Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee
Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136
I woke up burrowed into a mixed pile of blankets, pillows, and sofa cushions. Sunlight from the south-facing window was burning my eyes straight through their lids. Metallic clanging and scraping noises came from the kitchen, and my head throbbed a bassline underneath it. My mouth tasted like sawdust. Some brief flailing around ended with my paw wrapped around a water bottle that still had a healthy third left of its contents. I drained it greedily.
Brain, what the fuck happened?
There was nothing but a wispy silence in response. I guess my imagination was still booting back up.
I groaned, and sat up. The noises from the kitchen were a predator wielding a butchering knife and splattered in red Earthling blood. No, hang on, it was that guy I liked and some of those “tomato” fruits he’d mentioned. The air in the apartment smelled warm and tangy. The pleasant aroma tickling my nostrils was the only one of my senses that was responding positively; everything else hurt. No blue stains that I could see, though, and all my extremities seemed to be where I’d left them. I’d been fairly sure David wasn’t going to eat me, but the niggling doubt was probably going to linger in my subconscious until I finished unlearning it. Too many damn variations of “Okay, but what if Mom was right about…” to rid myself of, too few hours in the day.
I’m adding ‘But what if I’m only trying to sleep with a predator to get back at my mother’ to the list of things to feel self-conscious about, said the critical voice.
Oh nifty, you’re back. Any good advice this fine day?
Retroactively drink less.
Would if I could, buddy.
“My head hurts,” I said to David.
“It’s called a hangover,” said David, smiling a little at the sight of me up and about. “There’s no cure, but with modern medical treatments, it may still be possible to live a normal life.”
He set a steaming mug of an opaque brown liquid on the table, and a pair of pills. “More Baileys already?” I asked, slightly confused.
David laughed. “Nah. That’s two of the three parts of a hangover treatment: coffee and ibuprofen. Had to check the U.N. medical portal to make sure those were safe for you. The good news is, it turns out Gojids and humans are surprisingly similar biologically. The Venlil gave us a lot more trouble. Did you know the Venlil metabolize a whole bunch of plant-sourced chemicals way faster than us? It’s not just alcohol. Really threw our anaesthesiologists for a loop the first time a Space Corps transfer needed surgery.”
I grimaced. “Woke up part way through?”
“Nah, it was just local anesthesia for a shrapnel wound, thankfully. Sounds like the Zurulians have been coaching us ever since our alliance formalized, though, so that’s speeding up our adjustment period.” David shook his head. “Our doctors aren’t thrilled about having to cross-train on how to treat dozens of new species, though. There’s been some half-joking, half-serious chatter about looping in veterinarians. They’re the only medical professionals we’ve got who can already treat dozens of different mammals, and birds, and reptiles, and maybe even that one race of giant tarantula people.”
I nodded along numbly. He was talking way faster than my head could listen. “So, again, this is…?” I said, pointing to the pills.
“Ibuprofen,” David repeated. “Mild painkiller suitable for headaches.”
I swallowed it immediately with most of a glass of water. “And this creamy brown thing?”
Ha! Not yet, you’re not! said the odd voice, rejoining the party, as my face turned blue again.
“Coffee,” he said. “Recreational stimulant beverage.” That certainly explained why he was talking so fast. “Roasted beans--sorry, technically berry pits, we just call them coffee beans because labeling things gets ridiculous sometimes--are ground and steeped in hot water. It’s a little bitter on its own, so I added some nondairy creamer. Milk and sugar, basically, but I used plant-based milk. Your stomach’s probably feeling a little rough already, so no need to overdo it.”
I sniffed at the mug. It certainly seemed similar to Baileys. “Plants steeped in hot water,” I repeated. I looked back up at David. “So it’s a type of tea?”
David’s jaw dropped, and he stared off into the distance in horror. “Coffee is a type of tea?” he muttered to himself questioningly. “Fuck, I guess technically? I can put flower buds and bits of dried fruit in hot water, and it counts as a tea--herbal tea--so why would it stop there?” He shook his head as he plodded back to the kitchen. “Coffee is a type of tea…”
The coffee was bone-warming, and definitely tasted similar yet distinct from the chocolate drink I’d been served yesterday. Creamy and sweet and fragrant. Bit less smooth, though. It had a coarse and acrid aspect to it that fit into the same palate-clearing niche as the alcohol had. The only thing stymying my enjoyment was how thirst-quenching it wasn’t, so I found myself alternating between the coffee and the water as David finished cooking something with tomatoes.
I excused myself to use the restroom, and the medicine was starting to kick in by the time I came back out. The headache was fading, and I was feeling more alert. “You said there was a third part to the hangover treatment?” I asked as I sipped more of the coffee.
David grinned, and pulled out a comically oversized loaf of bread from the oven. Wait, no, human bread was weirdly fluffy and aerated. It probably just looked enormous compared to the denser grain cakes I was used to. That got set on the table on a side plate, and only the heat kept me from tearing into it immediately. David set a trivet out in the center of the table, then took a shallow cooking pot straight from the stove and set it on top of it. He pulled the lid off, revealing a thick red sauce with chunky vegetables and some unidentifiable pale yellow streaks. Through the wafting steam, David grated some flecks of pale cheese and tore up a handful of fresh green herbs on top.
