Long John

Hi... Fish.

Eek(trembling), Pardon me. Hi. I’m Long John. Fish for most part.

Though my body might protest from time to time. It doesn’t allow words to come out even when my mouth is always open.

Hi, Long John. Are you sent here by Clyde?

Oh. You think so? It’s these uniform by my body’s former owner. I’m actually a Kaiseki chef. What you earthling called Japanese cuisine. Tempura, mostly.

You're a fish in a man's body who cooks other fish.

(quietly) It's not lost on me. The irony. You know these Starport has a small chance of scrambling its passengers’ bodies. I’m a victim of the small odds.

Eek (not again) I can cook other things too if you bring the ingredient to me.

I'll see what I can do.

I've got some worms I can give you for free. Use them as bait.

Back home — my real home, the ocean — I never had to think about food.

I opened my mouth and the current brought it. Everything I needed just… arrived.

At least you can cook them now.

You are right. Cooked food is better. Especially with high temperature accelerating intense oxidation process.

TEM-PU-RA! My body craves it. Its phantom taste buds have been bugging me.

Anything you’d like me to fry? I hear there’s a creature beyond the forest—six eyes. The locals can’t agree whether it tastes wonderful or appalling.

And there’s a man—or man-shaped being—called Saru hiding in a hot spring somewhere beneath our feet. He may have a stash of good curry.

I’ve always wanted fried cutlet curry on the menu… though perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. This menu ought to be for my restaurant.

Sounds good. What do you know about this Saru with the delicious curry?

He’s a hermit. Half his body is always soaking in a hot spring. He knows more about caves and dungeons than anyone on the planet—perhaps except Marvin.

And rumor says his curry is the finest food this side of the Last Stop. I may be able to get the spices, but the recipe… that’s the real prize.

Hold on… I’ve uploaded the design of my restaurant to the mainframe. Once constructed, you are welcome to eat in it.

You came back. You actually came back. I wasn't sure...

I brought you the curry. Now you can finally add the Katsu Curry dish.

I've been thinking. My future restaurant will put {world} on the map. The gourmet-map kind.

You're thinking bigger than this room.

There are systems, whole systems, where people travel three standard weeks just to eat one specific thing in one specific place.

{world} has ingredients no one has ever tasted. I command cooking techniques no one has ever used on them.

I just need customers.

I'm thinking subscription. If I can get everyone eat here on a regular delivery, build the relationships, share the surplus…

You made all this a reality. You're {world}'s [social butterfly].

I think that's you, actually.

Oh.

Huh, ah, h.

It's a good fryer.

It makes anything better. That is its only setting. "Better."

I want to sell you this. Not give, sell.

I need capital to do business with Rohen. The merchant. He has components I need for the kitchen expansion, and Rohen does not barter on goodwill.

Thank you for the support. I hope you can take the Deep Fryer recipe, and this magazine, my favorite.

That's a nice bottle.

It's for Marvin.

You're sending sake to Marvin.

And fish. Fried. The way I think he would appreciate: presented with dignity.

You know Marvin doesn't… require food?

That's not the point.

His memory — do you know how his memory works? He told me, once, when I visited his realm. He said it moves like ocean currents. Not linear.

Deep channels carrying old information, surface currents carrying the new, and sometimes something rises from the bottom that hasn't been seen in years — and it arrives [whole]. Everything intact. Quite mad.

That is the most extraordinary mind I have ever encountered.

He also thinks everyone is his slave.

He feel responsible for everybody. The form of the thing matters to him. (simply) I respect that.

You're taking our "Lord M" pretty literally.

He presided over something magnificent, and it was taken from him, and he stayed. He didn't leave. He anchored himself to what remained and he [maintained it].

If he wants to be called Lord M, I will call him Lord M. It costs nothing. And it means everything to him.

Will you take it? I would go myself, but — (he glances at the kitchen, the counter, the new menu) — I have a restaurant now. People might come.

Tell him it's from Long John. He'll pretend not to know who that is. He knows.

Good timing. I've been thinking about [Sgt. Chili].

The musician?

The activist. The campaign against [Clyde]. (He folds the cloth, sets it aside.)

I've been here [long enough] now to understand what's at stake.

Whatever Clyde did to this planet — the Black Seams, the infected machines, and all the rest of it.

Someone has to push back. Sgt. Chili is pushing back.

