Technology has come a long way since the 70’s. Now we have cellular phones, tablets and smart home devices like Sena and Google Home.

My job is to monitor the Sena devices in the north west region to better focus advertising. Some would call it boring but it’s a living and occasionally, quite rewarding.

Within my group, we monitor over five thousand devices - which means that stumbling across a complete, interesting conversation from almost the beginning was a little like hitting the jackpot.

Recently, I encountered one such conversation that I felt the need to record. It was so fascinating that I figured I’d transcribe it for your reading pleasure as well as for me to review again in the future while dreaming of being as wealthy as this family.

I apologize for missing the first little bit but it shows a side of society that I will never be a part of personally.

“No, it has to be this way!” Evelyn insisted. “If you really loved me, you’d respect our wishes!”

“But Evie...”

“Don’t Evie me! They downgraded me!”

“That’s not MY fault! I had nothing in it!”

“You’re the Director, dammit! YOUR JOB is to enforce the rules. Do you really love me so little you’d let a stranger buy me?”

“I love you enough that I want to BREAK the rules, Evie.”

“You should have thought about that long ago and paid closer attention, then! Maybe I wouldn’t have been downgraded and Deborah wouldn’t have been classified as a ‘D’ on her first assessment. But what is done is done. There’s no law that says either of us HAS to be injected first.”

“Dammit Evie. Why did you have to give birth to an artist, anyway?”

“Deborah has your genes, Arthur. One COULD say that you brought this upon yourself. I suppose your next complaint is that you let me join The Humane Society a few weeks ago?”

“That’s not fair, Evie. They always lobbied for cats and dogs, not people! I never once complained about your involvement and I certainly didn’t know they’d changed their focus.”

“See? You don’t even know what we’re about any more. That’s why it has to be this way. We need to get our message across.”

“It’s no longer YOUR cause, Evie. It’s the Humane Society’s cause again now. But how is being delimbed and roasted alive furthering their cause?”

“Because people need to know it’s cruelty, that’s how! Jenny’s ex featured her last month and most of her went to waste! She was totally ruined by that idiot.”

“Well, he can’t be too much of an idiot or he wouldn’t be a category ‘A’. I’m telling you it was just bad luck.”

“He was drunk, Art. Distracted by that new blonde of his. He must enjoy losing his wives to reclassification. He’s already on number four!”

“Just a run of bad luck, Evie. All of them were cat A’s when he met them and that ‘dumb blonde’ of his is a nurse. She had to train for 4 years to become one.”

“Mark my words, Art. She’ll get reclassified within the year. But that doesn’t change the fact that he burned Jenny to a crisp. He totally screwed up checking on her and by the time he remembered her, even the dogs weren’t interested in leftovers.”

“I’m not going to argue about Theo and Jenny, Evie. This is about you and Deborah. I still don’t understand what that’s got to do with what you want to do. Just take the injection and we’ll keep you and Deb in the freezer. Use you a little at a time. That’s the proper thing to do.”

“You really don’t see it, do you Art? Firstly, there are millions of starving Africans while you’re entitled to keep all the meat you want. You think that’s fair? Secondly, what has become of our society when the meat animals that give up their lives for you and your pals, can be burned to a crisp by an idiot and just tossed away? It’s got to stop! Most importantly...”

“You’re one of my ‘pals’, Evie. You have a gift for preparing the most tender meals I’ve ever eaten!”

“That’s not what I meant, Art. I’m not going all sour grapes on you, I promise, even though you neglected to pay attention to my recent reclassification evaluation. Yes, I’ve always been able to appreciate the best way of serving various meats - it’s my job as your wife and the chief cook and bottle washer around here. But that was before yesterday. Now I AM the meat. I’m just a living, walking talking, pork roast today. I’m no longer classified as human. This morning one of the servants snorted at me and mumbled something about pigs inside the house.”

“We talked about that, Evie. If you can’t point out the servant, I can’t deal with them. But why are you two dead set on making a production of this? At least take the injections. Both of you. For me.”

“It’s Deborah’s last wish. She wrote this up and got an ‘A’ at school for that assignment.”

“As I said, why did she have to be so damned creative? I never for a moment worried that she might be classified as a ‘D’ on her initial evaluation. It makes me think something’s going on that I need to know about. Someone to call to account. Maybe some funny business within the review board?”

“You’re kidding yourself Art. She’s as dumb as a box of rocks. That’s what made her ‘A’ in school so special. Anyway, before you interrupted me, I was going to say that most importantly, my reason for not taking the injection is that I want everyone in the extended family as well as the whole neighborhood to experience a live cooking.”

“And why, exactly?”

“Everyone in this neighborhood gets their meat from the butcher. An arm, a leg, breast or tenderloin. They don’t seem to understand where that meat comes from. And in the rare event they purchase a whole carcass for a party or something, it’s already long harvested and processed. Our neighbors don’t even know that the butcher they go to doesn’t even prepare his own meat and the processing plant just slits the throats of its stock then guts them without the benefit of an injection first.”

“It’s quick, Evie. They don’t feel any pain. You’re talking about going over the coals while you’re still breathing!”

You didn’t even know The Humane Society was interested in livestock, Art. How then could you know that putting a hundred meat animals in a pen together for sometimes days on end with no facilities, effects the quality of the meat? They roll around in each other’s filth! It’s unsanitary and it needs to change.”

“And what’s that got to do with you and Deborah?”

“They’ll taste the difference. You all will. When Deborah asked last night, I said I’d support her. That means that we both get tenderized first, honey and then we get cooked alive to keep us tender. None of those nasty chemicals in our bodies being released to toughen the meat like the processed meat is full of. How long can I last before the fire extinguishes me? Ten minutes? Fifteen? I’ve heard some people that do it are almost rare before they expire. An hour on the spit. What a rush!”

