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In, for my first time. Hit me with a flash.
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Jan 10, 2024 09:08
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 05:12 |
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Spud Infinity (1929 words) Sarah was in the most intense game of Texas Holdem she had ever played on Ansible Beacon Seven. Jerry, chief engineer, had almost pulled off a heroic comeback after his two assistants had been eliminated, but he had finally overreached. He tried to bluff with a Two of Diamonds and a Seven of Spades, but Sarah had managed to figure out his tell after months of losing to him; he’d breathe slower for just a fraction of a second as he considered his choices when getting a crappy hand, and she had forced him to go all in with it against her flush. She was grinning from ear to ear, but the adrenaline kept her from feeling too comfortable. There was but one potato left on the beacon, and it had to be hers to cook with. It would be weeks until they were restocked with supplies, and she barely had anything to do here in the meantime. Jerry groaned in utter resignation as he threw his cards into the center of their mess hall’s round table, where they gently floated to rest on their “chips”. SocSpace, their employer and governing body of Earth and its colonies, disapproved of gambling, so they had to make do with cardboard squares of varying colors clipped from empty packaging that would have otherwise been chucked into the recycler. At least Lin, Jerry’s favorite protégé, had managed to smuggle a deck past customs. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” was the usual operating principle here, but because nobody really needed the potato but half of the crew wanted it (and were bored anyways), it seemed like the most sensible solution. Jerry looked at Sarah, his viking chieftain’s beard sagging with the weight of his defeat, and cursed, “Dammit, doc, thought I had you!” She responded, still smiling, “Couldn’t let you make that potato salad again.” Nariman, comms officer, card sharp, and culinary lord of the beacon, sighed. His eyes, wide like an eagle on the hunt, narrowed just a fraction as he interrupted their conversation. “You speak about that salad as though it weren’t an affront to humanity-” Jerry rose up quickly from his chair as he said, “Hey now, that was a family recipe-” “-Apparently his family loves horseradish so much he practically grated an entire root into it. I could hardly smell anything else for three days.” Sarah protested. “Ah, come on, it wasn’t that bad, Nariman.” It was, but Nariman was so ridiculously picky sometimes. Jerry threw up his hands and said, “Alright, alright, I can see you won’t forgive me for afflicting you with good country cooking. May God have mercy on my soul.” He rolled his eyes and made a cross over his broad torso, tracing his fingers on the standard issue blue jumpsuit everyone wore on the beacon. He sighed and said, “Anyway, last long haul ship that folded space near us said they got dinged by a few comets passing through the Oort Cloud. Their comms officer spent like five minutes nagging me about it, even though I got them to admit that there was no structural damage at all. Think I gotta dig into the sensor banks’ guts. Probably got an actual bug stuck onto something that’s throwing off the calculations. I’ll see you all later, and hopefully you in a better mood, Nariman.” Jerry took his bottle of beer and left the hall, courching so he could get through the auto-doors (made for mere mortals, not half-giants like him) without bashing his head on the top. Sarah called out, “Let me know if you need any help, Jerry!”, as she waved him goodbye. She turned back to eye her final adversary. Nariman had won the crew’s casual poker games time and time again, and now he had a reason to go all out. She never could find a single tell of his and it seemed like he had some sort of personal relationship with Lady Luck. She tried to act casual despite the daunting task before her, asking, “So, what were you going to do with the prize? You never did say.” He shuffled the deck, flicked two cards (the Jack of Diamonds and the Nine of Clubs) at her after she paid her ante, and answered, “Simple. I’m going to julienne it, blanch it, toss all of it into our cast-iron pan, pair it with some chopped onion and tomato, fry it all in ghee, season it with that leftover masala blend I made, and put a few fried eggs over the top when I’m done. You?” She could imagine how everything would look at the end. Nariman would always put so much red chili into his spices that whatever it touched turned as red as a Chinese New Year’s envelope, and the base notes (bright cinnamon and earthy cardamom) from yesterday’s meal he cooked hung in the mess hall like it were his banner. He was - as much as Sarah hated to admit it - a great chef despite his rotten attitude. When he cooked, he always had a fierce expression on his face, as though he were trying to conquer the food and make every ingredient submit to his design. Fate willing, she would hoist her own banner up today. She took stock of the playing field; she estimated that he had about one and a half times as many chips as she did. She knew he tended towards playing defensively, so she raised, putting two extra squares forward, and said, “Didn’t I already say?” “Sorry, wasn’t listening.” A typical Nariman move, trying to put her off her game. He matched