"What the...is that you, Freaky Ed?"

"Yeah, it's me!  And it's you, Bonehead Jason! Ha!" 

"Great to see you, my friend! What have you been doing since high school?"

"Working. Going to the community college. I'm almost done with my degree. You?"

"On break from college. Starting my junior year at Highton next month. Where Dad and Mum went. Majoring in Global Entrepreneurial Innovation and Development. Still playing tennis, too." 

"Mmm. I'll have a degree in biological engineering technology."

"You said you're working?"

"Yeah. Fleshgenics. Kind of a work-study thing. But they pay me."

"Whoa. That's the meat factory place. Meat from test tubes. Off-putting, if you ask me."

"It's putting me through college, dude.  And I don't actually touch the meat. In fact, no one does."

"So what do you do?"

"I'm a zapper.  I send the electrical charges into the petri dishes that make the muscle grow. It's pretty complicated, really. Stimulating muscle enough to encourage growth without inducing hypertrophy, which makes it tough, can be tricky. Takes some finesse, you know. And math."

"Muscle?"

"Yes. Meat is muscle, you know."

"What? Really? Never thought about it, I guess. So does it move around and twitch when you zap it?"

"Sometimes. But only after it's about 30 days old. It starts to change morphologically after about 23 days, and by 30 it can move on its own. The electricity mainly stimulates growth, like working out. I just got promoted and they transferred me from the juvenile plant, where the muscle just lies there.  Nowhere near as interesting. Seeding the fresh petri dishes with myocytes, then adding just the right amount of fetal cow serum was pretty repetitive."

"Fetal cow serum? Is that what you said? I have never, ever heard of that before. Thanks for poisoning my mind." 

"Hey, it's a cheaper way to grow meat. And no corporate farms, no slaughterhouses, no waste. What's not to like?"

"Creepiness. That's what's not to like. I'm moving to China, where they still have real ranches with chickens and steers and pigs and lambs before this stuff replaces real steak."

"Sure -- China's got child labor, air pollution and that little bovine hemorrhagic flu epidemic, too...It's a paradise! Great plan. No wonder we called you  Bonehead Jason."

"Well, I think I read somewhere that factory meat tastes like plastic."

"They're working on experience enhancers."

"'Experience enhancers?'  Why don't they call it flavoring?"

"Because that's not what it is. Experience enhancers alter the experience of eating, not the meat. Altering the cell cultures themselves  interferes with mitotic processes in early development, slowing growth."

"You mean they make you hallucinate a more pleasant eating experience?  Freaking wonderful."

"We have to feed 11 billion people, in case you've forgotten.  The appetite for meat worldwide is increasing, driven mostly by income growth in China, Afghiranistan, and North Korea. Fleshgenics is making sure the U.S. is at the front end of the global meat trend."  

"I don't know...a steak shaped like a test tube just doesn't seem appetizing."

"It's shaped however you want it shaped.  A heart-shaped perfect breast of Chicken Cordon Bleu for your sweetie on your anniversary? No problem. And steak shaped like steak - de rigeur, my friend." 

"So have you eaten it?"

"Not yet. Production is too small. Only the CEO, president of the board, and head scientific officer have tasted it. And they only got like half a bite each."

"Ah. So scalability is an issue. And investment capital, no doubt."

"Yeah. Capital, manpower, image, advertising; the usual start-up issues."

"You said it's called Meat-a-genics?"

"Fleshgenics."

"Definitely needs a name transplant. And we'll have to play up the global hunger angle. Feed the world!  Save the innocent animals! The resurgence of American manufacturing!