In Cake We Trust

Twila had severe allergies.

Not to pollen.

Not to gluten.

Not to cats.

Twila was allergic to bullshit.

Unfortunately, her whole region had begun baking with it.

Big Boss Man was out in the streets pouring it everywhere like flour and sugar.

Not the real kind, which could at least make a decent cake.

This was the false kind.

The kind mixed with liberal tears of outrage, patriotic frosting, Christian vanilla extract, and whatever dust comes off cowboy boots when people are feeling extra saved.

The mixture was baked into cakes and passed around to everyone who signaled correctly.

“HE CARES ABOUT US!”

“HE’S FIGHTING FOR US!”

“HE TELLS IT LIKE IT IS!”

Twila felt nauseated.

Other people were taking enormous bites.

Some slices had hairs in them.

Some had insect legs sticking out.

Nobody seemed concerned.

They claimed the cake made them stronger, healed them faster, kept them safer, made the whole country smell better.

People became so fond of the cake they started building with it.

Cake houses.

Cake walls.

Cake trim.

Cake identity.

Eventually ordinances were passed banning new houses from being built out of anything else.

Older houses were grandfathered in.

“WE ARE SAVED!” people cried from their frosting-based subdivisions.

Twila’s headache got worse.

Even the smell of cake made her sick.

But the smell had become one of the easiest ways to identify a trustworthy person.

Not by how they treated other people.

Not by whether they lied or manipulated.

Not by whether they were cruel, greedy, vain, opportunistic, or dumb as a stump.

No.

By the smell.

If you smelled like cake, you were one of the good ones.

And just like that, the appearance of trustworthiness replaced the old inconvenience of actually knowing anybody.

Suspicion was gone.

Poof!

Discernment was gone.

Boop!

Diversity had been exhausting anyway.

At last, blessed homogeneity was rising from the oven.

Businesses quickly adapted.

Painters, construction companies, tree services, roofers and plumbers painted CAKE SAVES! across their work trucks.

It practically guaranteed contracts.

Whether it guaranteed that the work was done to code was another matter.

In fact, code itself became suspicious.

Code was bad.

Code was wrong.

Code was causing problems.

Unless the code generated revenue.

Then code was extremely important.

Customers preferred the CAKE SAVES! contractors because they knew those men would do things the way they used to be done, or at least the way people imagined they used to be done, before all that troublesome new information arrived.

New information was new.

New was not cake.

Anything that was not cake was suspicious.

Possibly dangerous.

Probably liberal.

There was no need to inspect the work too closely.

The truck already said CAKE SAVES!

That was practically a warranty.

If the deck collapsed, government interference was blamed.

If the tree landed on the garage, somebody had clearly changed the weather.

If the paint peeled after six months, paint simply wasn’t made like it used to be.

Common sense became very important.

Common sense meant you did not have to know anything particularly well.

You just had to recognize cake when you smelled it.

Ordinary people began putting CAKE SAVES! stickers on their cars.

Nobody wanted to be the only person driving around without one.

Police officers wore little cake medallions so nobody would mistake them for the wrong kind of police officer.

The medallion said:

I AM SAFE.

I AM GOOD.

I AM ONE OF YOU.

It saved everybody the exhausting work of determining those things through conduct.

Respect could now be worn around the neck.

Trust could be stuck to a bumper.

Character could be printed in vinyl.

Tiny cakes began hanging from rearview mirrors.

They helped prevent accidents.

Everybody knew that.

And in the unlikely event that you were in an accident, you hoped the EMT had a cake tattoo on his forearm.

That was best.

The tattoo showed commitment.

But if the EMT had no tattoo, then your own cake medallion became extremely important.

Because what if nobody at the scene had cake?

What if the ambulance had no cake sticker?

What if the nurse had no cake pin?

What if the surgeon had no cake embroidered on his scrub cap?

What if, God forbid, there was no cake in the hospital cafeteria?

Some families began carrying emergency cake in the glove compartment.

Preparedness.

Common sense.

And if everything went terribly wrong—

if you arrived at the ER on a Tuesday,

and the EMT had no tattoo,

and the nurse had no cake pin,

and the surgeon had no cake on his scrubs—

well.

At least if you died, you were guaranteed admission to the Great Cake in the Sky.

Which everyone agreed was the most important kind of coverage.

Twila, unfortunately, was still allergic to cake.

That had become increasingly inconvenient.

People noticed.

That was the real problem.

Twila was not merely cake-free.

She was visibly cake-free.

And that made people suspicious.

“ANTI-CAKE!”

Someone shouted.

“LIKE AN ANT!”

Nobody knew exactly what that meant, but it sounded serious.

Soon people wanted Twila kept away from children.

Away from schools.

