The single, judgmental grain of rice lay in my palm, pulsing its faint, toxic-green light onto my skin. It felt like holding a tiny, feverish heart. I looked from it to the vast, hungry blackness pressing in on all sides, to Mr. Fin's star-speckled impatience, to my quivering pet-blob.
Just one grain.
That was not enough. Not for cooking. Not for anything.
A wave of practical despair, colder than the abyssal water, washed over me. My shoulders slumped. I tore my gaze from the cosmic ingredients and looked around our pathetic little dome. The bubble's membrane shimmered, a soap film holding back an ocean of void. Through its distorting lens, I could see nothing but shifting, formless dark and the occasional, terrible suggestion of movement—a coiling tail fin the size of a skyscraper, a cluster of eyes blinking out of sync.
"How deep are we under water?" The question left my lips, small and stupid. I hugged my knees tighter, the damp fabric of my jeans clinging unpleasantly. The sand beneath me, for all its gentle glow, was starting to feel like the world's loneliest beach. "And where… where in Japan is this? Is there a surface?" Maybe, if I knew the direction, I could… I don't know. Wish really hard?
Mr. Fin's dorsal fin twitched upward like a seismograph needle detecting a profound tremor of idiocy. It exhaled through its gills—not a sigh, but a long, pressurized shhhhhhhht of air escaping a submarine hatch, smelling of fermented kelp and profound annoyance.
"Japan?" The word emerged not as a question, but as a distorted chortle, warped by pressures that would crush steel into glitter. Its obsidian eyes, swirling with lazy supernovae, rolled in a gesture so human it was unsettling. "Your geographical markers are as relevant here as a single-celled organism's opinion on astrophysics. Depth, however…"
It paused, letting the immense, silent weight of the abyss press down on the bubble. The gelatinous blob at my side trembled violently, not from fear of the shark, but from the view. Its surface, momentarily mirror-like, reflected a vast, serpentine shadow coiling just beyond the membrane—a leviathan that made the concept of "whale" seem like a goldfish.
Mr. Fin's voice dropped to a subsonic rumble I felt in my molars. "Imagine stacking every ocean in your world, one atop the other. Then imagine drilling through that stack with a bit forged from dying stars. Drill until the drill bit itself starts screaming for its mother. Then go a little further. You are… in the basement of reality, land-grub. The 'where' is else. The 'how deep' is yes."
The sand beneath me shifted uneasily with his words, as if agreeing. A patch of glowing grains sloughed away, revealing not more sand, but a layer of fossilized shells. They weren't broken; they were crushed, flattened into intricate, geometric patterns by pressures that defied imagination.
[Environmental Log Updated: Substrate Analysis]
Location: Abyssal Gauntlet Waiting Room B-7 (Non-Euclidean Coordinate Drift Active)
Local Depth: Classified. (Metric: "Screaming Drill Bit")
Ambient Pressure: Sufficient to recrystallize regret into diamond.
Notable Feature: Substrate contains fossilized Mesozoic-era Abyssal Krill, geometrically compressed. Possible seasoning?
The hollowness in my stomach, which had been a quiet companion since the onigiri, yawned wide open. It wasn't just hunger. It was the sheer, scale-breaking distance. I was farther from home than any astronaut, any submarine, any prayer had ever traveled.
"Ohh, no," I whispered, the sound swallowed by the thick air. The practical problem was a life raft. "Then… then I can't get any more rice." The conclusion was devastating in its simplicity. No rice paddies. No discount grocers. No uncle scowling as he handed over a single, cold bowl. Just one, stupid, glowing grain from a terrified blob.
The sheer, cosmic unfairness of it hit me like a physical slap. My hands flew up and smacked against my own cheeks with a soft pat-pat. The warmth of my skin was a shock against the ambient chill. I didn't scream or cry. I just… folded. My legs gave out and I plopped down into the whispering sand, crossing them like a petulant child at the end of the universe. I let my head hang, staring at the space between my knees. The glowing grain, as if sensing my surrender, wobbled in the air before me.
"Can't get rice?"