“The third part of treating a hangover,” David said, smiling, “is eating the greasiest and most protein-packed breakfast you can get your hands on. Traditionally, this would be a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, but since bacon and eggs are off the table, I went in a different direction. Specifically east a bit, across a sea and a half.” He gestured at the stew of cooked tomatoes. “Shakshuka,” he said. “Or, uh, Menemen, maybe?” He seemed to stumble slightly. “Honestly, the whole south and east Mediterranean has a ton of culinary overlap, and they get a bit pissy about it when you point that out. But yeah, I think it’s Menemen when you scramble the eggs.”
My eyes widened as I stared at the yellow streaks in the sauce. “UMM,” I said, pointedly. Kinda wanted to try it, kinda didn’t want to choke to death on my own trachea?
David laughed. “Oh! Don’t worry, it’s normally served with eggs baked right in the sauce, but this is just turmeric-stained soft tofu. Spongy bean juice and spices, basically. The rest of the dish is tomato, onion and garlic, plenty of good olive oil, and some bell peppers and zucchini chunks. Salt, black pepper, red pepper, herbes de provence, and smoked paprika. Bit of parmesan and cilantro on top. Did you know like half the planet found cilantro unbearably bitter before they GMO’d that shit to be bright and lemony for everyone?”
I nodded along until he stopped moving his mouth, so I could seize the opportunity to start chewing with mine. David tore the loaf in rough halves between us, and started mopping up bits of the sauce with chunks of bread. A little metal scoop was there to make it easier to grab the thicker vegetable chunks.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
I found myself rapidly scarfing down the stew of oddly savory fruits and vegetables. It had the hallmarks, in broad strokes, of the more carnivorous dishes David had prepared for me last night--salt and fat and savory warmth--but with the tangy brightness of these tomato fruits.
I drained another half-glass of water. Gods, I was thirsty. “Dude, lose the parmesan, and you could absolutely sell this to the Yotul. Seriously, how the fuck are even your fruits savory?”
David swallowed some water as well. “I think tomatoes are the main one,” he said. “That's why we use them in so many dishes. Heck, the signature dish of New York City is probably pizza. Flatbread, topped with tomato sauce, topped with an oven-melted mozzarella cheese. It's pretty much never a bad flavor combo.”
I shook my head. “I think cheese is gonna be a hard sell for the average herbivore,” I said. I was neither average, nor an herbivore, so I was excused.
David nodded. “Yeah, as far as social media is concerned, that seems to be the vibe from Venlil Prime. They tolerate us eating dairy, since it’s less bad than eating meat, but they still think it’s weird.” He shrugged. “It’s fine, though. As a chef, I tend to focus on deconstruction and reconstruction to make unconventional new forms of dishes. If you know what an ingredient is there to do, you can swap around the components and restructure the dish. Cheese, like meat, is fatty and savory and salty. There aren’t any vegetables that do all three on their own, but you can work in a blend of plant-based ingredients and rebuild the dish from there.”
I nodded slowly, the fog of memory thinning just enough to give me pieces of a project from the night before. “Right. Like when we were discussing the Sour family of cocktails,” I recalled. “Any spirit, any sweetener, and anything acidic. You even…” I had to pause for a moment as my stomach did a quick somersault. “You made a sidecar cocktail with apple cider vinegar instead of lemon just to argue the point.”
“And it worked better, right?”
I finished my coffee to clear my palate. “Less terrible, still not great. Predatory cruelty towards a poor, innocent brandy like that…”
David snorted. “Top you up?” he said, nodding to my empty mug.
I nodded. “Yeah, but can I try it without the creamer this time?”
“As you wish,” he said, fetching me a fresh clean mug. Without the creamer, the coffee had a cleaner and more refreshing taste. After a lifetime in the Federation, I didn’t really mind strong bitter or sour flavors as much as humans seemed to. That was just what strong-flavored plants tended to taste like, and plants were what I ate. Black coffee was nice, in its own way. Hot water that just dissolved your worries away.
“So what’s this about a boating trip?” I asked.
David nodded, a red-stained chunk of bread halfway to his mouth. “Right. Yeah. I need bulk ingredients if I’m going to reopen. Probably some more employees, too, if I want to get back up to full operational capacity.” He waved a finger in a circle at the loft in his apartment. It mirrored the layout of the restaurant that sprawled across the bottom two floors of the building. “We’ve got more seats than I can cook for at once on my own. But, again, not really any foot traffic or reservations right now. We’ll probably do a couple large-batch lunches and set up a cart or something near where people are. But, again, first we need ingredients, so I’m going to head up the river and see if I can negotiate something with the farms there.”
This ‘coffee’ stuff is fantastic, said the critical voice. With this kind of power and alertness, I think I might even be able to criticize OTHER people!
…Okay?
