting specific areas with electrical stimulation. I learned quickly that there wasn’t much scientific study done in the area. If it wasn’t for the amazing work of Dr. Adler Walters, I’d still be working on the software. His discoveries about how the brain responds to taste, while working on the kükenroot, and his database of compounds found in edible plants, was vital to the development of Taste-T.”

Taste-T transforms the brain’s response to an unliked food to one that a user finds delicious, over the course of a few days. Once properly calibrated, the taste of every food can be your favorite. With record sales it looked like Taste-T was well on its way to be the most popular app ever made for the Ceremplant. However, users began to exploit an unfortunate flaw in the program, which allowed users to greatly enhance the brain’s pleasure response to certain flavors.

Soon, many were using “enhanced” versions of the app. Healthcare professionals say that using the enhanced version of Taste-T can be dangerous. While most experience a mild euphoria, a sense of relaxation, or an altered perception of time when tasting specific foods, many can experience much more drastic effects when eating certain items, particularly with first time users. Instead of relaxation and euphoria, some users can experience aggresiveness (asparagus), fear (tuna), or feelings of distrust (SSHAM). In extreme cases the altered app can lead to long-lasting disorders or even permanent rewiring of the brain according to some in the medical community. While Alex has since upgraded Taste-T to disable the exploit, parent groups say that it is easy enough to rollback the software to an earlier version if you know where to look. They say the potential for abuse is too high, and they want the app pulled from stores.

Well known Lahaina restaurateur and business owner Bob Abramo has banned anyone using the app from dining in his famous Chop House. “I take the art of grilling and preparing meat seriously, and want customers who appreciate the true taste of our offerings. Meat tastes good without the use of Taste-T, although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intrigued. I bet you could even make people taste like cured pork belly with the app, if you wanted.”

“It’s the kind of thing you think only happens to other families, not your own,” says one of the most vocal critics of Taste-T, 40-year-old mother Brenda Ronner. “My son Max never liked the taste of onions. It wasn’t an issue when he was younger, but as he grew up it started to become a real problem. Just about everything has onions in it, and he’d spend hours a week meticulously picking them out of food. We had to avoid certain restaurants all together because of their limited onion-free options. On his 12th birthday his father and I decided to finally do something about it, and get him the Taste-T app.” Brenda says it was one of the worst decisions of her life.

“Everything seemed fine for a few weeks. We went through the calibration phase, and soon he was loving the taste of: onions, shallots, chives, leeks, and even garlic. Our food options and future seemed wide open, but Max started hanging around with a bad crowd at school, biohacker Taste-T vegetarian kids with wifi studs in their foreheads, and LED eyebrows. His grades began to slip, and I started noticing onion skins in his room, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then he was caught trying to steal a head of garlic from the store, and the truth came out. Those kids had done something to his app, and he had been on a tasting binge for months. We took him to the doctor, and applied the upgrade. I thought I had my old Max back again, but I was wrong. A few weeks later, I came home early, and heard music blaring from his room. I could smell the onions halfway up the stairs, despite the towel he had put at the bottom of his door. What I saw will be burned into my mind forever. The reggae music was deafening, and there were half-chewed leeks everywhere. I even found a shallot in his underwear drawer. He was sitting in his chair with his eyes rolled back in his head, licking the biggest vidalia onion I’d ever seen. He was so out of it, he barely moved when I screamed his name. I want to save other mothers from seeing their sons like that.”

Brenda says they’ve had to enroll Max into an institutional learning facility equipped to deal with the issues caused by his Taste-T app, and she is not alone. Hundreds have claimed to have similar experiences to the Ronners, and many healthcare professionals say the potential for harm is high for those using the app. Ceremplant says they take their customer’s health and well-being seriously, and will address the petition after a thorough review of Taste-T, and their third party app policy.