My son is at the point where he is finding every joke funny. The same goes for his father. I really wish we had a better supply of water, fruit trees, even milk. Real cow milk hasn't been seen in years. Beer just isn't meant for children.
Dysentery and cholera are meant for them even less though. No one has yet encountered a hangover that is restraint to multiple types of antibiotics. A lot of diseases these days can't be cured with anything less than nano-medicine, and that isn't easy to come by. Even for children, beer is simply the safer option. Of course, they will be hearing an ear full when they sober up in the morning about excess.
At least I know they're getting enough fluids. Nutrients? Boy that is a gamble. We ration out vitamin pills when we can get them, but otherwise its just track what is in the food. Pretty hard when no one has that memorized, and we can't look to the sphere to see what we're missing, and order vegetables from it. We're never sure if the level of B vitamins are right, and protein... god - you know how many of us were vegetarians before this? And shooting your own animal on top of that? There are some people who like it, its a change. With the ecology falling apart, bad economics forcing cheaper food, and just a general desire to feed as many as possible - meat eating was expensive and in a real decline. Turkey or chicken occasionally, farm raised bison or ostrich., rabbits were plentiful, but you didn't have to look at their cute twitching noses first.
Of course, you didn't have the annoyance of them descending like locusts on your vegetable garden. Any that I eat, I do with revenge now.
The old future history magazines my grandfather read always seemed to believe by this point we'd be taking all our food in pill form. Just a quicker and easier way to prepare for our twenty hour work week at the atomic powered factory we'd fly to with jet belts.
We've got bread when we can, livened up with jelly when possible. We tried making butter from milk other than cow... No one has decided to give it a second chance. We got fruit and pickles mostly, thank god we had someone who made them as a hobby. Business actually. He ran a microbrewery restaurant - which has become the de-facto center of our little outpost.
Smart man. Most of us were inclined to make a run for the hills, or try to find a military base. He said no, everyone gather at the restaurant. The outdoor raised patio is a good scouting vantage, solar panels on the roof provide power, and the fermentation vats will be key to a new society. They give us pure drink, and more pure alcohol for use as fuel, disinfectant, chemical synthesis, and a trade good. There might be only three dozen people here, but short of a fortified NEST, an old brick restaurant isn't bad.
Oh look, I have to go help john again. I swear, the eight year old holds his liquor better!
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