“That was...” Trae picked at the frayed ends of his hair. “It was alright.”

“The winner was big name at the time,” Sao said.

"Huh."

They watched the balding professional stand, suppress a gag, and then raise both hands in victory, after which Sao paused the clip and flipped through their other options. “How about we watch this one next? Apparently he was a holder of 5 world records at his peak.”

“Yeah?”

Sao pulled up the fifteen-year-old video and propped the phone against the napkin holder. Then he and Trae, diligent as schoolboys, observed a middle-aged man tuck into three whole chickens. Only three, a long way off from the modern-day record of seven and a half, including bones. That massive record, of course, was now under investigation, along with over a hundred others.

At times, he wondered if he was stuck in a dream - a real dream, not a redness-fueled hallucination. Thinking back made him light-headed. After being given the rest of the day off post-investigation, Sao tossed a sleepy goodbye in Rai’s direction (Carme had already been stowed away into one of the many patrol cars) and headed home. When Sao shuffled through his front door, it was 6 a.m. The rest of the day and the following night were easily spent snoozing in the feathery hold of his bed, except for a brief stint around 8 in the evening when he woke up starving, ordered a pizza, devoured half of it and promptly went back to sleep.

Soon enough, a new work day had come, and the world had changed.

He was quite sure that Rai, and even Van, would call him dramatic for making such a proclaimation. So on their early morning trip to the hospital, he was happy to turn to Trae for support. For all the power of deception he possessed, Trae could not lie about how much he had enjoyed competitive eaters - eaters on his level - taking to the stage. Trae also could not hide the boredom he had toward the eating competitions of yore and their purely and piteously human rosters.

“Well,” Sao said, when the video crawled to a close, the eater doubled and streaming white vomit, “Things certainly change in a few years.”

“Not too much.”

“I forget how long you've lived. You must have seen all sorts.”

“And not like that.” Trae picked up the phone and stared at the blank screen. “Once they find and get rid of all the robots and Life Fountains, and everything else, we’ll be back to the old records. Just three chickens... like nothing's changed in 15 years.”

“I suppose.” Sao seated himself at the edge of a bench. “I’m afraid to see what the fanclub’s saying now that Cadoc’s reveal hit the news. They were right, in a way - Carme was behind something truly terrible.”

“They aren’t saying much. I guess because there isn’t really a fanclub anymore.” Trae scrolled nonchalantly to end of the videos. “The page managers even asked me to take over. I didn’t want it, though. I wouldn’t have taken the job even before Cadoc disappeared.”

Sao laughed and Trae smiled loosely. 

“I don’t like keeping up with news. When I was... put in charge of something important, I was too scared to even answer the phone.” It was back to hair-picking for Trae. “It’s good they aren’t too angry at Carme. Bad for their blood pressure. And she could have done much worse.”

“Yes.” Sao thought of the splayed shape in the backseat of the car. Carved open like a tin can, and yet to his mind’s eye Cadoc was still so much a human. “That robot - Cadoc, I really was stunned. In the end I have to say I’m more impressed than anything else...”

“She didn’t kill anyone. Cadoc didn’t kill anyone either.”

“I don’t think he could. He was built on a model created for hospice care.”

“Machines have been killing people since… forever. People always think they’re safe, even that the machines will keep them safe - but there’s always a way.” Trae spread his arms, turned to the wing of hospital that stood behind them. “The hospital is meant to save people. But there’s definitely things in there that can kill. Right?”

Sao only smiled.

Without further musings, Trae hauled up an infectious yawn, a plume of smoke vented into the air. Sao found himself stepping back for a yawn and a stretch as well. A few tables away a picknicker was caught in the chain and yawned too, curling his arms over the table and setting his head down. The sunlight that bore down on them did not help. The hospital lawn was a radiant green, not a sign of the previous day’s freak snowstorm. The world was at peace, it was napping weather.

Rai emerged from the hospital like a vampire, sticking to the shade, squinting in the sunlight. He waved Sao over. Suppressing a stream of yawns, Sao waved back.

“Looks like it’s time for me to get back to work. You have a good day.”

“Mm.”

