milliways_bar | (no subject)

"And the effect is similar, too," Galen says. "Something about these convergent realities tends to ring familiar, actually."

"How is your caf made, then? Coffee is the ground beans of a certain plant."

"Ground seeds from a plant, freeze-dried and then brewed with hot water," Galen says. "Similar again."

"But rather milder in nature, you said. And is the freeze-drying essential?"

He's more familiar with fresh beans.

"That is supposed to be the beat caf," Galen says, "but for the details you'd have to ask my friend Bodhi. I just drink the stuff."

He takes a slow and judging sip. "It is smoother, you're right. In my home, the beans are brought from foreign places and roasted before or after the journey. Dried by the sun or not at all."

"Well, this is good caf," Galen says. "Nothing like the charcoal and peat bog stuff you get in Empire mess halls."

"What is done to it to make it bad caf?"

"Nobody knows," Galen says. "Institutions happen to it, I guess."

"I suppose mass production will always damage quality."

"Not just that," Galen muses. "There is a peculiar combination of cost-cutting, bad processes and total lack of job satisfaction that will ruin any institutional food."

"Perhaps not every. But in most, the food being provided and hot seems to come ahead of taste."

"Something resembling the food or drink that it is named after," Galen nods.

Real food is one of the perks of finally having got away from the Empire.

"Fortunately, I spend little time in such places."

Now, anyway. He may have seen the inside of a workhouse before.

"Where do you get your food?" Galen asks. "And your coffee."

"From my employer's kitchens, when I am at home - though coffee, only in coffee houses should I be in a city. If I am away, at roadside inns."

"What do you travel for?" Galen asks.

"Business. My employer's, for the most part."

"Yes, I used to do that, too," Galen says. "For years, my family and I followed the work, rather than working in places we liked."

"What was your line of work?" he asks with mild interest.

"Energy research, originally," Galen says. "I started out as a scientist and then sort of slid the slippery slope into engineering."

"Are they not different fields?"

Though science in his time is only just out of its infancy.

"They are," Galen says. "But I ended up applying what I had researched."

"Ah." He nods. "Building something related to... energy?"

"First I was led to believe it was for a civilian energy project, but it turned out to be a enormous weapon that killed millions," Galen says, grimly.