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Sourdough
Robin Sloan
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Sourdough
Robin Sloan
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About This Book
Leavened by the same infectious intelligence and lovable nerdiness that made Robin Sloan's Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore such a sensation, Sourdough marks the triumphant return of a unique and beloved young writer. Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighbourhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her - feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she's providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer's market, and a whole new world opens up.
When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly? Sourdough is a soup of skilfully balanced ingredients: there's satire, a touch of fantasy, a pinch of SF, all bound up with a likeable narrator whose zest for life is infectious. The novel opens a door on a world that's both comforting and thrillingly odd. - The Guardian
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THE ISLAND OF THE MAZG
THAT NIGHT, I SLEPT ON MY FUTON on Cabrillo Street, satisfied with my decision. There were paths ahead that didnāt require the Clement Street starter. I still had the Vitru-vian, and I had become possibly the worldās leading expert on the use of robot automation in kitchen processes.
In the morning, I was startled awake by a bad dream that melted away as soon as I tried to remember it. It was dark outside. I decided I would go to the Marrow Fair and make my peace with the starter. It felt like it should be a private affair.
I rode my bike to the pier and waited for Carl to arrive. The atmosphere was close and clammy, heavy clouds hanging low. Some days, working in the Marrow Fair, I missed the sky, but this would not be one of them. It would be cooler down in the depot.
The Omebushi approached the pier, chugging merrily. Aboard, Carlās mood matched mine.
āHavenāt seen you in a while,ā he said, his voice still sticky with sleep. āPeople said you were spending the night.ā He poured us both some coffee and launched his boat again.
We cleared the Bay Bridge and rounded Yerba Buena Island on the way to Alameda. Then, we both saw it at the same time.
Ahead, the silhouette of the island had changed. A hazy bulge loomed in the center of the airfield. There was a new structure thereāvast, round, and somehow built overnight.
Was this part of Mr. Marrowās grand opening?
The Omebushi brought us closer.
Though it was as large as one of the hangars, it wasnāt a proper structure, but rather an organic form with a swollen, gaseous look. It might have been a rising hot-air balloon or a crashed dirigible.
Or, as I considered it, an enormous panettone.
Carl muttered a curse. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he dug in the compartment beneath his seat, produced a pair of binoculars, and tossed them into my lap.
Through the binoculars, I could make out the texture of the structure, and a sick feeling bloomed in my gut.
The forgotten lemon Iād discovered in my explorations of the depotās dark corridorsāI had picked it up, only to discover that the bottom was fuzzed over with fungus, velvety to the touch. Out of sick curiosity, Iād held my breath and peeled the lemonās skin away to discover that the fungus had padded its interior with airy filaments.
Through the binoculars, I saw that, but huge.
The billowing surface looked velvety like the underside of the lemon, and in the softness there was a pattern of ridges and depressions, and in that pattern, there was the unmistakable swirl of faces.
I put the binoculars down.
I knew those faces.
The Omebushi bumped roughly against the tiny pier. āBetter get in there and see whatās happening,ā Carl said.
I waved my bone-key token in front of the bay-side door. It called me skinny and unlocked, but when it opened, there was no depot.
Instead, I stared at a wall of the same material that bloomed on the airfield. Pale, creamy, billowing, and patterned with familiar faces. They were variously ecstatic and anguished and accusing and calm.
Up close, the smell was overpowering. Banana and gunpowder.
For a moment I was hypnotized. Then, tentatively, I extended a finger and poked at one of the faces. The substance yielded like foam.
It had the consistency of Lembas.
It was Lembas.
Carl was at my side, holding an oar. āCareful there,ā he said. He prodded the ballooning substance with the butt of the oar and it fell away; behind the Lembas was more Lembas. The depot was full of it.
AGRIPPAāS GOATS WERE CLUSTERED at the edge of the airfield, clearly perturbed by the apocalyptic puff pastry that had invaded their domain. Their keeper stood among them; he looked more placid.
āAgrippa!ā I called. āHow did this happen?ā
āDonāt ask me,ā he said. āThe goats woke me up. They were freaking out.ā
āHave you called anyone?ā
āNope.ā
I wanted to sputter in protest. I remembered who I was dealing with.
