A picture of a female Quotidian: a creature with four limbs around the beak on the underside of a head with a single eye. Above the eye is a body like the bag of a vacuum cleaner. [https://64.media.tumblr.com/a84ec195f3f8c7a4b3a2b8b09864226f/43758fc90ad8985c-d2/s1280x1920/f813f111d5cd0f58b1f121700af3412228eaa8cb.pnj]
Picture by Tim Morris
Koen slept badly in his new bed. He was as jet-lagged as if he'd flown from Beijing to New York. His brain could find no solutions, only problems, and there was no-one around to reassure him.
He only finally slept by reviewing recipes. Pea soup. Apple pie. Meatballs in beer and raisin sauce. After breakfast, he could spend the whole day slow-cooking a stew.
But how would he get meat? Was meat even available in this city? What if there was a sapient cow in the Convention? Wouldn't they object?
His heart fluttered.
Koen had long since stopped thinking "when I talk to dad about this…" and then feeling that stab of mourning. He had not stopped worrying about his heart, however. It could betray him at any time, just like – no, think about cooking.
He couldn't cook. How could he cook? He had no ingredients. In order to get them he would have to figure out who to ask, and they would be difficult. They wouldn't understand. And would Koen? Koen wouldn't even know the right questions to ask. It would be like when he moved to Brasília.
Telling himself he'd made a success of Brasília didn't work. He'd succeed before, but what if he failed now?
No. He would cook. He had to cook. He would unpack his knives – no. In this tiny, isolated kitchenette, Koen's knives would be as out of place as a team of paleontologists transecting a pre-school's sand pit. What was the first step of his plan, again?
Koen eventually settled on pancakes. They didn't need anything to be butchered or even cut up. For syrup, he could boil down some fruit. No matter how benighted the commissary was here, there would have to be milk, eggs, and flour, right?
He almost cried the next morning, talking to Yoshida.
The UN Embassy's stores were packed full of ramen noodles. Also available were compressed biscuits (or possibly cookies), dry crackers, chapatis, beef (sauced, spicy, or dried), ham (canned), chicken (reduced to powder), pickled mustard roots, pickled cabbage (spicy), dried radishes, dehydrated vegetable pulav, raisins, chickpeas, sooji halwa, frozen pizzas, and bags of mixed nuts. The array of vitamin pills, hot sauce, and alcohol was large.
The Management Consul went on while Koen sank into a trance of bitter disappointment and self-recrimination. Why didn't I think about this last week? He could have brought food instead of clothes.
Yoshida Fumihide tried to reassure the sad young Dutchman. The UN Embassy received a shipment of groceries every week, the most recent of which had come in yesterday, with Koen. Did he have any orders for the next shipment?
Koen mumbled something about flour, eggs, and milk.
"We have," said Yoshida gravely, "never attempted to smuggle eggs through Quotidian customs."
Maybe the eggs would have to spend two weeks in Quarantine too.
Koen fought off despair. He had improvised before, and there would be interesting local ingredients...which of course he could not sample. He was trapped in this apartment.
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Hunching his shoulders, Koen ordered coffee and more ramen. Maybe it would do the trick, the way it had last night.
The coffee did help. It was quite good, which showed that quality could be gotten here, if only someone knew what to order. And if the product was sufficiently nonthreatening to Quotidian custom's officials. What would frighten Quotidian customs officials? Koen would have to study their psychology. And in the mean time, a diet of ramen and mixed nuts?
Koen's fingers tightened on his mug. He was a prisoner. No, he felt like a prisoner, but that just because he was a traumatized animal. Koen knew he was unbelievably lucky to be here. He would cook. He would live through the next…two weeks!
The thought was like an electric shock. Koen's legs kicked out and he stumbled away from the table. His coffee cup clicked over on its side, but he'd drunk its contents. The only mess he succeeded in making was a small brown arc on the table's plastic surface.
Koen couldn't look at it. He couldn't walk to his door or back into his room. He couldn't stay here, pacing. He'd look like a madman on the security footage. Another shower? No, that would be crazy, too. His fingertips were tingling.
Desperately, Koen looked for something distracting. The walls of his apartment were bare. There were no book cases, no TV screen. Not even a potted plant. Koen had a phone and a hard drive with music and videos, but so what? When the movie was over, the hole in the bottom of his mind would still be there.
Despite its many impressive products, evolution by natural selection is not perfect. Take, for example, hyperventilation.
Intense muscular activity requires oxygen.1 Oxygen is generally found in the air, which must be breathed in. Oxygen respiration produces carbon dioxide as a waste product, which must be breathed out. It therefore makes sense that evolution has selected for animals that respond to stress by breathing more rapidly. Chances are they will have to fight, flee, or engage in some other exercise.
Problems, in fact, occur if they don't.
Koen, a civilized and sedentary animal, was now breathing too much and not moving enough. His exhalations carried away more carbon dioxide than his body could produce.
Dissolved CO2 makes water acidic, which means that if too much of it is removed, the water (in this case, Koen's blood) becomes more basic. The body does not like this. If a human's blood pH rises more than a tenth of a level, they experience tingling of the extremities, dizziness, and in the worst cases, fainting and seizures.2
This suggests that humans should either redesign their living spaces to allow them to wrestle and scamper about like their wild ancestors, or else learn to meditate.
Lips buzzing, brain nixtamalizing, Koen didn't remember belly breathing. He just continued to feel as if the world was falling down around him.
What could he do? What? He could write or read emails to one of the nine billion people now almost completely cut off from him, or he could try to contact one of the nine who were his only fellow humans on this planet. And what would he say to them? "Hi, I'm your new colleague. I don't really deserve to be here. I shouldn't be here! Also, I'm also having a nervous breakdown."
The words beat in his head. "Shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be here." The tingling had spread across his face and up his hands. Although Koen wasn't aware of it, his pacing had become much faster.
Nelly Steiner, when reviewing the flagged video material later that day, would see this: Koen sprinting from one end of his apartment to another like a caged cheetah. She would frown and nod, remembering her own reaction when she'd first arrived here. She'd wonder whether to tell Koen that everyone went a little crazy in the embassy, then thought better of it. She didn't know him that well. And it was weird that he was staring out the window. Nobody else did that. Nelly would give a little shudder, shaking off the stress, and got on with her work.
But that would be hours later. Now, Koen found himself at the window. It was small; he could rest his hands to either side of it without stretching his arms. The glass was cool against his buzzing forehead and nose, and very welcome.
Outside was the city.
The Zogreion stretched out from the human confines of the UN Embassy, out and up and down into the ramifying, slimy distance.
1 Except in the case of the Hypohydralicons, who are most comfortable at 250 atmospheres and 400 degrees C and almost never come to Convention meetings.
2 Byrd, Jr, Ryland P (5 August 2016). "Respiratory Alkalosis: Background, Pathophysiology, Epidemiology". eMedicine.