On the Price of Fine MRE Spice

 

Tonight's venue is a suburban home. The main conversation piece is the man-eating black metaphor that covers the ceiling. The owner, recently 'widooowed?' and with bub, agreed to lease out her apartment in exchange for 10g of Fine MRE Spice. This is 1% of the world's Fine MRE Spice which, being better than Great or Good, can make delicious. The homeowner is keen to see what this product can be exchanged for because she needs nappies.

He who determines the price of Fine MRE Spice, the owner of 90g, is Albrecht. A dozen-and-a-half prospective buyers mingle with wines and brie. Carl, pissed off with their potential competing offers, places a step-ladder near the snack table and climbs into the ceiling mould.

Chit-chat:

'They all know how badly Tom, in particular, wants a baby.'

            'The shipping charges, among other things, would be ridiculous.'

                        'Caroline considers mugs barbaric.'

'All right.' Albrecht is on his second glass of Paramimma 2020 Petit Verdot. 'Here's how this should go. Pitch your thing. I offer the amount of grams I want to pay for it. You can accept or make one argument. We've all got drinking to do.'

Liam drops a traffic cone at Albrecht's feet: 'Boomerang.'

'I appreciate the brevity.' Albrecht rubs eye lids. 'But could you elaborate?'

'The Boomerang Traffic Cone.' Duh. 'I found it. I threw it. It flew back.'

'And?'

'If you put it somewhere and somebody moves it, it slowly moves back.'

Who even are you?: 'I'll give you three grams.'

'But I want five.' Liam whines. 'It can save your car park.'

'Good point. Deal.'

Dorothy is next to petition: 'I have Gloves of +1 Fire Damage and Resistance.'

(Azrael sniggers: 'Not The Gloves?')

Dorothy earned these gloves after making kangaroo chilli. Au naturale, she did not use gloves when preparing the Jachuranga Peppers. She did use Mechanix SpeedKnit Utility gloves when, with the chilli stewing, she spent a free hour weeding. Capsaicin remained after rinsing - on her skin, in her pores, in her sweat, trapped within the gloves. Stubborn tap roots of thistles burnt to ash within the earth and Dorothy dared not masturbate for a week.

Albrecht: 'Again, don't really need it, but I'll offer you ten grams.'

Dorothy panics: 'Make it fifteen and I'll throw in a blow job.'

Wow that got semi real quick.¹

'Fifteen minus ten.' Liam mutters calculations to himself before hollering over crowd. 'So can I get a blow job?'

Dorothy hollers back: 'Not for you.'

(Fika: 'So that's how you meet people. Blow jobs.

Nathan: 'Uh, yeah?')

Albrecht is flattered: 'How much does your recipe actually need?'

'I reckon ten, but I want twelve just in case.'

Averting eyes: 'All right, no blowjob but eleven if you invite me to your next dinner party.'

'Deal.'

Which is not to say that after-dinner-party sex is out of the question.

Yvette is drunk: 'I have a Level Three EB World Card. I found it in the male staff toilets so you know it's got points.'

'I'm not a gamer.'

Ignoring him: 'And any rewards you earn, emailed to the original owner, will mess with them.'

'One gram.'

'What if also sex?'

What Yvette means is that, as a sex goddess², she will also be able to twist beyond-the-veil matters to positively influence Albrecht's sex life. Given a moment, she heads how she sounds but lets the question hang in the giggling air.

'Why, why do people keep offering me transactional sex. No, not for me. I don't want to appear in any memoirs.'

Yvette, insulted, flicks the bird on her exit, stopping by the drinks table for a Unico Zelo Tropo 2022 Sparkling. Liam follows her. Saperavi takes the opportunity to front the crowd. Pedro, her pterosaur partner in crime, gives her a digit up before slugging a IIPA through curly straw. Saperavi takes a deep breath:

'I come bearing goods from, well, the far east sounds, uh, colonial. From up north. I have a piece of bedding made from the finest silks, pioneering technology and the weirdest of circumstances.

Once upon a time, 2022 I think, a young man lived in a hermit kingdom. He was poor, like most people in his country, but he was happy because his king kept him safe and cared about him. Thing is, that king had a sister and the young man fell in love with the Red Princess. His go-to wank fantasy involved at least two body doubles.

The young man crushed on the princess but became self conscious of his posture. He sought to remedy his forward haunch. Well, he spent a third of his time sleeping, so why not straighten his back on his bed?

The young man sought perfection, to fit his neck with a self-confident pose. And so, he slept without pillow, or at least tried to - North Korea is not known for its mattresses. It does have beer though.  The craft beer scene is pretty good.'

Pedro raises his curly-strawed stout and quacks in approval.

Saperavi continues: 'So the young man plunged into the underworld, the madmen and the black market, to make the pillow that would lay him most horizontal. He found and experimented with avant-garde technologies that had trickled down from three generations of lunatic autocracy. He developed a pillow three millimetres thick but which provides sleepy-time bliss.

Then he shacked up with an actual woman - he spent less time on his back, she spent more time on hers.'

Albrecht: 'My posture is fine.'

'And the pillow is very easy to pack.'

'Ten grams.'

 

1. Possibly a bad idea, if the eating of Jachuranga Peppers would transfer bad gobby.

2. She is not technically a 'goddess', a title similar to 'doctor' given to medical practitioners who do not have a Ph.D.