BY LAUREN BUSSER
#257: The First Food Eaten by a U.S. Astronaut Was Applesauce
The fridge is full of food that no one wants to eat. In a few days, it will be no good and someone cleaning out the fridge will throw it in the trash. Helen wants to trot out the saying about starving children but knows it’s pointless.
She takes out a Tupperware of shredded chicken and rice, places it into the microwave, and hits the REVERSE button.
She watches dinner spin under the heating element slowly, at first, and then faster and faster. The food clings to the side of the plate and separates into its original ingredients; a tomato, some fresh herbs, a chicken breast, and uncooked rice.
She marvels at this each time, how the meal she prepared so expertly a few days ago separates and retakes its original shapes. She wonders how many people actually use the ‘reverse’ function on their microwaves, and how many pounds of waste this has saved the planet.
It’s still early, the projections are out, but the real effects won’t be known for decades. She knows this, and yet, she marvels at it as she takes the plate out of the microwave, separates the food and stores it in the fridge and cupboard. She continues to sort through the fridge.
# # #
#1,446: About One in Every 2,000 Babies is Born With Teeth
It’s the fifth time she’s been placed under general anesthesia. Every time it’s been routine--for the doctors; not her.
This time it’s her wisdom teeth. The assistant ties a tourniquet around her arm and starts the IV.
“Taking requests for dreams. What do you want to dream about?” the assistant says.
Helen remembers talking with her grandmother on a cruise ship while eating waffles and pancakes drenched in syrup from the buffet when she casually says she wants to go to Australia.
“What are you going to see in Australia?” her grandmother asked.
“Everything,” she answered. “And maybe try Vegemite.”
# # #
#1,447: France Used the Guillotine As Recently at 1977
They’d been walking for eighteen hours when they reached this house. Helen and a few strangers that became her friends loaded their packs with canned goods from the miraculously untouched kitchen. That night, they cook rice and beans over a small fire with cans of cling peaches for dessert.
They are sleeping with full bellies when the sirens wail and the gunfire starts.
There’s a blast and then the building starts to collapse. One person ends up trapped under a fallen crossbeam that used to support the second floor, but now bisects the living room where they had taken refuge.
“We have to go!” Helen shouts.
A piece of the ceiling falls, barely missing their heads. The second floor begins to splinter and fills the air with dust.
Outside there is shouting and gunfire, and Helen thinks she hears drones. They run along narrow roads ducking into tight alleyways until they’re out of town.
# # #
#732: The Chicken is the Closest Living Relative of Tyrannosaurus Rex
Helen reads a Twitter thread from a newspaper historian about how the papers in historical dramas are never historically accurate. He has photos and explains his rationale succinctly.
He closes the thread by saying, “That, is the smallest hill on which I am willing to die.”
Helen thinks about the smallest hill on which she is willing to die. She sure, it has to do with the anatomy of an uncooked egg. Her sister gave her a recipe that specifically told her to remove the small white patch in the egg yolk.
When asked why, her sister said, “It’s the rooster’s thing…his junk.”
“No, it’s not,” Helen says. “It keeps the yoke suspended. It’s like the egg version of an umbilical cord.”
“No Hel, I don’t think you’re right. Grandma always told me it was rooster genitalia.”
Helen knows she’s wrong, but doesn’t say anything, resolving to make sure she doesn’t remove the white bit the next time she bakes for her sister.
# # #
#144: Texas is the Only State that Permits Residents to Cast Absentee Ballots from Space
Helen is floating in one of the zero-gravity decks on the station. Through the porthole, she can see a star and marvels at how big it is now that she’s up close.
She remembers a trip to Pisa, with a tour guide telling her exactly where to stand and how to position her hand so that it looked like she was holding up the tower. She played along because it was the tourist-y thing to do, and because the fake grunt on her face gave her friends a laugh.
It would be funnier now, assuming that the tower was still standing.
She’s been floating in space for five years, eating foil packets of protein made from dehydrated tofu, quinoa, and nuts pulverized into a powder. If she’s desperate, she mixes it with the vegetable and algae mush from the hydroponic garden. But, most of the time, she drinks it with the recycled water and whatever moonshine the engineers make from the still they cobbled together.
She remembers watching M*A*S*H and hearing Hawkeye order a martini so dry it could be declared a wasteland. She floats up the observation deck, looks at the blue marble she once called home and thinks about how it’s like that dry martini.
Lauren Busser is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. She spends a lot of time watching and writing about television for Tell-Tale TV where she is an Associate Editor. When she's not writing she's obsessing about the apocalypse, thinking about how likely it was she was burned at the stake as a witch, baking, or knitting. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions, StarTrek.com, Popshot Quarterly, Cease, Cows, and others. She tweets at @LaurenBusser and shares photos of dogs, knitted objects, books, and baked goods at @madamedefarge on Instagram. You can find more of her work at laurenbusser.com.