On a Godless Planet:Volume2B Chapter 30
Chapter 30: Fatman[edit]
–The worse the person, the more they laugh.
●
Scarecrow viewed Tenma’s report from Okutama.
“Tenma-kun has really learned how to write divine mails.”
She used to write so stiffly it came off as a message from a government office. But now she had started including her own thoughts on what had happened.
“Do you feel like her mother?”
“I feel like an upperclassman seeing her awkward underclassman learn to get along with her peers.”
“Meanwhile, the human underclassman throws his surroundings into chaos instead.”
“Sumeragi-kun is…no, humans in general are the greatest source of trouble for the gods.”
On the game club’s camping trip, the Norse group was taking charge of the lunch barbecue and they were apparently making ancient preserved foods. Is that part of the experience? wondered Scarecrow, but at least it sounded like they were getting along.
There had been some issues regarding Kido. Scarecrow had her own thoughts on that.
It helped that she and Omokane knew Kido’s identity. She wasn’t sure how much it really helped to keep that a secret, but…
“There is a pretty clear dividing line between the pre-Sumeragi group and the post-Sumeragi group.”
“We’re from the post-Sumeragi group, so it does feel like there is a vague wall between us.”
“And that division is why we have to keep information on Kido-san from some of our own.”
“I don’t mind. She might be leaving, right?”
Before Scarecrow could respond, a Revelation Board appeared. It was a Greek temple style one. She accepted the divine transmission and looked to see…
“Excuse me, is Omokane there?”
She set them up again, was Scarecrow’s immediate thought. She wasn’t just guessing – she was certain of it. But when she looked up, she saw Omokane over by the bookcases pointing back at her and suppressing laughter.
She really was the worst.
“What now?”
Scarecrow really didn’t want to ask, but she finally asked Athena while glaring over at the Shinto Representative who was doing an impressive job of dying of laughter in complete silence.
“Omokane is…unavailable right now, but what do you need? I can pass something on to her if you want.”
“Ohh.” Athena’s voice spun around once. Or it seemed to. Then she sighed and…
“We went to the Oume Line platform just like Omokane said to.”
“Oh, that’s good.”
“Yes. Tell her we are thankful and that I will get her for this later.”
“I will,” said Scarecrow before breaking the Revelation Board.
She sighed. Shamhat started to say something, but Scarecrow held out a hand to stop her and then yelled at the idiot doubled over by the bookcases.
“Yatsuiiiii!!”
●
We finally managed to get on the Oume Line, thought Athena.
They hadn’t left the station yet.
They were on an 8-car train which would take them from Tachikawa to Oume.
The boxy orange train had a familiar look to it. For a Greek like her, it reminded her a lot of a certain object.
“Doesn’t this train look a lot like a sarcophagus?”
“You need to keep these thoughts to yourself! This isn’t our culture!”
“But we’re the inspectors.”
Demeter kept glancing over at the platform’s clock.
They had actually missed a few trains already. Because…
…Omokane set us up again!
●
“I have receive word that the Olympus inspectors will be late because Omokane-senpai was causing trouble again.”
“As much as I appreciate it, I feel like they’re going to be ready to kill us by the time they arrive.”
“What did she do this time?”
“I can make a pretty good guess. I’m betting you noticed something odd about Tachikawa Station on your way here. I’m boiling some salt water to prepare for our morning club activity, so once that’s done, I’ll tell you what I think Omokane did.”
●
She’s done it again, thought Scarecrow. As soon as she ended the divine transmission, she glared over at the (now very audibly) laughing Heavenly God.
“Must you always cause trouble?”
“What? They asked me how to get to Okutama and I told them. That’s all!”
“I can already guess what you told them.”
“Care to fill me in?”
“Well,” she replied. “She probably said, ‘If you want to reach Okutama via Oume, then go to the lowest numbered platform.’ ”
The other two had very different reactions.
Shamhat frowned. Omokane grinned broadly.
Scarecrow focused on Shamhat who clearly didn’t understand. Omokane’s reaction told her she was correct, so she explained.
