Sourdough

by Robin Sloan

Here’s a thing I believe about people my age: we are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted.

Greatest among us are those who can deploy “my friend” to total strangers in a way that is not hollow, but somehow real and deeply felt; those who can make you, within seconds of first contact, believe it.

The internet: always proving that you’re not quite as special as you suspected.

paroxysms of cosmic delight.

What a lovely term.

This was us, our time and place: we could wrestle sophisticated robots into submission, but were confounded by the most basic processes of life.

Maybe that was my great weakness: if a task was even mildly challenging, any sense of injustice drained away and I simply worked quietly until I was done. I guess I learned that in school.

I was preternaturally productive in those hours. At first I theorized it was something about the rhythm of baking, the quick bursts of attention alternating with mandatory pauses, but then I decided it was probably something simpler: I was happy.

Scoping myself out in my stand-up mirror, I turned and gently twerked.

Oh my god

food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice—and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.

I heard from others that Mr. Marrow was obviously Anthony Bourdain;

Oh no

I told them both I didn’t have time for this bullshit, and if anybody wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it via text message like a normal person.