Homestyle Meal - James Wylder

Sang Mi stepped out of Martha’s car—it was a weird noisy thing that spewed smoke out the back. Well, that seemed to be the general case around here.

“See you tomorrow, Sarah!” Martha said.

“Yeah! See ya!” she replied, and walked up the concrete path to the house. This in itself was different—she’d lived in an apartment her whole life after all. There was no glint of glass-polymer between herself and the sky, no occasional sound of the habitation dome's air circulators kicking on. She put that out of her mind, and opened the door. 

“Welcome home!” Chris called.

Home. Well, for a little at least. “Thanks.”

“Kinda weird you’re getting home after me.”

“Welcome to High School sports. Hey, did you know that all the sports teams use the school mascot? Like everyone is a stoat? And for some reason the mascot has a roman helmet on?”

Cwej walked into the entryway from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. “Yeah, I don’t really get it either.”

She set her stuff down and stretched out. “Can we speak Korean tonight? I'm getting tired of English.”

“Of course,” he replied in Korean.

“That's a relief,” she replied, also in Korean.

“Dinner is ready.”

She didn't waste time, and followed him to the dining room, and was taken aback. “Were you reading my mind?”

He’d set out a bunch of dishes—bibimbap, tteokbokki, kimchi pancakes, white rice, bulgogi beef… “Maybe a little,” he replied.

She danced her way to her seat, and started serving herself before catching her error and stopping to say a very quick prayer, and then resumed piling her plate.

“I figured you might be getting a little homesick, so I ordered a bunch of take out.”

“This is great—though ‘dinner is ready’ sort of implied you cooked it.”

He chuckled as he started serving himself. “I'm just glad you’re enjoying it.”

She glanced over at a pile of papers sitting by him at the table as she shovelled some tteokbokki in her face. “I still can't believe they use so much paper here. It feels so excessive.”

“I guess there has to be ways of doing it with less environmental impact.”

She shook her head, “I don't know anything about that, I just mean like, there are so many trees here. There’s literally one in front of this house.”

He stopped. Right, of course. “That would have to be weird for you.”

“I mean, it’s not like I see no trees. They have them in parks, and there are some whole indoor forests and stuff, but they just… show up places here, like boom, there’s a tree.”

“Welcome to Earth, I suppose… actually, I’d been wondering something Sarah—sorry, Sang Mi—I was worried I was going to have to compensate for gravity for you. Your bones and body structure didn't grow up under this kind of gravity on Gongen after all. But you said it would be fine.”

She nodded, her cheeks full of rice like chipmunk, before she chewed and swallowed. “Yeah, we took a field trip to Earth a while back. It was this huge thing. We had to get injections and gravity therapy treatments and take all these supplements, so I figured I'd still be alright.”

“How’d that trip go?”

She shrugged. “That's a story for another time.”

“Fair enough.”

She stirred some of the food on her plate around. “You're from Earth right? But like, the future?”

“Something like that. I was born in the Spaceport Five Overcity. They call it London at this point in history.”

“They call it Londonplex in my time. I guess it’s sort of an inbetween.” She set her fork down. “Hey, so, you work for someone right, you always just call them your Superiors? And one of them was that guy in the office we met, right?”

He nodded, and looked a little anxious where this was going.

“Are they like some sort of... time cops?”

That made him laugh. “They’d absolutely hate to hear you say that.”

She nodded. “We’ve met a few times now. When I saw you with the deer, later when I helped you with the kitten, then when you came back during the storm… do you remember my friend Saki?”

“How could I forget?” he deadpanned.

“You remember how she gave me the drugs, Delirium? At first I thought those were just like… drug trips. Not that I have a lot of experience with that mind you but… eventually I realized that the Delirium really was messing with reality. That when we took it during the cosmic storms that we could go to places our bodies weren’t in different times, or move ourselves to different places far away, or change the world around us…” She bit her lip. “I know that Delirium can’t be a secret forever. Will we have like… time cops stop us? Superiors, or whatever?”

A strange look came across his face, and Sang Mi couldn't tell if it was pity or envy. “No. Where you are, there are no Superiors. Heaven is empty, and so is Hell, for better or for worse.”

“Well not literally,” she said.

“Nothing shakes your faith, does it?”

She shrugged and returned to the bibimbap that was just begging her to eat more. “I'm a good Catholic girl, didn't you know?”

“Yeah, I think I heard that somewhere.”

“Do you believe in anything, Chris?”
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He stopped, fork halfway between his plate and face. He thought for a moment, his eyes distant. “Maybe,” he answered finally.

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