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  Hess glanced around the room. “Is this your presentation?”

  “I'll do the talking thing too. This is mostly me showing off.”

  When San left to speak with a newly arrived Ingrid, Hess glanced to Elza, who without looking up from her plate signaled back with a thumbs up. Hess placed a single spoonful from each tureen onto a plate and sat one seat away from Elza. As the room slowly filled, Hess took a tentative bite of the kitchen sink stew.

  “You have to admit it's good,” Elza said.

  He smiled. “I admit nothing.”

  “I hear that nothing is pretty popular these days.”

  “Only if it's differentiated.”

  “So they tell me.” Elza took a sip of a dark liquid. “You would hate this one. It's too bitter, too sour, and too sweet all at once. The lighter one is more your style. I think it's sassafras mixed with wheat beer. Somehow she made it spicy, so don't drink too fast.”

  Hess studied his plate. “You're spending a lot of time with San.”

  “I'm still keeping my promise from Iteration five. What is your plan to escape the island?”

  “We're stealing a steamship.”

  “Sounds promising.”

  Hess sighed. “It's low on coal. I'm not sure if it will be able to get up to operating temperature, let alone make it out of harbor.”

  “And you can't get more coal?”

  “There's an island-wide shortage. What's left is under guard. We could get it, but transporting it to the ship unnoticed would be a challenge. We're using wood as our fuel.”

  Elza turned to him. “You should make rocket candy. This island has a saltpeter factory and the kitchen seems to have plenty of sugar on hand. Be careful not to add too much at a time. Excessive heat will make your boiler explode. And even if you avoid that problem, you still have to worry about your firebox melting. Speaking of fireboxes, copper or steel?”

  “Cast iron,” Hess said.

  “What gauge?”

  “Thick.”

  “Hmm. Should work. I'll let you know if I think of anything else.”

  “Thanks.” Hess looked down at his empty plate. “She's going to think I like the food if I go back for seconds.”

  “If you must have something to complain about, try the dark drink.”

  He returned from filling his plate and grabbing a drink just as San began her formal presentation. “Feel free to keep eating while I talk. The food is in no way related to anything I'm about to say, by the way. I worked quite hard on this meal. My speech, on the other hand, is unlikely to impress.”

  San rubbed her hands together. “My contribution to the discussion is boredom. I have been bored since the first world. Some of you seem content to live the same day through eternity, but I can't do it. I yearn for novelty or, lacking that, oblivion.

  “I suspect that the Creator is as bored as me. Maybe that's the reason to make universes. You do your creation-thing, then you stop existing until your Observers come back, then you get to ponder over the new data for a millisecond or two. Rinse and repeat. Sounds boring to me, but then again, everything sounds boring to me.

  “That's it, the grand total of my reflections on existence. To riff off of Greg's presentation, there should be more diversity.” San turned and presented her palm to him. “High five?”

  Greg folded his arms. “Just two minutes?”

  “In my defense, I spent twelve hours preparing this meal. So I put in more time than anyone, just in a different way. Enjoy the food.”

  Chapter 26 – San / Iteration 4

  Another world. Another thousand years or so watching people do the things people do. This latest world seemed to be all islands. A shame, as he'd never cared for sea food.

  At least he was a man this time. He hadn't been the rugged sex since the first world. Iteration two was a fine world to be a woman, but three had treated anyone lacking a penis as a frail blossom in need of constant protection. San didn't do delicate very well. He liked to go where he pleased and do his job without interference from the quaint notions of the people.

  Maybe one of these worlds would do some interesting role reversals. He would like to see women lording it over men for once. Of course, that was hardly a stable social order. Men were, on average, larger, stronger, and more aggressive. So far the Creator had not deviated in matters of basic biology between worlds, but he could still hope.

  San settled into life on one of the larger islands, watching the people do the usual song and dance. They ate and shat and procreated and accumulated possessions and gossiped incessantly. Little things changed, but the core of human life never did. People were depressingly simple subjects. They hardly merited eleven Observers. Maybe Natalia has the right idea studying animals. Of course, if you listen to Griff, Natalia beds down with the beasts she studies.

  But San could not believe his purpose was anything other than the study of people. Which meant that he spent several years in Iteration four cataloging the myriad details of life on an island. The locals obsessed over fish, eating it with every meal. Indeed, their word for meal meant fish. They ate big fish cooked whole so that their scales had to be flaked off between bites. They ate little fish grilled over coals. They ate sea creatures with shells. They ate water snakes. They ate insects found beneath the water. They ate gelatinous sea animals. And for side dishes of vegetables or grains, they used garum as their primary seasoning.

  Garum: fermented fish guts. As in the organs removed from a freshly killed fish and placed into a barrel with salt to rot, whereupon the potent, thick liquid was placed in jars to be relished by deranged villagers.

  Garum: a substance capable of spoiling a bowl of grilled squash with just a drop. An unpalatable addition to every dish the people made. The only condiment provided in public eateries. The secret ingredient in every specialty dish ever offered to him by one of the locals.

  Garum: the bane of San's existence.

