The Secret Ingredient

Kim and I were getting high, nuzzled on our plush couch when a commercial for Mama’s Pies came through The Feed. My mouth immediately felt bland, as if I had licked cardboard. The flaky, crackling crust and sweet blueberries danced on the screen. A catchy song, almost a chant, overlaid the video.

It went, “…make the pies to make the love to make you make the pies to…”

There was indeed nothing like Mama’s Pies — they were straight-up addictive. 

Kim and I grew up eating Mama’s Pies. Not our mothers, of course. In the 22nd century, nobody cooks for themselves anymore. So to subsist, we relied upon The Feed. Prepackaged groceries, which could be heated through a chemical reaction with water, toiletries, take-out, toys, prescriptions — anything could be delivered through a pneumatic tube and delivered to our doorstep after just a few clicks on the screen. 

This was fortunate since we couldn’t go outside because the air was so toxic and insufferably hot. Spending extended periods outdoors without shelter meant almost certain death. The tubes that brought the food also ferried humans around for the required minimal travel, primarily to and from work. I don’t know what we would’ve done if it wasn’t for all those incredible human innovations that allowed us to keep living despite the harsh circumstance.

“Want to know why Mama’s Pies are so dang good?” a cheerful old woman with white hair on the screen, which we could only assume was the Mama, croaked. “The secret ingredient is love.” 

I could tell Kim’s mind was heading in the same direction as mine. It was her devilish smirk that gave it away. 

Over our many years together, I had learned the little hints that clued me into the workings of her lovely, labyrinthian mind. That smirk meant either “I’m about to commit petty thievery. Please be on the lookout for me, lover,” or “let’s do something a little naughty.” Not naughty naughty, just regular naughty like “let’s eat a whole pie in one sitting together” kind of naughty.

Kim contained multitudes that were endlessly fascinating to me. I was especially obsessed over the little things, like the sleepy lilt in her voice when she first awoke or how she insisted that my pink shirts were orange and my green shirts were blue. I was pretty sure she was colorblind and in complete denial. Yet, I loved her obstinate self all the same. I realized a while ago that love meant not only accepting but adoring the little idiosyncrasies that detail the picture of a person.

We clicked the purchase button on the TV screen and, after a few moments, received a harsh error message. 

Insufficient Funds – Please Refill Your CreditsCard^TM to Proceed

I felt defeated. We had lost our jobs only a few weeks ago, and it felt like the walls were already closing in.  If we couldn’t figure something out, we would be kicked out of our apartment and put in vagrancy prison until we could pay off the hefty fine. We had discussed taking out a loan, but I was hesitant since we had no income streams, and the lending rates were atrocious.

“Hey, it’s okay!” Kim cheered. “I think we have some sardines in the cabinet. Let me go see.”

She was good at putting on a brave face, but I could sense the worry in her voice. I had to do something. At that moment, the white-haired Mama on the screen looked straight at me and smiled.

“Are you looking for a career opportunity with competitive pay, flexible hours, and a clear path to advancement? Click here now to become a Mama’s Certified Pie Specialist.”

I sat up straight. This offer could be the thing that saved us. I ran the plan by Kim, but she was apprehensive.

“I don’t know. Are you sure? I’ve heard some scary rumors about the working conditions of that place,” Kim said. “It just seems… I don’t know… Culty?”

“Oh, come on, those are just rumors. You worry too much,” I said. “How about this? We give it a couple of months, and if either of us hates it, we’ll quit. No questions asked.”

With this stipulation, she agreed. We collapsed back into the couch, and I stroked her hair as she lay in my arms. 

Through The Feed, we faintly heard Mama say, “And don’t forget the secret ingredient: love.”

---

Mama’s factory was all-inclusive, so we lived in an apartment on-site and had all our meals prepared. Thankfully, we were granted an accommodation to stay in a couples suite so we wouldn’t be separated during off hours.

After orientation, this accommodation made a lot of sense. Mama’s Pies^TM placed a considerable emphasis on the “Pies are made with love” schtick. Seeing a company so focused on family was refreshing, particularly in this bleak day and age.

After orientation, we wandered the factory to get our bearings straight. The line from the song in the commercial was scrawled in red ink on the walls of the hallways.

…make the pies to make the love to make you make the pies to…

My optimism started to wane after the first day of work. We spent the entire shift cleaning berries, carrying them up a ladder, and dumping them into a giant vat of sugary-smelling red liquid. The berries bubbled and sent a cloud of heavy steam into our faces when they hit the surface. It would burn our eyes and choke our lungs. It made me sick. By the end of the day, we were exhausted and sticky to the touch. The saccharine smell of caramelized berries permeated every pore of our skin.

