Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Bartender

  Date [standardized human time]: November 20, 2136

  It was never cheap, adding personnel--even more so, really, since salaries were one of the Carnival’s biggest expenses already--but Iris and Rosi were sound investments in the restaurant's future. An herbivore waitress would make our prey customers feel more at ease and more willing to spend money, and a vegan baker could provide them with more menu items to spend money on. Not to mention, with a few more employees, maybe David and I would finally get a day off sometime this year.

  I wanted to watch movies, and maybe hang out with little Helena again, Luna complained. We were going to do Thanksgiving with David's cousin, but now we're working instead? This is terrible! We should fight the people from the State Department when they show up.

  Shadow rubbed her eyes. Even moreso than ‘we shouldn't fight anyone’, we especially shouldn't fight anyone from the U.S. Department of Revoking Our Work Visa.

  Luna grumbled, but didn't object. She simply slinked off into the corner to sulk.

  The front door to the restaurant opened, and I glanced over my right shoulder reflexively to see what kind of person wanted to eat in the middle of the afternoon. A human man in a fitted business suit with a long peacoat, accompanied by…

  My eyes widened in surprise. An Iftali! Now that was one rarity of an exchange partner. The Iftali woman might have been the first of her kind to ever set foot in this building, and with good reason. Setting aside the rather scant list of human-allied species with the courage to visit Earth, let alone a ruined city like New York, Iftalis were one of the largest species in the Federation. She barely fit through the door!

  Camels, said Shadow, dredging up some more recent memories. David has said that Iftalis look nearly identical to a Terran beast of burden called a camel, save that camels are tan and Iftalis pink. They are native to the arid parts of the planet Jild, which they share with an herbivorous people called the Suleans, who hail from the more verdant parts. David called the Suleans ‘miniature zebra-deer’. Nevertheless, together, the Sulean-Iftali alliance forms one of the only known instances of two sapient species making first contact pre-spaceflight, a fact all the more noteworthy in present times due to--

  Omnivores, said Luna, slipping back to the forefront with excitement. The Iftali are omnivores.

  Shadow blinked. Yes, I was just getting to that. The Suleans and the Iftalis have been on the diplomatic warpath on behalf of humanity as of late, since they are living proof of humanity’s claims that omnivores and herbivores can coexist peacefully, having done so themselves for what may very well have been millennia, long before the Federation was ever founded.

  Omnivorous mammals, said Luna, fully ignoring Shadow.

  Shadow blanched. Oh dear gods, you just want to get her to try cheese.

  It can’t just be us! Luna shouted. The world must know our truth! Having seen the mountaintop, have we not the duty--nay, the honor!--to share that blessed knowledge with others?

  Shadow blinked. Chiri, whatever you do, just act like a normal fucking person for five minutes. ‘Federation Standard’ culture can’t really handle the new you yet.

  “Oh hi, welcome!” I said in my normal fucking person voice. I glanced around at the furniture. All our chairs and barstools were still designed with a human shape in mind, which was close enough for most of our alien customers. David kept a few booster seats handy for guests dining with small children, which came in handy for the corgi-sized Zurulians, but we didn’t have much to work with for giant quadrupeds. “Uh, why don’t we see if we can scrounge up some cushions for you. You look like you’d be tall enough to reach one of the tables comfortably from the floor. Would that be alright?”

  The Iftali woman bobbed her head. “Thank you for the kind offer, but I’m happy to stand at the bar, actually,” she said. “My colleague and I are here to speak with the proprietor about some cultural outreach initiatives the local nation’s diplomatic corps was planning?”

  Fight--

  Do not! said Shadow. Impress her instead. We’ve been working hard to make the restaurant more accommodating to current and former members of the Federation.

  Current and aspiring defectors from the Federation, Luna corrected.

  Shadow’s brow furrowed. Hey, I thought we agreed that pure herbivores like the Yotuls belong in the Federation.

  Look at them! The Yotuls are terrified, and they still would rather be here, in a predator’s meat shop, than back home in the Federation, Luna pointed out. The least we can do is make them feel welcome.

  “David’s in the kitchen with our new vegan patissière, actually,” I said. I gestured to the waffle bites with the berries and cream. “You can try some of her prototypes if you like. He should be back out in a moment.”

  The Iftali looked at them closely, and shrugged. “Why not?” She lifted a massive forepaw and scooped one up towards her mouth, crunching happily. “Huh. These are nice. I’m surprised. I wasn’t expecting a restaurant on Earth to cater to us.”

