Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee

  Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136

  “Speaking of home,” David began. My blood pressure rose a little. I didn’t really want to think about the Cradle right now. “Dunno if this is a sore subject, but where did you plan to set up shop next?”

  “Shop?” I asked without waiting for the translator to finish explaining the idiom. “I guess I could open a shop. I really wanted to run my own distillery, but I’d always planned on building that out from my family’s winery.” I shook my head. The winery was ashes and glass. And my family might be. “If I have to start everything over again from nothing, it’s not the worst time to reevaluate if that’s still my dream.”

  “Alright,” said David, taking a sip of his Brooklyn. “Well, what drew you to distilling in the first place?”

  I took a sip of mine as well, savoring the complexity of flavors. The Federation didn’t really do complex flavors, with a slim pawful of exceptions. “Honestly, I think it was because that’s one of the few fields where changing things up was celebrated. Like, that gin you offered me earlier? We don’t really mix or age our spirits, but we do make herbal infusions.” Boldly, I plucked up a nut that looked like a tiny brain. It tasted oily and tannic. “I just always wanted to try something new and different. Different flavors, different combinations. Really experiment, you know?”

  David was smiling, but he was also suddenly looking a little red. Did humans blush?

  Oh good, accidental flirting, said the self-critical voice. Shall we move up to intentional flirting next?

  Alright, I got this. Watch the master at work.

  I'll be taking notes. For later. When you're lying awake at night, cringing.

  “It’s pointless now, though,” I said.

  THAT'S your opening line?!

  I was trying to shift the conversation back to something a human might like. “I’m a predator, so I’ll probably just end up learning to hunt or something.” I looked at him with an expression of obvious interest. “You can teach me, right?” There we go. Activity together, common interest, and the male gets to feel all competent and knowledgeable. Then maybe the thrill of the hunt stirs our blood, we find a nice quiet spot in the woods, and…

  David blinked. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

  My face fell. “You… you don’t think I can learn?”

  “What? No! I’m taken to understand it’s not really that hard. Guns exist, and deer are practically an invasive species these days. I’m sure you can pick it up, if you really want to.” David shook his head. “I’m saying I can’t teach you because I’ve never gone hunting before in my life.”

  “What.”

  I got nothing. That makes no sense. Maybe he’s an invalid?

  If herbivores could eat rubble, you would have been chomping on plaster an hour ago, said the quieter voice, but I couldn’t quite follow its logic this time.

  “Chiri, do the Gojids have, like… office workers?” David asked.

  “Yeah, of course we have office workers,” I said, a bit confused. “You could hardly build an interstellar civilization without administrators and logistics experts somewhere in the mix.”

  “You don’t say,” said the member of the newest interstellar civilization in the sector. “So, do Gojid office workers get time off from work to wander into the woods and forage for wild berries?”

  I laughed at the absurd notion. “What? No! Most of them wouldn’t even know how. If they want berries, they just buy them at the store.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  David stared at me and blinked slowly.

  “Oh! You buy your meat at the store,” I blurted out. “Right. Yeah. I guess that makes sense.”

  David shrugged, but his smile was back, at least. “Technically, I have mine delivered, because I run a restaurant, but yeah, I don’t hunt it myself. It’s a waste of time, and also farming exists. And now lab-grown meat. Besides, I go through a lot in a week. My business’s purpose is to sell food, cooked skillfully, by the truckload.” He gestured broadly at the ruined city. “Therein lies my logistics problem, though. No trucks lately. No more roads.”

  I had a brief moment of guilt and concern that I was eating what little food he had left. “I thought the U.N. was delivering food aid to the survivors. Oh no, but that’s mostly in the shelters, and you’re at home, so…”

  David waved my concerns away. “So I have to go for a short walk to pick up groceries. That’s not the problem. The issue is that I can’t reopen the restaurant with only what I can carry.” He reached for the cheese that looked like it was rotting and moldy, and ate some spread across the bread. It smelled weirdly good. “You caught me at a good time, actually. I was going to head up the river tomorrow morning--well, afternoon, at this rate--and see if I could set up some kind of delivery arrangement with the upstream farms. No roads for the trucks, but boats don’t need roads.”

