The Chocolate Cake Varient

Sarah’s silver fork slowly worked its way down through the cake, the top edge slowly being lost into the thick frosting. It almost seemed to swallow the fork as the creamy glaze touched back to itself, seeming to heal, and leaving a tell-tale line as evidence to the fork's trespass. As the fork reached the bottom, and the small triangular piece of cake was pulled away, its soft interior bounced back to its full volume. Sarah excitedly brought the piece to her lips, deliberately unadorned with lipstick as she wanted to make sure there was no chance of anything changing the taste. She slowly pulled the fork from her mouth, and the flavors of the cake came pouring in. The different textures of the chocolate frosting, and the cake melded together in perfect harmony. The cake was moist, soft, and flavorful. The sugar balance to cocoa was ideal. Not too rich, not too bitter, and while no one aspect was overwhelming, the cake itself could be described as perfect. However, it still was not as good as her daughters.

Sarah stood up, puzzled and curious. She began to take off the nodes attached to her head. The room was sparse, and elegant. Three soft white walls surrounded a cedar table, its live edges and natural textures complimented the contemporary room. The fourth wall was nothing but a window, looking out to a sunlit landscape. Mountains, pine trees, and various dots of wildlife filled the view. Sarah moved to a cart of equipment, which seemed misplaced against the refined fusion of nature and contemporary minimalism. She began to push the computing towers, loose wires and cables towards the door. Her time on the material earth was always a time for two things: her children and research.

Sarah had decided to visit her daughter, Synthie, in the material reality just a few days ago. It was always an experience, transitioning from one reality to another. Humanity had been traversing between a digital and material set of realities for a long time. Time ran differently when inside the Data Towers. These towering megastructures were the foundation of what humanity was today. Humans had learned to digitize their consciousness near the end of the 21st century. They discovered they could in fact: exist, operate, and perceive time normally while living it in milliseconds. The human race advanced quickly and 100 years inside the tower was a little more than 40 days on Earth. Within the first year of the Towers debut; diseases, hunger, poverty and death simply fell away. The greatest difficulties humanity faced was attempting to prevent the galaxy from being engulfed by a giant black hole in the next billion years, and keeping themselves entertained.

People spent hundreds of years working on anything they wanted. What was Sarah’s place in all of this? Well, she was a flavorist. She was a neuroscientist, a botanist, a holder of three doctorates, and a baker. She never intended to spend three-hundred years trying to perfect the taste of chocolate cake, but her cakes had become the standard. The votes were in, and her cake programs were the most popular across fourteen interplanetary colonies. Sarah had always made small adjustments to her recipes, striving to make a better product. She honestly had thought her chocolate cake was the best it could ever be.

Sarah’s daughter Synthie was a Wildlife Biologist. She had been on the surface for decades, and her study still had decades left. Sarah pushed the cart out of the room, and made her way down the hall. The walls were alive with a plethora of colors, poetry, and photos of landscapes that transitioned and flowed across her right hand side. To her left, a view from a mile high. Fields of farmland, speckled with ponds the size of stadiums, stretched out in a mix of golds and greens. Blinking blue lights marked the beginnings of the labs, rehabilitation centers and preserves. Past that was the vast wild.The human race had originally occupied 70 percent of earth's land masses. Since digitization was discovered, they had slimmed that number down to a mere 5 percent. As Sarah moved down the corridor, children ran around fearlessly, their parents trying to keep them on task. The touchscreen walls allowed education to take place anywhere. School work, games, and business could be conducted anywhere. Sarah smiled as she bobbed and weaved her way to her room. As the cart moved smoothly over the floor, she couldn’t help but think about her children growing up and how the Towers' views affected them. She wondered what the children around her would become. Would they travel the galaxy, looking to the stars and new worlds to colonize? Or stay close to home like her daughter. She turned into her apartment, the door silently sliding open as she drew near.