Away from committees.

Away from institutions.

Away from anywhere respectable cake might be served.

Poor Twila.

Stupid Twila.

Unblessed Twila.

Definitely not going to the Great Cake in the Sky Twila.

What made things stranger was that Twila knew plenty of other people who were allergic to cake too.

They just hid it better.

They wore cake medallions.

They put cake stickers on their cars.

They attended cake rallies and smiled beneath cake flags.

Some volunteered for nonprofit organizations dedicated to ensuring strong cake values in young people.

They knew what happened if you didn’t.

They had seen Twila.

Twila had become useful that way.

She was the cautionary tale.

This is what happens when you don’t present cake correctly.

For a while, Twila suffered terribly.

Not because she wanted cake.

And not because she was given a ticket, had a tree fall on her, end up in the hospital, or not go the the great cake in the sky.

She suffered because she cared.

And she still wanted the things that seemed to come with cake.

Trust.

Belonging.

Work.

Protection.

Credibility.

The assumption that she was probably a decent person.

She considered buying a medallion.

Just a small one.

Nobody would have to know.

But every time she imagined putting it around her neck, her stomach hurt.

Eventually Twila realized something.

The cake makers wanted her attention almost as much as they wanted her compliance.

The rallies needed people watching.

The flags needed people noticing.

The bumper stickers needed cars behind them.

The outrage needed opposition.

The cake economy required visibility.

Everyone had to keep presenting cake so everyone else would know cake was winning.

And it it made a sizable enough population sick, that was part of the plan for it’s success!

They needed attention and outrage to keep the cake economy baking.

And that was suddenly what Twila understood.

She did not have to win for or against cake.

She did not even have to keep looking at it or away from it.

She just had to stop.

She stopped arguing with the cake throwers.

Even internally.

Stopped studying the flags.

Stopped wondering whether the medallion people secretly believed in cake.

Stopped trying to prove that some cake-wearing people were cruel and some cake-free people were kind.

Of course they were.

Cake had never been a reliable measurement of goodness.

A good person was still a good person without cake.

And a person could be absolutely covered in cake and still be an asshole.

This seemed extremely obvious once Twila stopped staring at the frosting.

Eventually she realized cake itself was not even the whole problem.

Cake had become an economy.

Big Boss Man sold cake.

The Big Hats certified cake.

Factories printed cake flags.

Companies manufactured cake necklaces.

Political consultants tested cake slogans.

There were cake conferences.

Cake leadership programs.

Cake youth initiatives.

Cake consultants.

Cake podcasts.

Cake merchandise.

And cake nonprofit organizations dedicated to protecting cake values.

The nonprofits were especially impressive.

They generated enormous amounts of tax-exempt cake while explaining that everything they did was completely selfless.

Most of the cake wasn’t even sweet anymore.

It was Cake Zero.

It was presentation cake.

Visibility cake.

Identity cake.

Institutional cake.

Cake made in foreign countries and shipped with ever increasingly more expensive cake freighters.

Cake whose primary purpose was to prove that cake existed.

Twila finally understood that she did not need any of it.

She might lose more benefits.

Probably would. Most assuredly would.

She’d gone to cake college. She had worked at Cake LLC.

Evidently, people would trust her less.

Some doors might remain closed.

Some invitations would never arrive or be permanently withdrawn.

Nobody was going to put Twila on a stage and give her the Outstanding Cake Citizen Award.

She accepted this.

Poor Twila.

Stupid Twila.

Unimportant Twila.

Twila went home.

She watered her plants.

Fed her animals.

Made things with her hands.

Sat outside.

Watched the sky change.

Nobody applauded.

Nobody photographed it.

Nothing was tax deductible.

It was just real life.

And in the end, Twila learned to bake her own cake.

From real ingredients.

Flour.

Sugar.

Butter.

Eggs.

Things that did not require a slogan.

She did not photograph it.

She did not post it.

She did not donate it to a not-so-needy organization.

She did not sell slices to raise money for allegedly cakeless people.

Because, as it turned out, nobody really needed cake.

So Twila baked one small cake of her own making and carried it out to the porch.

No ribbon cutting.

No campaign.

No fundraiser.

No visibility strategy.

No cake values initiative.

Just cake.

Real cake.

And that is where we find and leave Twila.

Sitting on her porch.

Eating something made from actual ingredients.

Surrounded by her tribe of rescues, her excessive collection of plants, and enough vintage stuff to make any respectable minimalist deeply uncomfortable.

Poor Twila.

Stupid Twila.

Unblessed Twila.

Unfollowed Twila.

Uncertified.

Unendorsed.

Uninvited.

And peaceful.

Very, very peaceful.

She took another bite.

Life was sweet.

No one needed to know.