The Love Machine & Other Contraptions (6 page)

VegeScan

Elijah nagged us the whole way.

Throughout the flight from Earth he yammered and chattered and gabbled and nattered about his VegeScan, about how it was an unbelievable bargain at the Duty Free, about how he won’t be fooled again, about how he was now prepared for the whole shebang otherwise known as Life.

“
Nu
,” Schwartz said to him as the stewardess approached, food-tray in hand, “So where is this VegeScam of yours?”

“Vege
Scan
,” said Elijah. “It’s packed. Wait till we reach Potemkin.”

He nibbled loudly on cardboard crackers, while Schwartz and I defiled what was described in the menu as “fried duck nibbles.” May you never know such troubles.

Shortly thereafter, Elijah told us all about the glowing review of the VegeScan that he had read in his favorite magazine,
Mess Tin
. “When we reach Potemkin,” he said, “You’ll see for yourselves.”

And so we did.

~

As soon as we arrived at the Potemkin space colony, we were stopped by Customs for inspection.

“What is this?” said the official in a heavy Russian accent, pulling out of Elijah’s suitcase a strange rod with odd protrusions.

“VegeScan,” said Elijah. “It’s mine. You see, I’m vegetarian. And the VegeScan distinguishes between meat and non-meat.”

“This meat not meat?” said the official. At second glance, the contraption resembled a showerhead with an exceptionally long handle.

“This is a device which tells me if my food, yes? If my food is really vegetarian. Do you understand?”

“This understands?”

“I haven’t seen such a meathead since army boot camp,” Schwartz whispered in my ear. I wondered to which of the two collocutors he was referring.

“
My
device,” said Elijah, “distinguishes, yes? Distinguishes between meat, yes? Between meat and...”

“Let it go,” said Schwartz, and addressed the official in fluent Russian. He rattled and prattled, and the official’s expression grew more and more baffled.

“What did you say to him?” asked Elijah after we received an honorable discharge from Customs, but not before the official called all his friends over to ogle at the device.

“I told him,” said Schwartz, “that it’s an electrical tool for removing nose hair, and that you are a butcher on a diet.”

~

Elijah initiated his wondrous widget over our first lunch in orbit, in the Waystation Cafeteria. He ordered rice and tofu croquettes, Schwartz ordered a hot dog and fries, and I made do with a hamburger. As soon as the food arrived, Elijah pulled out the magic doodad from his duffel bag with much fanfare, stroked it for a moment, and then, with a confident sweep, brought its wide end close to his plate and pressed the button on the other end.

“Boop boop,” booped the instrument, and a red light went on.

“Um... one sec,” said Elijah.

“It’s really duck, your tofu,” I said.

“I think your rice said ‘cuckoo’,” said Schwartz.

“No, no,” said Elijah. “It probably smells your plates. There was a tuning button or something here. Wait a minute, will you?”

We spent a few delightful minutes watching while he delved into the obscurities of his glorious gizmo. Finally he held it aloft again and, with a victorious look on his face, brought it near his plate once more.

“Beep beep!” said the wand, and a green light went on.

“Eureka, it works!” I said with admiration.

“Give it here for a second, okay?” said Schwartz. He took the device, held it over the remains of the hot dog in his plate and pressed the button.

“Beep beep!” repeated the stick, green light and all.

“Is that a vegetarian hot dog?” asked Elijah hopefully, almost wistfully.

“You wish.”

~

Having finally managed to tune said preventative measure in a way he found satisfactory, Elijah spent the rest of our stay in Potemkin stuffing it into every possible crook and nanny. The toy said “beep beep” to cheeses and vegetables, “boop boop” to anything that had to do with meat, and an angry “EEEEEP!” when I directed it at the bedpost, in the hotel.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“If it can’t identify the thing, said Elijah, “it lets you know.”

I wondered aloud how many types of responses one could coax from it and Schwartz enlisted himself to the cause. It took him about an hour to find the fourth and final sound. He shoved the VegeSham’s spout into the contents of the frying pan I was using.

“Frrrr!” frrrr-ed the device angrily.

“What are you doing, you nut!” screamed Elijah and grabbed the VegeSnap from him. “Do you want to ruin it?”

“Why? What could I have possibly done?” said Schwartz innocently.

