Rotcod cast an eye heavenward and saw that gray vapor cloaked the sky beyond the tinted windows. Stepping outside, he found that it burned his lungs as well. The forest had been neatly cleared while he was indoors, and among the stumps the fairykids sat with forlorn expressions. When they saw him, they visibly brightened, recognizing their companion from the old world. They started toward him, and Rotcod could not keep himself from hurrying to meet them halfway. He had never thought he would welcome their company, but the sound of their laughter warmed him in an unfamiliar way. He hurried along the thorny barrier he had erected last night with a few choice syllables, thankful that the fairies had not changed. It was their way to face difficulties with grace and equanimity.
Unfortunately, he stumbled in a pothole and rolled to the brown grass a moment before they reached him. He was thus unprepared when, still smiling, they drew their steel knives and fell upon him.
“Faust Forward” copyright 1987 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1987.
NUTRIMANCER
Imagine a TV dinner, baked to a crisp. Silver foil peeled back by the laser heat of a toaster oven. Charred clots of chicken stew, succotash, nameless dessert, further blurred by a microforest of recombinant mold like a diseased painter’s nightmare of verdigris.
Fungoid cityscape.
Metaphor stretched to the breaking point.
Lunch.
Someone had found a new use for an old fryboy. At the Lazy-Ate Gar & Krill, 6Pack was swabbing shrimp-racks with an 80-baud prosthetic dishrag when a Mongol stammer cut through the sleazy pinions of his hangover, sharp as a bitter mnemonic twist of Viennese coffee rinds tossed from a cathedral window into a turgid canal where rainbow trout drowned in petroleum jelly.
“6Pack?” said the Mongol. “Want a new job?”
He glanced up from the remnants of crustaceans curled like roseate spiral galaxies and saw:
—Limpid pools of Asian eyeliner aswirl in a violaceous haze of pain and pastry crumbs.
—Bank check skin with “Cash” spelled out on the lines of a furrowed brow.
—Some pretty bodacious special effects.
To his typographic implants it looked like this:
6Pack scrabbled for a purchase on reality but found only the dishrag.
“Man, that sweater hurts my eyes!”
The Mongol stepped between 6Pack and the sushi counter “It’s pixel-implanted Angola wool, under hermeneutic control. Come with me or I will induce a convincing epileptic seizure by altering stripe frequency and then take you away in the guise of your doctor.”
6Pack considered his options. A nearby heap of batter-fried squid tentacles quivered like golden-brown weaponry hauled from the ancient trenches of the sea. The Mongol tipped back the brass spittoon that served him as a hat, exposing an Oster ionized water-bazooka stitched among his Sukiyaki cornrows.
“What do you want with me?”
“Surely you can guess, fryboy.”
“No one calls me that without hearing my story. You’ve gotta hear what happened, what th-they d-d-did to me!”
“Now, now,” said the Mongol. “Don’t cry. I’m listening.”
It had all happened too fast for words.
Whiz !
Bang !
Whirr—ee—rr—ee—rr—ee !
Snip!
Clunkata-clunkata-clunkata….
Prrrrang!
“And when it was over, I woke up. The East Anglians had rewired my tastebuds.” He waved at the racks full of squirming periwinkles, octopus eyes, mackerel intestines. “Now all this tastes horrible to me. I eat the finest chocolates from Brussels—” he cannot avoid the memory of the heavy matron who served him sourly from behind the polished glass counters, shoving a gift-wrapped box of buttercreams into his hands “—and it tastes like dirt.”
“If you eat dirt, does it taste like buttercreams?” asked the Mongol. “But no matter. I know your story. What if I told you that my employers can restore your tongue to its previous sensitivity?”
6Pack sneered at him. “No one’s got the technology to unsplice my tongue, short of the EASA, who did the damage in the first place.”
The Mongol produced a 3D business card from some fold of his sweater and handed it to 6Pack:
“I am a deaf-mute,” it read.
“Wrong card,” the Mongol said, snatching it back and handing him another which spelled out in tiny blinking lights: EAST ANGLIAN SMORGASBORD AUTHORITY.
“What’s the matter, fryboy? Swallow something you don’t like?”
Hands trembling, seeing the future unfolding before him like an origami hors d’ouevre, 6Pack knelt to kiss the Mongol’s fingers. “I’ll do anything to have my palate restored,” he pleaded. “Tell them I’m sorry. Tell them I’ll never confuse mayonnaise with Miracle Whip again.”
“You’re hired,” said the Mongol and drew his hands away.
The knuckles left a taste of Kentucky bluegrass on 6Pack’s lips.
He was at the Grocery Boutique when his shopping cart’s guidance system failed. Narrowly averting disaster, he switched to manual and swerved past an oncoming cart. Heart pounding, he looked up apologetically at the other driver. That was when he saw her.
A peach recomb-polyester scarf enshrouded permed and frosted curls. From platform heels of rich Corinthian vinyl, tiny blood-colored toenails oozed forth like delicate ornaments from a cake decorator. Rhinestone-rimmed videospex hid her eyes; her face was as sterile and empty as the corridors of General Hospital that held her attention.
“Pardon me,” 6Pack murmured.
“Chet, you moron, she just went in the MRI room with Emilio!”
He couldn’t help gazing into her cart as he passed.
Sara Lee Weightless Cake
Betty Crocker Astro-Cookies
He remembered sitting in a Parisian cafe, the tip of his croissant immersed in a demitasse as a pathetic screech made him look up abruptly into a—
Bird’s Eye Frozen Creamed Corn
Instinctively, he shied from the selection, but somehow she sensed him and drifted nearer, like a platinum-blonde manta ray in the aquarium aisle. Her lips parted, gushing warm air that smelled like a stagnant wind coursing from all the demolished bakeries that had ever harbored starving mice. She smiled with green lips. A particle of biftek swayed like an electric eel, trapped between her teeth.
“I’m Polly Pantry,” she said. “Join me for lunch?”
She caught his arm, pressed her mouth to his ear, and tickled the tiny waxen hairs with her tongue as she whispered, “Courtesy of EASA, 6Pack. You can’t refuse.”
Menu.
Foodstuffs.