I have a video of the life extension procedure that ended in a second, but I honestly don’t feel like watching it…
“Did I really do that procedure? It doesn’t feel like it.”
“It’s because you were just injected with nanomachines. I’m only twenty-one, so I don’t feel its benefits yet.”
“I’m nineteen!”
“I knew you looked young, but you really are… By the way, I’m thirty.”
Just barely in bounds… Let’s change topics.
“Ah, I want to go eat somewhere. I’m hungry.”
I really am. My stomach’s growling.
“Was that one of the side-effects of the procedure?”
“I think it’s that, you know~? Getting hungry because the nanomachines are working~.”
“Is that a thing?”
“I think so. People don’t normally get new ones, so I forgot. How about that restaurant? They use a food printer of a chain, so it’s cheap.”
“Okay… Food printer?”
I’m dragged into the restaurant as they make expressions like they’re exasperated that they have to explain from there, but they do explain.
The place feels like a family restaurant, with large windows that give it an open feeling and two rows of waiting benches by the entrance. There’s also a table with a tablet at chest level, and after inputting how many we are, it gives us a number and we head to the table with that number.
“I guess cheap restaurants are the same everywhere.”
“Oh~? Was it like this where you came from, darling?”
“Pretty much… We used a specific application on a tablet to order, but I guess here it’s a menu.”
We were ordering on tablets when I was in Japan, but I guess this went backwards.
“Apparently it used to be like that, but there were too many people leftover. This is the result of the Alliance urging big corporations to use people wherever possible to keep the economy going.”
“Hon… So is space an era of excess personnel?”
“There’s lots of people~.”
“To the point where a colony that should be keeping everything up to a single bottle of water planned and managed has unauthorized unregistered people renting rooms and working.”
Saratha points at herself. Plans don’t always work out. The menu… Soup filled with spices… Is this curry? It is, isn’t it? It’s the same color at least. Seriously?
“I’ll have this curry and… There’s no damn rice. I guess I’ll go with flat bread. What about you two?”
“Did you find something from your home? I’ll have one LL size omelet with a lot of meat… And one of these.”
“Don’t you always have more, Sara~? Hn? You say one isn’t enough~. And bread ouch!?”
Saratha chops Kori from the top of her head and pushes Kori’s nose in. It goes back to normal right after she pulls her hand away, but stop doing that. It’s scary.
“Saratha… Don’t mind me, eat what you want. Won’t it be bad if you don’t?”
“Guh, okay. I get it, stop pulling me.”
“I’ll have~… Cream soda and pudding and cola and pancakes and saratto severnier nieshanie.”
“What?”
We make our order to an employee, and while Saratha does order kind of a lot, I make sure not to react. Also, the menu says aurora salad. I guess I misheard that. I’m even considering it might be a malfunction, but apparently it was just her articulating herself poorly. Saratha heard the same thing.
▽▽▽
The spice filled soup is curry. The flavor is a little light, which throws me off, but it tastes like the honey and apple curry roux that was popular in Japan. I think it’s this thing that’s like octopus that’s throwing me off. I’ve never had curry with octopus.
“Is wheat a staple food here? I wish I had rice.”
“Rice? This place doesn’t have that. But there is sake and dango.”
What?
“Dango’s tasty~.”
“It fills the stomach and it’s cheap. I stopped by a dango place on the way back from work.”
“I didn’t know about that~!!”
“I didn’t tell you.”
“You’re not going to tell me you can’t have rice with anything other than dango, right?”
“Of course not.”
Yes, that surprised me. I wouldn’t think rice would be something just for dango and sake.”
“Rice porridge is nice~.”
“No way!”
“Was rice different where you came from? Indigenous people have funny ways of eating.”
I scoop up curry with my flat bread and eat it, and tell them about cooking rice with water. And then…
“Oh, that. We do boil rice like that. It’s called paella and it’s pretty expensive. Do you know that?”
“Do you cook that in broth…? I’m getting the feeling that there aren’t rice cookers here.”
It’s bad manners, but I hold the flat bread with my right hand and use the smartphone with my left… So there are rice cookers, and white rice. There are even places in this colony that specialize in organic onigiri! That’s surprising! I turn the smartphone over and show it to them without thinking.
“We’ve never been to one of those organic places. Check out the price of one salmon onigiri. You could have lunch here several times for that money.”
“Ah! Isn’t this expensive!? What is this a high class restaurant?”
“Hm~… A machine that only cooks rice~? It’s hard to find a place for it on a spaceship~. A machine that bakes bread can at least make different kinds~.”
“From what I can see here, it can boil and stew too, but it’s like an electric cooking pot.”
“Hn, I don’t think I like cooking to begin with.”
I look at Saratha like I’m asking if she’s serious, but Kori has a displeased expression too.
“Apparently this is a big hang up with people born on planets. But you know, spaceships and colonies are closed spaces.”
Saratha says as she makes a fist like she’s squeezing onigiri.
“So we have air circulators, oxygen generators, and wind spirit stones to create oxygenated air.”
The hell are wind spirit stones?
“Machines can suck up the air, but if you cook you’re going to get the spaceship all sticky.”
