“That’s what we need,” I said. “We’re in Alaska; we’ve got to at least smoke our salmon.” I slapped the metal frame with my hand a couple of times. We’d already been forced to cook outside due to smoke—so we might as well make the most of it.
Smoked salmon to accompany our stew?
“I was thinking we’d smoke the salmon first and then put it in the stew. Make it a smoked salmon stew. Doesn’t that sound good?”
Coeus mumbled something and furrowed his brow. He was obviously not sold on the idea. And that will be tasty?
“I mean, smoked anything is always good, so I don’t see what could go wrong… I had some smoked salmon fried rice not too long ago, and that was incredible.”
So you know how to use a smoker, then?
“Not really, but how hard could it be?”
Now Coeus looked even more uncertain.
“What? You don’t want to?” I said.
He hesitated for a moment, then said, No...I just don’t want to mess this up.
I nodded, completely understanding. This little “dinner party” was a special occasion in that we’d be cooking for guests for the very first time. We both wanted to succeed, and Coeus worried that straying too far from the recipe might have disastrous results. I, on the other hand, was fairly confident it would work out, and that the added touch of smoking the fish beforehand would give our stew that extra oomph it needed.
I gave it some thought. To be honest, I was really happy to see that his ego had grown so confident and distinct that he was willing to resist me on things like this. Part of me wanted to simply let Coeus do things his way, as that was the safer option for his mental health. But considering he was showing signs of wanting more independence, it would also be regressive—almost akin to babying him. And I was not his mother.
“Okay, Coeus. Here’s what we’ll do,” I said, turning so that we were facing each other head-on. “Ever play rock, paper, scissors?”
Lei pushed the inedible black mass off the rim of his plate with a suitably revolted expression. Presumably, it was his first time tasting a vaguely salmonesque charcoal briquette, though I couldn’t blame him—Titan was our primary food provider, and it would never let us ingest something so vile.
“Note to self not to use oil in the smoker next time, I guess,” I said.
“Yeesh, doc. Show a little remorse, why don’tcha?” said Lei.
“Look, it was my first time using one. What do you expect?”
“I expect you to not unleash a giant pillar of flame that coulda melted the whole goddamn glacier, that’s what.”
I didn’t know if he simply had it out for me or what, but I was not going to express one iota of remorse toward Lei, who was clearly just trying to kick me while I was down. I did however feel horrible for serving Professor Beckmann such a sad excuse for a meal, and for Coeus who’d been so determined to have this dinner go off without a hitch. I watched the latter drop a piece of the burnt salmon into his gustatory phalange, then hang his head and shake it from side to side, as if wondering what he’d ever done to deserve this.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I shouldn’t have let you do something so dangerous in the first place…
“Come on, don’t be like that. It’s not your fault and you know it.”
“I will say that the stew itself is rather tasty,” said Professor Beckmann, attempting to salvage the situation. “A bit smoky, but good.”
Again, Coeus simply shook his head. He was convinced this was only lip service.
“No need to be so hard on yourself,” the professor went on. “It really is quite good. And what’s more, you both slaved over it for more than three hours. How could it not be delicious?”
This got Coeus to lift his head—and made me do a double take as well.
“Excuse me. Professor?” I said.
“Yes?”
“What you just said is relevant to the hypothesis we were hoping to test via tonight’s dinner, so may I ask: why do you think it is that food always seems to taste better when prepared by someone else?”
“Oh, well, that’s a rather easy one, isn’t it?” he said. Coeus and I both shot each other an eager glance. “Think of it like tennis. It’s a fair bit more fun playing against a human opponent than it is to practice your backhand by hitting balls at a brick wall, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Uh, well…”
I’d never played tennis before, so I only vaguely understood this analogy. But I did know that it was a sport in which players hit a ball back and forth from either side of a net, so I could imagine how having a live body to play against would be more engaging than simply having your own shots rebound back at you.
So you’re saying… Coeus began, addressing the professor. These were the very first words he’d ever uttered to a human being other than myself, and his voice was tentative, but his curiosity was winning out. You’re saying that eating your own cooking is like playing against a brick wall, while eating someone else’s cooking is more interesting and stimulating, like the challenge of an actual opponent?
“Yes—as is having someone else eat your cooking. No matter what you might throw at a brick wall, it can’t respond in any novel way—it can only rebound your shots. But with a live opponent, there’s a dialogue—a back-and-forth. It’s exciting to wind up and give the ball your very best shot, then eagerly await the other party’s response. So here you go, Coeus,” said the professor in a warmhearted tone. “I’m telling you—this stew you’ve made is delicious.”
Coeus’s eyes lit up, and I watched in silence from the sidelines as he took the time to let the professor’s words sink in.
Once we’d finished cleaning up, the four of us spent the rest of the evening in our warm and cozy canopy tent. Coeus took this opportunity to fit in a bit more practice with his new toy, and Lei sat alongside him and observed, doing some sort of analysis of this new and fascinating technology on his holofield. He claimed it was an “engineer thing,” and I could only take him at his word. Professor Beckmann was curled up in a deep collapsible chair by the orange lamplight on the other side of the tent, looking at something on his own holofield.
“What are you reading?” I asked him.
“Oh, just perusing the collected works of Kenji Miyazawa,” he replied.
“Ah. Classic literature, I take it?”
The professor nodded. I didn’t recognize the author’s name, but the very fact that he’d given an author’s name made it seem like a fairly safe bet. It was exceedingly rare in this day and age to see a modern creative work tagged as “authored” when casually browsing Titan’s databases for entertainment. Works of art and entertainment such as novels, comics, music, and movies were called “works,” thanks to the strenuous labor that went into creating them. The network had proved more efficient at and capable of producing unique and fully realized creative works covering the full spectrum of tastes and aesthetics than we humans. And though a Titan’s brain was every bit as creative and unique as a human’s, the average human still did not consider a Titan a person, and so these works were not credited to anyone at all in their network listings. As a general rule, if a work was attributed to a specific author, there was a pretty high likelihood that it had been written more than a century ago, and if it wasn’t, it was likely more modern than that.
There were still plenty of human authors in the present day, of course. Novelists, cartoonists, musicians, and even film directors. But like my psychology research, these were created by hobbyists rather than workers. They were also generally the product of a single individual’s passion, created free of any outside pressures or restraints, and then posted to the network with little fanfare. People would see works by creators they followed, of course, and the network would occasionally suggest them to people it deemed might be interested, but they were generally not smash hits. Occasionally, a labor of love would earn some buzz along the lines of “so good, it’s hard to believe a human made it,” but there was generally a sort of condescending tone to this type of praise. People were more impressed with the amount of time and effort put in than the quality of the work itself, which was invariably quite primitive compared to what Titan was capable of. And indeed, it really wasn’t even fair to compare the two.