her raise and leaned back in his chair. She took a deep breath and simply said, “A Hasselback potato with garlic butter and herbs.” She drifted away for a second as she imagined what it would look like. The garlic butter, fortified with enough thyme and basil to make it more fragrant than any perfume, would seep into each paper-thin ridge she cut into the spud’s back and would soak into the very heart of the tuber. It was a alchemist’s mixture that would transmute all that was brown and beige into the rich gold every chef coveted. Of course, the spud would also be encrusted in salt so that each bite would be a tantalizing prelude to the crescendo of perfectly fluffy and buttery pith hitting her tongue. She felt impish enough to sprinkle a few bits of caramellized synth-bacon between each fold, although she wouldn’t tell Nariman this until after she won. The man absolutely hated bacon. Reality immediately reasserted itself when he won the round with a two-pair. He wore a wicked little smirk on his face as he collected his winnings. “Well, look at that! I guess you’ll have to put that hasselback on hold for a while.” It was like everything in the universe was conspiring with him. She legitimately wondered if she ask Diego (the beacon’s physicist) if he could detect if there was some distortion unknown to science centered entirely around Nariman that altered probability. Sarah would occasionally pull out a stronger hand, but his unearthly luck was such that her pile of cardboard chips slowly began to disintegrate before her very eyes. Eventually, she was forced to go all in. He shrugged his shoulders as she reluctantly pushed her chips forward and said, “Can you save me some time and surrender already? I got my shift in like an hour.” She shook her head. “Nope. Potato is gonna be mine.” She dealt out the cards this time. Twin aces for her. He scoffed. “Why are you even so fixated on that thing, anyway?” She cast three cards towards the center: a Five of Diamonds, a Jack of Spades, and a Queen of Hearts. She replied, “Luka broke his arm climbing to the upper deck, what, three months ago? I haven’t had anything major to do since then. I give out a little bit of aspirin for headaches, a little bit of calcium carbonate for stomach aches, and that’s it. Might as well spend my year on here getting good at something I’ll be doing all the time on my year off after I rotate out and go back home to Jamaica.” Nariman leaned forward. She heard him suck air through his teeth before he spoke, “Hey, at least you don’t have to deal with people whining at you all day. This beacon is responsible for calculating thousands of successful jumps, its gone fourteen years without major incident, but do any of these space jockeys care? No, its just endless whinging. ‘Oh, my cargo shifted too much, a comet bounced off my hull, we had too much turbulence coming in, it took too long’. I wish I could sit around and browse the AnsibleNet all day like you.” Sarah realized suddenly that this was it. He had just shown her his Achilles heel and he didn’t even know it. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Ah, right, so that’s why you’re so fixated on the potato. You got so much to do that you think you’ll never catch up to me once I get good, right? Soon everybody will be asking for me to cook at our get togethers.” He managed to return to his usual aloof expression, but there was tension in his voice when he replied. “Please, no one’s better than me. My dad was one of the best chefs in London and trust me when I say that I never disappointed my father.” “Then prove it. Wager everything right now. If you win, I’ll only make instant ramen for the next month.” He pushed all his chips forward without hesitation. “Fine. Let’s go. It’ll make my day every time I see you sucking down that imitation kimchi-flavored crap.” She drew the Jack of Hearts for the turn. Nariman didn’t look the least bit fazed. All hung on the balance of what she drew for the river. The potato! She had to have the last potato! She had memorized the recipe she found from front to back, and it might all be for naught! How could she possibly go on eating the worst noodles made by mankind knowing how close she got to perfection? Her hand shook as she drew the last card from the deck. There would be no justice, no goodness, no meaning in the universe if Lady Luck let her lose today. With one last minute prayer, she flipped the card over. The Ace of Diamonds! She squealed in joy and slammed the rest of her three-of-a-kind onto the table. He looked shocked as he sheepishly revealed a mere two-pair. He hung his head and muttered, “Good game.” She stood up, rushed towards him, and clapped him on the back before he could defend himself. “Good game! But hey, I can maybe sub in for a few shifts of comms if you teach me how you made that coffee-rubbed steak you made a week ago?” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and said, “Yeah, sure, whatever. God, you’re probably going to put bacon or some poo poo on that potato.” She didn’t say it straight out, but her laughter was as sharp as a guillotine blade as the dethroned king of Texas Holdem slunk out of the mess hall. The greatest potato ever made on Ansible Beacon Seven came out of the oven two hours later, triumphantly golden and adorned with flecks of emerald herbs and with rubies of sweet maple bacon.
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Jan 14, 2024 21:05
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