Works Blog — Beyond the Spozak

by Matt Ahlschwede

The diner was down on the ground level of Berwynne's Gate, wedged in between an ancient atmospheric conditioning plant and one of those fancy body modification shops the Edenites love so much. Everybody's got a little mod here or there nowadays, what's the big deal with them anyway, basing their whole culture off of it like it was the latest thing?

"Welcome to Scarf and Barf, home of the greasiest hamburger this side of Aldebaran.", said the portly cook, his bionic eye glowing red. "Thanks", I replied, taking a seat at the counter.

I had come to partake of the LandStrider, an enormous 5 kg burger. If you could finish it in half a standard hour, your picture would go on display in the diner's app, and you could feel the confidence to engage in the next stage of your competitive eating career. If you couldn't stomach it, well, maybe the big time just isn't for everybody.

A lanky blue Jovian sitting nearby shot out his ear stalks when I ordered. "Are you a competitive eater?", he inquired. "Aspiring.", I nodded, rolling up my sleeves. The pressure was on, people pay attention to a power-eater. "Did you see the sector finals in pie eating?", asked the Jovian. Leefus Raxx, the reigning pie-eating champion had his crown stolen by a relative unknown, an adventurous Gorox who had recently come out of hibernation, and had made a brief career in the competitive eating world. "It was a stunt.", I said, "Everybody knows about the ravenous appetite a Gorox develops during hibernation." "I couldn't agree more", retorted the Jovian, "and it's bad for the sport." His eye-stalks came into view over his sunglasses,(It is common for Jovians to wear sunglasses out in public, as most folks find their eye-stalks a bit unnerving).

Talking with Jovians, in some ways, is easier for me than talking to other Humans. Other Humans tend to have a subconscious averse reaction to my appearance. My features, I am told, are slightly reptilian in appearance. Something about my eyes is vaguely unsettling. I blame my grandmother for this. To Jovians and most other aliens, on the other hand, the human form is so exotic that they don't seem to notice.

Outside, ground traffic roared and honked, and a sky-cab landed across the street. A brain stood under a streetlight, reciting novels from memory, as a small robot gathered tips. The night's offering was from Donneth Vogue's "The Archipelago", one of the founding documents of the mad Markovians. It was getting dark, and various display signs were starting to come on. A local rishathra parlor was advertising a floor show "Forbidden Love: Red on Purple Takarran Lust" (How this was possible without one murdering the other will remain a mystery to me.) , "Benko's Robot service center, open all night", "Cosmid Biosystems: Solutions for a Better Life"

"The name is Bibi Malu", said the Jovian, "I'm scouting new talent for the Devourers of Dogur-Dann, perhaps you've heard of them?" (As though anybody in the competitive eating world hadn't.) "Really? Well, get ready to find your next star.", I could hardly believe it, the Devourers had swept the finals at the last Smorgasbord, as usual. Looks like the big time had come and found me. "No pressure, it's just dinner.", I told myself, unconvincingly.

In a few minutes, the serve-bot brought out the plate. "頂きます!", she burbled, setting the gigantic mound of meat and bread on the counter. A large timer lowered from the ceiling, and I unhinged my jaw.

As the timer started counting down, I cut the burger into nine sections, and my stomach reflexively expanded. The LandStrider smelled good, but that was beside the point, this was business.

Section one, section two: no problem.

Three, four, five. The timer passed the twenty-eight-minute mark, and I could feel a distinct weight in my belly.

The other diners started to gather around, and someone with a camera-drone was taking in the scene from above.

Section six and seven, I was starting to get the meat-sweats.

Genetic modifications are forbidden in professional competitive eating events unless they had been in your germ-line for at least two generations. Luckily, my paternal grandmother had been an Edenite, but not any ordinary Edenite. She had been one of the "Children of the Earth", an extreme subgroup devoted to genetic modification, and for some reason had spliced in a few python genes here and there. I was about to be grandfathered in (or if you prefer, grandmothered in).

Section eight was a bit gristly, (a rare defect in vat-grown meat).

Section nine, and done. The timer stood at 25:24, and the diner erupted in cheers. I had eaten the whole thing in just over four and a half minutes, a new record.

And that's how I made my big break.

To the extent possible under law, Matt Ahlschwede has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to The Big Break. This work is published from: United States.

By Cliff Taylor

"These are the toads that need us to become Gods."

The two boys squatted beside the dusty, blinking, unmoving toad in their dull silver rover suits. The night sky blurred and yawned with the geometry of the slowly twisting galaxies overhead; burning white, alight.

"Just take off your finger cap and touch it. This was the first thing Jeremiah did when he came here with his uncles."

The heavier boy sat down in the red dust and looked at the bony fist of the toad. His dad had filled his head with crazy war-stories the summer his mom took a refinery job the next system over and never came back. Droid debris scavenged and turned into ornate nomad's equipment clothing blood-hungry mammoths. Poisonous trenches filled with history-bits that moved and swirled like smoke, pulling hard-shelled rodents down into their depths. Headless men implanted with weak controllers pawing at the windows of their base, ghosts with no identities. The greater cosmos was full of barbarity and strangeness, odd phenomena and mysteries. He looked closely at the toad. It seemed to be asking him a question and he found himself wanting to answer it.

"All right. You had your chance. I guess I'm going to do it then."

The other boy, with a face like a smashed tomato, creased and poor-looking, screwed off the cap of his pointer finger and held it about an inch over the toad's still body. "Now watch." He touched the toad's dusty head and instantly its flesh began to expand and disassemble, enlarge and thin out, turn luminescent, dimensionally porous, impossible to see clearly with the eye no matter how they looked at it. It broadened and fanned out, condensed, became more light than body, then became a frozen multi-sided image of itself, then shot up directly into the sky like a perfectly engineered firework leaving behind a thread of vaporous light that appeared to stretch all the way up into the clouds and rover paths.

"Now it's a God?" The heavier boy asked aloud, more to himself than to his friend.

They each moved their hands through the light thread, watched it stick to their gloves and then unravel and fade. They did this until the remaining thread hung and wavered out of their reach. They eyeballed the so-called 'tail of the toad God,' laughing and marveling at the first real treat of their vacation, kicking at the red dust where it'd been, and then they started talking about dinner and maybe heading back.

"You gonna tell your dad about that?"

The heavier boy thought about his dad and the arm he lost in the war and then he answered his friend, "Yeah, sure. Probably someday."