Free The Love Machine & Other Contraptions by Nir Yaniv Page B

envision brave, undaunted researchers, enduring without complaint and for extended periods of time the harsh living conditions of interstellar travel; collecting information worth its weight in gold, against insurmountable odds; sacrificing; improvising; courageously seeking out exotic new life-forms; and so on, and so on. Usually these delusions will star a muscle-knotted male hero and minimally garbed female companion—or vice versa.
    On the other hand, three gluttonous, gawky and grouchy guys would never star in such a tale. For some unfathomable reason, no imagination has ever stretched far enough to think of relating the exploits of such a trio. Go figure.
    ~
    On the first day of our glorious expedition, we had nicely-baked hot dogs, and Elijah had baked beans and toast.
    On the second day, we had microwaved hamburgers—nothing special, but digestible, and let’s leave it at that—and Elijah had baked beans and toast.
    “You don’t want mayonnaise or mustard or anything?” I asked him, and that’s how we discovered that besides being a vegetarian for purely ideological reasons, he also hated mayonnaise, and mustard was considered by him to be the punishment for Original Sin.
    On the third day, we had veal cutlets and Elijah had baked beans and toast.
    “Do you mind not eating all the baked beans?” Schwartz asked him, instigating a fight which lasted two-score and seven hours.
    On the fourth day I decided to make mashed potatoes, and thus we discovered that our potatoes had decided to develop a culture of their own. The smell was abysmal. We sealed their storage cell and two of us decided to have schnitzel instead, while the third was left to consume baked beans and toast.
    On the fifth day, right after Elijah finished eating his baked beans and toast, Schwartz came up with a brilliant idea.
    “ Say,” he remarked, “did you check the toast with your VegeSkunk?”
    “Vege SCAN !” said Elijah, insulted. “No, but that’s an interesting idea. Where did I put it? Oh, here it is!”
    “Boop boop!” said the contraption, and a red light went on.
    “It must need to be reset,” said Elijah.
    “You bet,” said Schwartz.
    “One hundred percent,” I said.
    ~
    Elijah and Schwartz worked on the VegeScum for a full day, but to no avail. It said “beep beep” to the ketchup, it said “beep beep” to the eggplant pâté, it said “beep beep” to the pickles, it said “beep beep” to the baked beans. It said “boop boop” to the hamburgers, it said “boop boop” to the hot dogs, it said “boop boop” to the mustard—but only because Schwarz had dipped his cutlet in it the day before—and it said, in an impressively decisive manner, “boop boop” to the toast.
    Elijah ate nothing but baked beans that day, and in the bridge there was a certain feeling of unpleasant suffocation.
    A small glimpse of hope teased us when Schwartz offered Elijah the use of the processed food, those green glops of unknown origin which are featured on the menu of every vehicle worthy of the name “spaceship.” They are well-suited for zero-gravity nutrition, are visually abominable, as tasty as sawdust, and it would be a waste of words to describe their stench. They are, in short, classic vegetarian food. Unfortunately, Elijah’s dastardly doohickey decided to honor them with no more than a derisive “EEEEEP!”
    “I always claimed that it isn’t actually food,” said Schwartz, and Elijah feasted on another spoonful of baked beans.
    The next day Schwartz tried, out of desperation, to read the instructions that came with the contraption. The whole day we heard him mumbling about fatty acids and glycerol, about receptors and sugars, about stresses, steroid molecules, the amino acid relations and temperatures. We didn’t understand a word—and in my opinion, neither did Schwartz—but the whole issue prevented a fight or two, and amen to that.
    It was actually Elijah who discovered the solution to the mystery,