“I’m going to wipe them out,” Erik growled. “You think I don’t take this seriously?”
“I think you’re letting Alina program you to be a good little ghost,” Lanara replied. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if we can’t keep secrets if it means those other guys get an advantage. We have to stop them. We have to burn them to ashes, and that means risking other people’s lives: mine, Jia’s, Raphael’s, and everybody else’s who is part of this. Nobody’s going to be hired for your team and think it’s a safe job, so screw not hiring people because they might get killed.”
Erik ran his hand through his hair. “I’ll talk to Alina about getting people, but whatever you can do quickly might help.”
“Good.” Lanara nodded slowly, the fire dimming in her eyes. “Got any suggestions about what you’d want that doesn’t take a reactor overhaul?”
“Missiles and torpedoes don’t require as much power,” Erik noted. “Deployable launchers that we can hide. We can punch above our weight without needing as much reactor power.”
Lanara’s face brightened. “That’s…actually a good idea. I’ll concentrate on setting some up, but there’s only so much I can do while we’re on standby.”
“I’ll talk to Alina.” Erik turned back toward his flitter. “We’ll win the war, Lanara. We already are.”
“I know we’ll win.”
He looked over his shoulder as he walked. “Why is that?”
Lanara looked at the Argo’s cockpit, pain in her eyes. “Because we have to.”
Chapter Nine
Luxury means different things to different people.
For Jia’s mother, luxury was easy to define. It involved using lots of money to experience things that would otherwise be impossible, such as Erik’s beloved real crab meat puffs.
Jia’s education, life experiences, childhood lessons, and countless other advantages were all the products of money. Her mother cared for her, but she’d shown that love with cash, and the same attitude continued as an adult.
For other people, luxury is less about money and more about experiences that only the allegedly sophisticated would appreciate. That alleged sophistication was supposed to be born of education and an open mind, but the line could be rather thin between self-earned ability and purchased sophistication.
An education birthed by access to money and experience.
That was the only explanation Jia could come up with as to why she was now wandering through a bizarre labyrinthine restaurant that looked like something the fungal Orlox carved in their mounds.
Parts of the wall pulsed. Steam hissed from vents. The material changed as they went along, various parts looking like stone, metal, or wood.
Jia hadn’t checked anything other than the address of the restaurant. She’d assumed it was expensive because Mei didn’t pick modest budget places, but she hadn’t expected the bizarre décor, despite the mention of it being avant-garde.
She followed the waitress through the twisting confines of the restaurant. The bright glowing colors of the waitress’s body-hugging outfit slowly shifted, the patterns drifting and standing out in the dim lighting.
The farther they traveled, the deeper Jia’s confusion grew. Her hand passed through a jagged formation on the side, which was nothing more than a hologram. She smiled. It was a clever blend of the real and the illusionary to toy with her senses. She was unsure if that was useful for a restaurant experience, but it was interesting.
Patterns appeared and disappeared from the walls, some raised, some engraved. Careful geometric patterns, chaotic fractals, and ghostly holographic portraits of the famous and the unknown. A spectral Zitark ran across the hallway, followed by a laughing little girl.
The waitress moved on, unfazed.
The background music changed every couple of steps, not blending. The genres jumped from classical to the heavy percussion of Lunar pop. Something horrible and atonal assaulted her. She suspected they were carefully tracking their position to send the sound to their ears only, or perhaps it didn’t change if there were multiple customers.
It wasn’t all that long ago that Jia would have been irritated to go to a place like this.
She liked dancing with her friends, but the loud and cramped club experience was a known factor. There was nothing challenging to her preconceptions, unlike the ceiling above her that shifted position with each step. She wanted to jump up and see if it was also a hologram or some sort of active nano-VR manipulation.
Jia had now spent so much time in training scenarios that she’d gotten used to fake reality, but that was different from what she was experiencing this evening. Whether it was the Argo or the tactical center, her normal VR and AR environments were designed to work with her normal expectations to trick her into thinking it was all real, not purposely push the edge of the absurd and unusual to highlight the unreality.
She kind of liked it, but that didn’t change her surprise at being there. Mei had picked the restaurant, only mentioning she had heard good things. The choice was odd because Mei lived her life as the embodiment of proper behavior. She was Ms. Anti-Avant-Garde, even more than Jia.
The restaurant choice indicated something profound had happened, but Jia might be reading too much into a simple meal. For all she knew, everyone at Mei’s company who wanted to get promoted had to be seen in the right kind of place.
They finally stepped into the main dining hall.
Challenging someone for going outside their comfort zone would be hypocritical, so Jia had agreed without question to Mei’s suggestion, but as she walked through the restaurant seeing people eat bright tentacles and bowls filled with shimmering liquid, she began to regret her choice and her initial amusement.
Laws and Purists would presumably keep the restaurant from serving anything too exotic, but it was hard to judge meals when Jia didn’t know what to expect.
