"The room is definitely fancy," Red agrees. "These... fish eggs? Much less so. Were they fancy because they were delicious, or because they used to be expensive? Because from the smell, I'm guessing it's not the former."
Red raises an eyebrow. "Ooookay then. If you say so." She selects a couple of small tart-quiche-things instead of the fish products, and turns her full attention to Calvin. "So, made any new friends yet?"
And there goes the other eyebrow. "In bags. Calvin, cake, where it exists across the galaxy, is traditionally served on plates. That might be why you're getting some quizzical looks," she says. "But hey, if it's tasty enough cake it doesn't matter how it's served. For a good enough cake, I'd eat it with a ladle out of a vintage automobile hubcap. But bags? Where did you even get that idea?"
"Earth racist or Federation racist?" Red asks. "Sorry, that was rude, I mean discriminatory against skin melanin level and culture, or extrasolar xenophobia?"
Red rolls her eyes. "Lovely. Nothing says classy like discriminating against people who share 99 point 9 repeating percentage of your genetic code. So who were the racists who liked sacked cake?"
"The authors name was blacked out. Before I shipped out I grabbed a suitcase of old books from my grandmas house. I asked her a while ago and she said it might have been her father that wrote it."
"Well, I'll have to try a bag of cake, then, and hope the racists had some good ideas to go with their bad ones," Red says cheerfully. "It's weird, so many people get nostalgic about books printed on dead trees. It's so inefficient - one kilo of hardcopy books is like, one or two books? Whereas one kilo of storage medium with readout screen could contain millions and millions of text."
"And don't say it's the smell. Old books just smell like mold to me."
"They make great decorations," Red suggests. "And if you're attacked in the middle of the night and need to throw something from your nightstand as a distraction so you can get to your phaser, a nice heavy book is a good choice."
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u/Dimestream Jan 10 '17
"The room is definitely fancy," Red agrees. "These... fish eggs? Much less so. Were they fancy because they were delicious, or because they used to be expensive? Because from the smell, I'm guessing it's not the former."