by Robin Sloan
It was a decidedly different kind of work.
At General Dexterity, I was contributing to an effort to make repetitive labor obsolete. After a trainer in the Task Acquisition Center taught an arm how to do something, all the arms did it perfectly, forever.
In other words, you solved a problem once, and then you moved on to more interesting things.
Baking, by contrast, was solving the same problem over and over again, because every time, the solution was consumed. I mean, really: chewed and digested.
Thus, the problem was ongoing.
Thus, the problem was perhaps the point.
On Tuesday morning, I baked eight more loaves.
Every day after work, rather than migrate to the bar down the street with Arjun, I went straight home. I timed the bus perfectly, ran from the stop on Fulton Street to my front door, barreled into my apartment—because I had so much to do. I had to mix fresh dough, let it sit, work it again, shape it into loaves. All before bedtime, and bedtime was early, with a bar of sunlight still crossing the foot of my futon. It felt strange but good.
Wednesday: eight more loaves.
My hours at my desk became a blur. The moment I left the office, my brain shifted gears; the interlocking complexities of ArmOS were gone, evaporated, and all that existed was the labor ahead.
Thursday: eight more loaves.
Chef Kate made grilled cheese sandwiches using my sourdough and I saw them consumed in the cafeteria. I saw roboticists’ faces rapt with pleasure. I saw Andrei, the CEO, carrying one on his tray.
I took loose slices of sourdough, buttered luxuriously in the Chef Kate style, over to the Slurry table. Peter sharply declined, of course, but Arjun and Garrett both snatched them up greedily. “This is so good,” Garrett said. “Can I order it online?”
Friday: eight more loaves.
Some mornings, the repetition felt Zen-like; others, Sisyphean. But in either case, it felt good to use my arms, not my fingertips. My nose, not my eyes.
On Friday afternoon, Chef Kate told me the sourdough had been “pretty freakin’ good, dude”—I squealed—and asked me to keep it coming.
AS I MENTIONED BEFORE, nearly every large city in Europe has a community of Mazg, but they can be hard to detect. The Mazg like to live in alleys and courtyards, or up above the street. One of my uncles calls us “the second-story people,” which has a nice sound to it, I guess.
Here’s the thing.
I think many of my relatives like being obscure because it means they can’t be ambitious either. It lets them off the hook.
I think more people should know about the Mazg—particularly our cuisine. I think we should have restaurants with signs and front doors.
I think a lot of things.
A CATALOG OF PHENOMENA
THE RHYTHM WENT LIKE THIS: In the evening, when I got home from General Dexterity, I would play Chaiman’s CD and feed the Clement Street starter. I would wait for it to bubble and grow and suffuse the apartment with its banana scent. Then I would section off half of the mass, mix it into my dough, and form the loaves, which I would set beside the open kitchen window to rise slowly overnight in the naturally occurring refrigerator that was the Richmond District.
I went to sleep, but that wasn’t the end of the day for the starter. Many nights—not all, but many—it woke me with its grumblings and exhalations.
A catalog of phenomena:
• Tiny winking bubbles produced not randomly but in a perfect grid across the starter’s surface, like turbines on a power plant floor
• A dusting of pinprick lights, luminous powdered sugar
• Stronger lights emanating from deeper within the starter’s bulk, blurred like the sodium glow of a city viewed from a window seat on an airplane landing in low clouds
• A fine mazelike patterning on the starter’s surface, retracting into smoothness upon my approach
• Songs, various: all in the key of Chaiman’s CD
• Scents, various: with banana as the backbone, always, but adding other fruity currents as well as, on one memorable night, the smell of smoke so potent I thought for a moment the Jay Steve had lit the backyard on fire
Always that glossiness; always the moment when it wasn’t slime but something firmer, more self-possessed.
Always I saw these things in darkness, usually past midnight, in various states of wakefulness. Some of the encounters felt dreamlike, and in fact I suspected at least one really was a dream; others were as sharp and vivid as that first song.
