The flames in the fireplace were no longer as vigorous, and the charred marks left inside the stove faded into the dim light. The giant chandelier hanging in the center of the tavern swayed with candle flames flickering without wind. Beyond the window, the black night emanated a faint blue hue, a weak reflection from the nearby planets.
Arrogant finished a day's work and caught the last workboat back to the tavern. As soon as he pushed the door open, he found Greed, who should have gone to rest by now, still sitting behind the bar.
At this moment, the bar was cluttered with dozens of cups of various sizes, some filled with alcohol or beverages, while others were empty. The bottles, which were originally placed behind as decorations, had also been taken down and put on the side of the bar.
"This better not be some kind of secret welcome ceremony." Arrogant walked over and sat down. He casually picked up a cup and found the beverage inside was blue, then disdainfully put it back down.
Greed glanced at him and said, "Don't flatter yourself, it's not for you."
"So what are you doing?"
"I just want to taste the flavor."
"What?"
"Can't you tell? I'm tasting the flavors of these drinks one by one." Greed pointed to the cup in front of him, then picked up a bottle from the side, poured it into a cup, tilted his head back, and drank it, before smacking his lips.
"Oh, damn, that's too spicy," Greed said, frowning as he put the cup on the other side.
Arrogant glanced at the bottle and said, "That's because it's white tequila for mixing, it'd be strange if it wasn't strong. Haven't you drunk a Matador before? I think that's the best-tasting cocktail made from tequila."
"Have I drunk it?" Greed thought for a moment and said.
"You drank it during our vacation on the West Coast."
"Then I must have forgotten." After saying this, he placed the bottle he just tasted behind him and picked up another one.
Arrogant glanced around, noting there were about a hundred bottles of various types near the bar. A small portion had already been placed behind Greed, indicating he had tasted them, while a large mess was still scattered around.
"Are you planning to export Earth wines?" Arrogant asked. He thought this way because he recently learned that, in the cosmos, there isn't much wine culture. Within the territory of the Three Great Empires, alcohol is prohibited. Though the ban isn't comprehensive, people only dare to drink secretly. If caught, the entire family could get into trouble, so they naturally couldn't develop as many types of wine as Earth has.
But now that the influence of the Three Great Empires is weakening, they had to make concessions in this area, which naturally became a great opportunity for Earth's wine exports. Although Earth's production isn't outstanding, they could still take the high-end route and initially make a lot of money.
"This isn't a long-term business," Arrogant said. "The method for brewing liquor is simple. If it weren't for the control of the Three Great Empires, aliens would surely be able to produce better wines. Even if they loosen restrictions now, it wouldn't take long before they mixed wines that suit their taste, and human wines would just be a novelty."
"I'm not looking at this as a business," Greed shook his head, "the shelf life of wines is long, more suitable as gifts than for mass export. Rarity adds value."
"Then what are you doing?"
"Didn't I say? I'm just tasting."
"Did Strange encounter some trouble in the interstellar council? It would make sense to use alcohol to bribe those officials, but I don't think you need to be so fixated on the flavor. Aliens' taste buds differ from ours, making it difficult to choose something they'd like."
"Strange hasn't faced any trouble." Greed added a couple more ice cubes to the drink, "The Supreme Wisdom now can't manage anything, the entire council is at his mercy, even the executive robots have to obey him. What trouble could he have?"
"Are you trying to increase the tavern's sales? Developing new cocktails? Do you really want to be a bartender?"
"Can't I simply be tasting them?"
"Aside from the fact that you hardly ever do anything simply out of curiosity, you've tasted all those wines," Arrogant said. "Over two lifetimes, we've almost drunk every type of wine on Earth. What are you trying to taste now?"
"Haven't you noticed there seems to be a problem with my memories of those wines I've tasted?"
"What's the problem?" Arrogant paused for a moment, then searched his past memories. After searching, he indeed found some issues.
Sensory memories are categorized separately; visual, tactile, olfactory, and taste memories each have distinct records. Arrogant searched for the keyword "tequila."
Arrogant never drank this wine, as distilled spirits are somewhat strong. Even in cocktails, their alcoholic taste remains strong. He wouldn't drink such wines unless necessary. However, he remembered that Greed had drunk some when they attended a wedding on the West Coast, supposedly ordered in a Los Angeles bar.
Upon searching the keyword, the results were not taste impressions but rather "extraordinary dragon," "wedding gift," "Tony Stark," "sanatorium lawn," "license plate," "Shi'ar Empire," and other unrelated keywords.
Arrogant skimmed through and found large sections of plans. The memories were marked as thoughts Greed had while drinking.
