Intro to Terran Philosophy (13)

Cowritten with u/uktabi

Thank you to u/tulpacat1 for giving it an extra set of eyes.

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**LOCATION: Isifriss, Skruerika city, Professor Halthekar’s home**

Date: HST - 2150.01.24 Arxur Dating System - 1733.883 Location: Arxur Colony World - Isifriss. Closest Arxur-Controlled planet to Earth. (13 human years since the end of the Human-Federation War).

Lux and Halthekar stared at the ominous loaf of bread.

“Is it burnt?” Halthekar asked.

“I… I don’t know why it turned black. I don’t think it’s burnt though. It smells right. Ish…”

Halthekar nodded. He could only take Lux at their word. It smelled toasty, and somehow dry. It wasn’t his favorite scent. Hal didn’t know much about grains, but he had once toured one of the new feasteries, and this smelled not unlike one of their bio-feed chambers.

“This is it. First bread baked on Isifriss. I am going to cut a slice,” Lux announced.

Hal nodded solemnly, watching as if the two were about to handle nuclear materials.

Lux delicately placed their fingers against the bread, slid the knife through, and sawed back and forth as if it were a small log of particularly soft wood. After a moment, it was split. “Pretty good so far…”

The texture inside was disconcertingly sponge-like. Omnivores, Hal had learned, ate a lot of strange things.

Lux took a bite and their whole face contorted. Hal had seen a multitude of expressions on their face before, he had even worried sometimes that some of them were bound up in disgust. He needn’t have, as he now knew exactly what Lux’s face looked when faced with something vile. They chewed it slowly, instead of spitting it, and then swallowed as if to complete the formal procedure.

“Is it good?”

“...This might be the worst bread I’ve ever tasted,” They said. Lux had once had tea in a specialty shop on a martian space station that tasted like drinking the world’s most expensive grass, and smelled of a forest after rain. This bread was an equal and opposite experience. It was like eating dirt. Not just dirt, but particularly dirty, poorly-sourced dirt, somehow.

Halthekar couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry!” he said, through the grunting of trying to suppress more laughs. Lux had put so much effort into painstakingly washing and grinding the grain with their coffee-grinder, carefully measuring and mixing, researching and looking for yeast substitutes… *The kneading process alone!*

Far too much time and effort for the galaxy’s worst home-made bread.

“That is unfortunate,” he said, the chuckles slipping out with his words.

They shuddered and dragged their tongue under their top teeth to rid it of the aftertaste. It didn’t work. A laugh burbled out of their throat too.

“Back to the ‘drawing board’?” Hal quoted his friend.

Lux nodded and leaned back against the couch with a groan. “Yup!”

They’d have to look for something that had already been processed into flour. Corn, perhaps? Could definitely make bread out of that, and Lux had heard the arxur produced a lot of corn these days, so if they could find a place to acquire that, that could work. Not as exciting or interesting as alien grains, though. Or perhaps—the idea struck them like a baseball aimed just a little too low and thrown a little too fast.

“Cricket flour!”

Halthekar tilted his head. Neither of those two words translated cleanly.

“Yes. Yes, this is perfect. If I made something like keto cricket bread, you’d be able to eat it too!” Lux said. “Only problem is… It probably doesn’t exist in arxur space. I don’t suppose you have independently developed a tradition of drying and grinding up bugs?”

Hal huffed to clear the grain scent and took out his pad. “Would vrishnit powder work?” he asked, typing it in.

Lux gave him a blank look and traced a circle in the air with their index finger, which he had learned meant ‘keep talking’.

“It’s an independently developed tradition of drying and grinding up bugs.” He threw the results of his search onto the larger screen. “It’s not nutritious enough to support an arxur on its own, but we used it to stretch out and preserve meat rations longer. It’s… gone out of style somewhat, given… everything. But there are some feast halls that try to use it in more creative ways. Start culinary traditions of our own, yes?”

Lux watched as the screen scrolled through previews of a few of the places. Lyrken’s Fine Prepared Meats, The Piercing Claw, Essel’s Feastery and Hall, The Tender Cut… they all looked quite high-end. They nodded along as he talked. “...Yes. Yes, perfect. I have chicken eggs, I have a whisk. I… can make this work. How much is it and where can I get some?”

He was quiet for a moment, busied with the pad. “The feast halls must get it wholesale. Only place I can find here that sells it is down in the snowpack hubs.”

The lowest parts of the valley, and the absolute poorest parts of Skruerika. Lux didn’t have to guess why this vrishnit powder was still being sold there.

“Alright. Sounds good. I’m pretty free right now, I’ll just head out.”

Hal looked at them carefully. “You will be fine alone?”

They scoffed and rolled their eyes. “What–Of course I will! This is–Hal, I am an *adult*. I have been an adult for eighteen years. I have a bus pass. I have money. I can go out on a quick errand.”

“Of course.”

Somehow, Lux found the acquiescence more troubling than if Hal had argued further. “Plus hey, it can’t be too bad, can it? Just a hop and a scoot. I’ll be fine.”

**LOCATION: Isifriss, Skruerika city, Snowpack Hubs**

Date: HST - 2150.01.24 Arxur Dating System - 1733.883 Location: Arxur Colony World - Isifriss. Closest Arxur-Controlled planet to Earth. (13 human years since the end of the Human-Federation War).

One train ride, one bus and two hours later, Lux found themself in a much less pleasant area of Isifriss than they’d ever set foot on before. The streets here were cramped, and dark, and cold. There was hardly any natural lighting from above. There were walkways upon walkways and tubes and cables at odd angles holding up bridges between different buildings. Odd metallic clanks and groans that did not provide a lot of faith in the quality of the surrounding infrastructure echoed through once in a while. And there were *so many people.*

It was terrifying.

Lux wandered around in a warm coat, oddly glad to be one of many people wearing clothes. Not that they weren't still conspicuous, upright and tailless as they were.

But it was curious. The arxur here seemed so much more out-and-about. The street was crowded, in a way that Lux found somehow different than when he’d been out shopping in the nicer areas. They couldn’t place what it was exactly. At first they thought, well, the streets are just smaller. But that wasn’t quite it. Maybe it had something to do with the density? The dwelling units were *far* more densely packed here, and the shops too.

A small group huddled around one of the heating poles had turned to leer at Lux as they walked by. None of them said anything, but their bodies had all turned to watch. Lux tucked further into their cloak and sped up unconsciously.

The streets were colder, but there were more people, and so there were bubbles of warmth dispersing in the air, brief shocks of hot and cold depending on heating tubes or vents. They followed their map as it curved, avoiding the groups and huddles as best--

That was it! That was what was weird! They were *grouping up!* On purpose! Huddled in spots of warmth, or in groups in front of storefronts, a few were even bunching up as they walked. It was almost exactly the opposite of what they’d seen in their last shopping endeavor, where everyone had taken care to maintain polite social distance. Down in the valley floor, the arxur seemed much more comfortable with the possibility of bumping into each other.

*Huh. Humans spread out when they have more resources too. That’s a part of what led to the loneliness epidemic of the early twenty-first century.*

*Interesting.*

Eventually, they made it to the store. A few arxur were standing at the door, talking in quiet voices and eating out of little disposable cartons. A few were using short metal skewers—Lux could see them glinting under the dim light of the store’s sign—while others simply used a claw. They looked like… little meatballs. With sauce.

The group caught sight of them pretty quick. “Lux Swift,” one of them said, stabbing another meatball. “Touring the low-elevation hubs. Unexpected.”