The pot of barbeque sauce looked more like a witch’s cauldron than a cook’s pot, especially with Hex perched on Tami’s shoulder, something the health department never would have allowed. It was a good thing this was VR. Tami had hand-pressed the apples for cider, which she then turned into apple cider vinegar (ACV) and a batch of apple pie moonshine, which was what she considered the secret to her barbeque sauce. This had all been done months ago, according to Tami, so that the ACV and moonshine were at just the right levels of fermentation for this contest. The back of Joe's mind was filtering over all those laws she’d broken by transporting said moonshine in the back of the Thunderbird during the past few months over state lines. The World AI and Producer AI had overruled Joe's objections about the moonshine in favor of catering to Tami’s foodie following.
Their viewer count had gone up again. Joe didn’t see the draw of their show and wasn’t sure why their viewer count had gone up so much so fast, but they were getting close to the ten thousand viewer mark. The World AI had said it happened, but none of their explanations had made any sense to Joe. Something about it being harder to get the first hundred than the second and that it exponentially rose from there. It was another one of those things, like instant apple cider vinegar that vexed Joe's mind but didn’t seem to bother anyone else.
Viewers – 9989
This was how they all ended up in a tent surrounded by The Wildest Chili and BBQ Cookoff this side of the Mississippi. Which side? This side. It made Joe grateful for the smell-a-vision of VR, because it was all about slow-roasted meat, liquor, and aged tomatoes in all sorts of stages. Even the Dijon mustard came out of an unmarked jar from the Thunderbird’s miraculous trunk. Unlike books, VR videos on NOOB required the viewer to suspend disbelief enough that all this was just fine for the show. Joe supposed that when you could do a fast forward montage of a week’s travel across country, this time stuff was believable.
And why were they competing in the Wildest Chili and BBQ Cookoff this side of the Mississippi? They’d polled their viewers and they’d decided that their next case should be Ms. Toovers, the powerful café mogul who had just married wife number fourteen. Ten of the previous ones were dead, with Penny being the fourth live one. Ms. Toovers was an equal opportunity 1%er. She had two husbands too. She’d even married one of her Pomeranians, though that one was to promote ads for Pet Ministers Inc., another of Ms. Toovers’ many companies. Polygamy was a new trend of the rich. Then again, maybe it was an old trend that had been brought back by the wedding wars, an advertising campaign that had sent the moo-verse to the polls in favor of saving wedding-related jobs. Their slogan was, “If one wedding can produce revenue to save one homeless person, then more can save more,” and they’d paired that with, “Don’t support divorce, just marry more!” The radical right wing supported the second slogan, and the radical left wing supported the first, thus causing one of the first ever bilateral campaigns that took spinning to a whole different dimension. Normally, the people between those two extremes would have been the sane voices, but they’d stopped voting ages ago.
Ms. Toovers’ head chef had won this specific competition three years in a row. This year, Chef Coleon would lose to Tami and that would be their introduction to the vaunted Ms. Toovers who never missed the competition. Ostensibly, that was why Tami had pulled out the custom ingredients. Hell, they’d even had to stop at an artisan show in the middle of Kansas for a perfectly blended wildflower and sweet corn honey. Tami had told Joe that there wasn’t any competition more fierce than a Chili or BBQ Cookoff and this was both, so she’d gotten serious. Foodie comments were up, according to marketing.
“Janet, would you put another bundle of mesquite in the fire, please?” Tami pointed toward the stack of wooden stakes that made Joe think they were vampire hunting instead of cooking or black widow killing. Then again, he’d left some leeway to the writers for surprises for him, so he made sure to save one spike just in case.
“Got it,” Joe told her, laying the hickory stakes out in a level layer of wood over the older coals at the bottom of the huge drum that served as everyone’s BBQ pit. The event coordinators had denied Tami’s demand for a buried pit, insisting that one of the few leveling factors of the contest was that everyone had to use one of these drums for actual meat cooking. Tami had said she’d use it if she could bury it. They’d denied that request too. Jean had returned an hour later with a truckload of bricks that she’d proceeded to use to surround the bottom half of the metal drum so that, while the drum still existed, it was almost buried in mud-based bricks that made it look like a built-in. Those scenes had gotten some great reviews. Their foodie following appreciated things like this.
Exp +100 (Quest: More Viewers!! Quest Complete!)
