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They're not important. They've never been important. They're small, weak, unfit for war and in all terms they're just insignificant. Their small collection of worlds has no great strategic value and few rare resources. Even the area in which they live is the backwater of the galaxy. Most people should never have heard of them. They're not even particularly interesting to look at, being bog-standard and average in all terms. Not pretty, not ugly, not charming but also not boorish. In the grand scheme of things, they should in time just be like extras and background characters in a holovid. And yet, they've earned a fair bit of success that comes from a quite unusual area.

It wasn't the first meeting that revealed it. Not the official induction of their little race into the Grand Galactic Accord. It wasn't their meager trade deals with other weak neighboring species. It was the smell. From their small embassy, there emanated the most wondrous and mysterious scents. Smells that were unusual and unknown to the thousands of races living on the ecumenopolis known as High Concordia, where the Accord is based. It became quite popular to go near the Terran Embassy at certain times of the day, when the building seemed to be like an exotic and unusual flower that would only open to reveal wondrous scents at specific moments. Nobody was actually certain who was responsible for that delectable array of smells, as the building housing the Terran Embassy was also housing about 20 other races. Nobody actually went around asking about it just in case that the wondrous scents, so different from the normally noxious air of that planet-spanning city, went away. That could have been the end of it, if it wasn't for a member of the embassy staff, a certain envoy Markus Bergman, from the Terran homeworld.

He had attended some interesting places where people gather for partying, and had struck up a relationship with a vaguely mantis-like alien. This human man had been dating his new bug-like boyfriend for a few months, before they got stuck inside his small apartment together during a major traffic breakdown. The human man, of Swedish descent, had recently gotten a care package from Earth, with food from his home. One of these items was a can of something which most humans finds utterly disgusting. Sürströmming. Fermented herring. The alien looked curiously at his soft boyfriend as the human Bergman opened the can underneath water. But when the can was retrieved from the protective water, the bug-like alien's senses were assaulted with something unexpected. A strong, powerful, and to his alien senses wondrous scent. Bergman was surprised when his boyfriend ripped the can out of his hands and greedily devoured the contents of the can. Now, this dish is not for most humans, so he had been quite surprised the reaction of the alien. Even more so when his bug-boyfriend emitted a pleasant buzzing sound, and was told that the can had been the single most delicious thing that he had ever eaten. Bergman was intrigued, and began trying out various meals with his love.

Turns out that every meal was delicious. Gourmet even. Even the canned stuff. Being a modern bug-like alien, he livestreamed the entire experience, sharing it to a small but very intrigued group of aliens.

From there the rumor spread. Slowly. But surely. There were private inquiries with the few humans on High Concordia, which resulted in a surprisingly infectious joy. Curious aliens who'd import a ready-made meal from Earth, and experience what can only be described as a religious awakening upon eating their first ramen noodles. When the Terran Embassy had a cultural exposition that was open to the public with cultural delicacies from the Indian subcontinent, the police had to be brought in to control the mob that had formed, who had been begun fighting to get access to great food. The people who'd been hanging around the embassy building finally found out exactly what was causing the great scent-experience they knew so well. And considering what the usual diets were, consisting of functional and incredibly tasteless nutrient bars, people were interested to learn if the taste was as good as the scents had been. The human ambassadors, seeing the possibility for financial benefits, sent back coded messages to Earth, while they purchased various empty locations around the planet. They had a plan now, they'd seen an empty niche that they could exploit.

Soon, in 25 ''cultural offices'', chefs from Earth began building up their kitchens. They opened the doors, and let the curious public enter. And it was a massive success. The likes of which is frankly ridiculous. They had to bring out human security forces to close some of the places during the night, though some hopeful customers even camped outside the cultural offices. After a week the number of chefs and kitchen personal brought in from Earth had tripled, and the number of restaurants had doubled. The places were open all night, 27 hours a day, 8 days a week, what with High Concordia having a different cycle than Earth. Soon everyone had heard of the human food. Galactic media talked about the craze for food that actually tastes ludicrously good. Food that doesn't taste vaguely of ash or the horrid paste that most races ate, that was wonderful.

