Quoted By:
“I'll try my best to be specific.” You promise.
That never quite worked out as planned.
What Amos set down in front of you was much like what he had served you time and time again. ‘Imitation grox steak’, he had called it. This time, it was in two halves, each half of the patty delicately pinched between two slices of bread, a red sauce staining the crumb around it. A single leaf of green - a relative luxury - garnished the plate. It smelled of faint synthetic flavors and nutrient supplements- just like corpsestarch.
Carefully, you pick it up in a cloth and bite into it. The meat wept in your mouth, hot and pleasantly fragrant in a way you can't quite identify. Like so many other of these things you had eaten before, the smell reminded you of a corpse incinerator. It wasn't tender like it had been before, where the faux-meat had given easily beneath your teeth, but more mealy and chewy, holding it's firmness with the bread as you chewed, mixing the sauce, meat and bread together in your mouth.
It was good. Good, but you didn't understand what Amos expected you to say...
That it tasted like food to you? For some reason, the Delectica thought there was value in your opinion, despite you not having eaten at all prior to your release from the tank six weeks ago. Did he think you had a discerning eye when it came to corpsestarch, and such would be a more honest evaluator of it's reduction in taste than others?
Seems that no matter where you had gone in this hive, nowhere had you been able to truly figure out what your masters had wished or required of you. Alpha-Nought-5 seemed to favor you, for reasons you hadn't quite fathomed, was that why you were suddenly veering towards the faith? Korash-22 seemed to need you for... something. Symbolic reasons, maybe. He never seemed to need you to do any real work, though you learned beneath him. Cad, Tobias, Trisha- they all had believed you to have your own agenda, but you were increasingly doubtful of that.
There was a snort from your side, and you glanced up to see Amos wiping his nose with a cloth, sliding a small bottle back into his robe. “Well?”
You swallow the first half of the sandwich. “It's good." You hesitate. “It's good, and... chewy?” You hazard. “The sauce makes it taste... wetter than usual? But in a pleasant way, not like soggy corpsestarch. And the smell is as wonderful as ever and..." You sigh. “Mag- Amos. I'm not sure what you're getting from my opinion."