“The device,” said Elijah, “is very sensitive to temperature. I hope nothing happened to it!”

He had to re-tune his VegeSpam, and to run all the tests he had run earlier. Afterwards he spent very little time with us, but generously shared all of the interesting details he had discovered, to which we tried to pay no attention at all. We learned, against our will, that Quaker Oats sometimes have parasites, that it takes a while to identify sushi, and that gelatin is not a vegetarian food.

“Not vegetarian?” I asked.

“Gelatin is made of ground fish bones,” said Schwartz, spitefully happy. “I’ve known that since army boot camp. Check the candies you’re scarfing down.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Elijah, embarrassed. “I really like jelly stuff. Damn!”

“It’s not so bad,” Schwartz added. “Tomorrow you’ll discover that the soybean is also a kind of animal, and then we’ll really have a ball.”

“Get off his case,” I said. “We’re going to spend two months in this stupid spaceship together.
Your
idea, by the way.”

“
You
decided to get him the complete collection of
Mess Tin
.” retorted Schwartz. “What a great idea
that
was!”

“
I
,” I said, “was not the person who decided that we, of all the people in the whole wide world, would be the ones to find extraterrestrial intelligent life.”

“You just wait and see,” said Schwartz. “I researched this. It has to be this one. Of all the planets surveyed, Eta Pegasi III...”

“Okay, just shut up already.”

And so, the delegation’s spirits were quite high at the outset of our expedition.

~

“That’s BML/407,” said the launch supervisor. “It has a huge baggage compartment, three living areas, a small lounge and a centrifugalized restroom. And it’s all yours. Where are you off to?”

“Eta Pegasi,” I said. “Research—the usual shtick.”

“God,” said Schwartz. “My wife’s car looks better!”

“It’s been through some hard times,” the supervisor said, “but she’s passed the inspection and everything’s a-okay, apart from some problem with the supplies. You ordered something special, right?”

“Yes,” said Elijah. “A third of the food should be vegetarian.”

“What a piece of junk,” said Schwartz. “It really reminds me of boot camp.”

“That’s right,” the supervisor said. “I remember now there was a problem with the food, but we fixed it. You have some three hundred slices of toast we got special for you, and some crackers, and more of the same.”

“And is there anything to eat with that?” I asked.

“Do all your ships look like this?” Schwartz inquired.

“Yeah, sure! Ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, thousand-island dressing, baked beans, peanut butter, liver-flavored eggplant pâté, you know, it’s what everybody eats.”

Elijah opened his mouth to ask something, but I managed to get a word in first. “What about
our
food?” I asked.

“No problems there,” said the supervisor. “You’ve got twenty-two different kinds of meat, pressure-packed, fruit and vegetable concentrates, thirteen different sauces, potatoes, and so on. Like I said, everything’s a-okay.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Schwartz. “You call this thing BML/407? This isn’t a B-M-L, it’s a BUMMEL is what it is!”

And thus our new home for the next few months was named.

Elijah made some squeaks of protest that a woman’s name wasn’t chosen, but Schwartz diverted his attention by revealing to him the fact that potatoes are actually a dormant animal life-form. When the rhubarb died down, we brought our baggage into the Bummel and were launched towards the stars.

~

Imagine a scientific journey to an unknown planet. You probably envision brave, undaunted researchers, enduring without complaint and for extended periods of time the harsh living conditions of interstellar travel; collecting information worth its weight in gold, against insurmountable odds; sacrificing; improvising; courageously seeking out exotic new life-forms; and so on, and so on. Usually these delusions will star a muscle-knotted male hero and minimally garbed female companion—or vice versa.

On the other hand, three gluttonous, gawky and grouchy guys would never star in such a tale. For some unfathomable reason, no imagination has ever stretched far enough to think of relating the exploits of such a trio. Go figure.

~

On the first day of our glorious expedition, we had nicely-baked hot dogs, and Elijah had baked beans and toast.

On the second day, we had microwaved hamburgers—nothing special, but digestible, and let’s leave it at that—and Elijah had baked beans and toast.

“You don’t want mayonnaise or mustard or anything?” I asked him, and that’s how we discovered that besides being a vegetarian for purely ideological reasons, he also hated mayonnaise, and mustard was considered by him to be the punishment for Original Sin.

