"Kitchen talk", part 1 of the new series "After The Pandemic. A Fictional Story"

"Kitchen talk"

Part 1 of the series "After The Pandemic. A Fictional Story"

by Karin Sawetz

“There will come the day we have forgotten to remember how the revolt started and the names of the ones who had to carry the weight of others' guilt. Many will say nobody was guilty and that it was the coronavirus which ruined first the life of the weak middle class and worsened the suffering of the poor, before the revolt was started almost as a natural reflex to the greed of the ones who ruled discreetly from a shadowy network over power and money. The mass of people was breathless from the disease, the grief of the high amount of deaths made them hopeless, and the downfall couldn't be stopped early enough. The people’s situation turned with new working conditions into a degraded status of mainly short-time employees with diminished rights and such a low income that the living costs couldn't be covered. When it was hard to afford living before the pandemic, with the virus outbreak the economic situation of 99% of the population drifted off finally. Haven't you learned that the mass started the revolt like a natural reflex to survive?”  

"Sure. So you are giving me now a history lesson," the young woman binds her long blond naturally curled hair together such as she wanted to signal to get ready for missing no word. While taking her seat on the stool at the kitchen bar, she asks the woman who stands at a vintage oven. "Grandma, let me hear how it happened. You were once in between; literally in the epicenter of the revolt. Granny in hell's kitchen!" laughs the girl studying her grandmother who opens the door of the mid-20th century oven-like styled high-tech kitchen machine such as it would be necessary to control the baking process. The smell of almond cookies begins to fill the room. The warm scent melts with notes of green grass and meadow flowers carried from a light wind from the garden. It's a beautiful spring day in April 2077. The young woman in her short wide dress made of a creme colored light floating fabric with floral embroideries moves like a ballerina to the stove and takes elegantly one of the cookies. "It's always the same, Sarah," says the grandmother watching her with a slightly grumpy expression. "There are many examples in history how empires vanished and for the necessity to break the rules of systems."  With the first cookie still in one hand, the girl opens the door of the oven. "Sarah, don't eat all the cookies before our guests arrive! I haven't raised you to be selfish person." 

Granny splits up the amount of cookies in two well calculated halves on two different sized plates made of porcelain. At the smaller plate, she arranges the cookies in pyramid form. The tableware is decorated artfully with painted garden scenes like taken from a late-19th century natural history picture book. The grandmother was once an early bird in 3D printing design and one of the creative minds behind recipes for homemade printer powders recycled from waste every household produces daily. "It was a great time even when people became more and more stressed by the coronavirus outbreak. We lived at the beginning of a new era. Only few lost their patience…”

  

"Patience", part 2>