And he thinks that a StoneFeatherBoss guards one of the key [secrets] that would destroy Clyde.

I - I can't fight. (He looks at his hands — one human, one very much adapted from something that used to live in an ocean.)

But I can cook. I can [cook for him].

I'm donating the [lunch subscription]. Full service. Whoever defeats the [StoneFeatherBoss]— I assume you know what that is—

I do.

Whoever defeats [Stonefeather] gets this subscription. Once a day. Bring the ingredients over and I'll process them for free, so you can enjoy the best food on {world} that day.

That's what I can do. That's my contribution.

I just hope Sgt. Chili finds a [break] in the Stonefeather.

Put my name down as a contender, for your lunch services.

I thought you might.

And if I win the subscription—

Then you earn it. Or you give it to someone who needs it more.

Come back [hungry]. I'll have something waiting.

I'd never have had you down for someone… who's into causes.

I am not. But I have a feeling… it feels like the [right thing] to do.

Eek — (catching himself) — I mean. Welcome.

Your subscription lunch is ready. Today: garlic, tempura-battered, with a dipping sauce I have been refining since Wednesday.

And what am I saying, when you just defeated the most unseemly creature on this planet. You’ve earned my respect.

Thanks, Long John. I need to talk to you about something.

[Eat first]. Then talk. The mouth cannot do both at once and I will not have you waste good tempura on syllables.

This is incredible.

The batter is sixty five seconds in the oil at one hundred and ninety-six degrees, and the garlic still believes it is alive.

That is the secret. You must deceive the vegetable.

I found something. A projection — a recording, from one of the old [Watchers]. A Stonefeather.

(studying the reel-one film) [There]. You see that?

The Machine stopped mapping the mineral. It stopped counting. It started building anchors instead — [memory jars], the Stonefeather calls them.

What does that mean?

It means the Machine [learned]. Clyde sent machines to survey, to measure, to extract. Standard corporate doctrine.

You inventory a planet the way you inventory a [warehouse]: count everything, price everything, ship everything that turns a profit.

But the planet would [not hold still]. The [Great Worms] — they shifted timelines.

It’s unfathomable.

That’s the only explanation. Every time the machines finished a map, reality had already [moved]. The map was useless before the ink was [dry].

So the machines stopped.

[Worse]... it adapted. That's why the {world} turned out the way it is today. I don't think even Clyde realized it.

You think the machines caused the [Rift]?

I think they caused [everything]. They must’ve been everywhere on the planet.

And if they adapted using the Worms’ [timeline] technology, building anchors, storing every death, every rebirth, every face the walkers wore and threw away...

In that way, the worms could not shake them off. The machines had become a [parasite] that held the one thing the Worms could not afford to lose — their history.

And who can tell how long the machines stuck with the timeline-shifting worms?

And then, the [Rift] happened.

And then the [Rift] happened. And the Great Worms are [no more]. (A beat. He picks up the tempura again. Puts it back down again.)

[No. More]. Here is what troubles me.

The Stonefeather we found recorded the before. The arrival. The parasitism of machines. The slow entrapment. But the story stops at the Rift.

However long that took, it does not tell us what happened after. Who survived.

What the machines became once the Worms were gone. Where the [anchors] are now — the [memory jars], the who knows how many years of stored timelines.

Clyde’s robots were recording. That was their function. Survey. Observe. Transmit.

Beneath us, in the [cave systems], in the deep places where the Rift energy still pulses, there are machines that saw what happened. Machines that recorded the Rift itself.

You think the caves hold the answers.

I think the caves hold the [rest of the films].

The Stonefeather gave us the first reel. Somewhere down there, in the dark, in the places Marvin cannot go and Saru will not leave his hot spring to find...

There are [Watchers] with the second. And the third. And however many reels it takes...

Enough to explain how a planet full of sixth dimensional gods was reduced to — (he gestures at the window, at the ruins) — this.

…Eek. (He blinks, embarrassed — the nervous tic returning.) Apologies. I get carried away.

My mouth — it opens and words come out whether I intend them to or not.

I don’t mind you talking. You made a lot of sense.

The [caves]. (He nods, firmly.) You should seek [Saru’s] guidance.

There are places down there where its topology [defies] spatial logic. You should be vigilant for whatever lurks inside the [impossible spaces].