Alright, follow my lead…
I squinted in puzzled silence for a moment while ideas leaked out from the quarantined part of mind. It didn’t feel entirely unlike inspiration.
I nodded slowly, and turned back towards David. “Hang on. Question. We’re in a temperate zone, and this planet wobbles enough to have seasons, right?”
David nodded. “Yes, that’s correct. Why do you ask?”
“So it’s um, winter right now, right?”
David shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose so. If you’re worried about the cold, I think one of my old coats might fit you, or you could bring a blanket or something and mostly stay in the boat’s cabin.”
I fluffed my thick fur at him. “I should be okay without, but it never hurts. That wasn’t really what I was getting at, though.” I shook my head. “If you’re looking to reopen promptly, how much of a harvest is a farm going to have available in winter?”
David leaned back in his chair, and chewed on his tomato bread idly. “Shit.” He shook his head. “I got tunnel vision about the farms. Fuck. You’re right.” He rubbed his eyes. “Where the hell am I gonna find a pallet of eggplants or whatever at this time of year?”
My jaw dropped. “Egg plants?!”
David winced. “Sorry, I meant to say ‘aubergines’. Good catch. Stupid fucking name. They’re these big bulbous purple squash things, but when they first sprout, they’re a lot rounder and paler. Makes it look like there’s this little shrub that’s growing a bouquet of white birds’ eggs.” He sighed. “They’re actually pretty great if you’re cooking vegan, though, so the question of where to get lots of them stands.”
I leaned forward. I had hunches, not solutions, but maybe I could walk David towards one. “I mean, you guys are part of the galactic community now. You can send a cargo container from here to Venlil Prime in an afternoon. Surely aubergines can be shipped to Earth from another, warmer, part of Earth?”
David rubbed his face in exasperation. “I don’t have the import/export contacts to arrange something like that, and I don’t need a whole shipping container at once.”
I squinted at him, thinking. “I wasn’t suggesting that you get someone to land a Fissan light freighter on your front porch. But like… do you maybe know anyone nearby who might already have some import arrangements established?”
“What, like a wholesaler?” David shrugged. “There was an old famous one for fish in the city, but they’re a crater now. The wholesalers for produce usually just came to you, but the roads are out, and so are any warehouses in the city.”
“Okay, but like… what about outside of the city?” I asked, grasping at straws. “Where is the nearest non-atomized wholesaler that is, say, reachable by boat?”
David’s eyes went wide as the pieces fell into place for him. He practically fell forward onto the table laughing. “We buy our fruit at the store, obviously,” he said, mimicking back to me what I’d said earlier when the tables had been turned. “Alright, change of plans. Let me make a quick call.”
David tapped away at his holopad, and after a moment, someone picked up and chattered at him immediately. “Hey, glad to hear from you, too!” David said back cheerily.
David nodded, even though the other person couldn’t see it. “Of course I’m still alive! In fact, I was gonna ask if I could swing by again later this afternoon?”
There was a brief pause, from my perspective, as the person on the other end spoke. David laughed. “Haha, fuck no, I’ll bring your boat back when the roads are clear.”
David rolled his eyes. “I’m taking good care of her! Besides, dude, it’s winter. We both know nobody in their right mind would go boating right now unless they had to.”
Another slight pause. “Alright, glad you see it my way, buddy. So anyway, I need to borrow your car--the big one--and your membership card for the store?”
He flinched away as the person on the call started yelling, but David was grinning happily. Human play-fighting or something? …Play-arguing? “Yeah, it’s work-related, obviously!”
Another pause. “Of course I’ll bring the fuckin’ car back after! What the hell would I even keep it for, doing doughnuts in the rubble?”
One more pause. “Haha, yeah, I love ya too, ya bougie piece of shit. Oh! Wait, hang on!” David said, as his eyes flicked over to me for a second. “Is Helena still excited about aliens after all this, or uhh…?”
David grinned at me for a moment while he listened. “She is? Well, I got good news for her! When she gets back from preschool, tell her that Cousin David made a new friend, and now there’s a nice Gojid lady who wants to say hi to her. Alright. Alright. See ya in a couple hours. Love ya too. Bye--Oh! Right, might need an hour or two of ‘alone time’ with your wife.”
Shouting occurred. “Listen, I love you like a brother, but no, I am never going to stop phrasing it that way. Alright, bye.”
David ended the call and sat back down across from me.
“I feel like I might have a personal interest in that last bit?!” I said, staring at David in disbelief.
David laughed. “Sorry, my cousin married a very good lawyer. She helped me get the building? I thought I’d maybe take a swing at sorting out your immigration issues while we were in the neighborhood. You’d naturally be party to the proceedings, so you can and should be there, but lawyers’ spouses, less so.”
I rubbed the fur on my face in exasperation, but loosely accepted that the way humans treated each other was going to take some getting used to.
“Okay, so,” David continued, “I was gonna show you what our farms and orchards looked like, but hey, new plan!” He grinned. “Time to meet the least-shitty part of my family, and introduce you to the greatest American invention: the wholesale hypermarket.”