“People only really cook in big passenger ships with the help of cleaning machines~. It’s a big hassle~.”
“Ah, so the ventilators would get all oily and sticky?”
“Yes, wind spirit stones are coated with oil, so magic doesn’t work on them. They’re a pain because you have to polish them with baking soda. And the machine that circulates air is prone to breaking.”
“So… Basically, it spreads to all machinery?”
Oxygen producing machinery can break when people cook in space. That’s bad. And what if the nuclear fusion reactor or the shield generator break? That’s no joke.
“Just heating it is one thing, but even places that sell genuine cooking have to pay a cleaning tax.”
“Even those that were roasting meat on skewers?”
“The prices weren’t bad, so maybe they were heating up lab grown meat in retort pouches~. It had that color too~!”
“Retort pouches…”
“There’s no hot oil involved, so it won’t go in the air. There’s also frozen food or synthetic food printer stuff. Don’t you know about food printers, Genma?”
I only heard about them recently. I’m pretty sure NASA ordered development of a special printer to have pizza in space.
“Darling’s home was pretty advanced in terms of space development…”
“Getting all sentimental here is kind of annoying.”
“The Alliance decided to protect primitive planets centuries ago, so there aren’t many civilizations that develop space exploration on their own.”
That sounds like the sort of thing that will kill biodiversity. But getting back to food printers.
“Ah, hold on. Food printers… Here, there’s a menu, right? The curry you’re eating can be made in a food printer.”
“What’s a printer anyway? This is thick soup.”
“You get food cartridges, add flavor with the printer, and it takes form~.”
“Cartridges have liquid full of nutrients made by processing algae or animal based plankton. The colony produces them for its own use.”
So this curry is a flavor from some food cartridge? Just the soup?
“Those protein ingredients and the soup are all made from the food cartridge.”
“Saratha’s fattening and hearty meat omelet LL size, garnished with mandragora-style and walking mushroom-style, was all food cartridge~!”
Saratha unleashes a hellish chop to Kori’s flank, but that’s where the core is, so don’t.
“Seriously? Is that why it tasted a bit off?”
“The feelings of a bourgeois who only ate organic food~!!”
“I heard it’s different from real vegetables, but I guess that’s true…”
“It’s a little annoying.”
“Don’t complain at me, organic eater.”
I put the flat bread and curry in my mouth and finish it. I guess it’s not that different, and it’s nice that I get to eat curry anyway.
“So in a spaceship we eat from retort bags, frozen food, or food cartridges?”
“I think food cartridges will be the main one.”
“Organic retort bags and frozen food are expensive! But we might be able to buy retort bags and frozen food for the food printer~.”
“Then we might as well just use the food printer… Are food printers expensive?”
Saratha shows me on her smartphone that the cheapest one is five thousand puni. It’s huge too, the size of a vending machine. She then swipes and shows me food cartridge spices. The variety makes my eyes spin, five hundred sets. Uwah, coffee and tea. And juice.
“We could bolt one near the counter seats in Tortilla Double… And we could use ours.”
“Yes~. A high quality food printer would take a whole bedroom.”
I can see it on my smartphone. The momentum I feel when I see the flavor is a lot different and it has five star reviews is scary. There are also specialized food printers, like for tea, coffee, eggs, and stuff I don’t understand. The ones for drinks are relatively small, like a couple of microwaves.
“Wow. I’m getting confused, so couldn’t we buy a high-end food printer?”
“They’re half a million puni, and you won’t have any stock for it unless you go to a colony full of gourmet or inclined towards technology.”
“Zadar is a typical primary industry bed colony centered around the Mining Guild, so you won’t find that stuff~.”
“Mu, then I guess a normal one will do…”
“If you’re that curious, we could go to a gourmet colony next time~.”
“Hm, I’d rather go to a technological one. I took a quick peek at the ship’s equipment, and a lot of stuff like the drones is old.”
I guess that will depend on the work the Mercenary Guild puts out.
“Let’s not think about work just yet, and talk about renovating. I want to get rid of the tables and bring in couches, rugs, and cushions. I was thinking about making the second floor living quarters a shoeless area.”
“That’s fine by me. Casting Clean on my tail takes time.
“No dirt! Let’s make it hard to drag trash inside~! We could get big L-shaped couches on both sides of the room with a rug and cushions on the floor! We could lay down and watch TV and movies! Let’s go with a movie tonight~!”
“Are you okay in that bedroom, Saratha? Do you want to remove a partition and have two?”
“Hnn, I can lay a blanket on the living room when I want to sleep all stretched. Meaning I want a twelve meter long blanket.”
“That’s fine. Ah, I want a bath! Could I bust down a partition in the bedroom to do it?”
“We talked about this yesterday… What do you think, Kori?”
“Does darling want cola float bath play~?”
I gag, and Saratha twists Kori’s head off. Her core isn’t there, so there’s no damage.
We order drinks and dessert, and keep talking about renovations. Also, Saratha ate three times more than me. We’re going to have to talk about food storage when we get back.
So there are rice cookers,« and white rice. -> So there are rice cookers, and white rice.
Thanks for the treat.
Eh, Tetsujin V size is basically like an old american stove~
I guess that novel setting is far more advanced than this~