When I saw the pinprick lights, I tried to snap a photo with my phone, but in the morning my camera roll was just a line of swampy rectangles, the outline of the crock barely darker than the countertop, the lights I had seen with my eyes not sufficiently bright to register pixels on the camera’s sensor.
Another night, with the city-like extrusions, I tried again, this time using my phone’s flash, and it bounced back brightly from the shiny ceramic crock, blinding me. A moment passed, my eyes swam pink, and then the starter, summoning some hidden energy, flashed back. It was the faintest flicker of green, but it registered like a signal flare across a vast abyss. A message from Alpha Centauri. The resulting photo was awful and alien, like the time I tried to take a picture of the inside of my mouth to check on a blister that was forming. (Sorry, but I did.)
When the starter sang, I tried to record it, but these recordings, like the pictures, were all inscrutable in the morning. Either my phone’s mic didn’t pick up anything, or my own ragged breathing drowned it out, or there was a note faintly audible, but so what? Who was I going to play it for? On what website was I going to post it? Global Gluten? New thread: Does anyone else’s starter sing? Here’s a clip.
I stopped getting up. The rattle of the crock’s lid would rouse me, and I would listen for a minute, then roll over and go back to sleep.
* * *
AT THE CLOSE OF THE THIRD WEEK, Chef Kate summoned me to her kitchen.
“So, I love this bread, but these kids can’t tell the difference, and it’s bumming me out.” She waved her hand dismissively at the cafeteria.
I felt a twinge of shame. Was this Chef Kate’s life? Preparing great food for a terminally unappreciative clientele? No one ever ate the creative salads. Meanwhile, the tater tots were depleted in minutes.
“It’s really special,” Kate said. “You know that, right?”
I had suspected it, but hearing her say it plucked a string inside me.
“I think you should try to get a spot at a farmers market. The faces in the crust, they’re weird. People like that shit. Do you know how the markets work? No, of course you don’t. There’s an audition every month. Fancy judges. Mostly insufferable, but Lily Belasco is okay. If they like what you bring, they assign you to a market. Lake Merritt, if you’re lucky. Colma, if you’re not. I’m pretty sure you’ll get a spot if you try.”
I told her I would think about it, and she was quiet a moment.
“I’m sure you like your work here,” Kate said. “I have no idea what you do. No, please don’t try to explain it. But I feel like I have to tell you, for what it’s worth … feeding people is really freakin’ great. There’s nothing better.”
Even feeding people as ungrateful as the Dextrous?
She began to reply, but something caught her eye, and instead she shouted to one of her sous chefs: “Mario! We need a bacon refresh!” She turned back to me. “Trust me, if I could pay for my kid’s school with farmers market dollars, I’d be there right alongside you.”
THE LOIS CLUB (CONTINUED)
I MESSAGED HILLTOP LOIS and told her I would bring bread to the next meeting of the Lois Club.
I’m so glad you’re coming back!! she replied. We were afraid we might have scared you off. Flashy Lois can be a bit much …
It was nice to know we each had our own system for Lois disambiguation. Who was I to them? Young Lois, I supposed. Better than Boring Lois, or Lois Whose Stomach Hurt.
In fact, my stomach had been feeling pretty good lately.
So it came to pass that the Loises of the San Francisco Bay Area built open-faced sandwiches, piling prosciutto and fig over soft slathers of goat cheese all atop slices of my bread. They ate all of it, every crumb, and they oohed their appreciation.
“I’ve been baking bread for twenty years,” Professor Lois said, “and it never turned out this good.”
“My starter is unique,” I said.
She snorted. “I get mine in the mail from King Arthur—the flour company. Every three months it dies and I order a new one.”
The Loises shared their updates. Compaq Lois was organizing a fund-raiser for a turkey vulture research center; Professor Lois had just returned from an academic conference in Montreal; Impeccable Lois would soon acquire a vintage Moog synthesizer for a very good price; and Old Lois was still alive.
I told the Loises about my baking adventures—they interrupted to say, “It’s really great,” and “Truly, Lois, dear, you have a gift”—and also about Chef Kate’s challenge.