I ran to the control tower, descended the spiral staircase, and waved my bone key. The door openedāSTILLāTOOāSKINNYārevealing the concourse.
Just inside, my workstation was safe, unaffected. The Vi-truvian wobbled apprehensively. The Clement Street starter was quiet in its tub. But farther down the concourse, where Jaina Mitraās lab had been, the Lembas had formed a massive trunk that reached up to grip the ceiling. There, it splayed out in a dramatic many-fingered star, and one of its fingers had found the skylight above the lemon grove and pushed its way through to form the base of the bulbous structure rising on the airfield. Below it, the lemon grove had been consumed entirely. A few dark leaves were suspended in the Lembas like feathers on the nose of a cartoon cat.
The great bloom of Lembas blocked the skylight, so the only illumination came from the grow rooms, which cast their pink glow across a rippling scene that also had a soundtrack: Chaimanās album was playing, and not the spare overture but the later tracks, the ones in which he had accelerated the songs of the Mazg and overlaid them with rising sirens, bursts of noise, and a driving oonce-oonce-oonce.
It was a fungal party hellscape.
The Lembas was not finished. Around the absorbed lemon grove, it was growing in hungry surges. Was it obeying the oonces? I watched it bulge sickly in time to the music.
Then a figure darted into view. It was Horace: wielding a wide book, charging forward, poking at the Lembas, slashing it, gaining ground.
Just beyond the grove was his library.
Horace was holding the Lembas at bay.
His shouts echoed. āBack!ā he hollered. āBack!ā
I kicked at the brakes on the Vitruvianās wheeled base, spun it around, and pushed forward. We coasted together down the yellow-tape road, the armās momentum almost overbalancing it as we caromed into workstations and refrigerators before reaching the place where Horace was making his stand. He had his heels set, swiping with the book as the Lembas encircled him, oonce by oonce.
I locked the Vitruvianās brakes and grabbed at Horaceās shirt. āLet the arm do it!ā Then, all my scorn for the programmers on Interface drained away as I shouted, āArm, change task! Say hello!ā and the Vitruvian began to swing in a wide, slow arc. Where Horaceās book had been making scratches, the arm made great gouges. It was tireless. The Lembas could not pass.
I heard a howl and turned to see Stephen Agrippa emerge from the depotās vehicle ramp. He was running, Hercules the alpaca beside him, and all the goats a pace behind. Agrippa urged them forward with feral hoots and yips. Hercules spat.
The Lembas was vast but brittle; where its growth had slowed, it left an airy matrix, like the crumb of one of my loaves but scaled up massively. So, when we struck itāthe Vitruvian with its great fist, Hercules with his hooves, Agrippa and I taking swipes with fingers curled into clawsāit broke away in ragged chunks that tumbled and bounced to be consumed by the ravenous and, frankly, terrifying goats.
The goats feasted. The Lembas shrank. I reached out, gently now, and brought a sliver of the substance to my tongue. It didnāt dissolve into slime or stick to my teeth. This Lembas was a light, crispy bread with a deep well of flavor.
It was . . . really good.
Horace was still swinging with his book, enraged, protecting his archive. I unlocked the Vitruvianās brakes and pushed it slowly forward on its base. Its great swipes sent chunks of Lembas the size of beer kegs arcing slowly through the air.
At last, it was too much. The Lembas could not hold. A thin crack crept up the trunk, then spiderwebbed out, and it all began to fracture, glacierlike, huge slabs coming unstuck. The giant top, deprived of its foundation, came tumbling downābut gently. I tucked my chin into my chest, covered my head with my hands, and held my breath. The collapse was nearly soundless; just the whisper of a Rice Krispies Treat moving against itself.
I peeked. I was covered in the stuff. Everything was covered in the stuff. The smell of bananas was overpowering.
LATER THAT MORNING, the people of the Marrow Fair surveyed the damage in a deep, padded silence. Sometime during the scuffle, Chaimanās album had reached the end of its ooncing and the playlist, mercifully, had not been set t...