Memory Transcription Subject: Ensign Sifal, Arxur Dominion Fleet

Date [standardized human time]: October 18, 2136

Once I finished quietly dissociating--for the second or third time today, if my memory was still functioning--the first words out of my mouth were almost but not quite a request.

“I want to see your freezer.”

David blinked, as he processed my words. Silently, he stood, smoothed out his clothes, and led me by the hand to the back of the restaurant, right next to his kitchen. There were multiple massive metal doors, like treasure vaults labeled in pictographs, and he opened the one on the far right, marked with a stylized image of a snowflake and what I guessed was a flat slab of meat carved from a mammal’s shoulder. I fought the urge to blink as a blast of cold air billowed forth. I wanted to see. I needed to know.

It was an entire room full of meat. Floor to ceiling. Every wall covered in shelves, every shelf covered in meat. Even aside from the shelves, there was half of a massive carcass, that half alone bigger than I was, hanging from a hook on the ceiling in the center, and several smaller cuts besides: smoked legs, whole birds, cuts I couldn't even identify.

My legs gave out. I sank to the floor, and I just sat there and cried.

This is what they took from us. This is what I could have had. This is what might have been.

David sat next to me, and let me stare and sob as long as I wanted.

“How many,” I said at last, struggling to muster the energy to make it a full question. “How many freezers like this?”

David thought for a moment. “You’re in the neighborhood of Coney Island,” he said. “In the borough of Brooklyn, in what’s left of the city of New York. Coney Island was a recreational area. People would come here on warm days to enjoy the beaches and the sea, to enjoy the rides at the amusement park, and they’d come here to eat. The Cropsey Carnival was, in my humble opinion as its owner, the finest restaurant in the neighborhood.” He put one arm around me for comfort. “But there were dozens of other restaurants within walking distance, and probably thousands across the whole city. And they each had at least two walk-ins.”

The next door to the left had the meat symbol with no snowflake, and the other two were marked with a symbol that looked like a small tree, with and without the snowflake. Freezers and coolers, I guessed numbly, and he keeps the meat and plants separate. That’ll serve him well in the days to come.

“Your nations. The authoritarian ones. Who lasted the longest?” I asked idly, still just staring into the freezer. How much longer do I have to suffer?

With his arm around me, I could feel David shrug even without looking. “I dunno. Some old empire before peasants started talking to each other, probably. Authoritarianism starts breaking down around the same time that factories start popping up. In recent history? I dunno, maybe the Soviet Union, or China before they got their shit together.”

Only one of those wasn’t on the map. “What killed the Soviet Union?” I asked.

“You’re looking at it,” said David, as we stared at the freezer together.

I pulled David in for a full hug, and I had every intention of keeping him there until I felt better. He interrupted me after a few moments, though.

“Claws. Claws. Claws!” He said, increasingly panicked.

“Sorry,” I said, letting him go and sniffling.

“It’s alright,” he said, brushing his clothes again and checking them for tears and tears. “Here, what’s your favorite food?” he asked.

“Eggs,” I said without hesitation. David stood, and walked into the next door over.

He came back out with around thirty.

It took everything I had not to start crying again. “You just want to snack on them,” he asked, “or should I make you something?”

I plucked up one for the joy of it, but nodded to the rest. “I like your cooking,” I said. “I want to see what you can do with them.”

“Heard and acknowledged,” said David, setting the rest of the eggs on the countertop. “Let’s get you back to your seat while I work, though.”

David helped me up as best as he could--humans weren’t as strong as Arxur--and guided me back to the table. The two U.N. Peacekeepers were frantically whisper-shouting to each other about their helmets or cameras or something, but went abruptly quiet once we were back in earshot.

After I took my seat, I chomped the egg whole. Even chilled, it was delicious. The shell gave way easily, a thin chalky casing protecting the delicious goopy insides. I rolled my tongue around in the yolk, savoring the taste for a moment before I swallowed it. Always wonderful, I thought. “Krakotl and Duerten aren’t common in this sector,” I said, half to myself. “And they don’t lay that often.” I looked up at David, in the kitchen, staring pensively at the tray of eggs. “How often do chickens lay eggs?” I asked.

“Daily,” he said, not even looking up.

“What the fuck.”

“Yup,” said David, nodding, as he dashed over to his pantry and fridge, evidently struck by inspiration. “Hey Sifal, how are you with dairy?”