“I love the farmers markets,” Professor Lois cooed. “You should do it.” The other Loises nodded in agreement.
Compaq Lois spoke. Her voice was not kind or coddling, but stern. “Do you like your job?”
My hesitation answered for me.
“I know I have strong opinions about everything—I can’t help it, I do—but this one’s the strongest. I waited too long to get out of that office. Much too long. I weep for those years.”
The seriousness of her statement quieted the room.
“If this is fun for you—and I think it is fun for you? Damn, you’re good at it. You should try out for those markets. See what happens.”
The other Loises murmured their assent. Everyone wore inward looks, perhaps contemplating the things they wished they’d done sooner.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the advice.”
The wine was gone, so Hilltop Lois, wearing a mischievous look, uncorked a bottle of port. I got the sense this did not happen at every meeting of the Lois Club, but the ones at which it did: those were the good ones.
“I envy you, Lois the Younger,” sighed Compaq Lois.
“No, no, she’s Computer Lois,” said Hilltop Lois.
“We all have names? Who am I?” Old Lois interjected.
There was a pause. “You’re Most Respected Elder Lois,” said Impeccable Lois, who was today wearing a tweed suit tailored close to her body with pleats of intimidating sharpness.
Old Lois sniffed. “I don’t like it. Anyway, I think she has to be Lois the Baker now.”
“The bread was awfully good,” Compaq Lois agreed. She flipped the last remaining sliver of fig into her mouth and looked at me pointedly. “See what happens,” she said.
The setting sun lit the house in orange and pink and it made all the Loises look great. Emerging from the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of myself in a hallway mirror. My hair was longer than it had been in years, and it glowed in the sunset, the ends alight like burning filament. Lois the Baker looked great, too.
Cars appeared. One was from the expedient internet car service and Compaq Lois waved as she stepped in, her bracelets glittering. The other cars were piloted by various Lois associates. Professor Lois’s husband read The Atlantic while he waited. Old Lois’s daughter helped her into the passenger seat of a Toyota, laughing at some quiet joke. Impeccable Lois’s girlfriend drove an old Ford pickup truck.
On top of the city with my Loises all around me, I felt a tremor of something. Was it possible?
I had become interesting.
I KEEP WRITING “the Mazg” like it’s such a definite thing. In fact, Leopold (my father) is Dutch. Shehrieh’s mother was Italian. Truthfully, Chaiman and I could, if we wanted, decide not to be Mazg. I have a cousin who did that. She makes dresses in Barcelona now. But Chaiman and I have … attachments. For me, it’s the food, and for Chaiman, it’s the music, and for both of us, it’s Shehrieh, who is Mazg through and through, whatever that even means. We are both always trying to impress her and not disappoint her, which can be a tricky combination.
THE GREATEST OF ALL THE MARKETS
I’D NEVER SEEN SO MANY PICKLES in my life.
We were lined up, a hundred of us, all with our samples like offerings for a queen or a newborn prophet. Boxes and baskets and bottles and jars—so many jars: some jars plain, others with clever labels already designed and printed in anticipation of a bright future at one of the Bay Area’s many markets.
Not all of those labels would be needed.
The woman in front of me was clutching a jar of Japanese pickled plums between her breasts, staring into space, moving her lips, subvocalizing. Rehearsing.
Behind me was another woman who seemed somewhat more serene. She’d brought a tall bottle of olive oil labeled with a strip of masking tape that read PICHOLINE. In a cardboard carrier, she had eight tiny blue tasting glasses shaped like tulips.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she said, her eyes roaming the space.
The Ferry Building was more than amazing; it was mythic.
This grand structure on the city’s edge, perched on pylons, built a hundred years ago and in the middle of that century, not merely abandoned but actually walled off by a dark freeway that curled around the Embarcadero like a rampart. Then, an earthquake came and it was like something out of a fairy tale: the wall tumbles, the spell fades, and the townspeople realize what a gift they’ve possessed all along.
