They sit on the couch in Tao’s living room; Tao is eating his noodle dinner and Kris is to his side, eyes on the television. The television shows a program Kris recognizes to be “humorous”, with absurd situations and improbable repercussions. The laugh track booms when the elder uncle character slips on his niece’s spilled banana pudding, hooting as he falls to the ground.
Kris doesn’t understand this kind of humor but Tao likes it. Whenever Tao laughs, Kris looks to him out of the corner of his eye. His smile. Kris’ own lips twitch whenever he sees or hears Tao’s laugh. It means he’s happy, at least that’s what Kris’ brain cavity tells him.
Beyond learning typical human discourses like the history Kris has seen in Tao’s notebooks, Kris records Tao’s facial reactions to certain stimuli and then tries to mimic them as well as he can. He’s already installed with chips for emotions but Kris would rather learn on his own than have it all fed to him.
“Is there anything you’d like to learn to do?” Tao asks during a commercial break.
Kris, with his eyes still on the television screen, says, “How to cook.” The niece character on the television show had been trying to create a magnificent treat for her uncle and ended up almost dislocating his right tibiofemoral components.
“Cooking…hmm, I guess that could be easy enough.” Tao stands and ushers Kris to the kitchen, empty noodle bowl in his hand. “I don’t want to cook anything too complicated or expensive so...” He opens one of the top cabinets and pulls out a square orange packet. More noodles. “There’s no way you can mess this up,” Tao promises, pulling out a pot. “Just fill this up with water. Wait a bit until he heats. Dump the noodles in and then dump whatever else you want to eat with the noodles. Beef, chicken, egg too but that comes later.”
He pushes the square packet into one of Kris’ hands, motioning for him to take the pot with his free hand.
Kris glances at the package, memorizing what the ideal noodles should look like. With the picture now running through many filters in his head, he starts heating the water and empties the noodles in when his internal timer has counted down a few minutes. Tao watches this all, silent. He makes no move to correct Kris or command him to do anything.
Kris stirs the pot and, with his eyes on the noodle packet, asks if Tao has any spices in his cupboard.
“Spices? Can you…taste?”
“We shall see,” Kris says quietly, eyes on the bubbling red contents of his pot.
After it’s all been cooked, he adds a little more spices than humanly sane, evident by the little strangled noise Tao makes. “Is that…are you sure you can eat that? I didn’t think you needed to eat anyway.”
“I do not. My energy is from charging. Nevertheless…” Kris lifts the small pot to his lips and takes a curious sip, attempting to savor the taste in his mouth.
“Well? What does it taste like?”
Kris clicks his tongue, taking another sip. He doesn’t taste anything.
Tao tries to restrain him when he makes to pick up the spices again, “Whoa! You’re going to use it all up—“