That one took a few moments for the translator to break down. “How am I with… what?” I said, slightly shocked by the question. “I’m not a mammal,” I said. “We don’t… What!?”

“Got it,” he said, before muttering more half to himself. “Lactose is a sugar, so no dice there. Lactase enzyme breaks it down into…” Through his hololenses, David flipped through a document only he could see. “...other simpler sugars, so still no good. Alright. I can work around the problem.” He came back out of the cooler with a small white plastic tub and a jar of some pale yellow fat with dark flecks in it. “Ha! Can’t ferment in the tum if we ferment it out here first!” he said, grinning.

“What… what are you doing?” I asked, squinting to see better.

“Some goddamn magic,” said David, as he started to whip ingredients together in a pot. The cracked eggs, a few spoonfuls of the yellow fat, the white gloopy substance from the tub, and his usual assortment of strange powders. He had a fire back in his eyes, and his hands were moving so quickly, I could barely keep track. His forearms bulged from the effort: the rapid wrist movements with the whisk, the weight of a small cookpot as he carefully pulled it onto and off of the heat. Must have a grip like a vice, I thought. Once he was satisfied with the look of it, he took it off the heat entirely, and then pulled two food bricks and a fucking rasp out from the stars themselves only knew where. He carefully grated the dark red brick--some kind of dried or frozen meat?--into the pot first, letting it sit in the still-warm concoction for a minute or so before grating the unidentifiable pale white brick in as well. Then he tasted it, then he added salt, and then he poured the concoction into little ceramic bowls, which he shoved into a device that whitened the air with frost. A minute or so after that, David pulled them out, upended the little bowls onto plates, and served the result.

“Your dessert,” said David. “A spicy, savory, steak-and-egg pudding.”

I found myself staring at a pale yellow puck flecked with darker and lighter spots. I poked it with a claw. It split easily at my touch, and it rippled and jiggled gently around the small gash. I’d quite literally never encountered anything like it. The inertial dampening gel in some starship sensor instruments, or maybe brains? “This is wild. What is this texture?” I asked. “What am I even looking at?”

David grinned. “It’s pudding! Or custard, I guess, to use the European formalism,” he said. “Normally it’s made from eggs, milk or cream from a cow, sugar, and aromatics. But you can’t do sugar, of course, and milk’s not great for you, either. So I used a fully-fermented yogurt instead,” He said, gesturing at the white tub. “Basically, the stomach cramps and bloating you guys get is your gut bacteria having a party because you fed them sugar that your stomach didn’t digest first. By harnessing a few tamed bacteria strains, we can digest the sugars out beforehand.”

My eyes widened. Humans didn’t stop at animals? They made lesser creatures bow to their will all the way down to fucking microorganisms?!

“Now, because I was using yogurt instead of heavy cream,” David continued, “I needed to add a bit more milk fat back in. Butter still has trace amounts of lactose, so if you want to cut that down further, you need clarified butter, and bonus points if it’s also fermented.” He shook the little jar of yellow fat. “Picked this little guy up from Africa: an Ethiopian Niter Kibbeh. Fermented, clarified butter packed with their signature Berbere spice blend.” David was grinning ear to ear. This was him back in his element, whatever that element was. Chaotic spectacle, probably. “Then a little this and that to rebalance the pH, fuss with the texture, and so on.”

Prophet’s mercy, he was still going. “Then I started thinking about Vietnamese Pho, which is, umm… an entirely unrelated soup dish.” Even the Peacekeepers were just nodding along, barely keeping up. “They put thin slices of raw beef into the hot broth, and it cooks to a perfect medium rare at the table. So I grated some frozen beef eye round into the mixture, and let the residual heat bring that up to temp. Then I added some nicely aged Pecorino Romano cheese because it makes everything better, and then I rapid-chilled the whole thing to let it set.”

David smiled expectantly. I stared at his insane confection. “Okay,” I said, “But why milk, though? Like… why do you eat this?”

“Hm? Oh, because when you eat a cow, it’s gone forever. When you just take some milk from a cow, you still have a cow the next day.” David shrugged. “More efficient, less cruel. I think that might be a central tenet of Hinduism, but it has been a longass time since I read up on it, though, so don’t quote me on that.”