Trae had opened up an old Cadoc video. The official channel had been shut down, but backups were summarily re-uploaded for insult, posterity, or the morbidly curious. Rai was calling, but Sao found himself hanging onto the line of thoroughly formed words from Cadoc’s speakerphone mouth, just as intently he had the first time he’d tuned in. Cadoc had a voice fit for springtime, a beautifully timed trickle - perfect for lulling one into a nap.

“Good afternoon,” said the voice of Cadoc, which was really the voice of Carme. “First of all…”

Sao and Trae waited.

“Thank you all for coming to see me at the quarter-finals yesterday. I wanted to thank you all for your support.”

Rai was now tramping through the verdant field like a soldier through a swamp. 

“Maybe you could say he was dangerous.” Sao sighed. “He made eating look so easy. I still wish he did not have to be destroyed.”

Trae looked up. “Destroyed?”

“We’re one step closer to the finals in the South,” Carme continued.

“As per regulation. And there’s a certain corporation who’d want him out of the public eye soon and permanently...” Sao shook his head as Rai closed in on their nonsense. “Okay. I really need to go now.”

“It will be my first time in the South.” Here Carme injected one of those calm, fatal pauses. “I think we can make it that far.”

Sao turned. “Goodbye.”

---

Traffic swept by, falling behind them with airy howls. Rai gripped the steering wheel as if at gunpoint and yanked the car in lane for an exit. They ground up to a desolate strip mall, just emptied of its lunchtime crowd. The air smelled smoky, meaty. Sao saw the lettering of Bluna Burger calling out to them across the strip, as well as a handful of other attractive greasetraps in between, but Rai slipped past them into the back alley, and stepped Sao into a salad bar tucked into a tiny nook behind some water pipes. The patchouli reached him before the sight of the wooden sign.

It was pleasantly furnished in plenty of wood and ferns. Everything was a soft, earthen color, like a log cabin in the woods. The menu only listed salads. 

Sao ordered for them at the counter. The clerk was a cheerful, educated girl who had a lot to say about the source and quality of the lettuce and kale. The coffee order was an elaborate process. He smiled broadly for her; knowing she was spared Rai’s frustrations when it came to the detail of artisanal menus.

He then joined Rai by the window table - one of only six seats in the shop. There were a variety of potted plants on the sill, and he was pleasantly surprised to find they were real, leaves chewed by small bugs and dusted with pale fungi. Outside the window was a view of the blank wall at the opposite end of the hallway.  But Rai was focused on the television that was mounted directly overhead. He was either frowning at its odd angle, or the lilting tone of the news report.

And in latest updates, the Royal Food and Beverage Expo has been shut down early, and will not be continuing into the upcoming weekend as originally planned, pending an investigation by authorities regarding a very surprising turn of events in the Meat Cup Semifinals.

Sao screwed back his neck back to see.

2-day tickets for the weekend are to be refunded, and corporate partners have been requested to call the hotline below for negotiation and compensation...

“You’ve chosen the perfect place for some news catchup,” Sao commented, his chair tipped onto two legs.

“I’ve had more than enough of the food-expo-cancellation news.” Rai drummed at his phone. “I chose this place for the salad.”

Their drinks were set down. Rai’s coffee was gone almost as soon as it came.

“So, I checked in on Basil,” Rai said. “With Kep in custody, Nero weeded out, and Cadoc permanently out of commission, Basil is officially the triple hand-me-down winner of the Meat Cup Semifinals, and the top representative of Central region.”

Sao pulled his chair in, massaging his neck. “Congratulations to him. Is he doing better?”

“Not really. He’s on and off, still bedridden - not in any shape for a celebration. Or the finals - so I guess the South is taking the crown again.” Rai rolled his eyes to the ceiling, catching an eyeful of footage from the Expo on the screen. There was a shot of the semifinalists at the public pin test, before their fateful match. Sao felt a ghost of a smile cross his face. There was Nero holding a hand over his bandage, flanked with a maid at either side. Kep with his legs kicked out, grinning straight at the camera. Basil and his posse holding up victory hand signs. And Cadoc, positioned on a chair with Carme behind him, fading into the ring of reporters. She would have been indistinguishable had he not been looking for her.

