I’d had doubts, wondering if it would be like the disgusting unidentifiable meals we’d had back in high school, but in this brave new world, mass production of processed food wasn’t king. Most of our meal was locally sourced—a lot of it came from the huge converted greenhouse on the agricultural campus, where student workers grew what they’d later eat for dinner. “Maybe I can work at the farm. I did a lot of gardening work with my family,” I said to Danielle as we walked toward the Registrar’s Office, which also served as a work allocation center. One side effect of the Flare was that money, which had after all mostly been an idea, didn’t have a stabilized value yet. While the remaining economists figured out the best way to start from scratch—and my dad and brothers argued over the ideas of dudes named Keynes and Picketty as if the government advisers were listening in—many people and places had fallen back on an older institution. Bartering.
