I Have No Meth and I Must Cook

Chapter 1

Limp, the body of Tuco hung from the pink palette; unsupported—hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.

When Tuco joined our group and looked up at himself, it was already too late for us to realize that, once again, Mista White had duped us, had had its fun; it had been a diversion on the part of the machine. Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had produced it.

Tuco went white. It was almost as though he had seen a voodoo icon, and was afraid of the future. "Oh, God," he mumbled, and walked away. The three of us followed him after a time, and found him sitting with his back to one of the smaller chittering banks, his head in his hands. Lydia knelt down beside him and stroked his hair. He didn't move, but his voice came out of his covered face quite clearly. "Tight, tight, tight."

It was our one hundred and ninth year in the computer.

Gustavo Fring (which was the name the machine had forced him to use, because Heisenburg amused itself with saying peoples' entire names) was sure that there were canned goods in the ice caverns. Tuco and I were very dubious. "It's another shuck," I told them. "Like the goddam frozen elephant Mista White sold us. Todd almost went out of his mind over that one. We'll hike all that way and it'll be putrified or some damn thing. I say forget it, bitch. Stay here, yo, it'll have to come up with something pretty soon or we'll die."

Todd shrugged. Three days it had been since we'd last eaten. Worms. Thick, ropey.

Gustavo Fring was no more certain. He knew there was the chance, but he was getting thin. It couldn't be any worse there, than here. Colder, but that didn't matter much. Hot, cold, hail, lava, boils or locusts—it never mattered: the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die.

Lydia decided us. "I've got to have something, Jesse. Maybe there'll be some Bartlett pears or peaches. Please, Jesse, let's try it."

I gave in easily. What the hell. Mattered not at all. Lydia was grateful, though. She took me twice out of turn. Even that had ceased to matter. And she never came, so why bother? But the machine giggled every time we did it. Loud, up there, back there, all around us, he snickered. It snickered. Most of the time I thought of Mista White as it, without a soul; but the rest of the time I thought of it as him, in the masculine ... the paternal ... the patriarchal ... for he is a jealous people. Him. It. God as Daddy the Deranged.