Rai closed his eyes. “No chance at that 2 mil grand prize. Too bad.”

“But Basil is still getting last weekend’s winnings, isn’t he?”

“The eating league and police are settling the check transfer with his wife and staff - they’ll likely end up draining it on the medical bills.” Rai uncapped the cup of coffee to see if there were any remains, and was disappointed. “Not just from that day - we’re talking long term. Damage to the throat and stomach was pretty severe and the poison also did a number on his nervous system. He wasn’t keeping food down - wasn’t even swallowing in the first place - so he got put on a feeding tube yesterday. There’s some concern that it means he’ll never be able to eat on his own again.”

“That is awful.”

Rai shrugged, a bit too forcefully. “The effects of the job might have caught up with him eventually. Remember, the guy just was already in and out of surgery most of last year. Competitive eating was risky enough before Life Fountains and robots and god-knows-what-else started to get involved - anyway, what that means he doesn’t have great grounds for a lawsuit. Docs say he was showing signs of gastroparesis before the Semifinals. Weak or slowed stomach movements: the gut is stretched so far so much, the muscles starts to go slack, can’t keep things moving, and - you get the picture.” Rai snapped the cup lid back on. “And it can’t just be swapped out like an artificial stomach. This is apparently pretty common among natural competitive eaters, as the press has been starting to call them--”

The salads arrived, nests of pleasant greens and yellows, with white meats and garlic flecks.

“And it’s not like he can quit cold turkey. There’s relapse from years of training, it’s ugly stuff.”

Sao picked up his fork. “Please, let’s talk about something else.”

“Unfortunately there we don’t have too many positives to discuss, if that’s what you’re looking for. You know, for a case without fatalities, it turned out to be a real downer-”

Sao tossed his salad, tried to focus on the aroma of garlic and sesame. “I heard the North parents were cooperative and finally came clean.”

“That’s really stretching the definition of ‘positive’. The one tangent of the case that did involve a death. Death of a kid, no less - even if it was an accident.” Rai grimaced into his forkful of spinach. “You should have heard them on the way to the station, ‘we’re so sorry’, ‘didn’t think it would get this far’, ‘it was never meant to happen.’ ‘Accidents happen.’ Man, did I get an earful of that. Accidents.”

“I didn’t get to speak to them at all, but it sounds like they weren’t very sincere.”

Rai’s red eyes, which seemed to have attained an even rustier look in the last few minutes, laid on him for a long while. Sao speared up his lettuce, indifferent, until Rai got whatever he was looking for. “I’ve never had a kid, or lost a kid, and god only hopes I never will, and I don’t doubt they really did feel bad once they were caught… yeah, I do believe it was an accident.” Rai gnashed up some kale. “But I also know that I’ve put years into identifying shifters, magic, inhuman causes for human disappearances and trying to get HQ to take them seriously. But along comes a normal human couple who ‘disappear’ their own son for the better part of 20 years. And it’s supposed to be okay, because it was an accident? How can we ever move forward to protect ourselves, people, Central, whatever from any greater threat if we’re stuck chasing down ordinary people who are offing their own kids?”

Rai swallowed and snarled in the same breath, and ordered a second coffee by raising his cup like a torch, alerting the cashier who had been staring at them the entire time. 

The cup slammed down. “Call me callous, but, twenty years of hiding a murder can’t be flaked away with even the most heartfelt apology.”

“I see. So it’s personal on some level.”

“Personal? We’re talking about -- never mind.” Rai sighed. “You wouldn’t have liked them.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Sao uncapped his cup of tea for the first time during their meal, and stirred in some sugar. “You’re better at reading people than I am, for sure.”

Rai’s eyes seemed ready to burst from his head.

“I expect they’ll be facing punishment of some sort in the end.”

“You - ugh - it isn’t clear yet. Like I said, they made it clear they’re very sorry, and that’s all the police have to go on at the moment. Carme could lay the hammer on them, since she’s been watching them ever since Cadoc’s death, but she’s gone quiet. She didn’t want to make any further statement. She’s got problems of her own.” Rai’s coffee came, and his face brightened instantly. “Have you managed to talk to her lately?”