And it might have been a little too successful as a matter of fact. Some pundits said that human foods must be full of addictive chemicals, which admittedly some are. Some said that there were brain-controlling parasites in the meals. But no matter how many people officially spoke against the new fad of human food, people kept coming. The culinary arts hadn't been perfected. Too many species had forgotten them, their ancestors instead choosing incredibly boring, but ultimately healthy, functional food. But humanity had always placed a focus on it. On perfecting their meals, creating concepts like haute cuisine, of making everything a taste experience. The lack of culinary arts were so bad that even the average United Earth Army MREs were a step up from what most species had eaten before. But even with the increased amount of kitchen personal, the various human government-owned restaurants couldn't keep up with the demand.

Until the Greek restaurant hired an out of luck alien to help out. They had her help out with the dishes and the tables at the beginning, but eventually they found out she had an excellent nose for testing the and higher quality of ingredients. With that in mind, they began teaching her how to cook like a human would. She was a natural. Before she had been a transient, out of work, but now she was in her element. And the Greek place sent around a few low-key coded messages to the other restaurants that aliens could indeed cook. They'd already started to hire alien waiters and cleaning staff, but now they started to be on the lookout for those who might have the knack for food. Because there would always be people who had the talent for something like cooking, even if the art didn't exist in the culture, or if it didn't exist. There have been great programmers born before the invention of the first computer, people who if they hadn't been hunter-gathers in the stone age would have been incredible smiths, those who could have been wonderful artists if they hadn't been born in an age where art was forbidden.

And it was needed. Because human food was getting valuable. The courts of great lords and the houses of high politicians and great leaders were asking for human food now. But it turns out that the greatest of human chefs aren't needed, because every human capable of just basic human cooking would be greater than whatever they were using before. A very surprised cleaning lady was abducted one day from a small mining station because she was human. She wasn't a great chef, but the pirate lord who captured her showered her with various ingredients from across the galaxy and commanded her to make a great feast. Surprising herself, she made something quite decent but rather simple using whatever there was aboard the massive pirate vessel, and despite it not being the greatest meal in history, was so good that she was given more then twenty times her old wage if she'd stick around and feed the pirates. She agreed, and being creative while using alien ingredients to make human meals, created a whole new style of meals by accident.

The Terran Embassy established a cooking academy on High Concordia, and found that countless aliens applied instantly. And it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough. There just wasn't enough people to teach, and there were too many species, too many people interested in cooking, that it was impossible to teach them all. Theoretically, they could make holovids teaching cooking, but with the various aliens unused to human foods and unsure on what things should look or smell like, they'd have trouble teaching people right. They decided to accept that for now, things would be hard to deal with. That they couldn't adequately teach everyone. But that wasn't enough for aliens. Some began to head to Earth. Which was actually quite useful as Earth and her colonies actually lacked people, since emigration from the United Earth territories had been much greater than expected. For the first time since first contact, the population of Earth and her colonies began to stabilize and improve, as aliens by the hundreds of thousands moved to the quaint backwater that was the center of the taste revolution that had gripped the galaxy.

Some learned the art of cooking, many others just fell in love with the Earth, green and wondrous after the environmental restorations of the mid to late 21st century. It wasn't exactly an agrarian planet, or a primitive world, but Earth, despite lacking the great wonders that there are on many other worlds, had a soul that was welcoming. Humanity, having left behind bigotry and short-sighted foolishness as a result of the upheavals of the pre-contact era, welcomed the hungry and curious aliens with open arms. Soon aliens, having assimilated into the very food-positive cultures of the humans, were quickly as normal in the various delightful cities of the human race as humans were. Maybe humanity was small, in the grand scheme of things. But every major regime has a human or human trained chef-corps. Worlds with larger human minorities became veritable centers of culture and enlightenment, as the entire populations of those alien worlds learned how to cook in the human style. Of course, millions of worlds have only heard of the humans, the race that mastered eating and making food to a point beyond belief, where even the most basic adult human was capable of making a delicious meal. But one day, yes, one day, a short mostly hairless and mostly harmless creature will land on such a world, and open up a small restaurant, which will make them quite rich. And finally filling a hole in the soul of the people of that world.

Bite by bite from a delicious meal, made by someone who understood the human value of good food.

/r/ApocalypseOwl

This, O 'tis such a fine thing this. Very honoured to have your esteemed work Wordsmith!

I juggled the R15.5 ration pack in my hand while walking to work, trying to imagine it was that leg of beef I'd eaten years ago at my acceptance party. It was the only time I'd ever tasted anything that pleasurable. It had been so mouth-watering that in the years since I'd often dreamed of it.