  “We’ve certainly been doing our best,” I said. I held a paw out. “Chiri Garnet, head bartender. Also chief taste-tester, so you can rest assured that nothing on the menu triggers the Cure unless it’s supposed to.”

  The Iftali glanced at her partner, suddenly bemused. He shrugged and took a seat in the stool next to her. He waved to me. “Hi, I’m Mr. Russo, I’m with the State Department,” he said. “My partner here is a diplomatic attacheé on loan from Jild, who’s advising us on matters relevant to the Federation. She’s a little self-conscious because her name is, due to linguistic coincidence, pronounced nearly the same as an uncommon human name.”

  I tilted my head in confusion. “Okay? That’s fine. We get those, here and there. Just hired a Yotul almost named ‘Rosie’, and I’m taken to understand my own name sounds a lot like the English word ‘Cheery’.”

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  I wracked my brain for Iftali names I’d heard before, mostly from television. Zilba, Elka, Wullara… none of them sounded that much like any human names I’d ever heard of.

  The Iftali woman lowered her head, meekly, but seemed placated. “It’s… it’s Zelda.”

  I shrugged. I think I’d spotted that written on the spine of one of the books in David’s library. “Okay, that’s fine? Like Zelda Fitzgerald? It’s a pretty name.”

  “Yes. Exactly,” said Mr. Russo, suddenly stony. “Zelda like Mrs. Fitzgerald.”

  Charmaine, still doing paperwork on her holopad over at the far end of the bar, cleared her throat. “Tell her your first name, ‘Mr. Russo’!” she shouted.

  The human diplomatic worker sighed. “It’s Mario.”

  Charmaine cackled to herself.

  Sorry, we’ve been learning Earth culture for less than a month, said Shadow. We don’t know all the references yet. I dunno what to tell you.

  “Okay, nice to make your acquaintances," I said politely. David finished whatever he was doing with Iris and came back out towards the bar. I caught his eye and nodded towards the two diplomatic workers. “David, these are the two people who wanted to meet with you about the Thanksgiving thing, I think? This is Mario and Zelda.”

  David choked on his own spit. “Okay! Interesting. Very easy to remember, at least. Hi, pleased to meet you. Chef David Brenner. You comfortable?”

  Zelda bobbed her head again. “Yes, I’m fine standing. It was a bit cramped in the car over.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” said David with his winning smile. “We’re working hard on making our planet a bit more accessible to our new friends, but it takes time.”

  ‘Winning smile’ here, of course, meaning that he doesn’t flash his fangs when he does it, Shadow interjected.

  Surely an embassy worker like Zelda’s used to all the teeth stuff by now, Luna scoffed.

  Shadow made a disgusted face. Please don’t call it ‘teeth stuff’.

  David continued without a pause. He clapped. “So! Bit of a tight turnaround, if you want this ready for Thanksgiving Day. Tell me what you’re hoping to see in 48 hours, and then we can start haggling about piddly little things like ‘details’ and ‘feasibility’ from there.”

  Mario nodded. “So, to start, we were hoping we could rent out your restaurant for a special event.”

  “Easily done,” said David immediately. “We were planning on being closed that day, so there are no reservations. Telling my staff to cancel their holiday plans might be unideal, but I’m sure you guys have a temp agency or some caterers on speed dial who can spot in and help.” He glanced up at the mezzanine. “The building seats fifty, including the bar. Any more than that, I’d recommend setting up some heated tents outside.”

  Mario made a note of that in his holopad. “Alright, good to know. We were hoping to film and broadcast the event, if possible. I’m told you have previous television experience?”

  “Yup, won a few bouts of Culinary Combat, done the occasional Morning Talk Show segment about fun recipes to make at home,” said David. “No problems being in front of a camera. You want me to present a bit about what I’m cooking and why?”

  Zelda actually piped in at that point. “Ah, therein lay our concerns. We need to discuss what you’ll be making. I’m taken to understand that this holiday centers around a, umm…” She coughed, nervously, like she wasn’t even comfortable saying it aloud. “A large roasted bird carcass?”

  Rosi squeaked, clamping her paws over her mouth. “Oh gods, this is about that holiday?!”

  I bristled, and rose to humanity’s defense. “Yeah, the awesome one!” I blurted out before Shadow could stop me.