“The lowest numbered platform is technically accurate, but misleading. Because Tachikawa Station doesn’t have a Platform 1.”
●
“Oh, come to think of it, we used Platform 2 at Tachikawa Station.”
Kuwajiri nodded at Enkidu’s comment.
“Tachikawa Station is missing a Platform 1, so it starts at 2. And Platform 2 is for the Oume Line.”
“Oh, I was wondering about that! Why doesn’t it have a Platform 1?”
<It used to have one. The northernmost platform used to use its southern side as an exit platform for the Oume Line and that was known as Platform 1. The north side of the platform went unused and its track was used for the transport trains on their way to the Tachikawa land requisitioned by Yokota Base at the time. Locals referred to that side as Platform 0.>
“Waaaasn’t there a song about thaaaat?”
<Matsutoya Yumi’s Rainy Station. That is technically about West Tachikawa Station, but it does refer the service line to the base.>
“Is that platform the one known as Platform 2 and 3 now?”
“Huh?” someone said.
“The northernmost platform is 2 and 3, but I don’t remember it having a line to the base.”
“No, the current Tachikawa Station differs from the old one. In 1964, a runaway transport train from the base crashed into Platform 1 and exploded. This caused a conflagration, forcing them to remodel the station and the area around the north entrance. Daiichi department store was built where the old station and its shopping district were.”
<The transport line was abandoned in 1980 and the station building was remodeled again in 1982. That was when the building was given its bridge-like design and the Will in the station building was built. But Platform 1, which included the transport line, was demolished to make space to support the 1st floor of the building. So…>
“So the phantom Station 0 and Station 1 no longer exist, leaving only Platforms 2 onward?”
“Correct. After that, the Oume Line ended its stops at Tachikawa and ran direct lines straight to the Tokyo region. The same happened with the trains from Tokyo. Thanks to that, there was no point in making a new exit platform like Platform 1, so Platforms 2 and 3 were used for boarding and exiting.”
<And while this is information from the future, Platforms 2 and 3 are renamed 1 and 2 in 2007 and the rest of the numbers are adjusted accordingly, bringing back Platform 1.>
That summed it up. But that future hadn’t arrived yet.
“The Olympus inspectors would have been searching for a Platform 1 that doesn’t exist. And they were already tricked by the Chuo Line yesterday, so I do wonder how they reacted to that.”
●
“Aunt, why do I feel like we would have better off not thinking about it too hard and just going to Platforms 2 and 3?”
“Maybe, but it’s only natural to assume there’s a Platform 1 hidden somewhere around here.”
“And did I imagine it or did you shout ‘did they hit us with an illusion or spacetime spell!?’ when we realized there was no Platform 1?”
“It’s the natural assumption when something that should exist doesn’t!”
●
Well, I am glad they’re running late, thought Tenma.
It gave her more time to think about a number of things.
…And it helped improve everyone’s mood after last night.
Everyone was busy working on a minor camping activity.
“Okay, we should be ready to start the pickling now.”
They all held those sealable plastic bags called Ziploc. Those bags could also carry water and they filled them with…
“Um, I put the vegetables I bought inside.”
“We’re supposed to tap them now, right?”
“Right, right. You’ve got it. But don’t put too much in, okay? …Sumeragi-chan?”
“Eh!? Oh, was that wrong!? But I feel so bad for the eggplant and cucumber! See, they’re actually a couple and they’ve always wanted to be together, but they never could because they grew in different fields! But then the manly section chief cucumber shows up! He’s a former yakuza with dashing good looks and he’s so talented he was chosen as the leader for the new project! So what’s the poor skinny cucumber to do!?”
“Do you have to give them a story?”
“But now I kind of what to know what happens next!”
While this was going on, an unexpected Revelation Board arrived for Tenma.
“Tenma-chan? I’m sure you’re trying to figure out Kido-chan’s identity right now, so I’ll tell you this much: this activity here could actually be a hint.”
She didn’t need to ask what that hint was.
It had to be the pickling. Which meant…
…Is it about food culture?
●
I see. So I should pay attention but be subtle about it, realized Tenma.
The first thing she saw was the Norse knowledge god raising her hand.