Hex’s whiskers twitched over the fumes coming out of the pots on the kitchen of their portable, folding kitchen, a kitchen that looked better than Joe's old apartment’s kitchen. One pot was chili. One pot was the pre-concoction of BBQ sauce. This kitchen is what took up most of the rest of their tent. At a chitter from one of the ferrets, Jean shot to her feet out of the camp chair where she’d been taking a nap.
“No, you don’t,” she grit her teeth as she got into the face of yet another fellow contestant who had stuck their noses into their area. “No spoilers!”
“I was just passing by,” the terrified old man backed away from the snarling Jean, his hands up in the air to wave her off. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Save it,” Jean pushed up her sleeves and he nearly fell over himself running backward away from their tent. He wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last.
“Why are they even trying?” Joe shook his head at Jean, who just shook her head back with a bit of a feral smile. “Tami’s ingredients are all secret, in unmarked jars, and pre-made by her. It’s not like they’re going to get the secret recipe by sniffing the smoke.”
“If we didn’t put up a fuss, they’d lose out on one of the best parts of these things,” Tami grinned over the pot of chili. “I used do the same thing, though honestly, I’ve gotten more than half of my secrets from them. I just combine it all better.”
“It’s amazing how many of them spill their secrets over moonshine after the judging is over,” Jean snickered, sitting back in her chair and tossing a treat to Podo and Kodo, who were back to their guard duties. The guard ferrets had been Podo’s idea. Podo’s AI was pretty good at coming up with pet scenes now that we could communicate.
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“Cheers to that,” Joe saluted Jean with a bit of mesquite. Even though he couldn’t enjoy the buzz from the alcohol, he could certainly enjoy the break from the pressure. “Any news on the judges?”
“They still haven’t announced their last one, but the first four are enough to make sure we win,” Tami assured Joe. It wasn’t that they’d bribed them. They were mostly fans of Tami and elitist foodies. Since Tami didn’t run any restaurants, no one knew when they could get a taste of her food. For that reason, 1%er foodies scrambled over themselves to get a chance at her food. “I think they’re holding an auction on the last judge position.”
“Are we getting a cut of it?” Jean poked one eye open to ask.
“No, but even so, if it doesn’t peak over a million, I’ll be insulted,” Tami waved a wooden spoon.
“We should be getting a cut,” Jean groused, sliding her battered cowboy hat’s rim down over her eyes.
“It’s a contest,” Tami stirred contentedly. “It’s basically slave wage anyway.”
“Of a million dollars?” Joe raised a brow at Tami.
“Chump change for our target,” Jean snorted, her legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankles.
“It’s free advertising for the contestants and that’s supposed to offset the cost the entry fee and slave labor,” Tami tried to explain, but Jean just clucked her tongue. “Luckily, my eccentricities make up for the implausibility. I think.”
“Next time, we get a cut,” Jean grunted.
All this to get an introduction to a 1%er? Yep. This was show biz. Convoluted exercises in suspending disbelief. Joe didn’t mind because the viewers kept coming in. At this rate, he’d get out of all this before his two years were up and he had started thinking about what next? He didn’t think it too loudly, though, because he couldn’t really enlist the AIs in his plans for release. He plunked a few stat points into Emotional Resonance and Trend Adhesion. With all those viewers had come a bunch of levels and with levels came stat points that Joe had learned to dribble in as they came up.
Viewers – 10,092
“The judging is in ten minutes,” Joe protested, going back to the judge choice. “How can they not have chosen someone yet?”
“They’ve chosen someone,” Tami assured him, stuffing a spoonful of something in Jean’s mouth. “They’re just trying to keep the tension up by not telling us who it is.”
“Try this,” Tami stuck a second mouthful of magic in Joe's mouth, and he groaned aloud. He swished it around in his mouth like a taste of fine wine, letting it hit every taste center before finally letting it slide down his throat. His flavor analysis skill went up by two points. The flavors were layered with complexities that took a good minute to wade through. He only knew the disparate flavors because he’d been sampling them as she put them into the pots. The way they blended was food porn.
“How did you make chili taste better than melted chocolate?” Joe asked Tami, a flirtatious look in his eyes.
“Balance,” she replied, satisfied with Joe's response, but only because it was almost immediately picked up by a spider as a one-liner. The little flirtation was followed by a flurry of viewer comments that bumped them in stats a bit. Maybe they were right about adding a bit of romance.
Exp +100 (Click-bait pick-up!)
