Chapter Thirty-Eight – Eggs Burny Side Up

Chapter Thirty-Eight – Eggs Burny Side Up

“With growing populations comes a growing need for housing. This need is answered in one of two ways. Mega projects, or Rapid-Fab Housing.

Rapid Fab, surprisingly, costs significantly more as land around a mega city tends to go for a premium. The houses themselves can be built to code in under a week, or built without respecting code–for a small fine–in under a day, ensuring housing demands are met for thousands of middle-class citizens all at once.”

–Except from Housing in the 21st Century, 2039

***

I was up and at’em early the next morning. Before noon, even.

The group had set up a small chat about the Big Gun project, one handled by our respective AIs. I think it was safe to say that it was about as safe as a chatroom could be, even considering the number of people in it.

I poked at the chatroom while Lucy made breakfast. This morning was a ‘full English’ which meant that I got to sit at the kitchen island, hair still damp from a warm shower, and watch as an apron (and unfortunately more clothes) clad Lucy went about handling three pans and two disasters at the same time.

“Holy shit, why do eggs cook so fast!” she grumbled as she moved a pan full of eggs over to a plate and tipped it over. Eggs slid off the non-stick surface and mostly landed on the plate. Half of them looked uncooked and runny. The other half were brown-turning-black on the edges.

I smiled into a mug of warm coffee as Lucy ran the other way, stirred a pot filled with beans–from the resistance, I suspected some were now permanently welded to the bottom, then she poked at some sausages in the other pan. They spat and hissed, but actually looked pretty good.

“You’ll get a hang of it.”

“I might hang someone, alright,” Lucy muttered. “The site made this look easy! This is bullshit.”

“Wasn’t this like, the standard breakfast for a lot of places in the world?” I asked. “Eggs, sausage, toast, beans.”

“Fuck! The toast!” Luy ran over to the far end of the counter, almost tripped–which had me sitting bolt upright in case I needed to move–then made it to the bread… thing. The box with the foldy top that bread goes in, for some reason. She popped it open, revealing two end-bits of bread and nothing else. “Fuck!”

“It’s okay, we don’t need toast,” I said.

“But I want toast,” Lucy whined. Actually whined. I hadn’t heard her make such a pitiful noise in a while. The last time had definitely involved rope and had been a lot of fun.

“Myalis can–“

“Don’t buy toast. I’m making breakfast!” Lucy said.

“What about bread?” I asked.

She considered it. “Okay, but get it pre-sliced, I don’t have time for that.”

Shrugging, I had a small discussion with Myalis about alien bread while Lucy continued to putter about the kitchen like a 1950s housewife with the vocabulary of a 1850s sailor. I was just happy that she was enjoying her new cooking hobby so much. Plus it was food. I never said no to food.

The group chat caught my attention again as it moved. A message from Gomorrah asking if Tankette needed help at the mess tent, then Princess apologising that she couldn’t help on account of currently learning how to use a bulldozer?

There was a sub-channel, of course, for memes. Grasshopper was surprisingly active on there. I scrolled up and through about a hundred-odd photos of cats, dogs, strange reptiles, bears, birds, a few funny-looking fish. Most of them were ‘cool animal fact’ memes that probably belonged on some soccer mom’s media feed, but some were just cute pictures.

Gros Baton was posting obscure French-Canadian memes that–even translated–made not one lick of sense. Kinda weird to see someone who lived in the same general area as the rest of us have such a wildly different meme culture.

Gomorrah had posted some more nerdy science-facts memes, and then Crackshot and Princess got into a bit of a meme war. He was surprisingly adept at it, but Princess and Knight were tag-teaming him into meme… submission?