Tell me more about Hinduism? No, outside of offending my friend, my only options were to keep asking followup questions until the dish got cold, or to just get over the weirdness and try it already. It was technically animal protein, right? It wasn’t that much weirder than blood or bile, when you got down to it. Why not reexamine one more cultural norm today? It had eggs in it, too. I liked eggs.

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I used the little metal scoop David had provided, and I tried a bite.

Yup, chaotic spectacle. Delightful, wonderful, chaotic spectacle.

The first thing the dish brought to mind was the first dish I’d tried today: the mousse of pâté de foie gras. Not necessarily because they were similar, but because I had so few points of reference for elaborate foods. My day to day was raw flesh and jerky. Everything I’d been served today was more complex than I’d ever had before in my life. Even the rack of lamb, rubbed with herbs and roasted, was orders of magnitude more involved than my people’s “cuisine”, and that was some basic, uncomplicated cooking. And besides, I wasn’t starving anymore, so I could just enjoy the artistry.

The pudding’s texture was soft and luxurious, and almost but not quite wet. Still, I could have lapped it up with my tongue alone. The core flavor was the sulfurous intensity of the eggs, burning bright, but whatever David had done to the texture had made it taste so much richer.

It had to be the dairy. Had he added tallow, the dish would have been greasier than this. Somehow the proteins from the milk and eggs had captured and emulsified the milk fat, and the result just slid away smoothly on the tongue. It tasted light and springy.

And then the spices sang through, earthy and prickly and toasty. The flecks of beef were in there as well, as if the simmered muscle tissue was a spice now, too, adding the hearty notes of beef to the blend. And another new “spice” I hadn’t tried before, salty and funky, with an intensely savory bite. The cheese, I suspected.

All in all, the dish tasted better than eggs alone. David had taken my favorite food and evolved it.

The two Peacekeepers seemed to agree. “Even without the crust, this is the best quiche I’ve ever had,” said William. The translator identified quiche as a related dish. One of his favorite foods, evolved as well?

Charmaine shook her head, stunned and smiling from the taste. “The wildest part is how this whole dish is like a caramel sauce drizzle away from looking exactly like a flan.” A sweet dish, also similar. Did humans cook with eggs and dairy a lot?

David’s eyes went wide. Inspiration? “Excuse me, I need to fix something,” he said, and returned to the kitchen. He ladled some of the leftover beef broth from the bulalo into a smaller pot, which he quickly warmed over the fire. He skimmed through a shelf of various powders, glaring intensely. The expression broke into a mischievous grin as he found one to his liking. Powder into the warm broth, whisked to mix, rapidly chilled. He came back to the table, all triumphant smiles, and ladled the result over Charmaine’s dish.

The dark broth was thick and viscous now. It oozed and dribbled slowly across the pudding. “Your caramel sauce, ma’am,” said David. “And if I may serve you two as well?”

William and I couldn’t nod fast enough. David poured the thickened broth over the pudding until it was coated in it. “Very well, the final course reveals itself: Steak Flan.”

With the addition of the new sauce, the flavor soared to even higher heights. It was just sticky enough to paint the outside, and neither overwhelmed the other.

“What did you use to thicken the gravy,” asked William. “Flour? Corn starch?”

David’s grin widened. “Gelatin! All meat, baby!” He pumped his fists in the air. “Wouldn’t have worked normally--hot gelatin doesn’t set!--but it’s a chilled dish, so it comes together.”

I took another small bite, just savoring it as I never could before. It had been unthinkable to me, even this morning: diners who could just sit and enjoy food, and chat with each other as they ate. Chefs who could practice their craft, who had enough time and resources and tools to make music out of milk. “How do you do it?” I asked, knowing full well there were a thousand ways to take that question.

David shrugged. “I trained for years, and apprenticed for years longer. I practice constantly. And honestly, I just enjoy it. Designing a dish is a puzzle, and the solution is artwork.” His grin faded back to the bittersweet smile, his teeth hidden. “It makes me happy, seeing people enjoying my creations. I don’t know how many happy days I’ve got to look forward to, with the way things are going.”

There was a resignation to his words. “What are you planning?” I asked.

David shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he said immediately. There was a slight pause as his gaze drifted to the ruins visible through the windows. “It’s not like I’m going to have a lot of customers in the near future. Christ, I don’t even know how much of my staff survived, either. Or if they still want to work here.” He chuckled sadly. “Watching a city light up, watching the skyline crumble…. That’s the kind of experience that makes you want to rethink what you’re doing with your fuckin’ life.”

