Memory Transcription Subject: Ensign Sifal, Arxur Dominion Fleet
Date [standardized human time]: October 18, 2136
David blinked. “You need a guide to practical empathy?” he asked. “It’s a little tricky to explain something we do by instinct, but sure, I can give it a shot. We have some related business to take care of, first.” He stood up straighter, and patted my shoulder. “Toki, snuggle!”
What the fuck kind of command was--? David’s squat little dog plodded over towards me and hopped up on my lap. The “Corgi”, as he’d called it, looked very much like the war hounds the U.N. kept, but in childish miniature. It was odd to me how a simple adjustment to size and proportions made the creature look so friendly and harmless by comparison. Its teeth were still pretty decently sized, at least compared to its body. It didn’t have the nearly vestigial fangs that the humans had. But the creature was warm, and its coat was soft and fluffy. It felt soothing just having the creature perched on me.
It looked at me with a strangely humanlike expression of confusion, head tilted slightly to one side. I mimicked it, trying to puzzle out what was on its mind. Maybe it was used to humans, but couldn’t quite decide what to make of an Arxur? Its expression warmed to glee as it suddenly seemed to conclude that I was a friend.
Then it started licking my mouth, which was bizarre. Could it smell the seafood on my breath? I flinched, startled, then licked the creature’s face right back. It was a little awkward given my maw’s shape, but the little dog was startled as well. He twisted his face away, out of reach of mine, and then curled up on my lap, dozing.
When I looked back up at the humans, they were all grinning at me. “Oh my God, that was adorable,” said Charmaine, as William nodded in agreement. The way the two scouts were warming to me, I was getting the impression that I’d just succeeded on some Terran rite of passage.
“He didn’t seem to like me licking him back,” I noted.
David was halfway back to the kitchen already. “Dogs see face-licking as a sign of submission,” he explained, chuckling. “They don’t like it when bipeds try to put them in charge. Too much responsibility.”
Might be nice to have a little companion like this, though. “I wish I could have a dog,” I said.
David half-shrugged. “If you guys could fix your food shortage and your culture, it could probably work. Dogs can survive pretty happily off of raw meat and entrails. That’s efficiency right there, eating the same rations as you guys.” He eyed up the meat warmer with the rib rack in it, then shook his head, and pulled open a different cylindrical device. That one had had… chunks of leg and water, I think? An intensely savory scent wafted over towards me as he inspected it. “You guys might also like cats, especially if you aren’t quite so pack-minded as us.”
“What are cats?” I asked, as I stretched vertically to try and get a better look at what David was preparing. I couldn’t stretch too far without disturbing the dog on my lap, which would comprise a completely unacceptable deviation from mission parameters.
“Cats are our other major pet species,” said David, gingerly stirring and prodding the next dish. “They’re ambush predators with good low-light vision that like a lot of personal space. Very independent little creatures in temperament.” That did actually sound a lot like Arxur. “We didn’t really train cats to be useful the way we did with dogs. One day, early on in our agricultural days, we just kinda spotted them hunting the pests that were eating our grain, and we thought they were cute. Cats and humans decided to cohabitate ever since.” David turned back to the scouts. “Hey, can one of you two show Sifal some cat videos while I plate this? I think she’ll get a kick out of them.”
Charmaine shook her head. “I’ve only got bars on my military comms.”
William grinned and pulled out his holopad. “What, and you don’t keep a few saved to storage? Amateur!”
I watched the little creatures play at hunting and stalking on William’s holopad while he excitedly narrated their best features, in his humble opinion, and Toki watched along with me. William even showed me a video of his own pet cat back home in Connecticut pouncing on motorized toys that flitted about like small prey animals. “I never get to show these off on Venlil Prime,” he said wistfully. A few more videos showcased other cats sneaking up on each other, knocking objects off of shelves, or even managing elaborate escapes from their enclosures. One even managed to finagle a door open despite its total lack of opposable thumbs. “They’re not technically sapient, but they’re very clever little problem-solvers when they want to be,” added William. “Sometimes they even rope us into it, like they understand that ‘throw a human at the problem’ is a viable strategy.” It was a pretty good strategy, from what I’d seen of humans. I was starting to feel a bit of kinship towards the little willful hunters.
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“Yeah, I think I’d like to have a cat one day, too,” I said, looking back up towards David’s kitchen.
I watched David serve himself a tiny bowl of food and taste it while standing. Did some Earth custom forbid him from sitting while he ate? He seemed to contemplate the flavor, and added some more powders to the dish. A small taste further, and he nodded in satisfaction. Why was he eating so little? “I don’t, uh, need this much,” I said reluctantly, the words coming out like my teeth being pulled, “if you don’t have enough to go around…”
David looked up, alarmed, then looked back down at his tiny bowl of food. “Huh? Oh! No, no, I’m good. Thank you for your concern, but you don’t have to worry at all! Toki and I ate like an hour before you guys got here. I’m just tasting this to make sure I added the correct amount of salt.” He grabbed three large bowls and began to fill them using a ladle and some tongs. “Also, this dish takes at least six hours to prepare conventionally, so I was making sure the fast version had still gotten the meat properly tender. Pressure cooker, plus a few food chemistry tricks,” he said by way of explanation.
