Cherry Jubilee

Chapter 11

The restaurant is the one building in the village of premium users that holds its shape, even if that shape is like a cathedral viewed through a kaleidoscope. Minds wash against it and shimmer through it, but its rule transcends even the whims of its patrons.

Clouds are abandoned at the door. Inside, our thoughts are our own. For a moment, when we enter, there is only the rustling of fat bodies and the cold slap of bare feet on stone, before a symphonic organ plays a soft choral welcome, and rows upon rows of candles guide us to our seats.

Carol and I share an altar with a couple of other pachyderms, lost in their own conversation. I notice one of them is Michael Koresh, but other than a split second of eye contact, he doesn't acknowledge me.

There's room underneath the altar to sprawl our legs out as much as we like, and Carol does so right away, making herself the picture of comfort.

"Tomorrow we should go down and put in an appearance in the common realms," she says. "People need to know you're their saviour."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," I laugh. "There's a lot of work still to do before anyone's saved."

"It's never too early to get your story circulating. People get to choose which of us they want to feed when their time's up, you know? They rank their favourites one to eight in order of preference. Do you want to be the skinniest girl in the village for a trillion years?"

"That sounds exhausting just to think about."

She nods. "Exactly."

A regular sized woman appears at our table.

"Hello exalted ones," she says, without a whiff of sarcasm. "My name is Tammy, I'll be your server today."

"Hey Tammy," says a lady to my left. "Whatever happened to that cute little robot who used to work here?"

Carol rolls her eyes at me.

Tammy looks at me too. I recognise her. She was the woman at the buffet yesterday who wanted to be a lump of hot gravel in my taint.

She smiles politely at the lady. "Several of us regular users have been granted the honour of picking up the slack while Cherry is undergoing routine maintenance. In exchange for a few extra months here, naturally."

"How enterprising," says the lady. "May we meet our meals?"

Tammy nods. "Of course."

She leaves, and returns moments later with several companions, servers like her, leading a sombre column of men and women.

At the servers' direction, the meals climb up onto the altar and stare down at us, shivering.

The other patrons lean back, as their chairs flatten into soft beds. Carol shows me how to do the same.