“Now, let’s begin our primitive method of pickling. Western pickling isn’t quite the same as Japanese tsukemono. When sealed, pickled foods can keep for more than a year, so it’s worth knowing how.”
“The method is quite simple. You prepare some strong salt water, submerge the food inside, and seal it. That’s all.”
Everyone listened intently and exchanged a glance.
“That’s so crude! It reminds me of asazuke.”
“Hmm, but I think this uses a higher salt concentration.”
Tenma had some relevant knowledge here. So…
“Is it more like wet curing?”
“What’s that?”
“Wet curing is where you soak the food in a saltwater-based marinade so the osmotic pressure removes all the moisture from within the food while soaking it with saltwater to help preserve it.”
“You keep talking about salt, but I think of picking as using vinegar.”
A hand went up within the Norse group to explain that.
“It is commonly done with vinegar, but it can be done with salt too. There’s a tendency to call something pickled if it has a sour flavor from fermenting or from vinegar. Anything preserved with salt that doesn’t have that sour flavor – meat for example – is said to be salted instead. In Iceland, where Norse mythology was compiled, it is referred to as saltað, which comes from the word for salt, so they probably began with a salt-based method long ago.
“Since what we are making will be sour from the fermentation of the vegetables, pickling seems like the best term to me.”
“She said that so fast.”
“So anyway, let’s make some crude pickles the way we used to.”
●
It’s a simple method, thought Raidou. Like he had said before…
“You make some strong saltwater and then boil it once. Before it can start evaporation, you quickly take the pot off the heat to let it cool.”
A pot sat on the rocky riverside after doing just that.
They were on the Okutama riverside in the morning. Even under the tarp, it was awfully hot after boiling a pot full of saltwater. He wiped the sweat off with a towel.
“You fill the bag with the cooled saltwater and then seal the opening. And that’s it. After about three days, it should have soaked in and you can eat it.”
“What concentration of salt do you need?”
“We don’t have any scales with us, do we?”
“True,” Raidou replied. “But there’s an easy way to measure out the right amount of salt without scales. You put an egg in a pot of water. Then you add salt until the egg floats.”
“Does that really work?”
“Yes. ‘Until the egg floats’ sounds like a joke, but it is very real. Salt is known as a preservative, but it begins restricting saprophytes at 5% and stops their reproduction at more than 10%. So if you pass 10%, you can achieve near perfect preservation. Of course, it’s only near perfect because there are bacteria that like salt, but you can still call it generally safe.”
Kuwajiri continued speaking.
“While it depends on the specific egg, if you put one inside 200mL of water, it will usually float at around 25g of salt. Since the total is 225g, that is a concentration of just above 10%.”
“…”
“How did people figure that out in the olden days?”
“Senpai-chan, Senpai-chan. Mythologically speaking, we’re from even oldener days.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Senpai-san while Kido nodded in approval.
“Anyway,” resumed Raidou. “Here in Japan, saltwater meant for cooking is referred to as saumure, the French word for brine. Once you add in seasonings, herbs, vinegar, and whatever else, it’s known as a pickling liquid. Kuwajiri mentioned the different kinds of pickling before, but this uses a salt-based one. There’s no set rule for how much other stuff has to be in there to call it a pickling liquid, so don’t worry too much about the distinction.”
“Now, the word saumure seems like it could come from the French commune of Saumur, but there is no actual record of that. The main theory is it comes from a word for salt.”
Meanwhile, Raidou carried over the pot and Shifu scooped the saltwater into everyone’s Ziploc bags. After that…
“Everyone has their own tastes, so you can prepare your own. Adding pepper is the standard, but you can also had fruit peels.”
“I wish I could say I understand, but why soak it in saltwater? If you only need to sprinkle on salt and rub it in, why not just do that?”
“That’s true. Sauerkraut, for example, is made with just cabbage and salt, isn’t it?”
“It is,” confirmed Kido. Shifu shrugged.
“There’s a simple reason. Soaking it makes sure the saltwater gets into every nook and cranny. It’s more certain. With sprinkling and rubbing, you could miss some spots.”
“Also,” continued Shifu.
