JOHN VC

It’s true that my earlier get rich schemes have fizzled.  There was the FOREVER FOSSIL LLC, in which the Dearly Departed would be given a full-rites burial at sea in the Catalina Channel, with a bronze, silver or gold chain of choice wrapped around the remains together with a tombstone. Forget about floating corpses washing ashore, leaking embalming fluid. Instead we go straight down into the anoxic, lifeless black muds of this closed basin, where the absence of oxygen means that any organic remains will not only be undisturbed - but will eventually turn to iron pyrite. Thus the Beloved is transformed into a gold-shimmering fossil of metallic crystal, that will last through geologic ages. The site can be marked with a funereal buoy so that relatives can visit and throw rose petals on the waves.  How much better than being eaten by worms, you would think.

Then there was DREAMLAND EXPRESS, in which travelers would call DX for packaging. After stretching out in comfortable padded cartons brought to their home, workplace or hotel room, they would drift off to peacful sleep with medically supervised doses of harmless soporifics, their bags stored at their feet.  The cartons, properly bar coded, would be routed efficiently to their destinations, either local to international, and the traveler would awaken at the end of the journey refreshed and ready to go. No more airline security!  No more cramped seats! No more taxi lines! No more crummy food! No more lost bags - or rather, no more bags and traveler going to different places!  And imagine how much money the airlines will save, with nothing but inert cargo filling the fuselage and only the occasional inadvertent piddle to clean up, instead of all that trash.

It does seem that these revolutionary business ideas have been thwarted by entrenched interests and incompetent authorities. So I am now firming up plans for an end run around the entire global ecosystem, audaciously going — not to where none have gone before, but right back to where none remember ever having been. True, that’s because brains had not yet evolved — but if we want to find really practical opportunities where others only see problems, we might do well to consider returning to our precambrian roots. Thus, I give you — PLANCAKES!

The heck with the food chain, waiting for all those copepods and krill and anchovies to pass the nutrition up the line to get to something we can filet, with everybody taking their middle man bite of the energy before it gets to us. The time has come to start breeding edible plankton. Our company will move rapidly from the experimental tank to the ocean farm because of the extraordinary reproduction rate of protozoa and the swiftness with which these simple organisms adapt to selective pressure.

Protozoa are eukaryotes with chromosomes and proper sexual reproduction, so gene splicing will be absurdedly simple, allowing us to add flavors — cinnamon, sherry, banana, sirloin -  and colors, as well as desirable proteins and oils.  The texture of our various Plancakes will vary from mushy (as in polenta or mashed potatoes) to firm (as in bread or pasta).  And best of all, plankton communities do not require chopped up herring, or dog food, to grow. Just sunlight, for the photosynthesizing species that the heter0trophs feed upon.  Maybe a little fertilizser. No more toxic waste than you get with lawnmower clippings.  And there won’t be a copepod problem,  if the plankton get grazed upon - just a tuna opportunity.

Kind of makes your mouth water?