Cheap Space
Jan02
on 2018-01-02
at 02:05
Naturally, protein strips come with a choice of dipping sauces.
↓ Transcript
Columbia: I’ll just have toasted protein strips.
Kimi: Toasted protein strips?
Ready: Mechanically separated meat, mostly fish or bront, an Orion version of tofu, rice, and kelp. Cultured with mycellia, pressed, and dried, then toasted for serving. It’s a Basic Provision item, but still very popular.
Kimi: Basic?
Ready: No one goes hungry in the Empire. If one is short or trying to save up on Resource Credits, one can always enjoy Basic Provision menu items from any cafeteria at no cost. But you ladies are welcome to have whatever is available. Patient meals are covered by the Medical Department.
Columbia: But I’m not a- Oh. I’ve been checked in, haven’t I?
Ready: That is not for me to comment on. I am simply an attendant medic. But the Chief Surgeon will be here to talk to you shortly. I can say that you need not return to your post.
Kimi: Toasted protein strips?
Ready: Mechanically separated meat, mostly fish or bront, an Orion version of tofu, rice, and kelp. Cultured with mycellia, pressed, and dried, then toasted for serving. It’s a Basic Provision item, but still very popular.
Kimi: Basic?
Ready: No one goes hungry in the Empire. If one is short or trying to save up on Resource Credits, one can always enjoy Basic Provision menu items from any cafeteria at no cost. But you ladies are welcome to have whatever is available. Patient meals are covered by the Medical Department.
Columbia: But I’m not a- Oh. I’ve been checked in, haven’t I?
Ready: That is not for me to comment on. I am simply an attendant medic. But the Chief Surgeon will be here to talk to you shortly. I can say that you need not return to your post.
ummm ok did i miss a post?
I’m also struggling to remember what happened to Columbia.
Stress because she was slightly freaked out from being the transport tech that removed Kimi’s tattoos?
Nurse Ready was serving Kimi tea from her own stash and commented that it increased interaction by 75%. Kimi thought that number would increase if Nurse Ready wore a French Maid outfit.
Just because she’s ‘been checked in’ doesn’t mean that she needed to be checked in
EXACTLY!
Perhaps her willingness to interact with Kimi has unwittingly marked her as a prime ‘Volunteer’-candidate for Kimi’s medical rehabilitation…?
…after all, Nurse Ready can’t be saddled with 100% of this duty — that would be RUDE! Kimi might misinterpret her isolation as a racist gesture — as though they’re trying to separate her from the rest of the crew.
Aside from the fact that it’s patently untrue, this is assuming that Kimi fails to realize that a ship of exploration is ill-suited for carrying lots of superfluous passengers. Each crew-member is there to do a JOB, & putting Columbia on “Checked-In” status means that some other crew-member must cover her work-hours, while she & Nurse Ready tend to Kimi.
Was thinking more along the line of ‘by formally having her checked-in, she is now ‘officially’ a patient, and, as such, her meal is paid for by the Medical Department rather than having to pay for her meal herself’
That’s fair.
All this idle speculation of mine is just my way of marking time until the next, much-anticipated page appears.
Same here, can’t even spend the time re-reading old pages 🙁
Not a big fan of tofu. But I like the idea behind it.
tofu made from real meat. oh, the irony…
I think your misreading it. The protein strips are made of meat(mostly fish) or Bront. Bront is their version of Tofu and is made of rice and kelp.
Wasn’t Bront, Brontosaurus? You know, one of them ‘extinct’ dino-saucers? From that documentary series, Jurassic Snark?
I don’t recall the exact strip, but yeah, brontosaurus. Small ones. If you can call anything the size of a truck ‘small’.
Yep, this is basically meat paste mixed with tofu, rice, and kelp, formed into strips.
Okay, yeah, point being: bront is not the Orion version of tofu, those are two separate items
What “toasted protein strips” evokes for me is bacon. Crispy, delicious, mouthwatering bacon. But that evocation doesn’t go well with the author saying that it comes with dipping sauces, since that and bacon just do not go together because dipping bacon in a sauce sounds barbaric. Wrapping bacon around a shrimp, or a pork loin, or a meatloaf, or a brick, that is fine. But bacon dipped in a sauce? Get out of the kitchen, you are ruining everything!
Depends on how ‘crispy’ the bacon is: can’t wrap if it’s crispy enough to snap in half
As I understand it, one wraps the bacon around the chosen food BEFORE cooking, so that the cooking process will produce a crispy bacon-flavored shell.
(…not something I do, mind, but I hear stories…)
Just as I’ve heard-tell of flat strips of bacon, cooked just-enough to be stiff-&-crispy, then dipped in pancake-batter, then cooked the rest of the way…
…then served with maple syrup for dipping.
But what if the ‘sauce’ in question was Vermont Maple Syrup…?
Or New Hampshire maple syrup. Vermont does better cheese, we do better trees.
Fair enough.
🙂
Any civilization with broad access to fabbers and automated labour is going to need something like Basic Provisions and/or Universal Basic Income.
We ain’t there .. yet. 😉
Not Necessarily – read Damon Knight’s “A For Anything” for an alternative result
I suppose it would depend on whether the “Orion”-model of fabber is able to flawlessly duplicate living people (memories-&-all), as the “Damno Knight”-model could, & if so, how fast-&-cost-effective is it?