After a long search, he found one entry among the irrelevant information: "the ice cubes seemed a bit too much," and that was it. He found no further memories related to tequila, especially none evaluating its taste.
The taste of all highly distilled liquors is spicy and strong, leaving a lasting impression after one sip. Arrogant was sure that if Greed had even a bit of focus on the liquor at that time, he wouldn't have been caught off guard by it today.
Arrogant flipped forward again, and then he noticed that many of the foods Greed had tasted didn't have much notation about the flavor and the like. There were some sporadic records like "too salty" or "too oily," but they weren't very specific. In contrast, there was a long string of memories unrelated to food, too long to sift through all at once.
Immediately after, Arrogant went looking for Greed's thoughts while cooking, after all, how could someone not enthusiastic about the taste of food be passionate about cooking?
Then he discovered that Greed couldn't really be said to be passionate about cooking either. He was just keeping himself busy with something while his mind was preoccupied with many things. Cooking was the perfect activity for pondering matters, and the time spent washing, chopping, and frying was enough for him to bury half of the cosmos's life in the ground.
If everyone in this world were likened to spiders, some would be bird-eating spiders, never weaving webs and just going straight for their prey. Some are highly venomous, striking lethally once they move. Of course, most people diligently weave a web, waiting for prey to come to them.
But they weave webs to eat, whereas Greed was different. He eats to weave the web. His actions in acquiring all kinds of energy are to weave a larger web, extracting all the nutrients from his body just to expand this spider web outward to an even more significant extent.
It's not that he can't taste flavors; it's just that these endlessly proliferating plans take up so much informational bandwidth that almost all thinking threads are occupied, leaving very little bandwidth to focus on the reality of the present world.
However, somewhat interestingly, the little space left was mostly allocated to negative reviews. If something was particularly delicious, he might not necessarily remember it, but if something was extremely unpalatable, it would certainly leave a deep impression.
Because Arrogant found thoughts like "white people's food is terrible," "cold sandwiches are awful," "biscuits with sauce taste bad," "these lousy chips taste disgusting" multiple times in Greed's memories.
Arrogant suspected this was a safety program Greed had set for himself, preventing accidentally eating poisonous food. However, unfortunately, though white people's food wasn't poisonous, it might as well have been, as Greed's memory was piled with similar warnings.
It could also be that because there were so many of these warnings, Greed was compelled to cook for himself to prevent these errors from occupying too much of his thinking bandwidth.
Overall, Greed wasn't someone who could focus well on the present. He had a certain degree of dissociative wandering symptoms, causing him to have a weak sense of reality most of the time and lack impressions of many sensory experiences.
Nevertheless, Arrogant sifted through the latest memories, and just now, Greed had honestly recorded the tastes of all the wines he had tasted, for instance, the note for white tequila was "this wine could choke a person to death, spicy to drink."
Although the notes were still a bit brief, there was at least an evaluation. Of course, it could also be because the wine was indeed very spicy, and he didn't detect any other flavors aside from the spiciness, making it relatively brief. Meanwhile, wines that were relatively better in taste had longer recordings.
Arrogant's thoughts returned to reality. He looked at Greed and asked, "Which of them won?"
"What? Who?"
"Stark and Strange."
"What happened to them?"
"Which one of them cured you?"
"What do you mean cured me? I'm not sick." Greed paused for a moment and said, "But if you're referring to making me appreciate life a bit more..."
"Exactly, that's what I mean. Who was it?"
"Reed Richards."
"Huh???"
"That's really interesting," Greed stopped what he was doing, sat opposite Arrogant, and said, "I feel like I'm looking in a mirror, seeing myself through someone else's eyes. Even Anatoli back then didn't give me this feeling."
"He's entirely the opposite of you," Arrogant said, "but I don't think Reed is much like you either."
"Yes, because everyone's path is different," Greed said, "the path in pursuit of truth always has divergences, but if someone's speed can't match mine, I wouldn't be able to see what I look like running on this path."
"So you saw this in Reed?"
"Exactly. And I think he's running a bit too fast."
"That's rare," Arrogant said with some surprise, "I thought you'd never realize that point."
"I said, there needs to be someone who runs at the same speed as me for me to see him, but maybe I'm running too fast, and no one can keep up with me. Therefore, I have no way to understand what I'm like at that speed. But Reed Richards, his speed is on the same level as mine, and that way, I can see them."
"You think that's bad?"
"Of course. You can't call someone flying at three times the speed of light an ordinary person, can you?"
"You're not that slow either."
Greed laughed, handing Arrogant a glass of beer. The two gently clinked glasses, and Greed said, "This is my favorite beer."
Arrogant took a sip, frowned, and said, "Indeed, we'll never drink together happily."