This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate-fiction contest from Grist. Read the 2021 collection now. Or sign up for email updates to get new stories in your inbox.
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I say Torre Verde Vertical Farm is our marriage. It’s a metaphor, of course. Juvenal says it’s nothing like that. I rebuke saying the farm has been our home for the past 40 years, and it’s where we met for the first time and plucked our first lettuces from a growth gutter to make a salad for dinner. Juvenal insists that the farm — our farm — is just the means to an end, a collection of processes to feed a community of 300,000 souls. To which I reply that our marriage is also a means to an end, and the end is love. Our discussion usually ends when he says I suffer from GMTFS (Getting Metaphors Too Far Syndrome).
But, oh boy. Lately, I truly fear that instead of our marriage, Torre Verde might be our divorce.
Juvenal wants to retire... Read more
