Intro to Terran Philosophy (15)

Cowritten with u/uktabi! Thank you to u/tulpacat1 for giving it a read before publishing.

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From:  [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])  To: Henry Leigh

Hi Agent Leigh,

I just wanted to check in on the Swift case. Farrison has been concerned by the lack of progress over the past few weeks, and we were assured by ILEC that it would be handled as quickly and quietly as possible. Is it really that hard to convince a few ‘reformed’ Lizard Nazis to hand over Swift?

— Indira

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**Memory Transcription Subject: Rifal, Arxur Student** Date: HST - 2150.01.25 Arxur Dating System - 1733.884 Location: Arxur Colony World - Isifriss. Closest Arxur-Controlled planet to Earth. (13 human years since the end of the Human-Federation War).

“Well, there are hundreds of different ways to cook eggs, but I'm going to scramble these two,” he said.

“*Hundreds?”* Dad repeated excitedly.

“...Probably? I know there are at least several dozen. So probably over one hundred. I’m… not a chef. I am familiar with boiled, poached, scrambled, fried, and baked eggs,” he said. “And each of those has variations. Soft-boiled, hard-boiled, medium, sunny-side up, omelettes, standard scrambled, there are a variety of national styles, desserts…”

Dad nodded along looking awestruck, and even Mom seemed impressed.

With the dexterity of someone who had done it a million times, Prof. Swift took out the eggs, cracked them, and poured the contents into a bowl. Then with the little sticks he’d used before, he mixed the white and the yolk together until they were a uniform light-orange colour.

Once done, he held it up and put it aside. “Here we go. Let's add a little more oil…”

He lowered the heat on the pan so it was no longer blinding, and poured the mixture in. A new tantalising smell filled the air as the egg sizzled on the pan. Prof. Swift began to separate it after a few minutes, carefully rolling it into a tube.

It all looked very, I don’t know, *artful.* Or just practiced. *Humans must get a lot of practice cooking, by necessity*, I supposed. I'd seen professional butchers work, and it was somewhat similar, but there was a delicacy to how Prof. Swift was doing everything with those tiny hands. *No wonder humans call it ‘culinary arts’...*

After some careful poking and prodding, he seemed to decide it was ready. He put it on a plate and sliced it up with a knife, offering the tiny pieces to us.

It had an unfamiliar, though very rich smell. I ate mine in one careful bite, and was pleasantly surprised. It was indeed very rich, and coated my tongue luxuriously. The single bite did not feel like nearly enough.

And I wasn’t alone! All of us were looking forlornly down at our empty plates. None more so than Dad, who had snapped his own up without even bothering to smell it.

“Well that was excellent,” Shao said, a bit of egg falling from the tip of his snout.

“Yes! We should try all the other methods -- we have lots of eggs!”

“Perhaps another time,” Mom stepped in. “We don’t want to take up too much of Professor Swift’s night.”

“I can fry a few real quick in bacon fat just to give you a taste. Maybe we can have an egg night another time?”

Agreement was unanimous.

Prof. Swift took a thick dollop of white animal fat off a container and put it on the pan. Once it was sizzling and our mouths had begun to water again, he quickly cracked the eggs and poured them gently onto the pan, one after the other. Soon, the whites had hardened, looking bright, opaque white, while the yolks remained wet and succulent.

“Should we put that on top of our ready-to-eat kits, Dad?” Shao asked.

“I think they might be better as their own thing… but then again, perhaps we could wrap some \[meatballs\] in it, make them into \[meat tubes\]? Human Egg \[meat tubes\] has a nice ring to it, it even rhymes!”

Shao wrinkled his snout. “You can't call them Human Eggs, humans don't lay eggs. Terran Eggs, maybe? That doesn't sound that good… Hard Eggs?”

“Eggs Terran?”

“Egg delight. No! *Eggs in the Style!*”

“Yes! Human inspired!” Dad agreed.

I shook my head and let their brainstorming fade into the background, instead choosing to focus on Prof. Swift as he worked. He slid the eggs onto the plate, four yolks, one for each of us, and then cut the whole thing into sections so that we could each have one. “We call these sunny-side up,” he announced.

Dad's eyes lit up and he nodded. “Ahh, because the white bit there looks like a runaway coronal mass ejection.”

The professor laughed hard enough that he had to pause to breathe before answering. “Yes, Lithvel, that is exactly why.”

I prodded the yolk with a claw tip, testing the surface tension. I wasn’t *unfamiliar* with eggs -- arxur liked eggs! They were an excellent treat to follow down anything lean. But *cooking* them was strange. Eating eggs as a warm solid instead of a refreshing cool liquid in a lovely crunchy shell… At the very least, it seemed like a lot of extra steps. But I supposed it was no stranger than the rest of the things humans found necessary to cook. Once again, odd, yet intriguing.

The fact they were from a terran animal was intriguing, too. It was strange to me that the *only* kind of eggs we ate were from another planet. We used to eat tilfish eggs, but that had fallen out of favor for obvious reasons. The *tilfish* used to eat tilfish eggs too, but still, I understood why. Until we started growing our own native-to-Wriss eggs again, and maybe even after, there was going to be a certain *uneasiness* surrounding the whole topic. Chicken eggs, however, seemed to neatly dodge all that. They were considered *safe,* in a way that no other type of egg was.

Huffing, I scooped the ‘sunny side up’ egg in my claws and quickly dropped it in my mouth before it could fall apart under its own weight. As soon as I bit down, it burst in an explosion of warmth and rich, deep flavors. Much more intense than a regular egg! Like the heat was amplifying the flavor somehow, or maybe it was all that rendered bacon fat making it more complex. I savored it, pulling the scents in and wanting more. Maybe humans would be happy with all these single egg portions! But I was not.

My tongue ran forlornly over my teeth as I looked back to the pan, but there were no more eggs. Just the drying fat and fading heat. And Dad and Shao still pitching possible product names, and meal kit ideas. Dad had his pad out (despite Mom having forbidden it) and was taking notes, while Prof. Swift watched them seemingly fascinated. I wondered how many of the clever wordplay names actually translated for him.

Meanwhile, Mom was still struggling with her egg. Insisting on trying to copy the human eating with the skewers method, except she couldn’t keep the thing in her grasp. It kept slipping away and plapping back down to her plate, sending little flecks of yolk spattering about.

“Would you like some help?” Prof. Swift asked mom with a smile.

Mom froze, and carefully set her skewers down. Then dunked her entire snout right into the egg with a loud clatter of dishware, and slurped the entire thing down in a flash. She came back up, nose dripping with yolk but looking nonetheless pleased with herself. “I got it,” she said.

Everyone stopped to laugh at that, and I found myself chuckling along as well. Mom was a lot more fun when she wasn’t on such a specific hunt.

He laughed. “Did you enjoy it?”

“It was good,” she nodded. “Very different flavor!”

“Dear, what do you think of *‘Eggs in the Style?’*” Dad asked, showing his pad which had a mock-up image of some ‘sunny side up’ eggs on top of one of his pork-and-syasara-scramble kits. Mom stared at him until he cleared his throat and set his pad down.

Which seemed like a good opportunity for me to check my own pad. Immediately, I was bombarded with notifications.

“Professor, you are internet-famous again,” I announced, scrolling through the barrage of clips and images.

“Hm?”

I showed him my pad. He winced, as if he’d burnt a finger. “I really can’t do anything without ending up on the internet here, can I?”

“What’s happened?” Mom asked hungrily.