On the third day, we had veal cutlets and Elijah had baked beans and toast.

“Do you mind not eating
all
the baked beans?” Schwartz asked him, instigating a fight which lasted two-score and seven hours.

On the fourth day I decided to make mashed potatoes, and thus we discovered that our potatoes had decided to develop a culture of their own. The smell was abysmal. We sealed their storage cell and two of us decided to have schnitzel instead, while the third was left to consume baked beans and toast.

On the fifth day, right after Elijah finished eating his baked beans and toast, Schwartz came up with a brilliant idea.

“
Say,” he remarked, “did you check the toast with your VegeSkunk?”

“Vege
SCAN
!” said Elijah, insulted. “No, but that’s an interesting idea. Where did I put it? Oh, here it is!”

“Boop boop!” said the contraption, and a red light went on.

“It must need to be reset,” said Elijah.

“You bet,” said Schwartz.

“One hundred percent,” I said.

~

Elijah and Schwartz worked on the VegeScum for a full day, but to no avail. It said “beep beep” to the ketchup, it said “beep beep” to the eggplant pâté, it said “beep beep” to the pickles, it said “beep beep” to the baked beans. It said “boop boop” to the hamburgers, it said “boop boop” to the hot dogs, it said “boop boop” to the mustard—but only because Schwarz had dipped his cutlet in it the day before—and it said, in an impressively decisive manner, “boop boop” to the toast.

Elijah ate nothing but baked beans that day, and in the bridge there was a certain feeling of unpleasant suffocation.

A small glimpse of hope teased us when Schwartz offered Elijah the use of the processed food, those green glops of unknown origin which are featured on the menu of every vehicle worthy of the name “spaceship.” They are well-suited for zero-gravity nutrition, are visually abominable, as tasty as sawdust, and it would be a waste of words to describe their stench. They are, in short, classic vegetarian food. Unfortunately, Elijah’s dastardly doohickey decided to honor them with no more than a derisive “EEEEEP!”

“I always claimed that it isn’t actually food,” said Schwartz, and Elijah feasted on another spoonful of baked beans.

The next day Schwartz tried, out of desperation, to read the instructions that came with the contraption. The whole day we heard him mumbling about fatty acids and glycerol, about receptors and sugars, about stresses, steroid molecules, the amino acid relations and temperatures. We didn’t understand a word—and in my opinion, neither did Schwartz—but the whole issue prevented a fight or two, and amen to that.

It was actually Elijah who discovered the solution to the mystery, somewhere in the depths of his
Mess Tin
collection, of all places. Flour, it turns out, is almost never free of the remnants of insects caught by the harvester, and Elijah’s toast, collected with much fuss and at the last moment, was not of good quality to begin with. With a sigh of relief we agreed to be considerate and let him eat our portions of baked beans. Schwartz and I didn’t care about the quality of the toast, and Elijah, to illustrate his gratitude, tried to put together some refried beans for us.

You wouldn’t believe the mess caused by one pot of boiling oil in zero gravity.

~

On the tenth day the baked beans ran out. This produced a sigh of relief from two thirds of the staff, while the remaining third seemed a bit disappointed. We suggested that he start eating crackers.

For a week, the atmosphere was a little tense. We ate separately, because even the smell of meat drove the device insane—Elijah had to air out the bridge before every meal—and to block the croquettes and schnitzels from his view and to block our view of the crackers. The latter’s crumbs got everywhere, especially on everyone’s nerves.

It seemed as if Elijah’s mood was gradually deteriorating, until one morning, as we sat down to eat, we found him smiling as widely as humanly possible, holding a small round tin. Preserved corn.

Elijah told us how he had smuggled the tinned corn on board, and then provided us with a short description of his love for corn. Afterwards I also said how much I loved corn, especially of the tinned variety. Elijah countered by explaining that, although he highly appreciates the honest emotions I expressed toward corn, as far as this amazing vegetable was concerned, his love had neither contenders nor limits. In response, I claimed that, with all due respect to my old friend, corn was one of my oldest hobbies, ever since childhood, and that any smidgen of a rumor suggesting that my love for the Food of the Gods was even remotely comparable to someone else’s appreciation, was pure folly. Elijah responded that, despite our prevailing friendship, I lacked even the smallest notion of the love of corn.