My NeurNet flashed the alert across my eyes: my kitchen was low on several staple ingredients required for my menu plan for the week. My initial reaction of ‘huh?’ was immediately replaced by worry. What was Mom making? My ’Net hadn’t sent me any alerts on her vitals, so I checked manually. Blood pressure and blood sugar looked fine, but her body position — was she sitting on the floor? Had she fallen?
I pinged her ’Net. No answer. I pinged again. Still nothing. I had no cameras inside the house, and I now questioned that agreed-upon privacy boundary.
My boss approached as I dashed towards the door. “Again?”
“You know I’ll make up the time.”
“I do. Take care.” She understood. Her brother had also joined a 20th Cen cult.
On the tram home, my NeurNet tracked my elevated heart rate and recommended use of my anti-anxiety meds. That dose didn’t cancel out my angry worry, but I was no longer on the verge of bawling. I hated feeling like the parent in our relationship — or like a stranger helping a time traveller adapt to a new era.
“Mom! Are you OK? You have to respond to my pings, or — oh.” I stopped in the doorway to my kitchen. It smelt like cornbread, my favourite scent in the whole world.
My jaw dropped. Six platters of cornbread covered the counter. That explained the low-ingredient alert.
Mom sat on the floor, sobbing.
From the time I was young, she’d flirted with 20th Cen cult practices. Some adherents insisted on manually driving vehicles or shunned NeurNet implants. Mom didn’t go those routes. She wanted to cook and keep her house the old-fashioned way. Oh, how she embarrassed me when I was a kid! When she joined the full-on cult a decade ago, she signed on as a home labourer at their isolated compound — and signed off as my mom, as far as I was concerned.
Her recent cancer diagnosis had selfishly relieved me. NeurNet-regulated meds were the sure-fire way for her to stay alive. She left the cult. I’d begged her to move in with me for years. She did!
We’d been miserable ever since.
“I was testing cornbread to surprise you, but that, that thing can’t make it right.” Mom pointed an accusatory finger at the full-wall Sup unit.
Sup, short for Supreme Cooker. The pun amused me most of the time, but not at that moment.
“I see you sampled each one already.” My ’Net advised deep breathing to lower my stress. “The recipes must be good, or the Sup wouldn’t use them.”
Mom scrambled to her feet. “Good? Well, these three are too sweet, and this one includes corn kernels. That makes it a corn pudding, not a bread.” Spoken like a true descendant of the American South.
“Then why did you make it?”
“Sheer desperation.”
Her chagrin made me laugh. I had nagged her to use her NeurNet to access the Sup and everything else, and now she had — to this result.
“They’ll all be edible, with the help of butter,” Mom continued. “But I want — I need — to find the right recipe. I know it hasn’t been easy, having me here, and I wanted to give you a pleasant surprise for once.” Her smile wobbled.
Oh Mom. I fought the urge to sob. “You could’ve experimented with recipes over a month instead of six in one afternoon, you know.”
“I was impatient. I wanted to get it right today. I didn’t mean for you to miss work because of me. Again. I’m sorry.”
Guilt and exhaustion strained her face. Her meds had the cancer in remission, but her battle was ongoing. Mom had meant well. She was trying to be part of the twenty-first century — and my life.
Maybe I needed to think more like the twentieth century to help her along.
“Mom, do you remember how to make your particular recipe?” I asked as I multitasked to access the Sup.
“Of course I do. I don’t even need an implant to remember that.” Pride tinged her voice.
“Most people rely on the full automation of the Sup to have their meals ready when programmed, but I think I remember … aha! Mom, let me tag you through our ’Nets.” I took her by the hand — via mind-link — to show her the options for the Sup.
She gasped. “I can manually add my recipe?”
“Yes. But even more …”
“I can mix by hand and use the Sup for baking alone, like my old oven? I didn’t know these big fancy things could do that.” We mutually severed the link.
“I didn’t, either!” I grinned. Here I’d been, pestering her to use her NeurNet, and I hadn’t even been aware of all it and the Sup could do. “I can bring those options to the forefront and help you input everything.”
Mom’s eyes glistened. “I would need to test the recipe a few times. Individual ovens change how the food turns out, you know. I’d certainly control the mixing and baking process at first, then see how the Sup does handling the whole —”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. We need to freeze and gradually finish off what you’ve made first!”
She laughed. “True. We might be sick of cornbread soon.”
“Maybe,” I said, speaking slowly. “But your treatments are going well. Because of that, we have time, Mom. You’ll have plenty more chances to make the right cornbread recipe for me. For us.”
We moved together at the same time, our arms snaring each other in a tight hug. My NeurNet congratulated me on my new calm as I breathed in my mom’s comforting perfume of cornbread.
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The right cornbread - Nature.com
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