“In coastal regions, you can just boil seawater to get brine. Seawater’s salt content is a bit over 3%, so you just have to boil it until it reaches the 30% mark.”
“Then you could make as much as you wanted if you lived near the ocean.”
“That’s why people make barrels of brine that’s already been boiled. If you throw in whatever vegetables you want, they’ll double as a fridge. So brine barrels work as storage containers. And they can be reused after making more brine.”
“Reminds me of the Japanese nukadoko pickling beds. Those aren’t reusable, though.”
“Nukadoko generally have a salt concentration of around 10%. I see it as the East and West perfecting the technique in similar ways.”
“One advantage of this method is it still works with leafy vegetables, but the barrel provides more volume, which is more useful for meat. For example, you can stick an entire leg in there. Big pieces of meat work better soaking in brine than giving them a salt rub. In our culture, it was used to prepare venison for smoking.”
“For us, the standard was salting and wind drying.”
“We didn’t soak things in brine. Mostly because letting it wind dry was faster and water was valuable.”
●
I see, I thought with a nod.
Next to me, I saw Kido-san looking at her plastic bag of vegetables in an impressed way.
“When you’re done, you can write you name on it and stick it in the cooler. Tooru and I will take them back with us and leave them in the clubroom. Then you can take yours home when you’re ready.”
“I was wondering about that cooler. Can it really keep anything cool anymore? It’s been a day.”
“Hey, we’re Norse gods, remember?”
“Freezing spells are an ice and winter god power, but we can still use cooling spells. So we carved a powerful figure out of a riverside rock and stuck that inside. We have to reimbue it with power from time to time, but it’ll work fine.”
“Clever.”
I was going to agree, but then I realized something.
“Um? You said we would be putting these in the cooler, but then what’s all the stuff already in the cooler?”
“Mostly meat.”
“Yes. This here used up most of the vegetables that would only get in the way of eating all the meat.”
“A-are you turning this into a purely carnivorous barbecue!?”
Shifu-san was already swiftly preparing the grill, so they must have planned this.
●
The meat feast began at around 10:30.
I made sure to also get some of the rice Senpai cooked that morning. Also…
“I added some salt to make some quick rice balls. I also bought some pickled vegetables if you want some.”
I did want some.
“I thought I only wanted meat, but this makes for a nice palate cleanser.”
“Japanese pickled vegetables come in so many pretty colors, but when you get down to it, they all go great with drinks.”
“Kuwajiri-san? Why do you know how to open a can of beer with just one hand?”
That was a neat trick.
●
Tenma was working on a small mystery. She opened a Revelation Board and began a search while seated at an edge of the tarp where she was shaded from the sun but the sunlight still reached her by reflecting off the riverside rocks.
The mystery was Kido.
How had Kido reacted during the pickling work?
More than that, there were the earlier discussions of soy sauce and curry.
Combining those data points made something partially clear. Specifically…
…Kido-senpai isn’t an Olympus god?
Just as she thought that, she noticed a 350mL can held out next to her. It was orange Fanta. She looked over to see Shifu staring at her.
“How’s your homework going?”
Tenma checked to see where Kido was. Her work here could touch on Kido’s privacy. She felt bad about that, but it was her job to do it. And Kido hadn’t forbidden her from looking into it, so…
“–––––”
She took a look around just in case.
Kido was with Senpai-san, preparing to make a soup from the completely untouched vegetables. There was plenty more meat, so the soup would probably act as a palate cleanser.
Kido didn’t seem to be paying Tenma any attention. So…
“I’ve come across a bit of a mystery. Kido-senpai said the Kobe area is her home and she knows the Olympus gods, so I had guessed she might be an Olympus god herself.”
“Yeah, that would be the natural assumption. I did the same thing.”
“Then,” asked Tenma. “Why didn’t she know much about salting vegetables and why doesn’t she seem to have any dietary restrictions regarding meat?”
●
Tenma had a few reasons for finding this odd.
