COVIDYSTOPIA- March 17, 2022 AD (Somewhere in an Indian city, around morning coffee break time)
B gave a final look at the dozen screens in front of him before heading out of the control room for a coffee break. He usually took around thirty minutes time for his first break of the day.
These thirty minutes would pass by quickly over a surface skim of an online newspaper, stopping only to peer over the details of any article that piqued his interest. The Indian Premier League was all set to start again, he noted. He closed the laptop and headed back to the control room.
The dashboard was showing everything in green except for the Red Aisle. What's going on there, he wondered. Fruitbat Drone #13 was deployed to get eyes on the ground. The drone cam showed him that a tomato had fallen on top of one of the soil condition sensors. “There's always something”, he chuckled, before setting out to the greenhouse to deal with it.
B had once wondered at how a such small nation such as the Netherlands had become one of the world's biggest vegetable producers. After the pandemic driven famine, he had started intensive greenhouse agriculture inspired by the farming Dutchmen. He was not going to let another famine blindside him, come pandemic or worse.
(Disclaimer – this is fiction, exploring the what-ifs, post pandemic.)