He set the bowls down in front of each of us. “Make sure Toki doesn’t steal any,” he said. I looked down at the little dog, a rebellious fire of generosity blooming in me. I suddenly wanted to feed Toki as much as he liked. David caught my expression and laughed. “Nah, I let him eat people food sometimes, but this dish is a little bit poisonous for him. You can’t eat fruit, he can’t eat onions.”
Charmaine looked particularly surprised and happy with the dish, but kept staring at another cylindrical device back in the kitchen. I think that one had had grain and water in it? Sure enough, David spooned out two small bowls of fluffy white grain, and served them to each of the scouts, but none for me. My main bowl had more meat in it, though, and nearly no plants. Nearly. He’d left a few small stray leaves in my food, just enough to add some variety and color to what was otherwise ring-shaped slices of dark gray leg meat wrapped around white rings of bone. The marrow, freed from its boney shell, soaked into the water, clouding it brown. Why did waterlogged meat smell this good?
“Another dish from the Philippines,” said David. “Bulalo, or Nilagang Baka. I can never remember which is which.”
“It’s Bulalo,” said Charmaine, already picking at her meat with a tiny ladle. “Nilaga’s just the generic beef stew. This looks like it’s all beef shanks, so it’s Bulalo.” She sipped at the liquid and smiled. “Honestly, where did you even learn to cook this? This is fantastic!”
David bowed his head slightly, accepting the praise. “Second restaurant I ever worked at was this pan-Southeast Asian fusion place, but the head chef was this huge Ilocano guy who always kept his favorite home cooking dishes in rotation. And just about anything else from the north island, really.” He smiled, reminiscing. “Used to come in on my off-days to get blitzed on these absolutely wild Thai curry spiced piña coladas, and then chase it with some sisig and a couple lumpia.”
William looked as confused as I was until David explained. “Lumpia are basically little crispy egg rolls; I’m not gonna oversell them, but they’re fantastic after a few drinks.” I made a note of the phrase ‘egg roll’ for later. “Sisig is a fatty pork hash, don’t ask what part of the pig it’s from.”
Charmaine patted her cheeks and mouthed, “It’s face meat!” in an exaggerated whisper that my translator still picked up. I cracked up.
“Anyway, yeah,” said David, gesturing to the dish. “Beef shanks, simmered in water, with salt, pepper, onion, cabbage, and a big spoonful of fermented fish sauce. Let me know what you think, Sifal.”
I started by picking at the meat. It practically fell apart, it was so tender! That normally wasn’t a big deal to an Arxur--our maws could chomp through bones easily, let alone tough meat--but this was so delicate, I barely had to chew at all. And yet, this was a leg meat cut, one of the toughest and stringiest parts of any animal. All the richness of well-worked muscles were there, with none of the downside. And it was richer than usual, somehow!
“Try the broth, too,” said David. Following Charmaine’s example, I drank some of the cooking liquid the meat was sitting in. It was warm and savory, like I was drinking hot meat. The beef drippings had mixed with the marrow, infusing the meat’s flavor into the “broth”, as he called it--another uncommon word in my language--and there was the tiniest hint of a seafood funk behind it. But the dish didn’t taste fishy, it tasted gamey and wild and rich.
My eyes contracted slightly, as I concentrated on piecing the puzzle together. “The fish sauce,” I said, slowly. “It’s like music. It’s playing a supporting harmony.”
David nodded. “Yeah, good analogy. It’s a bassline. It’s too loud on its own, but it helps make the beef’s flavors sing.”
“I like it,” I said. “I’ve never had drinkable meat before.”
David blinked. “You’ve never had stew before?”
I shook my head. I was getting a little more comfortable showing vulnerability to the human, at least about little things like missing prior life experiences. “Not really, I don’t think. We don’t do a lot of cooking anymore.” Why did I say ‘anymore’? I wondered. All the little Terran words that translated too readily into Arxur words--restaurant, herding, broth--words that I’d rarely if ever heard before… They were starting to paint an interesting picture about my people’s culture pre-contact. Did we use to be more like humans? It was something I’d have to think about more.
“I picked this one because it’s simple, but uniquely meat-centric,” said David. “I thought it’d suit your palate.”
I nodded. “You said you were going to explain empathy to me, though?”
David smiled, and shrugged. “Yeah, but you seemed sad, so I thought I’d stuff you full of soup first.”
He wasn’t wrong. The stew made me feel nearly as warm and happy as the dog still lounging on my lap.