  “Who are you planning on selling to, though?” Now that I knew the weird rotting cheese wasn’t an elaborate prank, I followed David’s example. “What’s this one called, by the way?”

  “Roquefort,” he said. “That’s got an edible mold in it that helps break down some of the flavor compounds in a way that makes them more intense.”

  “Weirder than wood,” I said, chuckling. I savored the taste of it going down. It was even more intense than the Camembert, pungent and funky and delicious. An acrid bitterness underlaid the strata of thickened fat, and the savory flavors blossomed like a fungal bloom. Aside from maybe the first cheese, I had no memories to draw upon, nothing conscious I’d ever tasted to compare it to. It tasted fundamentally wrong somehow--not ethically wrong, but like it wasn’t supposed to be food--and yet there was something deep and primal about how good it tasted.

  A dead thing, falling apart. Life reclaims. So hungry.

  Wait, what?

  My quills stood on end. The only voice I heard in reply came from the outside.

  “And, well, most of the people in town with money to spend are here to work, so I’m planning on building up my lunch service, mostly.” David took another sip of his drink as I downed the rest of mine. Right, he was talking about his potential customers. “Hot meals for the construction workers, maybe some boxed lunches to go. Maybe some of the people in the shelters want to treat themselves to something fancy, maybe put on a facade of normality. And I’ve got the bar, so if any investors come in to talk business, we can serve martinis.” He grinned. “Probably no market, though, yeah. After all, any human can just chase down a deer if they get hungry.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, with your enormous claws,” I joked, flexing mine for emphasis. “What’s a martini?”

  “Another cocktail. That one’s actually made with gin, traditionally.” David nodded at my empty glass. “Want one?”

  Good idea. Drown the voices.

  …why are YOU suggesting that?

  I don’t know, lady. I think you broke something. That other one’s starting to freak me out.

  Won’t that shut you off, too?

  Hahaha, no! If drinking were enough to escape from a deep-rooted sense of self-loathing, the world would have happier drunks.

  Some drunks are happy. Maybe I’m one of them!

  Bet.

  “Yeah, sure!” I said, nervous but resolving myself to win. “Thanks!”

  David rinsed out the metal drink shaker, then poured in gin plus a pour of… the label looked very similar to the vermouth, but the contents were pale like blood plasma that had been robbed of its deep red Terran charm. “Why’s the vermouth look so anemic?” I asked.

  David did a double-take, trying to process my words. His eyes flicked from the bottle he was holding to the bottle he’d used for the last cocktail. “Dry white vermouth,” he said. “Lighter grapes, no skins. Er, I mean, no rinds,” he tried to correct.

  “Fruit has skin,” I said, chuckling. “It’s fine.” I pointed a claw at myself. “Besides, aspiring predator.”

  “Yeah…” said David, shaking the drink vigorously. I could barely make out his words over the dull roar. “Can we talk about that?”

  My face fell. “You don’t think I--”

  “Stop,” said David. “Just… stop. You keep saying the word ‘predator’. I don’t… I feel like the word has lost all meaning.” He poured the martini out across two oddly cone-shaped glasses, and added an olive to each. “We’re both omnivores. You have a medical condition courtesy of the Kolshians, but overall? You can literally just do whatever you want. Right? Like, welcome to Earth! There are no social rules that require you to hunt, or fish, or dig for clams, or whatever. You want a job at a distillery? There are human-run distilleries! Most of their owners have never hunted, either! In fact, a lacto-vegetarian master distiller probably wouldn’t even be worth a batted eye in the state of New York.” He shook his head as he set the two glasses out on the table. “So just… please. Stop assuming that there’s something you have to do to fit in. What do you want to do?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer the question.