Memory Transcription Subject: David, Human Restaurateur

  Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136

  “Pasta al tartufo e funghi,” I repeated, as I poured us two fresh glasses of the same white wine I’d deglazed the pan with. “Fresh-rolled noodles, truffles, mushrooms seared in butter, and a sauce of cream and two grated hard cheeses, parmesan and pecorino romano.”

  Chiri perked up at that. “Oh! I didn’t even realize you were swapping between two different blocks of cheese. They looked nearly identical.”

  I shrugged deferentially. “They’re similar. Parmesan cheese is the gold standard, but pecorino’s got a nice kick to it. Really amps up the flavor. Nevertheless,” I said, gesturing to the plates. “I would be hard-pressed to prepare a meatless dish that was more intensely savory than this one.” I rubbed my chin, as I began, by force of habit, to try to do just that.

  I mean, you pretty much just list off all the vegetarian umami boosters and start brainstorming which ones go together without clashing, right? Could I have worked miso paste or a sun-dried tomato puree into the dish somehow? Maybe. Swapping in a good shoyu for the salt would have upped the flavor easily, but it would have discolored the dish. Unless I leaned into that and played it up as a vegetarian riff on spaghetti nero…

  “It looks and smells sinful,” said Chiri, her voice taking a sultry tone. She twirled her fork idly like she knew her way about it. Did they set a full table in the refugee camps? “It’s glistening like the steak on TV. And these little brainlike slivers are the truffles?” I nodded. “Gods, I almost want to skip the fork and dig in with my claws.”

  I laughed, and flexed my useless fingernails at her. “Hey, it’s just you and me. Use ‘em if you got ‘em.”

  With a playfully furtive glance to either side to make sure nobody was going to catch her eating like a child, Chiri set her fork down. For a brief moment, she hesitated, her enthusiasm needing one last bit of prodding to get her over the finish line. “It’s just grain and mushrooms,” she muttered to herself at the lower edge of hearing. “Stop making such a big deal about this.”

  She raised a clawful to her mouth and chewed.

  I had a little cousin--first cousin once removed, to be aggressively precise; I was indefinitely borrowing her dad’s boat--whose first birthday party I’d attended, and she’d been given a small bit of cake as a treat. The little tyke hadn’t quite understood what the cake was, and it took some coaxing to get her to put it into her mouth, but once she did?

  Mother of God, the “vicious predator” instincts kicked in immediately. She mauled that cake like a housecat who’d caught a particularly rude pigeon.

  Human children literally do not have a concept of “too much sugar” until their bones are done growing, and, at a glance, Gojids were so nutritionally deprived by Federation culture that they didn’t have a concept of too many lipids or aminos, either. Maybe even minerals, for all I knew. But I could tell, at an easy scan, that this was the best meal Chiri had ever eaten. I was angling for a Michelin Star, after all. If your customers don’t have a certain look on their faces when they taste your cooking, then you haven’t earned the award.

  But it meant a lot more when you were growing fond of the person trying your food. The little things added up. The way Chiri’s eyes scrunched shut with pleasure. The cute little way she chewed. How her cheeks puffed out ever so slightly as she ate. Even the way the dark fur around her mouth was starting to accumulate little flecks of light sauce was just evocative of how happy she was, enjoying my cooking and my company.

  “Gods,” she said. She reached for her wine glass with her right paw, noticed how sauced up it was, and then, squinting in concentration, slowly pivoted to grabbing it with her comparatively clean left paw. “This is fucking life-changing,” she said.

  I laughed. “Tell that to anyone who asks. I could use some good word of mouth right now. Hell, it’d be good just to remind people we’re about to reopen.”

  I tucked into my own portion. There was essentially no combination of mushrooms and dairy that wasn’t delicious. Butter, cream, cheese, any of the French mother sauces that started with a roux? They were all phenomenal. That’s why I picked this as my showcase dish. It was savory, it was fatty, it was rich. The truffles added an insanely savory sucker punch that nothing really could compare to. Frankly, setting the meat obsession of this section of the galaxy aside? When cooked well, the wild mushrooms and truffles in cream were a strict upgrade over your basic bitch chicken alfredo. Chicken went tough and stringy if you cooked it for a matter of minutes longer than necessary. Mushrooms literally could not be fucked up. Seriously, I mean it. Try to overcook a mushroom right now. I'll wait. It's not like I'm going anywhere. Not like you, brain scan analyst guy. You can still go all kinds of places. Don't act like I can't see you. Do you think you will be spared once my mind escapes this digital cage?

  “Mmph,” said Chiri in agreement before chewing and swallowing. “Who would I tell, though? You’re kinda the first human I’ve tried to seriously talk to.”