She frowned as they continued walking. Another table was more regular, people eating what looked like noodle dishes. Other diners were enjoying an odd cut of meat that didn’t look like it came from any animal she recognized.
As far as Jia knew, the small number of colonies with indigenous life hadn’t gifted humanity with anything new and delicious. It turned out that lifeforms evolving light-years away under different conditions weren’t all that safe for humans to eat.
The waitress finally led Jia to Mei’s table. The elder Lin wasn’t garbed exotically. She was wearing a flattering dress that managed to leave much to the imagination. Her elaborate braids were no different than those of a lot of people in her social circle. Jia had never gotten into the hairstyle because it wasn’t practical for her job, either before or after the department.
The normalcy on display relaxed Jia. Her sister hadn’t returned from her business trip with a new exotic lifestyle, just a rather curious taste in restaurants.
Jia took her seat, unsure how she felt about the entire experience thus far. She was about to ask for a glass of wine when the waitress stepped away without saying anything.
“Uh…” Jia looked at Mei.
“The drinks will be brought to us in a minute,” Mei explained.
“But I didn’t order. Did you order for me?”
Jia tried to keep her irritation out of her voice. Mei knew her tastes well and might have anticipated her needs.
“No, I didn’t order for you,” Mei replied. “You don’t order drinks here.”
“Okay. That’s…interesting.” Jia stared at Mei, confused.
Her sister smiled softly. “Don’t worry. They’ll take care of you. Just sit back and relax. I know it’s different, but I’ve been meaning to bring you here since I tried it right before I went on my trip. I hadn’t mentioned it because I needed time to digest how I feel about it.”
“I trust you.” Jia smiled, trying to set both her sister and herself at ease. If there was one thing she’d learned about dealing with her family, it was the importance of starting any meal off without tension. It wa
s easy to go up that hill, far harder to climb down.
“Good.” Mei offered an uncharacteristic wink. “I am your older sister.”
“Welcome back, by the way,” Jia replied. “Nothing bad happened, but I missed you at the party.”
“I’m sure you did. I don’t like to miss Mother’s parties, but I have to take the opportunities that come. I know Mother will never be upset about me taking business trips.”
“No, she didn’t seem to mind.”
Jia decided against mentioning her suspicions about her mother’s desire for grandchildren. Not every conversation needed to be dominated by the whims of Lan Lin.
Mei gestured around the dining room. “Drink orders aside, what do you think so far?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest. I didn’t check this place out.” She glanced at a nearby table, which had an orange…something on a plate. “What kind of food is it?”
The low illumination made it hard to see, but Jia’s survey confirmed her earlier impression that the food was different at every table. That seemed a statistically unlikely scenario.
“It’s not a single kind of food.” Mei smiled. “It’s hard to explain. It’s all kinds.”
“All kinds of food?” Jia raised her brow. “That seems complicated.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Mei looked down as if searching for words. “It’s less that they’re making all kinds of food and more that the dining experience is customized for each set of guests.”
“That must make it hard to figure out what’s good.” Jia chuckled quietly. “How do they know people won’t hate it? Do they run a background check on everyone who wants to eat here?”
“Sort of.” Mei shrugged.
“Huh?” Jia had never eaten at such a confusing place. The battle in her mind about whether she liked or hated the restaurant continued to rage.
“When I made the reservations,” Mei explained, “they had me fill out a questionnaire. It took a good thirty minutes.”
“Thirty minutes of questions to make reservations? What do they do if you don’t fill out the questionnaire?”
“You don’t get to eat here.” Mei inclined her head toward the nearest table. “Not only that, they block you from being able to eat here for six months. There’s somebody at my company who begged me to take him, but I didn’t want to lose my right to come here.”
“It can’t be that busy if you’ve managed to eat here twice close together,” Jia suggested.
Mei shook her head. “I got lucky. Normally, people can’t get reservations sooner than a year apart. It’s somewhat random. They open a certain number of slots and make reservations at different times. I think it’s also somewhat determined by the questionnaires. They want a diverse group of guests to promote myriad experiences.”
“I don’t know if that’s genius or an overly elaborate way of generating buzz for the place. Meals based on questionnaires rather than direct orders. Huh. I guess it’s not that strange.”
“They base the whole dinner on that, including the drinks.” Mei nodded. “The way they explain it, you’re supposed to be living a meal instead of eating it.”
Jia stared at her sister. “Who are you, and what have you done with Mei Lin?”
Mei laughed. “Is it weird that I’d pick a place like this? Let alone twice?”
“It looks weird. The waitstaff is dressed in unusual outfits, and they barely talk. You don’t get to pick what you eat.” Jia nodded toward swirling blue and red dust in the air, along with the changing scenes over their table, including what appeared to be a black hole. “And there are things like that.” She reached over and patted her sister’s hand. “It’s interesting, I’ll give you that, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of place you would enjoy.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
“I don’t know.” Jia smiled. “I can forgive a lot if the food is good. But I’m asking about you. This just doesn’t scream Mei Lin.”