Mr. Fin's voice didn't boom this time. It hissed, warping and distorting like a vinyl record left on a radiator. Its dorsal fin twitched downward in a spasm of pure, cosmic exasperation.
The green grain shot toward me—not gently, but with purpose. It aimed for my lap, but I flinched, my knees jerking up. The grain ricocheted off my shin with a faint ping and embedded itself in the sand between my feet. It didn't just land. It struck with a sound that shouldn't have been possible: a deep, resonating GONG that hummed through the seabed, followed by a fading, ethereal moan—the sound of a deeply disappointed ghost.
Thu-rumm. Woooooooo…
The sand where it stuck fluoresced angrily, a brighter, more urgent green.
My pet-blob quivered. Then, with a wet schlorp, it extruded a single, clear pseudopod. The tip trembled, then formed itself into a crude, trembling arrow. It pointed, with unmistakable intent, directly at the whalebone mortar and pestle that had grumbled into existence on the coral-counter-turned-workbench.
[User NightSnack (Snail of Graviton Lvl 12400) messages User C'thullus the Ever-Hungering:]The drama! The pathos! The sheer culinary incompetence! I haven't been this amused since a supernova failed to poach an egg. Do make her use the mortar. I wish to see the grain suffer.
[User princesspamperville23 (Starcrushing Vine Lvl 9849) replies to NightSnack:]Ugh, fine. But if she doesn't start doing something, I'm filing a complaint with the Gauntlet Oversight Committee. My vines are getting bored.
[System Alert: Lobby Satiation at 18%]
Judges Present: 8/8
Ambient Mood: Shifting from amused curiosity to restless hunger.
Note: Prolonged inaction may trigger… snackification protocols.
I didn't see the messages directly, but I felt their intent. A new, prickling pressure settled on the back of my neck, different from the abyss. It was the weight of a billion eyes, rolling in unison.
As if to underscore the point, the bubble's membrane behind Mr. Fin rippled violently. For a split second, the oily swirls cleared, and the blackness beyond resolved into a scene. Pressed against the other side was a silhouette, jagged and multi-limbed. One of its many claws held up a large, bioluminescent scorecard. The writing wasn't in any language I knew, but its meaning drilled directly into my brain:
PATIENCE: -∞
Then it was gone, and the membrane returned to its featureless, hungry shimmer.
I stared at the embedded grain. I looked at the blob's pointing pseudopod. I glanced at the ominous mortar. Mr. Fin loomed, a wall of scales and simmering galactic disappointment.
The loneliness was still there. The fear was a constant hum. But beneath it, a spark of stubbornness ignited. It was the same spark that made me ask for a pet instead of doing an assimilation. The same spark that made me choose rice in a cosmic cooking gauntlet.
They were all so big, so powerful, so bored. And I was just a girl, a grain, and a glob of scared jelly.
Fine.
I uncrossed my legs. Leaning forward, I dug my fingers into the cool sand around the pulsating grain. It came loose with a faint pop. It was warmer than before, almost uncomfortably so. I held it up, eye level, between my thumb and forefinger. Its green light pulsed in time with my quickening heartbeat.
I looked at Mr. Fin, meeting one of its galaxy-filled eyes.
"Okay," I said, my voice quiet but no longer a whisper. "One grain. You want me to cook with one grain." I pushed myself to my feet, sand cascading from my lap. I took the two steps to the fossilized whalebone mortar. It was cold and porous under my fingertips. "So I'll cook with one grain."
I didn't know what I was doing. But for the first time since I'd choked on that stale onigiri, I had a direction.
Pointed straight down, into the mortar, by a trembling arrow of fear and a shark's contempt.
I dropped the grain in. It landed with a tiny, solid tok.
The entire bubble seemed to hold its breath.
[Starter Challenge Updated: Prepare the Cosmic Base Grain]
Objective: Process the ingredient using provided tools.
Suggested Method: Grinding? Crushing? Pleading?
Warning: Improper technique may alter ingredient properties. Or anger it.
I picked up the pestle. It was heavier than it looked. My fingers closed around the smooth, ancient bone.
Now what?