The Soup Struck Back
I spent the last several days in bed at the !FEST Hotel in Lviv with a fever, muscle pain, vomiting and the complete inability to eat.
For most people, this is called illness.
For me, the inability to eat is considered an extinction-level event.
The cause was Caldarian enteric virus, strain 4, from alternate Earth QMV42RX.
I had been sent there on Thursday to investigate an atmospheric anomaly above the city of Veligrad. The anomaly was harmless. The lunch was not.
Earth QMV42RX is almost identical to ours, except soup occupies the cultural position normally reserved for religion, national identity and arguments about parking.
Every family has a sacred recipe. Every city claims to have invented broth. Their parliament once collapsed after a minister suggested adding cream.
At lunch, I was served a grey liquid containing one potato, three leaves and something that may once have known a chicken.
The waiter asked what I thought.
I said it tasted like warm water containing a rumour of cabbage.
The entire restaurant went silent.
A woman at the next table covered her child’s ears.
An elderly man slowly removed his glasses, apparently so he could hate me more accurately.
I later learned that Caldarian enteric virus normally infects migratory reptiles, long-distance bus conductors and anyone who publicly criticizes soup.
The virus is unusually specific.
The Clovis Institute medical report described it as “serious but self-limiting.”
The Institute uses this phrase whenever something is not expected to kill me permanently.
By Friday morning, I had a fever approaching forty degrees and sufficient time to reconsider my restaurant review.
The soup had not contained a rumour of cabbage.
It had contained revenge.
For three days, I remained in bed beneath two blankets, drinking water in suspiciously responsible quantities and staring at the ceiling while my body attempted to expel everything I had eaten since approximately 1847.
A hotel employee knocked and asked whether I wanted breakfast.
I said no.
He looked frightened.
I looked frightened.
Somewhere in the Clovis Institute, I believe, a red emergency light activated.
Death would technically have ended the symptoms, but I decided against it.
Dying is an unreliable form of medical transport. There is a chance I return where I died, a chance I wake in another century, and a chance I arrive in a reality where breakfast was banned after a tragic omelette incident.
So I stayed alive.
On Sunday, I managed half a piece of dry bread.
On Monday, I ate soup.
Not the same soup.
I am brave, not stupid.
Today I successfully consumed eggs, potatoes and cake without vomiting, dissolving or changing timelines.
The fever is gone. My appetite is returning. The Institute has declared me non-contagious.
I have also submitted a corrected report regarding the cuisine of Earth QMV42RX.
The soup was excellent.
The cabbage was simply operating undercover.