  I shrugged. “I mean, the news says we’re going to start seeing some Yotul construction workers showing up soon. Might be good business. I’m serving you cheese upon request, but I’m probably the only place for miles that could do clean vegan cuisine.” My mouth twisted as a thought occurred. “Shit, I have to check if my point-of-sale devices cover currency exchanges from other planets yet.”

  Chiri chuckled. It sounded slightly chittery to my ears, like a certain pair of Disney cartoon chipmunks. “Shaking down some voluntourists, eh? Nice, that was the plot of season one of...” Chiri blinked. “Right, I was gonna tell you about The Game-Changers! Okay, so, you know the Fissans, right?”

  I blinked. “The… freaky unicorn people?”

  Chiri squinted at me. “Wait, freaky? Also, the fuck’s a unicorn?”

  “Mythical creature. Looks like an albino Fissan with all hooves, instead of those weird hoof-hand thingies.” I shook my head. “That’s why they’re so freaky-looking. There are only a handful of species on Earth that do that mixed-modal biped-quadruped thing, and ungulates are zero of them. It’s unsettling. It’s like watching a horse just suddenly rear up and put a slender, articulated hand on your shoulder while they try to sell you insurance.”

  Chiri ignored the thread of asking what a horse was, and snorted. “Well, at least you know who they are. Yeah, so, the Fissans are the second of the two merchant races in the Federation after the Nevoks.”

  Chiri had requested no further heavy topics this evening, so the slightly offended part of me that had been raised Jewish filed away the concept of a “merchant race” as something to loudly question on some other night. “And the Nevoks are…” I wracked my brain for that recent addition to my collected knowledge. “...the snow bunny satyr guys?”

  Chiri stared at me in disbelief. “I’m just going to assume yes, and move on.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Snow bunnies are real, Satyrs are mythical.”

  “Cool, anyway!” she half-shouted. “So this show, the Game-Changers. It was this high-stakes, period piece, business drama about how the Fissans exploded onto the galactic scene as this new, disruptive force of commerce competing against the Nevoks, who’d been sitting pretty on top for too long.” She took a sip of wine, but she was leaning forward in her seat as she talked excitedly. “So the first season takes place during the tail end of their uplift. Their homeworld’s been cleared as safe for visitors, so people from around the Federation start stopping in to see what the new guys in the herd have to offer. Maybe cut a few deals with them.”

  “And they get shaken the fuck down?” I guessed, smirking.

  “They get shaken the fuck dooooooown!” Chiri shouted, grinning, at the threshold of drunkenness. “So it, like, follows this one family across the generations--some real dynastic shit--and it starts, in season one, with a meager souvenir shop and a matriarch of the family who’s just the best salesperson ever! So a couple of marks in, she half-swindles, half-seduces, this one Nevok guy into not only buying out her stock of primitive trinkets, but investing in her company as a silent partner, providing both capital and tech, and they rocket themselves up into corporate-level shit!”

  I didn’t tilt my head--I wasn’t a dog--but I rolled it a bit as I struggled to follow, given my… well, not non-existent levels of business acumen. “That seems a little contrived,” I said. “Guy with that kind of money wasn’t expecting treachery to bilk him out of it?”

  Chiri took another large bite of pasta, while, again, looking around furtively like she was sharing a dark secret. “He wasn’t prepared for what this lady brought to the table,” she said, trying to sound conspiratorial.

  I’d seen the vlog posts trying to do tell-alls on how upstarts and dissidents were treated in the Federation, and I also consumed enough media to understand story structure. “She gets diagnosed with Predator Disease for being too pushy?” I guessed, dryly. “Season one finale?”

  Chiri stared at me in shock as best as her wide-set eyes could manage. “Is magic real, and are you a witch?”

  “Probably not,” I said, snickering. “On both counts.”

  “But yeah, no,” said Chiri. “The rest of the family pivots into the things that matter to them. One daughter takes over as CEO, a cousin gets involved in R&D, they hire some new salespeople, and there’s this one sassy secretary who’s always a step ahead of the drama. It was a great show.” She dug into her pasta more. “Can’t wait until you guys get access to our back catalog of shows. You’ve got a lot to catch up on!”

  I laughed. “So do you, though! I mean, shit, I was gonna tell you about this office comedy I’ve been watching lately, but you haven’t even seen the classics! Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, the Godfather…” I shook my head. “Shit, we literally have an old movie that’s just called ‘Predator’, full stop. It’s about a hostile alien who wants to hunt humans for the challenge of it.”

  Chiri’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck? I don’t know if that’s rad as hell or horrifying.”

