Dina set out in search of the Edenian nectar, the aromatic fluid that once held the now long-forgotten memories of taste. She was an ex-commander of the military bees and was armed with indigenous knowledge of the wild. She trained decommissioned bees and sent them out to survey the land, going deep into the wilderness to search for authentic flavours from purer forms of plants.
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Dina was part of a secret women farmers collective. They were called Deep Rooters and had organized themselves to protect the natural flavours of the land.
The land they had once co-created and nurtured was now just a uniform army of crops forced to submit to the whims of the Contractors. Farmers had been forced to outsource their minds, to help build ‘data’ that would support the Contractors' avaricious ambitions. But the women farmers kept a little secret. Unable to co-create with the earth anymore, they became foragers.
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Dina was a legendary forager, relentless in her efforts. The Deep Rooters worked in secret to preserve and protect the legacies of old from the reckless Contractors who were determined to quash any sign of the old indigenous plants.
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Foragers of flavour.
As the temperatures soared and the water table declined, the Contractors' agro bots watched as the genetically modified crop struggled to stay alive. All the stunning technology and all of the farmer's knowledge harvested by The Contractors were proving powerless against nature’s fury. The land was groaning under the weight of increased production to support the increase in population. Gene editing developed drought-tolerant and better-quality crops, but they outcompeted the natural plant species and overtook the land, wreaking havoc on the agricultural ecosystem. As the food grew more beautiful, it also grew bland.
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Flavour soon started to become scarce. The rich could afford the rare flavorful produce, but for the middle-class society, it became a luxury. Meals at home were bland. Flavour-enhancing restaurants were sought out in order to invigorate the senses. Flavouring devices appeared in the market. Artificial essences overtook the market. But they never really brought true satisfaction.
Dina’s Locator bee bots used their collective intelligence and electroreceptive sensors to survey the land and bring back information for Dina and the collective to assess. If the nectar located was of interest, they would send out additional bees to forage. They were called the FoBees.The beebots worked like a real hive, with Dina as their commander. They flew in a vic flight formation and upon reaching a suitable location, dispersed to conduct surveys and bring back authentic flavor compounds in vials that could be sold to the flavor-enhancing market.
The crops were far from recognizable, so the bots were trained to identify VOCs in the odorscape, emitted by the plants that were uncontaminated by pesticides. They scanned through their database of chemical signatures and once the right plant was located, the bee emitted ultrasound waves to affect the flavor molecules through cavitation. The bees used a lapping needle to extract the juices from the crop. These juices were stored in the body of the bee in a hermetically sealed vial.
They brought back authentic flavor compounds that were archived in the Edenian Nectar labs, analyzed, and used as benchmarks for the synthetic biology factories.
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The flavors that the bees brought back, brought colour back into the dull lives of the people in the city. The Edenian nectar was a sensorial treat that had the power to bring back memories of old.
SPECULATIVE DESIGN, FICTION, STORYTELLING
ACADEMIC PROJECT AT NID
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GUIDE: DR.JIGNESH KHAKKAR
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Credit: Amal Dev C for help with renders
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