Unit 5a23 walked slowly, slowly out of the back of The Restaurant as he solemnly followed the waiting tauman with the far too short dark jean shorts towards the absolutely terrifying food critic, Viktor Viktorioso.
Viktorioso was a tall, thin man, who was incredibly tan and incredibly gaunt. He was wearing sunglasses, and smoking a cigar thicker than Unit 5a23's hydraulic legs. He was presently flipping through a small booklet. On closer inspection, Unit 5a23 could see that the book was a list of recipes based on sex positions.
"Have you ever read The Kama Foodra, my metal friend?" asked Viktorioso with a smile. His teeth were bright white, which was incredibly uncanny for a tauman - usually they were turquoise. "It's a great source of foodspiration. One of the most popular dishes in here is the Mission-airy Custard, though of course that's more baking than it is cooking. That being said, toast is at the intersection of both."
"Hello, Viktorioso," replied Unit 5a23. "I've heard so much about you." This was a complete falsehood, as Unit 5a23 had no idea who Viktorioso was and had never heard of him before mere moments prior. However, Viktorioso didn't need to know that - and what's more, it seemed like the right thing to say. Wasn't it? This was some big, scary food critic with a cigar. Everyone should've heard of him, right? After all, fungal taumans were shaking when they saw him come into the restaurant. That had to count for something!
"You have?" said Viktorioso with a cool smile and a puff of smoke. "That's... interesting to me. So many chefs, you know, they don't even keep up with stuff like this. They pay no mind to critics, they just focus on the art, of course you must know since you know of me so well that when I say the art I am of course talking about cooking, and yet at the same time I shall explain this to you at length. The reason I am explaining this to you, as well as the reasoning for me explaining my explanation, and indeed if we step even further out the explanation for my explanation of what I must explain is that it is customary for a critic such as myself to talk to the chef as if the chef is some sort of an imbecile. I do not mean this in a derogatory fashion, although at the very same time I must tell you, indeed I am wholly compelled to tell you that it is supposed to feel derogatory to you. I'm supposed to put you down, it is what I do - not that you need me to tell you this at all, hell, of course you know this, but at the same time I would be lending too much credence to you and your intelligence, I wouldn't be putting you down enough if I did not tell you that the way I see you, and the way I see all chefs, is as if you had just had all of your memories wiped out only hours before you are standing before me, as if you are but little mental babies with no memories and barely any cognition. This, is the critics' way. Understand that about me, okay?"
Unit 5a23 wasn't sure what to say. He wasn't certain whether this strange critic somehow knew that he'd indeed lost his memories or whether he'd just coincidentally said all of that in order to appear 'big' or something.
[Detecting probability of conscious irony...]
[...]
Unit 5a23 was thrilled. His own system was actually anaylzing the social dynamics of this interaction for him at lightning speed! Maybe it would help him gain some clarity before the critic eviscerated him about how awful his toast was for countless unseen reasons.
[Conscious irony probability 12%]
Twelve percent? Well, that wasn't a whole lot. So, that meant that, almost definitely, Viktorioso had absolutely no idea that Unit 5a23 had indeed woken up with no memories only hours ago - although, due to all the constructed memories Unit 5a23 had stressed upon his cognition to create and maintain, it felt indeed much longer to the automaton.
Unit 5a23 looked at Viktorioso and realized he was waiting for something. But what? Unit 5a23 quickly skimmed through all the recent experiences in his RAM and finally understood what the critic was looking for. With literal nerves of steel, Unit 5a23 nodded in affirmation.
"Excellent, glad we have the understanding. Now, please, do sit down."
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
"Sit down with you?" Unit 5a23 was confused. "You want me to sit with you?"
"Unit 5a23!" whispered the fungal tauman with the scrunched up, overly revealing jean shorts. "You don't ask Viktor Viktorioso questions like that! He's Viktor Viktorioso! He asks, you do! He jumps, you ask to what degree you tune your hydraulics to!"
But the critic just smiled, and when Uniot 5a23 did finally sit down across from him, he looked absolutely thrilled.