We ate pie for every meal — egg pie for breakfast, tomato pie for lunch and minced meat pies for dinner. And, of course, sweet pies of every variety were served for dessert. Those succulent pies were the only solace from our day-to-day misery at the factory.

I know it sounds crazy, but Kim and I started to dream the same dreams at night. In one, the atmosphere was no longer hot and toxic. We sat on a magical porch swing surrounded by woods and floated in relaxed, comfortable darkness. Balmy wind rattled the trees, causing the branches to whistle and sing with the crickets. Kim wrapped her cardigan tight around her waist and nuzzled herself into the crook of my arm. The smell of oak from an unseen fire drifted over us. Blue moonlight danced through the leaves and cast a jagged shadow. Kim’s hair draped around her delicate neck tickled my cheeks as the wind blew. Everything felt so vivid, perfect, and peaceful. Like it was real.

Then we would wake up and peel our eyes open that were sealed shut from the powdered sugar that had settled on us overnight like crusty dew. The physical toll aside, we felt strange emotionally in this unfamiliar place. Like life and love had been sucked right out of us. Still, we clung to one another like two tangled buoys battered by a storm. 

We had different reactions to the stress. I was afraid to go back to the outside world, whereas Kim solely focused on getting us out of there. She felt that working in the factory was ruining us. She was right. Our depression was the only thing we shared anymore. Kim, a woman who could make my heart flutter with a quick glance, now only inspired an insipid malaise. 

But I still insisted the situation was more complicated and couldn’t be fixed by simply leaving. Inside the factory, we had a purpose and, more importantly, security. Nothing is more valuable than security in a scary, terrible world where the outside air can kill you.

We continued, stumbling around in our daze until it came to a head one night. We were eating our pies, indulging in the scant bit of pleasure we were afforded under the single Edison bulb above our dining room table.

I asked her, “How is it?”

She finally lost it, screamed, and threw the pies against the wall. Her wails turned to sobs as she leaned against the wall behind her and slid to the ground. I had never seen her so distraught.

“I can’t do this anymore!” she cried. “We have to leave now.”

I argued with her to stay as she gathered her things, barely moving from my spot in the living room. Tears drummed the metal floor. We thought I might snap out of it by the time she was ready to go, but she was standing in the doorway with her bag, and I still hadn’t moved. Her face was a crumpled mess, a despondent look I would never forgive myself for giving her.

The last thing she said was, “You promised me we would leave together.”

We were both surprised that I said nothing in response as she left. I felt like I had lost a piece of myself. I was ashamed for letting her go but utterly terrified of what would happen if I followed. Safety was my main priority, even if it meant losing everything that made life worth living.

I ate pies until I was sick that night.

---

It was another somber, gray day. Mama called me to her office, so I shambled through the winding red hallway until I came upon the shiny ivory door. It vibrated under my knuckles as I knocked.

“Come in,” I heard a familiar voice say.

I entered, and there she was: Mama.

“How are you, dear?” Mama cheered.

In what felt like a pavlovian response, my heart lifted, if ever so slightly, from the depths of the sadness I was mired in.

“I… I’m okay. My girlfriend left me. No, that’s not true; I chased her away,” I mumbled. “The world is hard. I’m scared.”

“Oh, dear…” Mama said.

Her short legs swung off the massive, black leather chair and shuffled towards me. Her trembling hands reached out and pulled me close.

“Now, now…” She whispered.

For a moment, it felt nice.

 “Now… how the FUCK did you let her go?!” She snarled into my ear. I felt little drops of rancid spittle on my neck.

Shocked, I separated myself from her.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKERS WERE MY TOP CONTRIBUTORS. I’LL ASK AGAIN BECAUSE YOU’RE OBVIOUSLY DUMB AND DEAF. HOW. DID. YOU. LET. HER. GO?”

I couldn’t manage anything more than unintelligible stuttering in response. It felt like I had just seen Santa Clause club a baby seal to death.

“Do you want to see how this ship runs, boy??” Mama said. She tugged down on a wide red curtain behind her desk, which rolled up in a flash. It was a view overlooking the factory apartments I had never seen before. Pneumatic tubes ran from the roofs of the flats into the glass ceiling above. They chugged rhythmically, pulled red liquid up into a bulbous muscle at the top, and dumped it into vats of pie mix moving down a conveyor belt.