  Seriously, Chiri? In front of the Federation diplomat?! Shadow yelled, incredulous.

  Zelda and Mario both did a double-take and stared at me, wondering what possible chain of events could have led to a Gojid acting this gung-ho about carnivorous feasts.

  Charmaine cleared her throat again and swooped in to smooth things over. “As you can see from their reactions, David has a reliably positive track record when conveying potentially perilous Earth concepts to aliens, hence the Agency’s recommendation. You’ll be prerecording the event anyway so each planet can choose what to broadcast and what to censor, right?” Charmaine shrugged. “Coach him on tone, then, but let the man cook.”

  Zelda still gave me the side-eye with some suspicion, but that didn’t stop her from talking to David. “Yes, well, to mince the idiom, what, quite literally, will you be cooking? Surely you won’t be serving bird flesh to any of your prey customers.”

  “So the funny thing is, I was planning to invite Chiri here to my family’s Thanksgiving celebration already,” said David. “As a result, I’ve already researched and plotted out a whole vegan Thanksgiving menu. Most of the traditional side dishes--mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, sweet potato casserole--can pretty easily be made vegan, plus a mushroom-based gravy makes a respectable substitute for a meat-based one. And, because I’m a man of spectacle, I even designed a substitute centerpiece for the main.”

  Rosi had a paw in the air immediately. “What could possibly be a substitute for the spectacle of a giant roasted bird carcass?!”

  David looked at her quizzically. “You had it last night. It was the stuffed pumpkin. That's why I had that recipe ready to go.” He turned to Mario and Zelda. “It’s big, it’s flashy, and it showcases the ingredients that might have been served at the first historical Thanksgiving feast. It’s got the Three Sisters crops grown by the indigenous peoples of New England--corn, beans, and the pumpkin itself is a large squash--plus I was using local mushrooms, green onions, and berries to make a sweet and savory sauce.” He glanced back towards Rosi and I. “It was good, right?”

  I gave two thumbs up immediately. Rosi’s head sank below her shoulders. “Yeah… yeah it was really good. Don’t carve a face on it this time, though, gods…”

  The two embassy workers turned back to David with a look of concern. David held his hands up in a placating fashion. “Rosi’s an employee. We serve meat here. I was trying to ease her, gently, into being comfortable around some of the ingredients she might encounter in the kitchen. It may as well have been a pile of mashed potatoes sculpted to look like a bird. Carved pumpkins are a festive decoration on Halloween, in any event.”

  Mario and Zelda looked at each other, then back to David. “Would it be possible to preview the menu?” asked Zelda. “Again, we just need to ensure that these dishes will be safe and appropriate for any Federation dignitaries present.”

  “Of course,” said David, though there was a slight twinge of pain to his expression. It was the lull before the dinner rush, and I think he’d been hoping to get off his feet for an hour or so. “Any additional dietary restrictions I should know about?”

  Zelda tilted her head. “It’s funny you should mention that, actually. How much do you know about my people’s faith, the Consecrated Order?”

  “Nothing, I’m sorry to say,” said David. “I consider myself fairly well-read on Earthling faiths, though. I’m not unfamiliar with religious restrictions on diets, if that’s what this is about.”

  “I’ll spare you the large-scale doctrine, then, and simply state that our faith emphasizes the importance of minimizing harm,” Zelda said. “Killing an animal for its meat would of course be considered monstrous, but even when eating plants, we prefer plucked fruits and seeds over root vegetables torn from the ground. We should never uproot a whole plant when we can take what we need from it in a way that allows the plant to continue to live.”

  David nodded slowly. “Okay, I can work with that. At the very least, I can label which dishes contain roots so any Iftali guests can avoid them. That’s interesting, though. The minimization of harm reminds me a bit of Jainism. Maybe even elements of Hinduism, perhaps. Hindu cuisine tends to favor dairy over meat in many cases as a peculiarly carnivorous approach to the same problem: it’s immoral to kill an animal when simply taking what we need from its milk could suffice instead.”

  Oh dear gods, no, Shadow breathed, as she struggled to hold an increasingly feral-sounding Luna back.

  Nope, we’re doing this, this is happening, give me the mic, said Luna, elbowing Shadow out of the way.

  Zelda looked introspective, and the words started bubbling up in my throat. “Hey, it’s funny you should mention that did you know that dairy doesn’t trigger the Cure in mammals haha isn’t that neat?”