"You know, chef - if I may call you chef - I've got something to tell you that may come as a shock." He slowly puffed his cigar, exhaling smoke out his mouth and nostrils as the living wood on his face contorted in excstacy. "See, chef, I've actually eaten a whole lot of toast in my life. You might already know that, from my memoir, that my fathers used to make me toast every morning for breakfast. It is a fond memory of my life, a life that is in general spent picking apart with extreme negativity other peoples' work. And - this is definitely something not even a fan of mine might know - I've been doing what I consider a 'toast tour' of Nomachiato. And I must say, I think that my tour ends here, in Flungunglica. Do you know why my toast tour ends here in Flungunglica, chef?"
"N-no?" said Unit 5a23 with apprehension. He was seriously concerned that his toast had, inexplicably, been horrendous. Perhaps it had been so awful that Viktor Viktorioso would never eat toast again.
Vikgtorioso took yet another long drag of his cigar. This time, he started to blow out shapes with the smoke. First, a thumbs up, then a thumbs down, then a horizontal hand that looked to be a bit of a so-so. "You see, chef, I knew something after taking but one bite - yes, that is right, one bite - of your toast. I knew that my tour needed to end, because I had found it."
"Found it?" Unit 5a23 had no idea what the critic was on about.
"Yes, I had found it. See, I am a critic, this much is true, chef. But that does not mean that there does not live within me a genuine appreciator and theorist of food, food in all forms. And, see, the reason I've been doing my toast tour - and now don't you tell anyone this - but the reason I've been doing my toast tour is that I was looking for something. Now, all of my critiques are always genuine. You, yourself, with all your knowledge of the machinations of my mind, know this. However, every piece of toast I have had has been lacking in something, it has had some great deficiency. That being said, it has all changed, chef. You have changed that, and, unwittingly or not, perhaps this is all coldly calculted due to your deep understanding of me as a person... Regardless, chef, the end result is the same. One bite of your toast taught me everything I needed to know about my own tour. It taught me everything I needed to know about my career."
Unit 5a23 was terrified.
"That one bite, chef, took my back to my childhood home. To my dads making me toast while they read the news scrolls and drank black coffee. I can smell it now - the burnt beans, the fresh paper, and the perfect toast. And you, chef, have given me the perfect toast, and given me a piece of my own life to hold and behold forever and ever."
The robot felt excessively grateful. He said this over and over again, to an absurd degree. He was just short of hopping out of his chair and falling at his knees to the critic's praise.
"So, let me tell you something, you, you brilliant automaton, you," said Viktorioso, shaking a pointed finger and smiling wide as possible. "I want to hire you."
"Hire me?"
"Yes. I'm so sick of being a critic, and my long running career of writing hit pieces on people has me very well provided for. I want to leave all this behind, find somewhere cozy of my own, and never cook or eat out again. But, of course in order to do that I need some way to eat. It's not like I'm married or anything. So, with that, I'd like to extend to you my formal invitation for employment. Please, take a business card." He smiled as he handed Unit 5a23 the laminated card. "Free of charge."
Unit 5a23 wanted to tell the critic that he was damned right it was free of charge, but he hgeld his robo-tongue. After all, he'd just been offered a job! Clearly, Unit 5a23 had really been correct regarding his past. He must indeed have been a prized chef, and excellent cook, an artist of the stove. That was, unequivocally, Unit 5a23.
Then, the critic pulled up a news scroll and sighed, shaking his head.
"What is it?" asked Unit 5a23. And then, he said something else, something that was decidedly a little ill-calculated. "Constipation?"
Viktorioso just laughed. "Oh, no, no, just reading about all those disasters in Gifflenberg. By the gods, it's depressing. A meteor wiped out half the city. The other half seems to have gotten leveled, the bad kind of leveled, by some sort of an alien attack. Maybe I'm misreading that bit. And then there's... gods, this really does sound awful. This scroll says there's a strain of illness Nomachiato hasn't seen in five centuries. They're calling it New Curr. Guess it's a good thing you're not technically alive, eh, chef?"
But Unit 5a23's mind was reeling and skipping.
[Context discovered]
[Rebuilding memory base]
[...]
[Memory base reconstructed]
And then, Unit 5a23 gasped, suddenly realizing who he thought he was.