The Cow That Lives Forever

The scientists had done it. They had solved world hunger, they had ended farming as we know it and they had rid the world of animal cruelty.

It wasn’t an easy path, naturally.

Like so many strides in science before, its initial steps were in the other direction. The research on regeneration was originally military, an effort to prevent the soldier caste from reaching depletion point before the fighting in disputation zone F-118 could even enter its second generation.

As it happens, the combat phase of the contemporary geopolitics cycle was deemed inefficiently timed and put on indefinite delay. Diplomatic program 17 was spun up to fill the gap, but the regeneration project continued.

As is so often the case in the grandest of designs, the hard part proved easy and the simple grew complicated. Regeneration itself is anything but impossible, after all most living creatures do it to one extent or another. Advancement in the field is only a consideration of acceleration and scale.

Each cell of your body knows where it is and what it is, and simultaneously carries that knowledge for all the other cells.

Your DNA hologram stores the blueprint of your whole within every minute part, and the chemistry of repair is in-built.

The limitations of scope, speed and resource can be overcome. And they were.

Growing back skin and bone and flesh overnight is only a matter of combining elements in the right amounts at the right time.

It worked…and yet it didn’t.

Nerves are different. They don’t respond, they grow back but don’t connect to the network. The synapses that were once bright with arcing electrons dim with each renewal. They could make living flesh but they couldn’t make their flesh…live.

Something was lacking. Something antiquated heresies – those deemed antithetical to liberal society, and thus justly placed under legal limitation – might have named the spark of the divine.

A first regeneration limb has noticeable reduction in strength, reflex speed and fine motor function. After three cycles a new-growth arm or leg may as well be tied on with string for all the function that was preserved.

Regrown limbs, then, were a dead end. Being both more expensive and ultimately less use than advanced prostheses.

But the technology for accelerated regeneration of viable muscle mass now existed. It was only a question of finding a use for it.

The searchlights went strobing in all directions for an application. Military and medical – the most profitable fora of research since time immemorial – were out. Farming and agriculture were the obvious next step.

What our more superstitious forebears may have called providence was on their side in this endeavour. Preliminary testing showed the body chemistry of vegan ungulates was more conducive to the regeneration process.

Simply put: Cows grow back cow faster than people grow back person.

Early ideas of selling the technology to the farming conglomerates to repair damaged or mutated product prior to market inspection were turned over for a more ambitious overhaul of the cattle market in general.

A shift from herd considerations to individual units was precipitated by a peculiar complication of the regeneration itself – namely, that it seemed to work better if the animals were kept in isolation.

The next step was obvious but Earth-shaking – reinventing the cow as a home appliance.

They could put a cow in every home, one that could be harvested for meat as needed…and then just grow it all back.

The appeal would not be universal or reach unlimited, barriers of cost and taste ever exist, but the market will always respect a product that turns a finite resource renewable.

Even if the immortal cow didn’t become as ubiquitous a home fixture as the television or refrigerator, butchers would only need a handful of animals themselves in order to have all the meat they would ever need. Meat that could be cut to order and replaced overnight with little to no waste.

And the cows would always be safe.

…once they had been fixed.

Nature is chaotic and ill-suited to indoor life. Rough edges and sharp corners must needs be sanded down and padded up.

Firstly, and most obviously, it was decided that the cows should – one way or another – be made insensible to pain. This was both a pragmatic question of noise management and an ethical courtesy.

Second, it was generally agreed, weapons were surplus to requirements, being somewhat incompatible with civilised city life. Just as people gave up their firearms and blades to embrace a safer, less chaotic society, so must the cows shed their horns.

This was a simple matter of genes. The regeneration process is a gene therapy in itself; a little tweaking to prevent horn growth was a trifling matter in comparison.

Third, there was the evident need for all such cows to be sterile. This was a natural question of patent protection and supply control.

Fourth, it would be required that the cows be kept inside at all times. This would prevent modified genetic material entering the natural biosphere, whilst also protecting the animals from disease – to which they became more susceptible as their flesh grew and regrew.