I knew how to read between the lines now. “And what did you decide to do with your life?” I pressed.

David shrugged. “Today, I’m helping the city’s recovery effort, and helping a new friend learn how to survive until she can outlast this war. Tomorrow is tomorrow.” He was telling the truth, and he was also lying. But that was all I was going to get out of him. The fact that his words could be both was still more than I’d known yesterday.

David straightened his clothes out and stood. “I’ll get the kitchen ready for you guys if you want to use this place as a base of operations. Probably put together some chafing dishes in case anyone gets hungry.” David paced back to the kitchen, already lost in thought. “Something vegan for the other off-worlders, probably just a basic buddha bowl, but I’m thinking bao instead? Yeah, keep it grab-and-go. I’ll do some nice meatballs for the Arxur, just gotta figure out how to keep it hand-portable.” He paused, staring at the canister of gelatin he’d left out. “Yeah, meatball in aspic,” he concluded. “I make this all the time for Toki. It should be perfect for you guys.”

“You’re cooking the Arxur dog food?” Charmaine asked.

David snorted. “No, I’m cooking the Arxur what the New York Times has called four fucking stars of dog food.”

The two scouts and I stood as well, preparing our gear before we had to head back out. “We should be back in a bit,” I said. My tail flicked happily. “Thank you. It’s been… life-changing.”

“Good food often is. Come back soon,” said David. “Before you head off-world. I’ve got a few gifts I wanted to prepare for you.”

As the afternoon dragged on, and the scouts and I dragged the injured into David’s restaurant, I pretty rapidly found myself preparing a gift for David as well. In retrospect, I should have spotted it earlier: the nitrile gloves, the bottled mineral water? His building had no running water. Some hypersanitary kitchen! As soon as more people started filing into the neighborhood to help comb for survivors, I was pulled off of search and rescue to help set up a starship-grade water purifier with a hose running to the nearby river inlet. It was a straightforward project, and I enjoyed my work. Could have done with less sun, but at least it was still a cool autumn day.

When I came back inside to test (and then hopefully drink) the water, David pressed two small boxes into my hands. One looked like an old holopad, but with an ancient and simplified screen. “My old e-reader,” he said. “I got you a small library of human works to page through. You might need to update the translation software database, but I think you’re up to the task.” The other box was heftier and slightly ornate. “Couple of the meatballs, to go. They’re cooked through and sealed in aspic, so they should last for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, if you keep them cool.”

I smiled with my eyes. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you for your kindness.”

David smiled back. “Well, if you want to repay me, you’ll just have to live long enough to come back to visit Earth.” His smile turned bittersweet, and his eyes drifted to the Peacekeepers running roughshod around his kitchen. “The U.N. doesn’t answer to me, but my own doors, at least, are always open to you. Keep it together, Sifal, and find your opening.”

I hugged him one last time, a final goodbye undercut by the simple fact that I still had to spend the next several hours continuing to head in and out of his restaurant while I worked. We exchanged words here and there, but with other Arxur present, I had to be careful about who overheard us. Long goodbyes were awkward, it seemed.

Eventually, after a long day of work, I made my way back to the shuttle taking me back offworld. My own ship’s second-in-command, First Officer Vriss, was handling the debriefing. He’d received a gift from the humans as well.

“Nice hat,” I said. He had a puffy flat knitted cap on his head with a wide brim in the front. Even near sunset, it seemed to keep Earth’s overly bright starlight out of his eyes.

Vriss nodded slightly. “The humans are oddly generous,” he said. It was going to take some adjustment, remembering how little my own people spoke.

“Captain couldn’t make it?” I asked, letting a note of humor enter my voice.

The first officer made a low noise in his throat that, from him, may as well have been hysterical laughter. “The Captain was not the right tool for this particular job,” Vriss said simply, a truly crushing condemnation. Chief Hunter Isif had chosen only the level-headed and the obedient. The Captain was neither.

Vriss sniffed the air, and then looked at me, puzzled. “Ensign Sifal, you have more rations than you started with. Care to explain?”

I shrugged. “It’s as you said: the humans are oddly generous.” I pulled one of the meatballs out and offered it to him. “Care to try it?”

