Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee

  Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136

  The human talent for lying seemed to extend into the advertising arts. I’d never seen grilled meat before in my life--frankly, I’d been indoctrinated since birth to find the idea abhorrent--but the commercial made it look delicious! The way it sizzled like a harvest fritter on screen--did meat taste like fruit or cake? No, David said it was savory, not sweet. My attention slipped past David towards the mushrooms sizzling in a hot pan. I couldn’t wait to try what he was making.

  Still, what an amazing device! “You can grow your own meat?” I asked, awe slipping into my voice. “You don’t have to hunt for your food, or hurt animals at all?”

  David blinked. “We have, as a species, literally never been unclear on that point.”

  I pointed at the screen. “I thought you were making that shit up! That’s an actual product that humans can have in their homes?!”

  David rubbed his eyes. “Okay, first of all, the home-use bioprinters are gimmicky garbage. They run off of these proprietary ‘meat pod’ starter kits that cost nearly as much as just buying meat at the store. If you really want to grow your own custom meat blends at home, you need a commercial-scale bioprinter and several college courses just to operate the damn thing.”

  I squinted at David in confusion. “Wait, why do they sell the home-use ones, then?”

  David shrugged. “Americans have always had an individualistic streak, and it’s only gotten more intense since the Satellite Wars. Off-grid home tech is still a massively profitable market, all these decades later. Too many old folks grew up not being sure if public infrastructure was still going to be there when they needed it.” He suddenly changed his voice, like he was affecting the persona of a much older man. “A man’s home is his castle, and you gotta look out for you and yours first and foremost. Be prepared for anything! Never know when the damn Ruskies are going to knock out the power grid again.” He sighed. “Or the Krakotl, apparently.”

  I pointed at the lights on the ceiling. “Wait, how do you have power?”

  David shrugged helplessly. “Off-grid home tech,” he repeated. “Had the generator already, and the water purifier was a gift from the Arxur.”

  Don’t make a big deal about it, said the critical voice, watching my back as usual. The Arxur are clearly a sore point for him.

  “And it, uh, works well?” I asked, biting down a half-dozen potentially ruder questions.

  “Yeah,” said David. “You wouldn’t think it, but the Arxur are weirdly hygienic. All that raw meat, I guess.” He nodded back towards the paused commercial. “That’s one of the reasons why we cook ours. Kills any bacteria.”

  If raw meat grows bacteria, said the odd voice, then how does letting it rot on purpose work?

  I blinked. “What about all that aging stuff you were talking about earlier?”

  David nodded. “You have to do that carefully and hygienically, yeah. Sterilize the containers, and then introduce specific microorganisms that you know are safe. Or you go the other direction and make sure that no microorganisms can grow in it at all. Dry it, salt it, cook it, douse it in vinegar, or any of the above and then seal it up like jam or pickles… It’s a lot of work to make sure you don’t accidentally poison yourself.”

  That’s how it must have started for our ancestors, said the odd voice, quietly. One day too many with nothing to eat but carrion. Hunger overtakes revulsion. Maybe-poison beats definite starvation. There was a short pause before she chimed back in with an observation. If drying out meat makes it safe, maybe that’s how the Iftali got into scavenging the deserts of their homeworld?

  Good for them, I suppose, but the Cradle is too lush and rainy for that. If you left anything perishable outside, it’d start to go moldy within days.

  That mold-ripened cheese was pretty phenomenal, wasn’t it?

  I shivered as I briefly tried to remember how many different molds had antimicrobial properties. Was that how…? No, no more horrible revelations until tomorrow. Better to change the subject. “Alright, tell me more about the bioprinters, then,” I said to David. “The good ones, I mean. Do you know how to operate one?”

  David nodded slowly. “I actually do, yeah. I took most of the science electives my school offered when I was training to be a chef.” He nodded towards the book he’d pulled out on--Oh, right, mold-aging food. Fuck. “I’d have to brush up a bit on the biology side of things, but I know the basics. I’m not getting a bioprinter, though.”

  “Aw, c’mon, why not? It sounds like fun!” I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it, but the tech alone sounded fascinating. Just grow meat anywhere? Could it work on plants, too?

  David shook his head. “I don’t want one around me. My whole culinary style is offbeat and experimental. With a device like that around? It's too tempting to get… weird about it.”

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  My eyes narrowed. “Weird how?”

  David rubbed his eyes. “Say, Chiri, how much would I have to pay you to license a small cell sample?”

  The very thought was a source of instant revulsion. I grimaced so hard my face hurt. “Where are you going with this? I thought humans didn’t eat sapients.”

  David held up a finger. “Humans have strong moral objections to robbing a person of their life or bodily autonomy for no good reason,” he corrected, “especially over something as ridiculous as eating them when other food sources are available. But what happens when the person isn’t harmed by being eaten? What if they consent to it in writing?”