“Kido-senpai seemed fascinated by the pickling methods we used. She should have been familiar with that if she had made Japanese-style asazuke with commercial brine, but she wasn’t, which means she at least doesn’t know much about wet curing. She also wasn’t aware of the advantages of soaking vegetables in brine. And she seemed entirely ignorant of how much salt to use and the talk of seawater.”
“So you’re thinking she’s a god from a region without any oceans, or at least with more rivers than oceans?”
“But Rome and Greece are both coastal regions, aren’t they?”
“Yup,” said Shifu, who supposedly knew Kido’s identity. And yet, “The thing is, while we do know who Kido-chan is, I get the feeling that isn’t the real answer.”
“Huh?”
“Y’see,” said Shifu. “It’s like with Mr. V. If she’s a god the Olympus mythology took over, then wouldn’t she have an identity other than the one we know?”
●
Shifu was only guessing here, but there was one thing she did know.
“In Olympus mythology, Kido-chan is an enemy of the gods. But that’s only in the stories of Olympus mythology, so that might have ‘overwritten’ her original stories.”
“Even if that is true, I don’t see how it helps me negotiate with the Olympus gods.”
That was true. When discussing the present, bringing up someone’s origins would only get you “we’re not talking about that here” as a response. Furthermore…
“Kido-chan is part of Olympus mythology now. Maybe she didn’t used to be, but she can’t go back now.”
“Right. If that was possible, the Roman gods could regain their former selves and it would lead to a divine conflict over whether we all return to our original forms or not.”
Exactly. This knowledge god was clever. But Shifu was still thinking about Kido-chan’s true form.
“If we knew who she was, it’s possible Kido-chan would stop being so hard on herself.”
“That form, you mean?”
She was sharp. Kido-chan’s transformed arm would likely spread to her entire body. What would she look like once that happened?
She was not a god. She was an enemy of the gods. And what were those called?
“No…we should refer to her with her original divine name.”
“I will give this thought separate from preparing for the negotiation.”
“Great. Figured anything else out?”
“Yes,” replied Tenma. “Kido-senpai must be a god from a culture that used primitive salting such as dry curing. But yesterday, she made a curry from stewed vegetables, which suggests a proficiency with stews. That said, stews are a big part of Mesopotamian culture too, so it doesn’t narrow things down much. However, before we came here, she showed off a very early concept of the water cycle, so she must be an equally ‘old’ god.”
“And is there anything that doesn’t fit with her being an old god?”
“There is. I already mentioned it, actually. When cooking yesterday, she made a consommé soup, but that includes beef and chicken stock. And when she ate yakiniku, while she did eat the pork, it looked to me like she was mainly interested in the lamb. Also…”
Also…
“At breakfast, Senpai-san cooked the new corn meat she accidentally bought. That includes horse meat, but Kido-senpai ate that as well.”
“So is she not from a Mesopotamian culture?”
“Correct. She isn’t Roman or Greek and she isn’t Mesopotamian either…so if she is from a European mythology, it could be a fairly minor one. Minor mythologies usually have fewer gods, less fleshed-out stories, and less power. Which is why I have decided it wouldn’t help much to bring this up during the negotiation with the Olympus inspectors.”
“But,” she continued.
“Now I’m curious why the Olympus gods fear her. I will continue to ponder this and dig a little deeper. I have a suspicion that knowing her origin will tell me what her identity in Olympus mythology is as well.”
“So you’re going at it from the other end, huh?”
But that was reassuring to hear. The Norse group had Kuwajiri-chan, but she looked at things differently and had different interests. Kuwajiri-chan tended to be more conservative and used her knowledge to provide support, but this god here seemed more aggressive.
They’re both interesting in their own way, thought Shifu just before Tooru spoke up.
“Okay, the meat on the rack is just about done! I’ll slice it up and set it on the warming section, so eat as much as you want.”
“As much as we want? So afterwards, it’s time?”
Tooru nodded. Afterwards, they would clean up the rest of the barbecue and…
“We can play in the river…and do some terraforming!”
Interlude[edit]
“The fact that we’re all changing into our swimsuits despite all the complications since we arrived tells me just how much everyone’s been looking forward to this.”
“I could make some excuses, but we’d all know that’s all they really are.”
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