Here and Now and Then

by Mike Chen

“No. Your first name is Quinoa. When you were born, the trend was food-inspired names. You’ve always hated it, which is why you’ve always insisted on going by Kin.” The very mention of the fact prompted a familiar sting to the side of Kin’s head, not nearly as bad as before, but enough to demonstrate what Markus meant about being told information. “That’s funny,” Kin finally said, his voice reduced to a dry gravel. “Quinoa was a big part of my recipe last night.” “You cook? Oh. That’s...” The harsh creases of Markus’s expression lightened, almost forming a smile before returning to its serious default. “That’s interesting. And you kept your name.”

One of the ways I approach world-building is to take mundane things from our world, see how they were treated years ago, and see how I can project that into the future. In this case, naming trends seemed to have no real rhyme or reason to them; they followed seasonal trends or pop culture or flowers or whatever. So with this freedom, I just decided that in the early 22nd century, people named their children after food and cooking. A reader did tell me the other day that they encountered a young boy named Quinoa. It wasn't me!