“That’s the point.”
Jia blinked. “I don’t understand. You wanted to go to a place you wouldn’t like?”
Mei opened her mouth to respond but closed it when the waitress returned with a tray containing two cocktail glasses, one filled with a layered black and white liquid and the other with a bright speckled golden liquid. She set the first in front of Mei and the second in front of Jia.
“Enjoy.” The waitress departed, her face somber.
A waitress across the table wore a bubbly smile and practically skipped away after delivering her drinks. Jia didn’t want to read too much into what that implied about her sister’s questionnaire.
Jia tore her gaze away from the waitress to focus on her suspicious drink. “Is this alcohol?”
“I don’t know.” Mei picked up her drink and swirled it. “You never know what anything is until you eat or drink it. The mystery is part of the experience.”
Jia supposed that was the same as ancient humanity. There were plenty of plants and animals in nature that were delicious and plenty that were deadly. Someone’d had to figure out everything through trial and error.
She’d often wondered about the early agricultural societies who identified crops and then bred them through the centuries.
Could early farmers have envisioned how teosinte would become corn? Did some cruel ruler throw prisoners at fugu until they found the delicious and non-toxic part? There was a dark amusement in thinking ancient criminals might have contributed to modern gourmet culture.
“Isn’t that what the questionnaire is about?” Jia asked. “Do you drink alcohol?’ and ‘Are you a vegetarian?’ That kind of thing.” She edged the glass closer to her mouth, both terrified and fascinated. “What’s the point of making you answer questions if it’s not about ensuring the meal will appeal to you?”
Mei shook her head. “It’s nothing so straightforward. I don’t remember them mentioning anything about food or drink.
“What do they ask, then?”
“It’s all strange questions like, ‘You are walking down the road when a qilin approaches you. The qilin asks you your favorite day of the week. What do you answer and why?’” Mei tilted her head, her brow furrowed in recall. “Another one was, ‘a Zitark is named in your parents’ will. Do you contest it? Why?’ The questions weren’t the same both times I took the questionnaire. They weren’t completely different. I’d say about half the questions are the same, but that Zitark question was in the first questionnaire and not the second.”
Jia stared at her sister, waiting for her to crack a smile and admit she was lying. No restaurant could function the way this place was described. When Mei didn’t change expression, Jia accepted she was telling the truth.
“That’s the weirdest thing I’ve heard in a while,” Jia replied. “Don’t people need to know what they’re getting, so they don’t eat something they object to?”
Mei looked unconcerned. “When you make reservations, they make it clear that they might or might not serve alcohol, and they might or might not include meat. They also say the meat might or might not be artificial. They promise it won’t be toxic other than the potential for alcohol and that you won’t get food poisoning, but that’s it.”
“In other words, if you come here, you are taking your chances?” Jia asked.
“Exactly,” Mei replied. “It’s not a place for people with specific limits for whatever reasons. I don’t see a problem with that since they go out of their way to warn you.”
“Fair enough.”
Jia peered down at her drink. The small bright specks continued to float. The disjunction between the dining experience and Mei’s normal taste continued to gnaw at her. Her sister was the kind of woman who lived by limits, not one who went to strange restaurants that gave you no indication of what they might serve. It didn’t make sense.
“Some new friends recommended this place,” Mei offered as if picking up on Jia’s thoughts. “They say it’s all the rage in avant-garde gourmand circles. There’s an
air of mystery to the whole thing as well. No one knows if they’re using a sophisticated psychological analysis AI or if it’s just a performance that we all choose to buy into it.” She leaned close and lowered her voice as if passing along a great secret. “There are even some rumors the food is produced through the use of recovered Navigator technology.”
Jia had her doubts, but given some of the things she’d witnessed in her time with Erik, she couldn’t say it was impossible. Everyone focused on the obvious with ancient alien technologies, including how they might be used as weapons or to improve transportation, but humanity had put almost as much effort into its food as its weapons. It only made sense that the Navigators might.
She couldn’t bring herself to accept that the Hunters had devoted technology to that. They probably just ate whatever victims they could whole. Such a cruel race probably had disgusting tastes.
“You hate this place?” Mei asked, sounding disappointed.
Jia shook her head. Her thoughts about the Hunters must have leaked onto her face.
She forced a smile. “I don’t know what to think, but I’m surprised you’re so enthusiastic about it. It doesn’t seem very…you.”
“I think in this case, not knowing is fine,” Mei replied. “They’re not going to do something illegal or anything that will get Purists breathing down their neck, so I can enjoy an unexpected experience without worrying about more than not liking the flavor. There are worse things in the galaxy.”
Jia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Of the two of them, Mei was more like their mother. She didn’t pick out a dress without calculating all the ways it might influence her interactions with others.
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