😛
I actually think the point is moot, because the “Orion”-model fabbers have never been described as being able to “analyse-record-&-duplicate” a pre-existing object. In Damon Knight’s story, food doesn’t need to be grown (or even COOKED) anymore, because you can take a freshly-cooked gourmet meal, make a “prote” (“prototype”), & then produce copies from that “prote” over-&-over, for YEARS afterwards, with no cooking-skills involved. In the “TMI”-universe, however, Sky has spent years to become expertly skilled at programming a fabber with descriptions of her desired designs. If she could record-&-duplicate organic material, then she could make a “recording” of her RIGHT arm, then use her programming-skills to perform a “4th-Dimensional Rotation” (to the data-record of the arm’s structure), & then fabricate (from that “rotated” data-set) an organic replacement for her LEFT arm, which the ship’s surgeon could then re-attach — no need for any prosthetics…
…& the same trick could be applied to replacing Jaz’s leg!
The description of [Basic Provision Protein Strips] in today’s page demonstrates that “fabbers” are NOT used by Orions in food preparation. If it WAS possible, then it WOULD be done, because it’s FAR more effective to store raw material in BULK, & then fabricate it into food (or whatever ELSE it needs to become) only as needed. In comparison, food storage would occupy FAR more of the ship’s volume, & in space, every cubic millimeter is too precious to waste. As “roomy” as this ship appears, everything about the design must be justifiable (either physically, or else for the crew’s mental well-being).
I’m gonna go “out on a limb”, here, & predict that the tech for “fabricating living &/or edible organics” will never become a possibility in this Author’s story-universe, because it would effectively “deflate” the dramatic character development that he’s worked so hard to create. In a nutshell, it feels to me like a “Deus Ex Machina” — it’s too conveniently easy a solution. When solutions are TOO easy, you lose the dramatic tension in your story — & readers will lose interest.
I say this, even though I’ve (very-much) missed her ‘unmutilated’ look…
…Sorry, Jaz.
Dipping sauces? Ace-grade hot sauce?
no. they still can’t find a container strong enough for it.
They actually use it to remove corrosion on the tractor coils.
Yup; honey-mustard, barbecue, or ranch. ;-p
AS I recall…
– honey-mustard is for the “n00bz”, to get them acclimated.
– barbecue is for the pros. It’s mixed-as-needed because nothing will contain it for long.
– ranch — well, ranch is better-suited to lubricate the creakier titanium joints.
🙂
Ranch (buttermilk) isn’t available. Milk tolerance only evolved in Terrans a few thousand years ago. Actually, many Orions are violently allergic to dairy products. You’d be surprised at what they manage with tofu and mayo.
Lactose tolerance apparently occurred simultaneously in at least two locations about 15,000 years ago (estimate). However, _all_ humans are lactose tolerant until puberty. The mutation that happened is actually a failure of the ‘tolerance’ gene to turn off. It has spread to most of the population because up until about, oh, 70 years ago, being lactose tolerant was a major pro for survival. It gave food sources such as cheese that could be carried over a winter, and calcium rich liquids (etc) that improve skeletal health. This is why you don’t give cats milk. Once they move from ‘kitten’ to ‘young adult’, they lose their ability to metabolize milk properly – causing diarrhea. (Fun fact. Higher fat dairy is often safe for lactose intolerant people to eat. The more fats, the slower they digest, which allows lactase enzyme to work against the lactose. Also, extremely hard aged cheese tends to have no lactose. It’s used up in the aging process.)
So, you’re saying that Ranch (to Orions) is like Beans (to Kimi)…?
(…whispers…):
“the HORROR! … the HORROR!”
😉
Kimi may be reacting the cheese in the beans she eat rather than the beans themselves. Statistically people of Asian decent are less likely to be able to digest lactose as adults than their European counterparts.
Welcome back.
Hmmm. I was thinking about this recently w/r/t something I’m writing where there are humans adapted to low-gravity. Given reduced need for maintaining muscle mass they don’t need the calorie density or protein we do for that purpose; but given that they are also adapted for much more thorough tissue repair including apoptosis and cell replacement as a way of dealing with moderate radiation while not getting cancer (or at least, while eliminating cancerous cells as rapidly as they pop up) they do need at least some significant calorie intake for breaking down and rebuilding proteins at a rate far higher than us.
Well checking to see if my WP login still works here at TMI. And to be honest toasted protein strips sound pretty good, like Orion Bacon without the pig torture.
I can’t seem to locate the voting link. I remember it used to ge on the left sidebar for a while, but now I can’t find it on either sidebar. I don’t care about the incentives, how do I vote for TMI?
Do like me: vote for some other great webic, and follow the link back to the main hosting page, TMI is still on the front page, just have to scroll down a bit (you might find some other webics you haven’t read before)
Nope, no pig-torture…
…teensy bit of fish-torture…
…maybe a hint of bront-torture…
…but all the pigs are safe.
😛
PS:
Meanwhile, they go “B@T_$h!+ CRAZY” on the rice, kelp, & mycelia, & they have at-least 7 kinds of vicious sadism reserved just for the tofu!!!?!
(…the chef reports that it’s a VERY cathartic outlet for her frustrations…)
😉
Sounds like the chef needs a girlfriend 😛
…& here I thought this was being done so that she’d AVOID breaking her girlfriend?!?!
Eh.
What do I know, any-who…?
😉
For second I thought it was bacon
Welcome back. It may have been a disaster that caused it but I enjoyed reading TMI from beginning to end again.
Welcome back.
YAAAY!
Just wondering: are the invotives still broken? Have continued to vote all this time, but still getting the broken image icon
Also can’t view the Compilation page 🙁