His brow furrowed. “What is this? Why are you offering me food?” Prophet’s mercy, I’d been living in the clouds for so long that I’d nearly forgotten how insane it sounded to just give food away. I needed a plausible explanation. Thankfully, I’d just received a crash course in social predation. I think I knew how to lie while telling the truth.

“It’s human cuisine,” I said. “I was planning to write up a report on the subject. It would benefit me if I had corroborating witnesses. Happy to eat one with you, if you’re worried about poison.”

Vriss nodded slowly. This wasn’t a difficult deception; he wanted the food, and I’d ticked all of the boxes to verify that it probably wasn’t a trap. “Let’s have it, then.”

He took the proffered meatball, and I ate a second one. It didn’t slip my notice that he hesitated a moment until after I’d swallowed mine. Trust was earned. Fair enough.

The aspic added nothing, but again, it was a tasteless gummy seal on the real prize. The meatball itself was divine. Okay, granted, it had been hours since my last meal at this point, and I wasn’t full anymore, but I’d gone far longer than that without food, and that first bite from hunger still hadn’t ever tasted this good before.

The exterior was roasted--or maybe fried?--to utterly crispy perfection. Whatever ignorant sins they committed against raw flesh, there was definitely something to be studied about the human habit of burning the outside of their meat. It crunched like a thin layer of bone, but with a robustly toasty-sweet flavor that was worth betraying your government over. And the insides? David had been learning as much as I had, I suspected. His menu had been oddly muscle-forward, which was probably the human custom, but this was a blend of everything. There were several tough cuts of muscle blended into the mix--leg and shoulder and rib--offering endless flavor. I suspected he’d even mixed multiple animals together. But he’d also added the oddly-absent organ meats to the dish. I tasted notes of precious liver, plus kidneys and other blood-rich organs like hearts. And the texture was delicate and soft and juicy to the point of being nearly as creamy, to steal a word, as the pudding and the mousse. And it was perfectly salted, and David had added just the right blend of spices to enhance the meat without giving up the game. There were no visible flecks of leaves, just his fair-colored powders, which blended into the meat innocuously.

All told, it was phenomenal. If I hadn’t been a little bit used to it by now, I’d have been on the floor purring in happiness. Vriss looked for a moment like I’d caught him in flagrante delicto, which was the most emotion I’d seen out of him basically ever.

“Motherfucker,” Vriss said softly, in awe, his eyes dilated. I think I liked the way he looked when he was this happy. I’d need to figure out how to make him happy more often.

“I’m told they store well chilled,” I said, my tail flitting around ever-so-slightly flirtatiously. “Maybe I leave you a couple more, and you let me try to reverse-engineer the rest?”

Vriss licked his lips, hungry perhaps for more than food. “I think I can see where that might benefit the Dominion,” he said.

On the contrary, I think I could see where that might benefit me.

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Chef’s Improvised Tasting Menu, Finalized:

1. Mousse of Pâté de Foie Gras

-Local Long Island fatty duck liver, ethically sourced

-Fresh whole chicharrón crisp

-Optional local blueberry preserves

2. Charcuterie board

-Italian mortadella, soppressata, and Prosciutto San Daniele

-Spanish Jamón Ibérico, D.O.P.

-Pinuneg-styled herbal blood sausage

-House-cured salmon lox in fennel, house-smoked sardines

-Optional bread

3. Chilled seafood platter

-Fresh-ish local oysters, optional oyster shell

-Shrimp cocktail, peel-and-eat

-Tuna tartare, cubed like (but seasoned distinctly from) poke

4. Bulalo

-Braised beef shanks, bone-in

-Fresh beef broth seasoned with marrow and fish sauce

-Optional jasmine rice

5. Rack of lamb

-Lollipop chops, carved tableside

6. An Egg

-Literally just a single egg

-Served raw, shell-on

7. Steak Flan

-Eggs and cultured yogurt

-Ethiopian Niter Kibbeh

-Pecorino Romano cheese, grated beef eye round

-Bulalo stock gravy drizzle

8. Toki’s Bounty

-Meatball, mixed cuts with offal, reverse-seared

-Edible clear aspic seal for freshness

-Humanity’s dreams of a better world

8b. (Vegan Alternative) Buddha Bao

-Vegetables and tofu in light soy-ginger sauce

-Steamed dough

-Humanity’s wishes for ongoing friendship

Thank you for dining with us at the Cropsey Carnival. We hope you enjoyed your meal.