“Well I’m still against the tenderizing part. You’re my wife and Deborah’s my daughter. But more importantly, what you said about the chemicals. That’s hogwash, Evie. There’s no proof that any certain emotion creates a chemical that ruins the meat! You’ve prepared some of the best meals we’ve ever eaten. They wouldn’t be half as good if you were right about damned natural chemicals.”

“I’ve never bought meat that came from those processing plants, Art. I always get mine from the co-op. It’s more expensive but you can afford it. There, they raise their meat from birth and they pride themselves on supplying the best quality. If the co-op families weren’t raising stock animals from birth, most of those animals would have been category ‘A’ people when they had their initial evaluations.”

“Those places are the ones that should be shut down. I’ve heard the conditions there are as bad or worse as the state processing plants. In fact, I’ve got a submission on my desk at work, asking for an official enquiry to be opened. Female breeders spend their whole lives bent over, unable to move, chained in place and bred continuously until they’re too old to conceive anymore. Then they’re disposed of as grade III meat. And that’s just the breeders. The female stock and the males - they have to double as farm labor and transport slaves until they’re turned into feed themselves. You know they breed the females again within an hour of giving birth even though they can’t physically conceive for at least a month?”

“That’s because the females need something in their holes, everybody knows that. As for using slaves for manual labor, what would you prefer? Maybe seeing them lounging around being waited on hand and foot? No, they’re kept busy and they pair the females up to pull the cartsand they’re out to good use pulling taxi carts too. Although The Humane Society wants to change that as well.”

“Really? The Humane Society doesn’t like co-op methods either? Why’s that? Maybe THEY don’t want the herd gainfully employed before they’re harvested? Maybe they WANT the herd to run wild on their farms and don’t even want to see them tagged? Free range has been tried before, honey. It was a waste of resources and we have precious few of those, these days.”

“Don’t be silly, Art. The Humane Society thinks the breeders aren’t mentally stimulated enough while they’re being raised. But those meat animals are carefully exercised and their anatomy is evaluated as soon after puberty as is practical. You can’t get a jumbo breast out of a pancake, for instance.”

“I don’t know, Evie. It just seems wrong, what they’re doing. At least in the state processing plants, the meat is only there for a short while.”

“Art, It’s been proven that if you want jumbo breast meat you sometimes have to start their growth hormones early and stretch, stretch, stretch. They skewer them as soon as the breast tissue can support the rods, too. And it’s mostly natural stretching, using the animal’s own weight to stretch the breast right from the nipple. And it’s humane too. They only train the breast meat for a couple of hours a day, so the process takes even longer. Very fascinating to see.”

“Yeah, growth hormones. Another thing the state processing plants don’t use. It’s all about getting them in, processed and to the butcher. No waiting.”

“Growth hormones are totally safe, dear. The co-op is even trying out new methods all the time. That sausage we had last week? All from a single penis. And I saw it before it was even removed. It was twenty inches flaccid! Can you imagine how long it took to stretch a penis that much and the effort to produce that girth? Incredible!” The crown alone weighed half a pound and the best part? The male it came from is still there. I was going to get a couple of pounds of thigh for Thursday and he’ll STILL be around for rump roast next week, unless someone else purchases it first. The state processing plant won’t go to the trouble of ensuring the meat is kept alive and fresh like the co-op does.”

“But do they really just let them run wild all around their properties? Without clear tags, they could be mistaken for a naked category ‘A’ person passing by. Just think of the stink it would cause if a cat ‘A’ was butchered by mistake!”

“Oh no! They definitely tag them! And if anything, they tag the herd more thoroughly! Every future cut of meat is individually tagged. Some of the females have more metal tags hanging off their bodies than the males! But that’s not what I meant.”

“Tell me. Exactly what did you mean then?”

“As I said, The Humane Society’s problem is with the breeder animals, not the herds. They want to make the co-op rotate holes on the breeders to give them a break from constant, boring vaginal sex. Our co-op rotates the males between vaginal, anal and oral sex to give the males variety - to keep the animals happy and docile, I guess. The Himane Society was very impressed. The co-op uses a cute little device to keep their breeders mouths open so they don’t even have to remember to do it themselves. I don’t know how I feel about a breeder cleaning off the penis of the male who has just done anal with a different breeder, though. At least I know where your penis got it’s coating, when I do it. It just seems to me like ingesting another breeder’s feces off a Dolcett male’s penis is hardly hygienic but I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”

“Another point in favor of the state processing plants, Evie. No animal is there long enough to get sick from sharing excrement. Anyway, this isn’t about the co-op or state processing plants. It’s about you and Deborah refusing the injection, being tenderized and cooked alive. Why would you choose that option? It doesn’t make sense!”

“Deborah is a virgin, honey. Can you imagine dying without knowing sex? And can you personally imagine the affront of not being offered her holes first, yourself? She’s dumb, but she’s gorgeous. Surely you can get it up a few times for her before the neighborhood has its go.”

“It’s not that, honey. Its partly the other facet of tenderizing and dammit, to be honest, it’s mostly that I’m a one-woman man. I’ve only ever made love to you since we’ve been married.”

“That’s just it! You’ve been very selfish, Art. For sixteen years I’ve only ever been with you despite the number of men and women who have offered. Now that I’m meat, it’s beyond my choice to resist someone who wants my mouth, vagina or bottom. As your wife, it was only proper, to turn them down since it would offend you, but now ... well you govern the policy! You know meat animals can’t refuse.”