A menagerie of humans and bots passed as I was walking by. It was more difficult to tell the difference between them than it used to be, but the bots had a sheen to their skin that could only come from the plastic compound they were made of. If that wasn't enough, they were always perfectly shaped, unlike most humans. My grandparents had often said that the bots were weird when they were launched, but we were used to them. They were always helpful or willing to give advice. My only problem with them was the ration packs.

Any bot would quote you figures from the Age of Obesity, telling a twisted tale of how people used to die from coronary artery disease because their diets were terrible. "Food was everywhere and people ate too much of it." Then they would state how R1.X ration packs were the answer. "All the nutrition you need in a single pouch, without anything to keep you wanting more." Blech. I knew they had something else out there, otherwise, they wouldn't have had "real" food at my acceptance party.

I slurped down the ration pack right before I arrived at my nondescript office building, tossing the pack into the recycling bin. Through the rotating door was the bio-scanner, which I walked straight into. There was a quick flash before the bot at the desk waved me on. "You arrived at 7:57 AM" flashed on the marquee screen above the elevator as I got on. Upstairs, my team was ready the moment I walked into my office. George had my cup of water on the desk and was prepared to start my shoulder massage. Rosie had my tasks for the day laid out on the monitor and was already in the supervisory chair.

"Welcome," they said in unison.

"What a wonderful day!" George said as he slightly adjusted his bowtie. I was always envious of the bots' ability to stay totally put together. They didn't sweat, they didn't need to shower, and they never needed to change clothes. I'd never seen George in a different tux than the one he had on, and it looked as perfect today as it had years ago.

"You have a lot of tasks today, so I wouldn't waste a moment." Rosie offered stern advice as she crossed her legs and stared at me with that laser focus that my parents often said was "creepy." I never understood what their problem was. She was just doing her job, making sure that not a moment of my time at the office was spent not working.

I began at once, opening up the first file on my to-do list. My job was to review conversations between humans and bots and point out places where the bot could have sounded more human-like and why. Some of the conversations I read sounded pretty good, others required considerable effort. It was easy for me, I'd tested in the 98th percentile when doing this task at school. They said it was the main reason I'd passed the acceptance test.

Occasionally George would massage my shoulders or change my position in my desk chair for optimal posture. He ensured that nothing I did in the office could be considered harmful to my health. He was also responsible for serving me an R15.6 packet for lunch, which he brought up on a covered tray as if to make it seem fancier than it was. I'd often joke that I wished it was a leg of beef or something else, and he'd always give me a death glare before a lecture on how bad for my health that would be.

Rosie started the lunch timer - twenty minutes, and I ate while making chitchat with them. The bots had pretend families, pets, and lives which they liked to go into great detail about at times, to give them a human-like character. I usually forgot that what happened to them wasn't real, and whenever Rosie told me her dog was sick I responded with real sympathy. "This was normal," they said.

I started work again in the afternoon still feeling hungry, as I always did. Sometimes it got to me enough that I felt like screaming at George, or worse - punching him in the face. I never revealed these thoughts, as I knew they'd send me straight to Colony H, where the unaccepteds were sent. The only work there was backbreaking manual labor, and it was the impetus for every child to study as hard as they could in order to gain acceptance. The most I could do was tell a joke about that leg of beef.

When I left the office I spent time thinking about the old days in the early 21st century, the ones I'd read about in books as a child before they were confiscated. The world was harsher back then. People lived their lives without any control at all. The life expectancy was only 75 years, and people died from all sorts of diseases that we could cure today. There were murders, muggings, shootings, and all sorts of death. Safety mechanisms just didn't exist.

What a horrible world that had to be. By the time I had slurped down my R15.7 ration pack for dinner, I'd forgotten all about that leg of beef.

r/StoriesToThinkAbout

Amazing work as always Apocalypse Owl! Poignant and precise with every word and phrase!

Oh god; that was terrifying and deep. The training of the bots to be better while simultaneously being frustrated with how good they'd gotten. Sympathy for the bots doing their jobs of enforcing rigid routines while lamenting the lack of freedom. The double think is palpable.

Thanks for creating and sharing this dystopian world of doom.

Glad you enjoyed it, that's exactly what I was going for :)