The Ferry Building was rebuilt, reopened. It was better than ever, and best of all on Saturdays, when it unfurled itself into a farmers market that filled up the plazas, reached out onto the piers. Trucks converged from a hundred miles in every direction carrying fruits, nuts, vegetables, flowers, fresh meat; the whole bounty of California. The sun glittered on the bay and the big bridge to Oakland bracketed the scene like a picture frame.
This was the greatest of all the markets, and basically no one in this line had a chance of getting a spot here. I’d learned this online, searching for information about the tryout. You started on the periphery and made your way to the bright bustling core.
It was Wednesday, so there was no market, but even during the week, the Ferry Building was a prodigious hub of gastronomical commerce. We petitioners were lined up on a catwalk above the building’s main concourse, where shops sold cheese and chocolate, beef and beans, knives and cookbooks and garden gloves. Midday sunshine streamed in through skylights that ran the length of the building. Tourists and locals alike gathered around Greenlight Coffee, watching the baristas take their time.
In San Francisco, there is a particular trajectory available to food-related enterprises. Your little venture—maybe it’s called Greenlight Coffee!—begins with a ramshackle cart at the outermost corner of a far-flung farmers market. Colma: market of the dead. In a year or two, having established your dedication, you are invited to the Ferry Building. This is your audition. The right person sees you—and the right person is assuredly here, canvassing the stalls—and you are springboarded, granted a small storefront in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. If the storefront is successful—if it assists with the greater aims of gentrification, is written up in national food and/or lifestyle publications, including, ideally, The New York Times (the local paper can’t help you here)—then you will be permitted to open a larger, more boldly designed flagship along one of the city’s Certified Cool Thoroughfares. In a few years, you will have expanded into a few additional locations, including a permanent spot in the Ferry Building—a gleaming café bathed in that midday light. You will have become a celebrated local mini-chain. Finally, you will sell your company to Starbucks for nineteen million dollars. And remember: You began with the cart at the outermost corner. You began here, in this line.
That’s why I was petitioner number forty-three, with more people behind me than in front. This tryout occurred once a month. We would have had bet
ter odds applying to Stanford as adult learners.
When I reached the front of the line, a bright-eyed Ferry Building functionary explained what I was about to experience. The deal, she said, was this: Three minutes with the panel. Offer a taste; just a taste. Explain what makes you different. Be eloquent but concise but confident but deferential. Much of this is beyond your control; if you make pickles but the markets are overflowing with them, it won’t matter how great your pickles are.
The woman with the Japanese pickled plums was inside now.
The loaf I had baked that morning had cooled completely, and suddenly I wished I’d carried it in some kind of insulating sleeve. But then, I supposed, it might have turned soggy. How do you store and transport bread? I didn’t know anything. That was the absurdity of this: I was standing in line with people who were masters of their craft. People who pickled plums, pressed olives, raised chickens, kept bees. I was just lucky: gifted with good raw materials and, perhaps, charitably, a sense for how to use them.
The Clement Street starter was waiting back at my desk.
“Smells good,” the functionary said, catching a whiff of the bread. I wished suddenly that I’d brought the starter itself. I wished I’d trained it to sing on command. I could have put it in front of the panel and said, Have you ever seen anything like this?
The functionary explained that the panel would taste my sourdough and hear my plea, then announce its market placements later in the afternoon. Placement was conditional on my willingness to sign certain agreements and also on certain logistical double checks that she, the functionary, would make. If I wasn’t placed anywhere—well, most of the people in this line had been turned down many times already. You can always try again, the functionary said. You were allowed to return once a season. People applied and reapplied, groveled and waited, for years. The Greenlight Coffee people had done that. Nineteen million dollars.
The door opened. The pickler of plums emerged, her face a tangle of vexations. I tried to catch her eye, to give her an encouraging look, but she was all wrapped up in herself, carrying her jar toward the stairs that would lead her down to the main concourse, where perhaps she would acquire a cone of cardamom ice cream to assuage her anxiety.