Taft 2012 by Jason Heller

Author:Jason Heller
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction.Historical, Politics, Fiction.Contemporary, Humour, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781594745560
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2012-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

CASTRO COZMOS, CHEF and proprietor of Chicago’s acclaimed and trend-setting Atomizer, stood in the restaurant’s cluttered, chaotic kitchen with his arms buried to the elbows in a white industrial bucket full of a pulpy, fibrous, indeterminably meatlike dough. Pale and pasty, he appeared to be made from the same substance as the one he was kneading. The smell was rich and almost rancid; Taft recognized it from somewhere, but he was too busy swallowing back a bit of bile to wonder about it. Kowalczyk, too, turned slightly green in the presence of the odor, but he remained quiet and put on a wan smile as Castro looked up from his bucket and grinned hugely at them as the maître d’ led them into the kitchen.

“Mr. President! I’ll wash off and be with you in just a second. Please, have a seat over there at the chef’s table.” He stuck his chin out in the direction of a small, rickety table in the middle of the kitchen surrounded by folding chairs and a steady stream of bustling yet slovenly groomed cooks.

The server pulled out their chairs. Taft’s shuddered under his weight. “Careful there,” quipped Kowalczyk as he took his own seat and pointed at Taft’s belly. “I don’t think that thing was made for multiple occupants.”

“That’s quite a bold affront, coming from a bald fellow.”

Kowalczyk rubbed his palm over his scalp. “Oh, this? Remember, Bill, I’m a Marine. This was my hairstyle for years.”

“Really? Is that how they deloused you?”

“Gentlemen!” Castro Cozmos stepped up to the table, turned a chair around, and plunked himself down. He smelled of cigarettes and, of course, the gloppy meat-starch he’d been manhandling. With a grubby towel he wiped his forearms and then began cleaning under his yellowish fingernails. “Welcome to Atomizer.” He shook hands with Taft and then Kowalczyk. “Castro Cozmos, molecular gastronomist.”

“Kowalczyk. Hungry man.”

A laugh bubbled up on Castro’s unshaven face. “Hungry! I like hungry. I’ll warn you right now, though: here at Atomizer, we’re not concerned with anything so pedestrian as filling stomachs.”

“So it’s all about taste over substance?” Kowalczyk said, grinning.

“Taste? Why, that’s even more boring.” He pointed toward a line of nearby sous-chefs, each in some stage of unpacking, kneading, slicing, or microwaving a particular packaged food product. “Atomizer isn’t about flavor or sustenance. We’re all about the process.”

Castro snapped his fingers and waved at a cook from the line. “Phillip! Bring us over an order of the, oh, the Deconstructed Nacho Roe.”

Phillip nodded and removed a bowl from the nearest microwave, added a few shots of some powdered substance, then dumped it all into a machine set up on a wheeled cart. With the cord trailing behind, he pushed the cart over to their table. When he pressed a button on the side of the machine, it started whirring and purring like a dervish.

“What you see here,” said Castro, patting the vibrating cart, “is a centrifuge.” A moment later Phillip switched off the contraption and spooned a few hills of miniscule, iridescent yellow globules onto the plates in front of them.

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