Food Trek

for desert, just giant bowls of maple syrup, all around. the type with an antiquated racial caricature for a mascot so you feel uncomfortable eating it

do not offer water. do not offer a choice of drink. everyone gets the same thing: tomato juice, mixed with vodka, mixed with clam juice, mixed with budweiser, mixed with sour milk.

do not offer water. do not offer a choice of drink. everyone gets the same thing: tomato juice, mixed with vodka, mixed with clam juice, mixed with budweiser, mixed with sour milk.

mixed with at least two different, corrosive sulfates, for added kick. Of course, as you have no experience as a restaurateur, the added kick is food poisoning.

don't forget to serve everything at the incorrect temperature

The Luncheon lowers its shields, and the Smorgasborg teleport aboard. Your security forces stand at the ready, but the Smorgasborg don't believe in half measures. Dozens of hideously modified beings of various origins have come aboard from their dodecahedral starship.

Your guests are on board, and you have been hard at work in the kitchen, personally involved in every aspect of this travesty you are going to call a meal. A quick peek into the dining room shows you that the Smorgasborg are waiting for their meal, nervously watched by a security team. Thankfully the cyborgs haven't horribly murdered or absorbed anyone yet, but that could change at the slightest provocation.

So, Captain, what will you serve for your first course?

a box of chocolates, but all of them are filled with pure disappointment (harvested from that terrible planet you had to save the other week)

Ah yes, the planet Meh in the Ugh system. You were allowed to collect a jar of pure, liquid disappointment as a reward for serving the first decent food on the entire planet for three hundred cycles. You've been using it as a paperweight. You add some thickener (sawdust) and whip up some chocolate coating. Your werechocoholic nature makes you twitchy, but thankfully you've been taking your antilycanthropol and can stifle your terrible urges.

As a final touch you dump the chocolates in a cheap, lightly used cardboard box, and send them out to your guests.

---

The Smorgasborg eyeball the chocolates dubiously.

"Chocolates, as an appetizer?" Their leader scoffs, "Is this their custom? Very odd."

The Smorgasborg dig in, and almost immediately a change comes over them. A chorus of sighs goes around the table. Every last one of them has the same look in their eye that my parents did when I told them I was becoming a narrator.

YOU KNOW WHAT MOM AND DAD? I'M HAPPY. I'M DOING WHAT I ALWAYS DREAMED OF DOING. I'M LIVING MY LIFE. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE HAPPY FOR ME? WHY CAN'T YOU ACCEPT ME FOR WHO I AM?

Uh. Ahem. Anyway, your appetizer is a rousing failure, just as planned.

Huh. Usually your failures are of the unplanned variety. I can't tell if this is a step up or a step down.

Mämmi.

Keep on leading with the desserts, huh? Though by many accounts, mämmi barely qualifies as 'dessert.' Also, thank you for not making a pun about 'just desserts.'

However, this particular dish requires a long process of sweetening and baking, before being chilled for several days. You don't have time for that, so what you are really left with is a large quantity of brown sludge. Perfect. You send it right out!

---

The Smorgasborg run their spoons through the unappealing gunk laid out before them. None of them wants to be the first to taste it. Finally, one screws up his nerve and gives it a shot.

He gags, nauseated by the barely-edible proto-dessert. A split second later, the others begin gagging, too. It appears what one tastes, the others all taste too. How delightful for them.

"Can we get something to drink!?" One yells.

do not offer water. do not offer a choice of drink. everyone gets the same thing: tomato juice, mixed with vodka, mixed with clam juice, mixed with budweiser, mixed with sour milk.

mixed with at least two different, corrosive sulfates, for added kick. Of course, as you have no experience as a restaurateur, the added kick is food poisoning.

We're just going to ignore that jab at your culinary skills. Well, I'm going to ignore it, anyway.

You send out the drinks, while you work on the main course...
You can hear the chorus of groans that greets your corrosive cocktail. You're not sure if those sulfates are actually strong enough to hurt them, but they'll sure as heck feel it!

Now, let's see...

artichoke hearts, seared, for an appetizer and a surprise digestif encore. they're leathery and hard-to-chew on the outside, but raw and still bleeding on the inside, and it's impossible to decide which is worse.

for desert, just giant bowls of maple syrup, all around. the type with an antiquated racial caricature for a mascot so you feel uncomfortable eating it

don't forget to serve everything at the incorrect temperature

You've already served a couple of appetizers, which were also technically desserts, so you're just going to mash everything else together into the main course. Leathery seared artichoke hearts, left to sit until lukewarm, and then dumped into chilled bowls of Uncle Bglarblglarp's Old Timey Space Syrup, which comes in bottles that amazingly haven't been pulled off the shelves despite the racist undertones in their designs. Just look at those oversized foretendrils, the way the mandibles have been shrunk down to appear less threatening. Disgusting. You're glad you live in a more enlightened age, where no one is looked down upon due to race, gender, or sexual orientation. Other than those damned Meringui. Nobody likes the Meringui. Bunch of filthy, scum sucking layabouts who-- ahem.

You decide to take the last course out to the Smorgasborg, personally. You look them in the eyes as you set their bowls in front of them. You also place down several bottles of syrup facing them. Watching them. Judging them.

They appear uncomfortable, and somewhat phyiscally ill. They pick uncertainly at what can only be charitably called their food.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" You goad, "Eat up! Don't worry, there'll be plenty more just like this once you've absorbed us into the hive mind!"

Their leader slowly places an artichoke heart in his mouth and chews it with a martyred expression, which is soon copied by all of the others. His pale skin glistens with sweat, which he tries to wipe away with his mechanical arm, nearly concussing himself.

"This is... this is... the most horrifying dining experience I-- WE have ever had. And we once ate leftover lo mein that had been in the fridge for three weeks. This is absolutely *bleep*ing atrocious and if this is demonstrative of the level of culinary ability your Dominion holds we want no part of it!"

Yes, it appears your plan was a rousing success!

"Which is why we are now going to destroy you, your crew, and then your entire civilization so that you may never inflict this level of horrifying cuisine on the galaxy ever again!"

Yes, it appears your plan was too successful!

The Smorgasborg upset the table, and then they tip it over, sending syrup and artichokes flying! Their leader advances on you with murder in his eyes and whirring blades on the end of his arm, while his fellow cyborgs occupy the guards. The table doesn't even try to get up and fight back. It just lays there, sobbing to itself. Pathetic. Looks like you're on your own. How are you going to get out of this one?

Offer them a heroin pie.

Get them high on lye

It is also a great moisturizer

start a toothpaste fight

>Say this, "Oh, but what about the antidote? For the metal consuming anti-hive mites that have been slipped into your food?"