Fine MRE Spice

 

Albrecht went to a decent school, suburban public but one of the state's better ones. Its emblem was a grapevine leaf and its motto Finem Respice, which is wank for 'consider the end'. Fifteen years after graduation, this trivia is amongst memories that inform Albrecht's labour-intensive exhumation of his home-ec teacher's grave.

A peek above ground level before two more shovel loads of dirt are scattered to the left. The coffin is jimmied open. The corpse is not much skinnier in death.

Albrecht squats: 'Hey, Mrs T. I get it now. That cake icing I made in Year 9 was pretty sloppy. I forgive you.

But I get more. Finem Respice. Fine MRE Spice. Fine Meal, Ready-to-Eat, Spice.'

A hundred-odd pinpricks of golden light emerge in a 32cm diameter sphere, at Albrecht's eye level and above the corpse's heart. The pinpricks become darts lining towards the sphere's centre, converge on a  light unbearable to look at. Darkness, and a small glass jar dinks onto coffin lid.

Albrecht: 'Huh. Didn't think that would actually work.'

Albrecht grabs the jar and bails. This is not grave robbing but disturbance-of-corpse-for-profit. This is how Albrecht came into possession of 200 grams of Fine MRE Spice, a blend of spices and preservatives (made from mostly extinct plants and animals) developed for military catering by the acid influenced CIA of the 70's. Only a kilogram was made and they don't make it anymore.

'And it's fiiiiine. The best there is. The bench mark, or it would be, if American spooks hadn't deliberately lost it in their own bureaucracy to prevent its passage up rolled bill into senator's nostril. That's why military food is unambitious, nowadays.' Carl wistfully drinks gose. 'Your target market are foodies, preppers and alchemists. You have any of those in your network?'

Albrecht: 'My network is a gardener, a mechanical vampire and yourself.'

Carl manages to restrain his smile just short of maniacal. He is confident because he has a few dozen Quetzalcoatl Feathers to barter with and they have recently spiked in price. Demand has been steady: bow hunters, who use gravity-proof arrows, occasionally miss because nobody has developed a range finder which accounts for the curvature of the earth's surface. Supply has faltered because that supply was Carl.

Quetzalcoatls only drop feathers when they bang and they only bang was hook-ups are arranged by their wing-humans.* The social norm is that the wing-human must be the opposite gender to the feathered-serpent-dragon. Young'ens come and go, meeting the same few people, of compatible gender, in the same scene. Watching feathery rainbows writhe and tangle would eventually make horny and they would settle, seizing their own most acceptable other wing-human and laying with them in the Quetzalcoatl's freshly vacated bed (read: usually a demolished block of houses). This is social taboo and the young-ens would leave with their last batch of Quetzalcoatl feathers and, often enough, their hearts warmed.

Carl saw an opportunity. That opportunity is gay. Because Carl is gay.

Whilst slithery Quetzalcoatl fucking stroked the reptile part of his loins, Carl never saw the wing-women as an outlet for his arousal. (Queer dragons have their own hook-up means and etiquette which can wait for another blog post.) He got into the feather game to grow his network, to meet other dealers of esoteric goods with whom to hustle. Carl was a stayer, Carl became good, Carl glutted the Quetzalcoatl sex-market - so that newer potential wing-humans sought other side hustles.

Then Carl started playing Dredge, a cracker of an indie game. It is a fishing game with Superhot-esque time management, meaning that time only moves when the player does. The main danger, the core pressure, is the insanity that comes with being on the water at night. Every type of fish has aberrations which hint at an Eldritch horror truth - a cod grows three heads, becoming like a shiny Pokémon. Materials from shipwrecks can be dredged to build improvements for the boat.

Carl played the fishing game instead of the feather game and nobody else was game enough to get into the game. Supply cut off but demand steady, people started trading away the feathers they had tucked away, receiving ethically dubious meats, furs and horns at relative bargain price. This stockpile, unlike toilet paper, has started to run out. Carl sat on his few dozen feathers whilst their value rose and hammerhead sharks were depleted.

So Carl lays his cards on the table: 'I seem to have come across some Quetzalcoatl Feathers. Not cheap, of course. Going to have to let go of some El Dorado Green, I'm afraid. Shame.'

Albrecht quirks eyebrow: 'I don't want Quetzalcoatl Feathers. Nor does my network. As you know.'

A chill straightens Carl's spine: 'Hmm perhaps you would be interested in some mythril?'

'Mmm not really?'

'Ghost Tobacco?"

'Ghosts?' Worry needles Albrecht's voice. 'Are real?'

'Ummm.'

'Perhaps that El Dorado Green you were going to trade?'

The chill runs the other way through Carl's spine, to his bowels. He had some El Dorado Green. He does not have any El Dorado Green. He smoked what he had whilst playing Dredge.

 

*That joke is funny because neither Quetzalcoatls nor humans have wings.