“Not at all. I’m not even sure where she’s being held.” Sao blew on his tea, stirred it some more. It wasn’t ready yet. “Should I be concerned?”

“Not if you aren’t already.” Rai began to dump sugar into his new coffee. “How about Cadoc? Did you check out the reports on him?”

“I don’t really want to. I doubt I’ll understand any of the technical details.”

The response to this was an uncharacteristically slow slurp of coffee. Rai was eyeing him again with searchlight focus. “Cut me off if this is out of line, but you sounded pretty upset at Carme the other night. Or was it at Cadoc you were thinking of?”

“It’s not worth being mad at something that isn’t even alive. Although, okay - it would be a lie to say I never saw him as human. Carme, though, had her reasons. And they both gave us - me at least, plenty of entertainment.”

Rai’s lip twitched.

“What she said, about ill will and injustice being necessary for survival - she was part of the game, of course, but from an observer, in retrospect... the world of competitive eating as we know it only became great on the backs of its cheaters. It is truly terrible that honest humans like Basil were crushed in unwitting matchup and I am a little burned at being fooled into flirting with a robot and controller...”

Rai’s face contorted as he began to choke. 

“But that’s what I get for being another thrill-chaser.” Sao scraped his plate, waiting for Rai to catch his breath. “Carme wasn’t the only one disrupting the world of eating, of course. Kep knew the truth and he let it go, Nero knew of Kep’s actions, and he let the game go on too. I wonder now if Cobalt and his staff knew too; Carme did say bribery was in the picture.” He sighed. “It was corrupted top to bottom, but the result was what we wanted to see. The boring familiarity of eating taken to its natural limit. Well, the illusion of being natural. The foul play just catered to the will of the crowd.” Sao picked up his fork again with zest. “I have the right to be ashamed of myself - so, no I won’t hold it against Cadoc. A robot, of all things.”

“That’s a bright world you’re seeing,” Rai said, hoarse from coffee in his airways. “That’s Carme’s world of the future, huh? The inevitable showdown of superpowers and supertechnology - making its stand in the competitive eating circuit, and beyond.”

Sao crunched, thoughtful. “One thing I hope - when the android ban lifts - is that robots start to look a little more interesting. Why waste their power trying to fit the mould? Why look human?”

“Who says it’s a waste? They’re tools, their appearances are tools, that’s it. Shifters are the same way. Humans still hold a lot of power in the world. You gotta seep into the flock to get close and grab hold of it yourself.”

“What a grim prospect.” 

The salads were gone, and so was Rai’s second coffee. It all came down to Sao and his half-drunk tea, but he was in no mood to rush. He scraped at the lid, eyes on the ceiling. “Just think. Carme was a fairly mild person. Mishandling of blood aside - she was clearly not violent. Her robot was a plain copy of herself with a somewhat quirky, convenient backstory. And he was only made to eat. An android of different purpose could do so much worse. Who knows what other insidious applications are going on in the backdrop of life, by those who get away with it.”

“Like we don’t get enough stress just investigating humans.” Rai shrugged. “At least you could say it’s an additional thrill.”

Sao laughed. “Well, look at that. You found something positive after all.”

Rai was suddenly absorbed by some messages on his phone, and Sao was left to finish his tea and thoughts alone. Despite the sunniness of Sao's jeering, when Rai really began to smile, it was not a settling look.

“Are you busy the rest of the day?” Rai asked.

Cup against his mouth, Sao did not respond.

The phone disappeared into some pocket of Rai’s jacket. “The Upwater cops cleared up the overgrown yard behind the old North house. They just dug up what looks like an old lacy blanket...”

Draining his tea with the speed of a glacier, Sao kept them in place, at rest, in the peaceful confines of the salad bar and its mercifully bland, grey view until he could no longer. He didn’t have to reply to Rai, there was no denying the old lacy blanket in their future, and maybe there were some bones, and some old chocolate wrappers. 

So he stood, gathered his coat, but chose not to put it on. It was finally spring, after all.

Finally.

They were sent off by an addition from the news channel, or rather, a station sponsor, which went:

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