Bugs in the Coffee Business?, Do you know what's in your Latte? Options

[Guest_Artemis_*]

My fellow runners and I were on a run down in the Puyallup Barrens almost a year ago. We had to take over a small section of the barrens and maintain it as if we were a new competing gang. (Certainly this was an odd experience for a Tir-educated female shaman like myself, but my fellow runners were knowledgeable enough.)

While I helped organized a clinic and education center for the local denizens, others in my team took over the local rackets, among which included a latte stand with coffee that was like no other. I am more of a tea drinker, but even I could not help but indulge at least once in the drinking of this beverage that nobody else could pass up. It was incredible! I couldn’t understand how coffee so fine was being served in the barrens and not by some corporate owned distributor in Seattle.

Well, days passed... we kept peace in the area and were responsible for crumbling the foundations of a church comprised completely of magic-hating psychic wizards. While exploring and helping out in the small community that we had appropriated, one day we happened upon the daily chores of a small boy who helped operate the latte stand. Little did we know that in the basement of the building that the latte stand operated in outside of, a couple of cages housed two fattened larva bugs of some form.

To this day we aren't quite sure what it was that we had seen, but the process of squeezing these creatures until milk came bursting out of their bottoms is something that I will never be able to remove from my memory, much to my misery. (Note to self: Seek an instructor who knows the Alter Memory spell.)

As it turned out, this milk was the "secret ingredient" used in their coffee. One of my fellow runners says that it's natural even for some insects to go about similar techniques for nourishment, feeding and maintaining large larva such as those with simple vegetation and garbage in exchange for milk. But after that experience, none of us drank coffee for many months to come. And I... I am sticking with my tea from now on.

[Wonazer]

Damn! Even SOYcaf sounds good compared to that!

[Guest_Artemis_*]

Tell me about it... but still, my fellow runner brought up another point:

Metahumanity enjoys the sweet taste of honey. And we all know where that comes from. Is it any different to use bugs for purposes such as milking, as we do with cows and like animals?

I'll remain an avid tea drinker, but that is something for the shadow community to chew on for a while.

[Dr Vital]

Back in the 20th century they used to call fruit juice "bug juice" because the red color came from crushed beetles.

Serve me up a glass of the bug spew. Sounds better than what they've been pretending to call milk around here.

[John Campbell]

[Liquid_Obsidian]

Who cares , if the joe's good ?

[Abstruse]

Can't be any worse than this soymilk crap in my minifridge right now...

[Snow_Fox]

Yeah but honey is bee's backwash, condensed. It hasn't gone through the bee's whole system from top to bottom. Also your average bee is what 4cm long. Any time you get some giant bug it's at best a metabug and you don't know what the chemicals are. At worst it may be a bug spirit and you don't know what 's going on there. If that's the case the people running the stand might be possessed people.
It might be just trying to build up a market. I seem to remember about 10 years ago there was some stuffer that was revealed to come from bug spirits, Blue Baccosoy I think. But it might be something more unpleasant, like carrying an infection or control the regular drinkers.

Please tell me that you shut down the "supplier."

[Wonazer]

[Buzzed]

Next thing you know, someone will try to breed a western bee spirit with an african bee spirit to create a race of bee spirits that creates more honey like the african bee spirit, but without the hostility. Yeah right.

[Wonazer]

Ah, man! Ignorance is bliss.

Who ever said the change to soy products was a bad thing?

[Shadow]

Water, ayep. I am sticking to water. Water that has been run through a million filters, but water non the less.

[Dogsoup]

[Wonazer]

[Spookymonster]

How about paying ¥10,000/kg for coffee beans that come from a cat's ass?

[Tanka]

[RangerJoe]

Speaking of dubiously adulterated soy products, I have good news and bad news about SoyaFizz. The good news is, SoyaFizz Pink will be joining its SoyaFizz bretheren on store shelves all across the Barrens next week (joining the illustrious ranks of SoyaFizz Blue, Green, Red, and Yellow). The bas news is SoyaFizz Green. Yep... still made of.....

The Watcher

[Tanka]

"Soylent Green is people!"

*cough*

[Req]

mmm...AmberGel...

[Wonazer]

[Spookymonster]

Funny you mention that...
I had a chummer who did a run against a clone farm once. You know, one of those joints where they speed-grow livers and kidneys and things when some rich frag's shot their OEM stuff to hell? Anyhoo, he's sweeping the grounds looking for... well, that don't concern you none :). And he's findin' rooms of vats and tanks with various bits of people (and animals, but don't quote me on that) floatin' around. He moves on a bit, and finds a couple of operating rooms - still nothing unusual, given the purpose of the joint. Except, there's a blood-stained conveyor belt stickin' out one side of the room...

Well, never one to leave a curiousity unsatisfied (may he R.I.P.), my pal figures out where the belt leads to - a locked room marked 'EMPLOYEES ONLY" in the basement of the clinic. So like any self-respectin' SINless son-of-a-devil-rat, he blows the door up REEL GUD and walks right in.

Into a butcher shop. Or, more accurately, a slaughterhouse. The room was kept just above freezing (to keep the stench down low, I guess). Slabs of human remains hanging from meat hooks on an overhead conveyor. Chop tables with arms and legs draped over the side, in various states of filet. A rust-stained deli slicer with a piece of masking tape and the words 'HEAD CHEESE' jokingly scrawled across it. A stack of cardboard boxes lined one wall of the room, right next to a shrink-wrap machine. Each box had 2 words stamped on it:

LONG PORK

So by now my pal's got the willies somethin' fierce, but he's a pro. So he holds down his lunch long enough to finish the gig and evac. As he's leavin', he catches a small caravan of lunch-wagons headin' back the way he came. He didn't catch the name on the trucks, but in the rear mirror, he could make out the words "...CHEAPEST PORK COMBOS IN THE 'PLEX!".

At first, I took his story with a grain of salt. I mean, troll-gangers with a taste for hallucinogens aren't exactly the most reliable witnesses, so ka? But then I start hearin' of these noodle carts gettin' knocked over down in Everett, and how the eyewitnesses all swear that the perps smelled really foul, and had milky eyeballs...

[Guest_Artemis_*]

The good news is that I assenced the community and found there to be no trace of a hive or even a splinter group of bugs. The milking bugs, however, were indeed possessed by bug spirits that were being tended to by the latte stand's staff. We didn't have the heart to shut them down since it was the primary means of supporting the community and keeping them fed and clothed.
Since there was no bug society to be found, we agreed that this new bug we found must have been some small subspecies subservient to the domineering bugs that we all know. How they came upon the little buggers is still a mystery to us.

Spookymonster:

Ack! That is truly disgusting... sometimes I am very grateful to be an elf. Salads and fruit suit me just fine, especially when I picture the horrid things that certain persons and species attempt to get away with in our society.

[RedmondLarry]

These bugs that were being milked sound like Aphids.

Here's a link: Ants tending Aphids
And: Ant Cows

[Wonazer]

Ack! Links?! Ok, walking away, walking away...

[Snow_Fox]

You didn't shut them down, just because they were a primary source of business? WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SOYCAF! Anyone remember the UB? They did lots of good- clinics, soup kitchens, counciling, possessions abductions corruption of souls and organizations! Jeez hunting them down was one of the few things that made me glad for AZT's ruthlessness. If only they'd shared their info with everyone else a lot sooner we could have avoided a lot of problems.