Inspired by Saifedean Ammous Fiat Food book. What would the world look like in the near future if we moved further away from eating real foods and moved towards more industrialised, controlled and processed foods? Once these children had a taste of freedom they never looked back.

The night fire threw long shadows on the wall. My grandchildren were restless, their bellies full of roasted venison and roots from our garden—food we had grown with our own hands.

“Grandpa,” Sam said, “tell us how it really was. What school was like when you were our age.”

I rubbed my knee, remembering the weight I used to carry there. “It was nothing like this,” I said, gesturing toward our simple home built with honest work. “We learned in great halls called Learning Pods. Every child had a Personal Education Assistant—sleek robots that followed us everywhere, recording our every word, monitoring our every bite. They said it was for our own good.”

The children wrinkled their noses. They had grown up free, learning from books and experience rather than screens.

“The robots served us our daily rations,” I continued. “Engineered nutrition blocks with flavor enhancers, soft rolls that dissolved like foam, cups of synthesized beverages. They filled your stomach but left you hungrier. The PEAs would scan our plates and bodies, adjusting our portions based on algorithms. We were told it was perfect nutrition, optimized for learning. But everyone was heavy—not strong, but swollen. Kids waddled instead of ran. Faces puffed, skin sallow. I was the same—breathless, ashamed, yet told I was at peak health.”

“But you weren’t,” whispered Lila.

“No,” I said. “We were being slowly poisoned.”

Then I told them about Cleo. How she walked into the lunchroom one day with a leather pouch stitched by hand, carrying berries, wild greens, and strips of venison her family had hunted and preserved.

Her Personal Education Assistant immediately began flashing red warnings: UNAUTHORIZED NUTRITION DETECTED. CONTAMINATION RISK HIGH. REPORT TO ADMINISTRATOR.

The smell of her real food cut through the sterile air like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. Children stared. Teachers tensed. The other PEAs began clustering around her, their sensors whirring.

“Unsafe,” the children muttered, parroting their robots. “Gross. Unoptimized. Malnourished.” They mocked her lean frame, her clear eyes, the way she moved with purpose.

But when she slipped me a wild strawberry at recess, hidden from the cameras and sensors, I learned the truth. One taste of that tart-sweet realness, and suddenly the nutrition blocks turned to ash in my memory.

“That was the moment,” I said softly, “when I understood what we had lost.”

“Didn’t the robots stop her?” Sam asked.

“They tried,” I said. “When Jace—a boy twice my size—tried to knock her pouch away on orders from his PEA, I stepped between them. Me, soft and slow, standing like a wall of processed protein. The robots began shrieking warnings about social disruption, but I shoved him back anyway. He looked shocked, like no one had ever defied their optimization before. My PEA recorded everything, and I got three days in Correction Protocol. Cleo’s food was destroyed. But in that moment, everyone saw that I was willing to fight for something real.”

The response was swift. New sensors were installed in every hallway. The PEAs received updates to detect even trace amounts of “unprocessed biologics.” Children learned to recite: “Natural food carries unknown variables. Trust the optimization. Be grateful for safety.”

But Cleo kept finding ways. And I kept refusing my rations, even as my PEA flashed urgent nutritional warnings. Others began to notice.

We planned it like a resistance movement. In the middle of lunch one day, Cleo stood and opened her hidden pouch. I stood beside her, my PEA sparking with alarm signals. Then another child, then another. From secret compartments, from under loose floor tiles, came fruit, dried meat, seeds, honey.

The smell of life spread through the hall. The PEAs went haywire, emitting piercing warnings. Teachers shouted orders. Security drones descended from the ceiling. But the children didn’t stop. We traded bites, shared berries hand to hand, laughed as we chewed food that tasted like sunshine and earth. Some threw their nutrition blocks on the floor where they splattered like paste.

For the first time in our lives, we were nourishing ourselves instead of being fed.

That day the awakening began.

My parents resisted at first. “Kai, this is dangerous,” they said, staring at the disciplinary notices from my PEA. “The system knows what’s best. You’ll get sick. You’ll fall behind in optimization scores.”

But I told them, standing in our sterile kitchen with its automated meal dispensers: “This is my body, not the algorithm’s. If I eat their processed blocks, I’ll be weak forever. If I choose real food, I’ll be strong. You raised me to think for myself—let me prove it.”

They watched me changing before their eyes. The puffiness fading. My energy returning. The glazed look of constant hunger disappearing. And slowly, cautiously, they joined me. We found families like Cleo’s who still knew how to grow and hunt. We began trading in the only currency the system couldn’t control or debase: Bitcoin. A deer for vegetables, vegetables for eggs, eggs for seeds—and Bitcoin to store our work across time, incorruptible and beyond anyone’s manipulation.

The more real food we ate, the clearer we saw. The rations weren’t optimized at all. They were designed to create dependency—easy to manufacture, engineered for compliance, backed by nothing but the weakness they perpetuated. Natural food was scarce and required work, but it was real—like Bitcoin itself. Finite, honest, and proven by time.

Lila’s eyes were wide. “So you won?”

“Eventually,” I said. “The school couldn’t contain us once other parents saw their children becoming stronger, sharper, more alive. Families began demanding the right to opt out, to choose their own food and education. What began in one lunchroom spread across communities. People remembered what they had traded away for the promise of convenience and safety.”

“And Cleo?” Sam asked.

At that moment, the door opened. Your grandmother stepped in, carrying bowls of bone broth and baskets of bread we had made from grain we grew ourselves. She moved with the same quiet strength that had impressed me decades ago, her eyes still bright with the intelligence of someone who thinks for herself.

“Cleo,” I said, reaching for her weathered hand. “The girl who shared a strawberry with me. The one who taught me that fighting for truth starts with refusing lies.”

The children looked from me to their Grandma, understanding dawning in their faces like sunrise.

As they ate the food she had prepared—real nourishment grown in honest soil—I knew our resistance had never ended. It lived on in every choice they would make, every bite of real food, every satoshi saved, every moment they chose sovereignty over safety.

The robots were long gone for now. But freedom? That would last forever, as long as we kept choosing it.