  He had endured horrible foods before. The tubers used as a famine food in Iteration three had been one – the unpleasantness of their blandness exceeded only by their horrible mushy texture. Another had been the bitter plants used as a medicinal supplement in Iteration two and consumed every spring by entire villages. The meat of the bobcat his tribe had killed in Iteration one. Each time he had dutifully chewed and swallowed the offered fare to avoid attracting any undesired attention.

  Not in this world. Not with garum. The substance offended him on every level. He hated the thought that the stuff came from rotten offal. He despised the taste of it. He objected to its undeserved popularity.

  As a consequence of his unique opinion, San made most of his own food. He avoided the street vendors popular among the people of this Iteration and ate a monotonous diet of grains, vegetables, fruits, and birds – until the day he realized that he had become a recluse.

  A ten-day without human interaction sparked this realization. Gardening, hunting, preserving, and cooking were all time-consuming activities, which placed them in conflict with his mission. So San took action. He abandoned his hut, moved into town, got a job heaving nets on a boat, and committed to partaking in local customs.

  His first meal was breakfast on the street. He dutifully bought a bowl of egg-white soup that reeked of garum. By slurping quickly, he minimized the horror of the experience.

  His second meal was a light lunch provided on the ship. It consisted of flat bread, pickled fish, and a small sweet onion. He forced it down with a hearty dose of self-pity.

  His third meal was a buffet inside a pay-to-enter food tent. With an almost perverse pleasure, San consumed an array of disgusting food choices. Smoked fish. Crabs. Squid. Bitter greens. Raw egg-yolk over fried insects. Every garum-laden bite affirmed his low opinion of the local food.

  The following day, he broke his fast with raw porpoise blubber. After the standard fare of his ship-lunch, he dined that night on offal pie. Inside the shell of the pie was a wild menagerie of undesirable leftover fish organs: liver, tongue, skin
, bladder, heart, and roe. Plus garum. Lots of garum. San emptied his stomach after his first bite.

  Day after day, San sought out the most horrific culinary disasters. He grew inured to the sense of disgust. After his first month, he had gained a reputation among the people as someone with an iron stomach and a defective tongue. He continued his meal-time adventures partly in perversely ironic protest of their food traditions, but also because – more and more as time passed – he enjoyed the intensity of his reactions.

  Over several thousand years of life, he had learned what he liked and disliked. The inevitable consequence had been that his diet in previous Iterations had consisted largely of figs, almonds, grains, and land animals. Foods, even his favorites, had become bland. In the midst of his current disgust, he had discovered an odd pleasure in novelty.

  One day, several months after his change in diet, he found himself at a buffet lacking any suitably entertaining options. San contemplated the open table for several minutes, despairing at the thought of eating food that no longer excited him in some way. Then he resolved to remedy the situation.

  San dipped fried finger-fish into a bowl of garum to intensify their flavor. When that failed to provide the desired reaction, he began to concoct a more provocative combination. He used an edible flatfish scale plate as the base, placed bitter greens on top, then added pickled beets, onions, and a ridiculous amount of garum.

  San eyed his hideous creation with pride. It should be simultaneously too fishy, too salty, too sour, too bitter, and horribly textured. In short, he had designed the most revolting food item he had ever encountered. San took several moments to appreciate what he had done – and also to steel his stomach for the upcoming ordeal.

  He folded the fish scale over on itself and took a bite. Scales crunched, juices squirted, beets smooshed. A riot of intense flavors struck him. San chewed, swallowed, licked garum from his lips, and studied the thing in his hands. It was every bit as powerful as he had imagined. But it was not unpleasant.

  San took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. It wasn't unpleasant at all. Another bite. It was actually quite good. Excellent, even. He swallowed the last of his invention and returned to the buffet table. The next one he made had more of everything, but especially more garum. This food called for lots and lots of garum.

  Chapter 27 – Hess

  When the meal concluded, Jerome tapped the side of his glass with a fork. “This shared meal makes a convenient segue to what I want to talk about.” He paused before continuing. “A long time ago, during the first Iteration, I decided that I would fulfill my purpose best by remaining unknown to the rest of you.

  “I based that decision upon what I witnessed among the tribes. The people did horrible things to one another, had such vicious vendettas. I witnessed a woman jealous that her child died while another's lived convince an entire tribe that her nemesis was cheating on her man. The end result was another dead child. Such spite seemed endemic, so I resolved to hide myself.

  “By the time I thought to question my reasoning, it was too late. The eleven of you were a cohesive group. Showing up at that point, no matter how much I might wish to, would have been awkward at best. I resolved to live with the consequences of my decision, and that is what I did.

  “Until Iteration one forty three. While conducting research on what I believed to be fascinating world leaders from history, I discovered rumors that the unusual couple had survived gruesome assassination attempts in miraculous fashion. You can imagine my initial horror at the idea that Observers had conquered over half the known world.

  “Then I learned that after their disappearance, the remains of several palace guards were discovered – each bearing the signs of horrific, yet undeniably creative, deaths. By this point, I suspected something untoward had happened. I broke my cover to contact Ingrid by letter, posing as San. The response indicated that the guilty party would be entombed in darkness until the sky opened. So I immediately opened the sky.