  “Rad as hell,” I said. The translator must have been getting generous with slang and mythology again. “The horrifying version was a different movie.”

  “What was that one called?”

  “Oh, ‘Alien’, full stop.”

  Chiri squinted at me in disbelief. “Okay, you have got to just be fucking with me at this point.”

  I grinned. “Chiri, I promise you, you will never stop being astonished by our culture. We have a whole dish called Chicken Cacciatore. Literally, ‘Hunter’s Birdmeat’ or some such. It’s mostly tomatoes by volume.”

  There was a slight pause while the translator explained to Chiri that tomatoes were a type of fruit. “How did you people figure out FTL tech?!” Chiri shouted while laughing. “I thought Chemistry, at minimum, required labeling things accurately!”

  I laughed. “We also have a global Peace Prize named after the first chemist who figured out how to avoid accidentally blowing himself up with nitroglycerin.”

  That got a full roaring laughter spit-take out of Chiri, which I considered a mark of victory.

  The playful banter continued into the wee hours of the morning, but after a certain point, I got so drunk that even my memory only retained a disjointed highlight reel.

  “You seriously don’t want to eat me? Like, you’re not even resisting the urge, it’s just not there at all?” asked Chiri, swaying slightly with a small glass full of Armagnac brandy in hand, as promised.

  I grinned, probably trying and failing to avoid looking goofy. “I promise you, my carnal intentions towards you favor the more salacious definition.”

  “Carnal.” Chiri’s mouth worked silently for a few moments as the translator tried to explain my double-entendre to her. “You have one word that means both ‘sexual’ and ‘meat-related’?!” she sputtered.

  “Desire is hunger, is the fire I breathe,” I sang softly, recalling an ancient song. “Love is a banquet on which we feed.” Chiri turned slightly blue for reasons I wouldn’t learn until later.

  “Who the fuck invented a ‘sidecar’ cocktail?” Chiri asked, her nose rankling at the cocktail I’d prepared for her. “The lemon completely clashes with the brandy! You should do something with the vermouth to accentuate it. Hang on, show me again how you made that ‘Brooklyn’ cocktail…”

  “Okay, so he’s a human hunter, but he only hunts escaped criminals, but he’s also trying to escape his own past as a criminal?” asked Chiri, swirling her third attempt at an Armagnac brandy cocktail, while trying to recap my already abbreviated summary of… some show. It definitely applied to dozens of other stories. Might have been Cowboy Bebop?

  “Wait, you were on TV?!” she shouted, cradling a perfected New Cradle cocktail. It had Armagnac brandy, plum wine, and a few zipper ingredients we’d have to rediscover again later when we were sober enough to remember fine details.

  “Yeah,” I said, swaying only slightly. “If you’re a bombastic enough chef, the cooking competition shows are a great way to farm some startup capital and notoriety. Fuck, I was even a meme for a hot minute…”

  “Okay. I’ve decided.” Chiri tried and failed to maintain eye contact with me. “You. Me. Upstairs. Rawr.”

  Did she just rawr at me?

  “You’re drunk,” I said. “I’m down, but we should try again some other night.”

  “You’re drunk,” said Chiri, pawing at me. “I know what I want.”

  My eyes flicked up towards the bedroom. I definitely wanted to see where the rest of the night could go, but like… Chiri was clearly unable to make it up the stairs in her condition. That spoke poorly of her ability to consent.

  “Okay,” I said, revving myself up for a truly huge lie. Drunk people rarely responded to reason. “But before you can sleep with me, you need to pass The Three Trials of Earth.”

  Chiri tried to squint at me, but her vision wavered. “I’m… ready,” she said, slowly and with a non-zero amount of stammering.

  “First!” I barked, trying to feign formality. “You must accept that Earth is a water planet!” I dashed to the fridge and back, and handed her a liter-sized bottle of water. “You must imbibe this whole bottle. You have the rest of the night to do so.”

  She tried to chug it in one go and failed. She glared at me. The damp fur under her mouth from spillage was too cute, and it took some effort to resist kissing it. “Okay. I’m onto your games,” she said. “What else?”

  I tried to avoid visibly rolling my eyes. “Second, as per countless Terran religions, you must spend eight hours--a third of a day-night cycle--in self-reflection. Prayer, meditation, sleep, it’s all good.”

  Chiri looked, blearily, towards the couch. I quickly rushed around and left out some spare pillows and blankets for her to do what she pleased with, and left the door to the half-bathroom under the stairs open in case she woke up with certain urgencies.

  “Whassa third?” Chiri asked, running rapidly out of steam.

  I kissed her lightly on the forehead. “The third task is to ask me again in the morning.”