“Do you know what this is?” she crooned. “It’s the system that makes Mama’s Pies so fuckin’ delicious. It’s the secret ingredient. It’s love.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Did you think I had enough love to pump out these pies forever?!? When I was younger, I wanted every pie to be chock full of my love. But, as my business, influence, and wealth grew, more people wanted pies from me. It was addictive. Trading my love for unimaginable wealth soon consumed me,” She growled. “My husband left me shortly after realizing I had no love left to give him.”

Mama had a catch in her throat and teared up. A red handkerchief emerged from her smock to dab her eyes.

“That day, I stopped giving a fuck. I realized nobody cared about the quality of love inside the pies. I was giving away a crucial part of myself when I didn’t need to. That’s when I started harvesting other people’s love.” 

She walked over to the large window overlooking the love-harvesting tubes. The pipes continued, moving methodically from apartment to apartment, steadily draining the love out of the unsuspecting workers’ brains. 

“Oh, and it went so well. I went from a million to a multi-billion-dollar company within a year. Do you know how fuckin’ much that is?” She asked.

“I don’t–” I stammered.

“Of course, you don’t. You’re a fucking idiot. An idiot in love. I’ve seen a lot of idiots. They come in here in love with an idea, a philosophy, a person, a game, a piece of art, a hope, something,” She said. “And I take that love right from them. But you two… You’re something else.”

I stared at her, not unlike an idiot.

“You and your girlfriend were responsible for over half of the output of this entire factory. Seven billion pies. That’s exactly what your love amounts to. More love than I’ve ever seen in this goddamn world. Fuckin’ incredible. When I was a young woman who appreciated romance, I might have taken an existential solace in this anomaly. But not anymore. I only have one question for you.”

“What?”

“How will you make her fall in love with you and bring her back?”

I pushed her away, bolted out the door, and ran down the winding red hallway, the neverending aphorism on the wall whizzing past my head.

… make the pies to make the love to make you to make the pies to…

I heard the pitter-patter of Mama’s surprisingly agile body scurrying behind me. I didn’t stop to look until I returned to the door to my room. She crept around the corner as I fumbled with my keys.

“Where are you going, my dear?” she cackled.

I finally slipped the keys into the lock, fell through the door, and slammed it closed. I scrambled to gather my remaining personal items and headed to the emergency exit hatch in the back.

As I lowered my body into the tube, the lock slowly clicked, and the front door flew open. Mama slithered inside.

“You can’t stop me!” I screamed. “I need to go! I need to find her!”

“I can stop you. I could make that pneumatic tube spit you right back onto the factory floor, where you would stay for as long as I say. Or…” 

She paused. 

“I can send you home to your girlfriend. So long as you bring her back here in four days, you have nothing to worry about. You can sleep safely in Mama’s factory forever. I’ll even give y’all some extra pies. But I must warn you,” Mama croaked. “If you try to run, I will find you. There is no corner of this sweating, poisonous world where you can hide. You’ll be looking over your shoulder forever.”

I said nothing, but the sugary tears that dripped from my face onto the floor gave Mama the answer she was searching for.

The button clicked, and I was sucked through the pneumatic tube. Moments later, I was deposited onto my living room floor with a thunk. Kim looked at me quizzically through bites of her sardine sandwich. Finally, I was home, if only for a moment.

---

Kim and I held each other for a while and felt the loving warmth wash over us, quenching our parched souls. I looked deeply into her eyes and noticed a speck of greenish blue that I had never seen before. After many tears and kisses, we relayed our time apart to one another.

“So she said she’d hunt us down?” Kim asked.

“Yes, and I believe her. She is basically omnipotent. It looks like we have no choice –”

“Bullshit! We are not going back there.”

“But what else can we do?”

She got down on her knees and held my hands.

“We should run. Fuck it all,” Kim said. “We take our shit and go. I don’t care if we only make it a day, a week, a month, or whatever. I would rather live a life on the run, taking turns watching over each other at night, than go back to that hellhole.”

“But we would have nothing.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

Over the next few days, we took out a loan and maxed out the debt on our CreditsCard. Most of it was spent on supplies for our long vacation, but we also splurged on our favorite foods, drinks, and movies.

Three days of hedonistic expression of our love commenced. Our stomachs bulged out from all of the eating and drinking. We made love, slept in clean sheets, and held each other until the amber sunlight filtered through our blinds each morning. A million little nothings were shared as we danced in the moonbeams that fell through our tiny skylight. Love had returned to our bodies.

I almost tricked myself into thinking those few blissful days would never end. As if maybe we had stumbled into a universe of infinite happiness from which we wouldn’t wake.

On the fourth day, we stood before the doorway that led into the blistering, toxic, uncertain wasteland. She gripped my hand. We exited and began searching for our beloved swingset on the porch.