  “One forty four had the internet. I watched the online forums as Elza sent out message after increasingly frantic message. When no response came, I went to find Hess in person. He was working in a gas station, broken. I moved closer to watch over him.

  “And then the unthinkable happened. Hess became newsworthy. Knowing that Ingrid was out of circulation in a backwater nation, I posed as her and reached out to the other Observers, some of whom were already on their way. I made arrangements for everyone to meet on my property, hoping that Hess would come to his senses and flee while I delayed the manhunt.

  “He did not. Instead, he walked right into the inept trap set for him. I freed him. He came back the next day to surrender himself. Unable to resolve the situation, I opened the sky once more after revealing myself to Hess and Elza.

  “The greatest irony in all of this was how much I enjoyed being part of the team. Even faking another's identity every moment, even while sabotaging the goals of the group. I loved interacting with my own kind. It was the community denied to me my entire existence.

  “During one forty five, I was tasked with conducting the vote. In the process, I joined a team to liberate Ingrid and Erik, an experience that I unhesitatingly rank as the most meaningful of my life. After, Hess chaperoned me on my travels.

  “The great lesson of my life is that no one can exist in a vacuum. Human connection is the most important thing any of us can ever have. We need community. And I regret with all my heart that I waited so long to join mine.”

  “Fuck you, Twelve. You're not welcome in my community.”

  “Hey,” Griff said, “you realize none of us actually like each other, right?”

  “I have no illusions. Every encounter seems to fizzle out due to lack of interest. I sincerely doubt you could understand the value of what you have without having experienced its absence as I did.”

  Drake chortled a bitter laugh. “What do you think you got now that you didn't before? Not friends. None of us much care for you, Jerome. Guess you could say the same about any of the rest of us, but at least we got history. You crashed this party.”

  Jerome flinched. “Well, if it's any consolation, you only have to endure my presence one more day.”

  Chapter 28 – Jerome / Iteration 8

  He sat cross-legged on his hotel bed and watched the eleven on his computer screen. Their party had become boisterous enough to warrant an eviction from the hotelier. In response, Erik had corralled Griff, Drake, and Ingrid to one side, where they were plotting who knew what brutality. When they broke apart to enact their plan, Elza informed the room that she had purchased the official's goodwill. Across the room from her, Hess surreptitiously slid a knife from the serving line up his sleeve. The two of them made eye contact for a brief moment. They were protecting the people again.

  He smiled. This was the first time he had ever been in the same building as his comrades. Their first full gathering was the last place he should be, but that hadn't been sufficient motivation to keep him away. He was one of them, whether or not they knew he existed.

  San handed a drink to Elza, the latest abomination she had concocted from the stores of the well-stocked liquor cabinet. As always, Elza tried it. Like everyone else who had braved San's failed experiments that night, she spewed it out of her mouth in a spray of mist. Having watched the entire evening from hidden cameras, he knew that the secret ingredient of every drink that night had been detergent from the cleaning closet.

  Natalia drifted in and out of random conversations, more interested in kissing the snout of the dog she carried in her purse than anything happening around her. She left soon without telling anyone.

  Greg and Mel sat together in a corner, politely alternating whose turn it was to pontificate on subjects the other feigned interest in. The microphones had long since ceased reporting intelligible speech due to the rising sound level, but earlier they had lectured on the semi-satirical movement and the cumulative impact of tariffs on the world economy.

  Drake appro
ached Kerzon to show yet another person his state-of-the-art SlickSlate tablet computer. Drake had given each of the Observers an identical demonstration, one at a time, repeating word for word the same fan-boy pitch.

  A drunken Kerzon made a pass at Hess, either forgetting that Hess was strictly heterosexual or having fun with the fact. Mel disappeared with Ingrid. San walked out with Kerzon even as her eyes lingered on Elza. Greg left by himself.

  Everyone trickled away until only Hess and Elza remained. Half a room apart, they smiled at the same moment, their eyes meeting half a second later. Seconds later, the banquet hall stood empty.

  He watched the space from his computer, remembering the second-hand sights. San and Ingrid spontaneously break-dancing. Erik sawing through chair legs so that Griff crashed to the floor when he sat after returning from the restroom. Ingrid spinning some epic tale while standing on a table. Kerzon leaving a trail of laughter behind unheard punchlines. It appeared to have been a good party, no matter the awkward moments or the times violence threatened. And now it was over.

  The others had not opted to book rooms in the hotel. He didn't think it wise to remain there himself. The threat of discovery loomed over the entire city. If there was a lesson to be gleaned from the lives of the other Observers, it was that they recognized one another on first meetings with all the ease of lifelong friends. For all their differences, the similarities of origin and purpose were greater still.

  He packed the electronics into his bag and departed his room. As the main entrance neared, he slowed, then stopped. The banquet hall's doors stood a stone's throw away. With quiet steps, he approached.

  The room stood empty. He studied it for a time, imagining himself there. The cup San had offered to Elza still sat at the center of the space. He drifting inside, lifted the half-full cup, and took a sip. Then spit with all the speed of an autonomic reaction. The substance burned with malicious astringency. He looked down at the liquid and almost-smiled.