Weightless:
10 days of breakfasts
it’s good morning the sky! there is sky all around us, so much of it but so little to fill it we sometimes call it space. we’re hungry. this morning we’ll eat.
DAY ONE: Protein & Calcium Slide
day one space-food. Lenore squeezes out a little tube of toothpaste-esque protein & calcium slide, the same stuff they make edible panties out of. everyone holds out their bowl except Morty, who doesn’t have to eat that shit thank you very much!
floyd: Morty, you’re a wanker.
breakfast is at 3am. everyone’s still scraping the shit off the inside of their mouths at 11:23am. on the one hand, you can’t deny that it’s good for the spirit to have real protein & calcium slide in your belly. on the other hand,
gregor: This stuff’s shit.
lenore: thanks, Gregor.
gregor: Really, this stuff’s shit. It’s really shit.
rushka: Gregor, just be quiet.
roman: I think... I think I shall cook breakfast tomorrow.
excited gasp fills the room.
DAY TWO: Sand-Cream
Roman mixes a huge bag of peanuts and cashews that they looted off a Charity Relief ship running out to a starving colony. he grinds the nuts up really small and throws in a few handfuls of flour. he forgot that it’s zero gravity (it’s WEIGHTLESS) and the flour goes everywhere and seconds later the room is lost in a haze.
two and a half hours later (8am) Roman emerges from the kitchen with a dirty looking concoction that runs through his fingers like happiness.
roman: My mum used to make this. It’s called Sand-Cream.
floyd: Oh christ.
everyone nobly gives it a try.
lenore: This is actually really good.
rushka: This is fucking delicious, Caesar.
morty: Can I have some?
rushka: No. You’re dead.
by accident, Roman has made just enough to fulfil everyone’s nutritional requirements, but not enough to fill them up, so everyone leaps hungrily and alertly to their positions.
DAY THREE: Foot
there’s no food left on board the ship. Lenore sits trying to chew the soundwaves creaking out of the acoustic drive. Gregor eats a shoelace, then a dessert spoon.
roman: This is no good. Morty, we’re going to have to eat one of your feet.
morty: No but I need my feet!
roman: Rushka will prosthetic you up a new one. Gregor, get the saw.
Morty sulks alone on the toilet for the rest of the day while Lenora toasts his right foot over an open fire. Floyd mixes up a small zero-g bowl of salt, cumin, rosemary and basil and sprinkles it over the spots of tinea.
gregor: If people don’t want their toenails I’ll have them.
DAY FOUR: Hallucinogenics
silence. there is still no food. Everyone sits alone, lost in contemplation of their own starvation. At last, Roman speaks.
roman: Rushka, break out the hallucinogenics. We’re going to imagine breakfast.
Rushka injects everyone with a heavy syringe just under their tongue. Forty seconds later, everyone leans in and with great relish, begins to devour the full english breakfast before them. Sizzling bacon, poached eggs, toasted bread, grilled tomatoes, naked spiders, buttered muffins, ghostly cyclists riding through the jam, orange juice, pineapple juice, the queen of the frogs doing a slow striptease in the middle of the table, taking off one layer of skin after another...
DAY FIVE: Liquid Breakfast
Roman leaned in to the go board, a stone held carefully between his first and second fingers. On the other side of the table, Floyd sat back sneering, confident of victory. Roman placed his stone and stretched backwards. Behind him was Gregor with a tray of coffee. Roman took a cup with a nod, and Gregor filled it with steaming hot black brew, a cloud of powdered milk and a squeeze tube of glucose. Floyd took a cup and filled it instead with sake brewed from his own sweat. Without a word, Floyd took a sip, picked up a stone and placed it.
DAY SIX: Pork
The crew have obtained a live pig, stolen from an escape canister hurled out from planet Earth. judging by its trajectory, Lenore calculates the canister must have launched from somewhere in northern Eurasia, which might explain why no-one can understand anything the farmer says.
It’s a quick task to strip the canister of all its useful goods, then to jam the farmer back in the container and launch him back out into space. Now they have a pig and in everyone’s heads are thoughts of pork and ham, garnished with pineapple and honey.
First, though, they have to kill it.
The pig swims ungainly in the weightless air, desperately fleeing its pursuers. Behind it, Gregor blocks off the doorway to the corridor. At the other end, Rushka appears, carving knife in hand. Slowly, they begin to float towards the pig...
DAY SEVEN: Rushka’s breakfast
Ingredients:
- Apricot blossoms
- Peach stems
- Marionette bones
- The laughter of cripples
- Calm dust
- Space ice
- 4 grams shaved off Morty’s tongue
- A bathtub filled with petrol
DAY EIGHT: Mystery Breakfast
It was late afternoon when they finally sat down to breakfast.
morty: Mmm, what’s this?
lenora: Smells good!
roman: Sure does!
rushka: Dee-lish!
gregor: Yeah!
floyd: I dig it. Anyone for seconds?
everyone: Yee-ha!
DAY NINE: Space-Parasite
at midnight the ship had gotten caught in cobwebs. Eight broken satellites, drifted out of earth’s orbit, had been woven together by a space-parasite of some kind, and now the ship was thudding away, trying to break the strands that clutched at it.
Lenora was trying to pulse the acoustic drive to a cobweb-breaking frequency. Roman was perched lightly on the front of the ship, chopping at the thick space-web with a curved sabre.
Gregor, meanwhile, was hunting the space-parasite that had woven the web. He carried a laser harpoon and his trusty sidekick Morty as bait.
DAY TEN: Sonics
lenora: I’ve figured out how to generate nutritional soundwaves through the acoustic drive. Floyd, stand there.
floyd: No.
lenora: Rushka, stand there. Now, when these beats hit your belly, they will stimulate your cells to produce proteins and vitamins just as if they’d been ingested orally.
That morning they all stood swaying in the music, silently chewing and gulping, their tastebuds gurgling as their stomachs filled up.