  I stared at the paused screen, glistening with cloned meat, and considered it. Did I care about pieces of myself that I wasn’t using? If someone wanted, say, one of my shed quills or a bit of fur that came off, how much would I care? If a child who’d never seen a Gojid before wanted to put a quill somewhere in their collection of cool rocks and pretty bird feathers that they’d found, I might indulge them. If an adult wanted to bask in my scent for… purposes… then absolutely not. Thus, I felt like it depended on what the recipient planned on doing with it, which… as arguments went, felt right, but didn’t seem to add up. A cell sample for medical testing sounded normal; a cell sample so someone could grow food out of me felt unsettling. But I wouldn’t notice the cells missing either way.

  “It still feels weird,” I said aloud. “Like… what kind of person wants to eat sapient meat?”

  David shrugged. “Yeah, that’s my assessment, essentially. Even if it’s ethically on the level, it still just feels wrong.” He shook his head, and wandered back towards the stove. He poured out a glass of pale wine into the pan, which hissed angrily as he stirred it forcefully. “The ancient Greeks practiced slavery,” he said, by way of the world’s strangest segue, “but they had unusually strong laws against cruelty towards slaves. The really weird thing is, it wasn’t out of kindness or egalitarianism. The ancient Greeks were honestly total bastards about their slave-keeping. They just recognized that slaves were ‘person-shaped’, and it probably wasn’t a great idea for their society if fellow Greeks started getting into the habit of being cruel towards ‘things’ that looked like people.” He tossed the noodles into the boiling pot to the side, and poured some viscous white fluid onto the mushrooms. “Which sounds like an insane argument, but it’s kind of how I feel about sapient meat. It doesn’t matter how harmless it seems. You probably shouldn’t normalize thinking of people as being made out of food.”

  What a truly curious ethical lens, said the critical voice, waxing philosophical for once. It’s comforting, at least, that he sees eating sapients as a road he doesn’t want to go down. It’s like the Humans understand the Arxur, but don’t want to be anything like them.

  I grimaced. “That is certainly one of my issues with the Arxur to date, yes.”

  “I mean, yeah,” said David, shrugging. “Even if they rewrote their whole society tomorrow, it’s going to take generations for the Arxur to completely get over their cultural norms on that front. But I wasn’t talking about the Arxur.” David looked over the stovetop, and decided he had a few moments. He turned to me as he spoke. “Chiri, I’d personally be tempted out of curiosity, not necessity. There are other types of meat I could eat that have less ethical baggage attached. But, uh, then there’s you, Chiri. You’ve got a medical condition with a strange loophole.”

  I stared at him in confusion. “Right, hence all the cheese, yeah? Like, I know it’s not meat, but it’s at least a start.”

  David rubbed his eyes. “Chiri, there’s one type of meat you can probably eat without triggering a reaction,” he said. “It’s the one you’re currently already full of.”

  I didn’t find this turn of events funny, but the odd voice wouldn’t stop laughing.

  She’s you, I’m you, don’t get into the habit of thinking of us as separate people, said the critical voice brusquely. But yeah, also, um, don’t eat yourself.

  But it’s harmless fun! said the odd voice, still laughing. Is our own body not meant for our own indulgence? Why wouldn’t we enjoy ourselves?

  Because there are different levels of damnation, said the critical voice, and developing a taste for Gojid flesh is not a level we’re prepared to sink to.

  “I’m curious,” I said softly to David, “but not curious enough to justify getting used to thinking of my own people as food.”

  David nodded. “Glad we’re in agreement. That’s why I don’t want a bioprinter in the building.” He set out two pale bricks, one off-white and nutty, and the other with a black swirly pattern, and reached for a rasp.

  “Do the bioprinters work on non-meat substances, at least?” I asked.

  David paused, not expecting the question, then picked the black-swirled brick back up to show me. “It… does, actually, but it’s not economically useful for things that we can just grow outside in a field. But we never figured out how to grow truffles reliably. They’re these incredibly savory little forest mushrooms--the wild ones look like little black balls--but we could never get the mycelium to sprout predictably. We used to just have to infect a whole orchard with spores and hope for the best, but the bioprinters can just clone the mushroom flesh directly. Brought the cost down by a ton.” He waved the small brick before putting it back down. “That’s why I’ve got an inch-thick sheet of fresh black truffle instead of a ball.”

  “Gotcha,” I said, and just settled in to watch him cook. Once the noodles were ready, he plucked them out with tongs and dropped them dripping into the pan. He tossed them a few times, then grated a small mountain of white cheese on top of them, and tossed it more. He tasted the sauce as he went, adding salt, cheese, grated truffle, and even a few splashes of the water the noodles had boiled in. The noodles looked like they were about to go flying, but he juggled them in the heavy pan effortlessly.

  He portioned out two big plates of noodles, then grated more cheese and truffle on top as a garnish, plus a bit of some ground up black flecks. Some kind of seed grinder? A spice?

  David sat back down across from me, ready to re-announce the dish, but I put my paw over his hand. “This looks amazing,” I said, once again turning myself damn-near cross-eyed trying to look him in the eyes, “but… can we keep the conversation a little lighter for the rest of the night?”

  David laughed. “Absolutely. What’s your favorite TV show?”

  I did my best impression of a human grin as I picked up the tiny pitchfork he’d set out for me. “Buddy, I am going to massacre these noodles, and then I am going to tell you all about the best period drama ever written.”