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With her tray piled high with food (and her tablet warning her about the caloric content being in far excess of what she should eat in a day), Apollonia finally made her way over to sit down at a nearby table.
There had been so many choices!
Each stall had information on the food, noting where on Earth it came from, what cultures ate it, when it had been invented.
She hadn’t imagined that people in different parts of Earth still ate different foods. Wouldn’t all these centuries of limitless food, cheap travel, and no privation have led to everyone being pretty much the same in tastes?
She didn’t know what the truth was, but at least she could try their foods.
Looking over her prizes, she looked at her tablet for the names of them all; she had an orange spongy thing on a stick called a corn dog, apparently it had some kind of meat inside. Fried potato sticks covered in brown gravy and white chunks called poutine, fried balls of chickpeas called falafel, a fish-shaped cake with sweet bean paste inside called taiyaki, a triangular slice of thin bread with cheese and tomato sauce on top (pizza), and pieces of fried plantain called kelewele.
And cabbage pudding.
The latter was apparently a newer invention, a creamy sweet dessert flavored with cabbage. She had no idea what cabbage tasted like, but the color of it reminded her of the sweetened algae paste she’d once viewed as a treat. It gave her a power trip to be able to just buy it like it was nothing.
She’d had to stop herself from continuing on, because she’d hit only about half the stalls, and the only one she had resisted had been ‘cotton candy’, which looked interesting but was apparently just pure sugar.
She could not possibly eat all of this, but she was at least going to taste it all.
Taking the corn dog, she bit off the end, surprised pleasantly to find that there was a sausage of some kind inside.
She decided to try the more savory items first – the poutine, then falafel, pizza, and fried plantains, which she was surprised to find were spicy.
“Dark!” she spat, taking a drink. She’d heard of food that burned in your mouth, but she’d never had any.
“What troubles you?” she heard.
Her skin crawled. The voice was toneless, lifeless, and the presence was suddenly there.
How Kell had snuck up on her she didn’t know, but she turned in her seat to look at the being, her face pulled in taut lines.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Ambassador,” she said shortly. “Don’t you have your own flight to catch?”
“In a sense,” Kell replied. “It will not leave without me.”
“So why not keep them waiting if you want?” she asked sarcastically.
Kell’s eyes had been on her food, but he glanced to her now, as if to communicate that yes, he knew she was being sarcastic.
“They will possess themselves with patience,” he replied, and moved to sit.
She almost snapped out that she hadn’t asked him to sit, but bit her tongue. The damn thing was an Ambassador.
Even if she also felt he was a murderer.
It wasn’t just that it had killed Michal Denso, when she still thought there had been at least the possibility of a peaceful outcome, and not even that she had a very strong feeling that what he had done could have harmed her and Verena . . .
But he had killed something beyond them, a lifeform that she could not truly understand . . . something that had not even had a chance to live.
Was it accurate to call it infanticide if what you killed had been closer to a god than a person?
She heard footsteps behind them, and glanced back to see Brooks approaching.
“Ambassador,” he said politely. “I did not expect to see you here.”
“I had a moment,” Kell replied, once more looking to the food.
Apollonia did not offer him any. She picked up several fries in the poutine and ate them.
“I didn’t know you were so hungry, Ms. Nor,” Brooks said lightheartedly.
“Well, Dr. Y does want me to put on some weight,” she said after she swallowed. “But really, I just wanted to try some things from Earth. Please tell me these are real Earth foods.”
“Yes, they are,” he replied. “I know most of them.”
He picked up one of the fish-shaped treats. “We would eat taiyaki every sundown, for luck,” he said, tearing it in half and taking a bite.
It was sweeter than he remembered, probably made so on behalf of tourists. But it wasn’t bad.
“Every night?” she asked. “Just some kind of universal desert?”
“I grew up in Antarctica,” he clarified. “Sunset comes once a year – we made a festival of it. I don’t know how taiyaki became so popular, but they became very symbolic of it for us.”
He ate another bite, and gestured to Kell. “Ambassador, if you’d like some, please help yourself.”
Apollonia stiffened, and Brooks glanced to her and spoke again. “We can’t eat all this ourselves.”
Kell said nothing, but reached over and picked up a falafel, putting it in his mouth. He swallowed it immediately.
“How do you like it?” Brooks asked.
“It is food,” Kell simply said.
He rose. “I am going. Captain. Apollonia Nor.” Nodding to each of them, he turned and walked away.
“Good riddance,” Apollonia muttered.
Brooks caught that, but said nothing.
“We’ll have a shuttle here within the hour,” he told her. “Let’s finish this up and then head over to our terminal.”
Other Terrestrial 