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"Night after night they stood alone, invisibly, in their solitary food lines, and pressed the assigned code into the machines. Three minutes on high for some. Five minutes on low for others. A minute and a half on defrost and then three minutes on medium just for complexity’s sake. These codes, commands really, sometimes varied in pattern but nonetheless managed to convey a certain level of assuredness with their simplicity. Poke holes in plastic to allow steam to escape. Do not reheat. Pull back film before heating. Do not add water. Keep frozen until ready to use. The results were blandly inevitable yet somehow conjured up the hint of a miracle, as if someone in a great laboratory had developed a secret formula to turn a single fish into a meal for millions. A poet scientist no doubt, a Jesus of genetics who was probably paid a percentage, perhaps as many as 25 or 30 basis points some conjectured, for each of the frozen derivatives he was able to slice and dice from a single whitefish, which most people assumed was cod but which was actually Alaskan or walleye pollack because it was cheaper and not yet considered endangered. Night after night they stood alone, invisibly, and pressed their assigned code into the machines."