“Did you infuse the chili with the hickory smoke from the BBQ pit?” he asked, watching her give him a sly smile as she scooped it into a competition bowl. “So that’s what that pipe into the pot did.” Tami’s thick stew pot was hooked up like a still that burped the hickory smoke of the barrel into the pot and through the juices. If anyone noticed the tiny hole they’d drilled in the barrel, they weren’t going to complain as long as they got a shot of the whiskey or a taste of the chili. It was much more likely that Jean would “fix it” before anyone noticed.
“Liquid smoke has a terrible aftertaste,” Tami lectured, setting the bowl on the counter to turn to the BBQ barrel that hadn’t opened since she’d slathered on the BBQ sauce. “Infusing it is the only way to do it properly.” The billow of smoke from the pit smothered the tent and its surroundings in a scent so dense it was tastable.
“That’s properly all right,” Joe nearly swooned as the bite from the spices from the chili was just now flaring to life in a sparkling set of aftereffects that married lovingly with the scent of the BBW smells. If he was the kind of guy who could be gotten through his stomach, Tami would have been the ultimate wife. At least in VR.
“Now this,” she said, placing a sliver of meat on his extended tongue.
He spent a minute providing foodie porn moans and explanations of the flavors. This was his job. He’d had a lot worse. He couldn’t think of much better. The flavor-analysis skill had enhanced his taste buds to the point of expertise that would qualify him as all the judges combined. Grinding this skill was a true joy and only one of the reasons he was working to get totally onboard. There just had to be a way to keep this life outside of prison. He’d have never considered himself a NOOB star, but now that he knew he had the skills and knack for it, he wasn’t about to let it go.
“And there’s the building burn of the secondary flavors finally blowing up my palate,” Joe concluded. The slather of smoked beef that Tami fanned out on the plate was caked with bits of cooked BBQ sauce and yes, a few small flecks of the hickory ash.
“In a good way, right?” Tami narrowed her eyes at the plate, filching just a tiny bit of beef to taste for herself.
“Hell, yes,” Joe moaned out, sidling over to the barrel so that he could snag another chunk of meat before she snapped it closed on his hands.
“It’s so tricky to give enough heat to those with tolerance and still not burn out a softer palate,” Tami fussed, adding a ramekin of fresh Hickory Moonshine BBQ sauce to the plate.
“I’m feeling the burn,” Joe admitted.
“That’s what the cornbread is for,” Tami said, finishing the plate with a mini-bundt-shaped cornbread bun that she pulled from a nearby, cloth-covered basket. Joe grabbed one and sure enough, they were fluffy and slathered in a smear of honeyed-butter that had a hint of wildflowers.
“Shall we?” Tami balanced the plate of perfection in both hands with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. Jean levered up from her chair, knocking the rim of her hat back and forth to settle it firmly on her head.
Together, they joined the parade of chefs, cooks, and spectators who were all making their way to the judging booths. They passed smells that hinted at goodness and ones that had missed the mark entirely. It made Joe reconsider a future as a food judge, as they were assaulted with smells of the spiciest peppers at a booth that didn’t have Tami’s concerns for balance. Some contestants hid their ineptitude behind an insistence that more fire was the only solution to chili.
As they neared the stage, Tami went toward the line of contestants, and Jean and Joe went to find their seats in the audience. Hex accompanied Tami, well hidden in her hair. Hex might still sleep next to Joe, but she and Tami were inseparable during the day. Even the ferrets were more cuddled up to Jean during the day, leaving Joe to his own devices. He found he didn’t mind. There was something about the fact that no matter who they preferred during the day, they always came back to him at night. Podo, the lazier of the ferrets, liked to hide as a hat accessory for Jean’s cowboy hat with her tail hanging down behind to blend in with Jean’s ponytail. Kodo was always sneaking off somewhere and, considering how much food was around, was likely taste-testing everything. Kodo was the only one with a flavor-analysis skill higher than Joe's and he was always working on it. Only VR magic made it so that he wasn’t as fat as a house. Then again, the same could be said for Joe.
“No way,” Jean breathed out toward Joe's ear, and he was bumped by Jean out of his search for a sign of Kodo’s tail.
“What?” Joe followed Jean’s stare and found his own mouth popping open. He’d found Kodo too. He was perched on the shoulder of their old friend Glenda, who was seated with the other four judges. “Oh. Is this good or bad?” Glenda was feeding Kodo a bit of the light lemon sorbet that had been provided to the judges as a palate cleanser.
Exp +100 (Quest: More Viewers!! Quest Complete!)
“Good?” Jean answered, but Joe could tell that she wasn’t sure.