My Planet Is on the Menu

How it begins

My home planet appeared between the fish and the sorbet.

I read the menu again.

Third course: the eastern continent of Vessa, lightly reduced.

There were twenty-seven million people on the eastern continent.

I was one of them.

"Ambassador," I said.

Iven adjusted the ceremonial napkin on his knee.

"Beautiful printing."

"What does lightly reduced mean?"

"A conventional expression."

"How lightly?"

He looked at the line.

The imperial dining chamber was full of flowers that had been persuaded to bloom in vacuum. Beyond the glass wall, our planet turned slowly beneath us, green and blue and apparently unaware that it was about to be served with a mineral glaze.

I had been hired to make dessert.

It was supposed to be the most important meal of my career.

At the service door, an imperial kitchen assistant waited with a procurement tablet.

"Chef Voss? We require your approval."

The requisition listed three thousand tons of coastal salt, nine hundred tons of iron-rich soil and the removal rights to a mountain I had climbed with my father.

I did not sign.

"The menu is symbolic," Iven said.

"The quantities aren't."

The assistant glanced toward the head table.

For a moment, I thought she was frightened of me.

Then she lowered her voice.

"Please. The first two courses have already been accepted."

I looked down the table.

Our delegation was praising a soup made from resources they had apparently agreed to surrender.

Across the room, the imperial chef watched me through the service window.

He lifted one finger to his lips.

Not a threat.

A warning.

I took the procurement tablet and crossed out the mountain.

The assistant went pale.

"What would you prefer?"

I thought of the dessert waiting in the cold room. A simple thing made from seeds we had brought voluntarily, with enough sweetness for everyone at the table.

"A different conversation," I said.

Then I went into the kitchen.