Liam introduces Jaal to the many wonderful foods that humans enjoy.


Jaal always wondered about the spot of paint that was scraping off the wall next to the refrigerator, but when he saw Liam throw the door open hard enough to slam into it he got the feeling that he just found out the answer to his own silent pondering.

The inside of the fridge was a bit jumbled up with leftover containers, produce rations from the Nexus, unopened cans and jars, and several partially consumed bottles of water with a note on it from Cora telling Peebee to finish them before opening a new one, next to one that had been recently opened with a note on it from Peebee telling Cora not to tell her what to do. Liam rifled through it, tossing some containers of ominous, fuzzy mystery food into the garbage as he searched.

"So what are we doing exactly?" Jaal asked.

Liam turned around with a can of something called "Mountain Dew" in hand. "I tried some of your food last night. So now it's your turn!" He took Jaal by the hand, rotated it so it was palm up, and placed the can in his hold. "That's called soda. It's that stuff that Peebee drinks when she decides to keep everyone else up all night."

He fiddled with the can a moment before finally discovering how the pull tab worked, but not before Liam had to stop him from shaking it to test how much was in there compared to the size of the can. One small sip was all he managed before shoving it back at Liam. "That tastes awful! Why is it so sweet?"

"It's Mountain Dew. It has enough caffeine and sugar in it to put a butterfly in diabetic shock."

"What is a butterfly?"

"Okay, next food! What else do we have in here?" Digging through the bottom layers of the fridge unveiled a container of chicken flavored ramen noodles. Suvi's name was written on the label, but it had been in there for about a week and was in all probability forgotten by now. "This is ramen, popular among students and people that don't have a lot of free time or skill to cook." He handed him the container and a fork. "Enjoy!"

Liam couldn't tell if it was the fact that the noodles were a week old or the fact that they were gross because they were cheap ramen, but Jaal ended up taking a swig of the Mountain Dew to wash out the taste of the ramen.

"Do your people actually enjoy this?" he asked.

"Not really, no," Liam shrugged.

"Then why do you eat it?"

"Because we've got about eighteen kilos of it in food rations that Vetra can't get rid of. Next!"

Jaal thought the leftover carrots and green beans were too mushy. He refused to eat anything with visible mushrooms in it, which turned out to be a rational fear of eating random, unknown fungi, born of the high toxicity of most existing fungi, whether they originated in the Milky Way or Andromeda. The applesauce ushered the same complaint of being too sweet that the Mountain Dew had brought on, which considering the fact that some of the angaran juice he'd tried was pretty sweet itself made Liam deeply question just how much sugar was in the average human diet. His attempts to feed some of Scott's macaroni and cheese to Jaal ended badly when the pathfinder appeared out of nowhere and tackled him to the ground to protect his favorite food.

"We've gone through almost everything," Liam pointed out. "You seriously didn't like a single thing that you tried?" He turned around and felt sickened when he saw Jaal pull a lid off of a plastic container he'd found in the back of the fridge and start eating it.

"Hmm..." Jaal stated. "I do like this. What do you call it?"

Liam wondered how he could get past the foul smell emerging from the container long enough to eat it. "That's a container of banana yogurt that came with the fridge," he replied. "When it was purchased. In the Milky Way..."

"It's 'zingy'. I like it. Especially this stuff that's growing on top of it."

"I think that's lemongrass..." Liam pointed out.