The room was plain with no windows, and reacted to her voice as she gently requested for an analysis of the data she had just brought in. In moments, scans of her brain, data and measurements spread across the walls. Her brown eyes narrowed to slits, as she began to process her research. Sarah wanted to know why the cake she made with her daughter last week was so good. She compared data from the time with her daughter, with a more detailed look of the cakes she had been working with. Sarah had wondered if it was as simple as being with her daughter, or the nostalgia from a millennia ago when Sarah first taught Synthie to bake, that made her daughter's cake taste so good. She looked closely. Even digitized, neurodiversity could make it difficult to decide if the emotional investment of baking a cake, versus the quality of the cake, is what made it good. Hours went by as if moments while Sarah got lost in her work. What made her foods so authentic, is that they held no additional programs that would affect humans. Foods could be laced with special programs that would trigger the feelings of nostalgia or even love. Sarah's recipes had nothing like that. Her recipes were considered family activities, and while you could simply wave your hand in the air and receive one, they were intended to be baked by hand. In every recipe, the first ingredient was always friends and family. Sarah looked at the graph in front of her, and despite everything, her daughter's cake tasted better. Its consistency was poor, the ingredients worse, and overall, it was just a normal cake. Subtract all the emotional variables, and her brain still loved it more than a perfect cake. Sarah felt genuine joy at this discovery, and decided it was time to head out again to see her baby girl.

Sarah made her way out to the courtyards of the Tower, and was greeted by the bustle of industry. Drones, robots, and workers made their way up and down the streets and airways quickly, processing all sorts of raw materials. The sun beat down on her skin warming her to the soul. As she made her way down the civilian promenade she wondered how she should travel. She could travel by air, ride with some of the workers and chat if she wanted company, or she could go by foot. It would be longer if she went by foot. She smiled as someone ran by, testing out their new body. Humans on earth often had modified bodies. These advancements made people capable of superhuman abilities, but using those abilities for day to day tasks had lost its appeal to Sarah. When life was limitless, it seemed to be such a waste not to stop and smell the flowers. She smiled and decided to walk. She stopped and spoke to everyone she saw, took pictures, and assisted others when she could. Without fear she slept under the moon and stars, and made her way across the vast complex to the edge of the wilderness. Humans, after evolving past their physical forms, had taken on the task of taking care of their planet properly. She passed through the various buildings dedicated to the care and study of the planet. Despite the advancements of humanity, Earth still turned on its normal time, and the healing process could not be rushed. The last gate, marking the transition from the safety of the complex to the wild, was something out of a story book. Trees intertwined into living walls and doors felt more like something from an elven city than a man made structure. It seemed to stand out against nature and fit seamlessly into the landscape all at once.

Sarah walked through the gates and began to stretch her senses. The world seemed to flood into her being as she began to look for Synthies camp. She shifted through sounds, smells and visuals until she found the camp. It was farther away than last week, but not in the mountains anymore. Sarah began to mosey along taking in everything around her. Her body was fitted with special hormone replicators, allowing her to walk and rest unharassed from any wildlife. Days went by and a feeling of peace filled Sarah by the time she took her first step into the campment.

Synthie had known for days that her mother was on the way, and worked with a smile on her face in anticipation. As Sarah stepped from the woods into the camp Synthie rushed to her mother. Sarah smiled, always fascinated by Synthie’s various work additions. The last time she saw her, Synthie had a lithe frame and was much shorter. Built to work and navigate the caves and canyons in the southern mountains, Synthies parts had been chosen specifically for her environment. Now in the forest, and working with larger animals, Synthie’s arms and legs were thick, and her hands very large. Sarah felt encompassed and safe by her daughter's embrace. Giggles erupted from the two, and Sarah excitedly followed her little girl to the main tent.

“I would like to cook for you, and your crew if that's okay” Sarah stated as they got settled in. Synthie’s brow furrowed with curiosity. In moments, she was being streamed the data her mother had on her new experience with chocolate cake, and her questions surrounding the meaning of the changes. Sarah began to explain that she would like to travel with Synthie's camp, and use them as a control group. Half of them, including Synthie, would be working on Earth for several more decades. While the other half, would be rotating out regularly as interns and students. This would allow Sarah to set up a control group to test and measure the recipes that long term consumers respond to favorably against a rotation of short term consumers. She would grow, cook, and provide meals three times a day, and she would use this time to not only discover why she loved Synthie’s cake so much but maybe improve all of her recipes. Synthie looked at her mother with awe and excitement. It never failed to impress her when her mother found another genuinely interesting project. Synthie watched and listened to her mothers excited words and ideas as they poured out, mixed with data streaming into her brain. Synthie could feel the buzz inside her mother as they shared communications far deeper than just words. She smiled, and hugged her mother again. “Of course you can, as long as I get to help with the cakes” stated Synthie, her voice was soft and sweet. Tears of joy gleamed on both of their cheeks. Neither had expected when Sarah first taught her daughter to bake a cake, that twelve hundred years later they would still find making a cake together to be exciting, and special. Love simply didn’t age.