Fifth, there was the issue of diet. A regenerating cow needs a special diet of processed soy beads, protein adjacent nutrition grains and a cocktail of amino acids and glucosides to keep the system running efficiently. Hay and grass diets introduced toxins that could interfere with the process and potentially, as noted above, carried the risk of disease.

This specialized diet had the additional beneficial effect of negating all digestive waste – including methane – which meant it would be possible to keep them in populated areas without violating local, national or global ordinance on clean air preservation. The noted reduction in meat quality and texture was considered minor, and eventually marketed as beneficial to personal health.

And finally, any and all 4ever Cows – the name patented at early stages of development – would not and could not produce milk. The effects of the gene-editing, chemically controlled diet and regeneration technology on milk were largely unknown and potentially harmless, save a noted re-coloration to a murky grey. But, it was generally agreed, this grey tinted milk would be viewed as a bad sign by the more impressionable and science-illiterate members of the general public.

Once these guidelines were decided and rules written, the roll-out began.

And it changed the world.

Since then, the 4ever Cow^TM has sold millions of units across global regions 1, 3, 4 and 5, with parallel researchers in Designated Opposition zones 2, 6 and 7 releasing their own equivalent product to similar success.

A press campaign on the ethical improvement of sustainable meat, coupled with state-led programs ensuring certain social benefits to those who participated in pilot schemes, created an early demand that has never plateaued in the decade since launch.

As it was found that immortal cow meat would pass both the “sustainability” and “animal cruelty” tests laid out in decades of case law on socially beneficial dietary practices, state appendages in multiple sectors could Officially Declare immortal cows “part of a vegan diet”.

This lead to the first increased uptake in red meat consumption since the passing of the Responsible Consumption Treaty by the second World’s Congress.

Further, Official Vegan status ensured that any family who owned and operated their own 4ever Cow^TM would be eligible for a Certificate of Responsible Consumption, along with all the social benefits they are known to provide.

Everyone was pleased with this development, and the consensus “immortal cows are a good thing” was ratified at all levels of society within a year.

But, as is always the case, society never moves forward without having to forcefully drag along the deluded few clinging to old-fashioned ideas and outdated mistakes. Some people – those considered as being outside the generally accepted definition of “everyone” – raised their own illogical objections.

Though almost all formally recognised and officially licensed Environmental Protest Groups supported the move as “in line with the general well-being of living things”, some small independent collectives still lodged complaints on animal rights grounds. The written consensus shows them to be incorrect.

The cow does not die, it doesn’t even feel pain, so there can be no question of cruelty.

On the contrary, it was the safest cows had ever been. Its food was efficient and nutritious, it was warm and dry and it was under no threat from predators. Even better, their existence spared old-fashioned cows the pain and indignity of death for nothing more than food.

It meant the crude methods of beef farming from ages past could be suspended indefinitely, and those cows still trapped in that machine would be spared.

The vast majority of the billions-strong meat herds that once supplied our beef were deemed no longer sustainable. The original plans were to turn them loose in managed wilderness parks, but as their well-being could not be guaranteed in this scenario – and the potential environmental impact was under-researched – it was considered the respectful and sustainable strategy was a managed cull and widespread burning.

The vestigial herds of vintage cows are preserved in living agricultural museums.

Though their gradually declining visitor numbers and questions concerning the responsibility of imparting such knowledge to impressionable minds will likely lead to the government withdrawing funding in the next economic period.

There are better uses for that land than keeping relics of our savage past alive, especially when it incurs the risk of historical man-on-nature atrocities being taken out of context to promote old-fashioned thinking.

We don’t need fields anymore. We don’t need ranches or hay or breeding stock.

As long as we keep up our subscription to the specialized feed, all the meat we require is grown in the basement of our own homes.

The 4ever Cow^TM has earned a place at the heart of the family unit, somewhere between furniture, appliance and pet. Many are named and treasured members of the family, and given specially adapted rooms in which to live.

And there they remain.

Cows that can’t go outside, can’t live in a herd, can’t produce milk, can’t grow horns, can’t make baby cows, can’t eat grass…

…and live forever.