Purity (Pure and Tainted) by Evangeline Anderson

vitamin and protein paste to supplement our
nutrient drinks.” K made a face. “If that’s what you mean by food then I would
rather not have any. I never liked that paste very much.”
    “Oh, I think we can do a little bit better than protein paste.
Come on.” Boone led her further up the hall until they ended back at the mess
hall. He was glad to see that no one else was up and bitching about breakfast
being late. Loki, especially, could be a picky eater though when he cooked he expected them all to eat
Erian high holiday food which was much too frou-frou for Boone’s taste. He
preferred plain old home cooking—the same recipes that had been handed down by
his ancestors from Earth-that-was. Especially for breakfast.
    “What are we supposed to do?” K asked.
    “Fix breakfast for ourselves and the rest of the crew. Don’t
worry, you’ll like it.” Boone was already rummaging in the cold storage unit
for the ingredients he wanted.
    K walked over and tapped the food simulator experimentally. “Why
don’t we just use this? Isn’t it what Mom used to make that strange sweet
drink—the hawt shauklat you gave me last night?”
    “Hot chocolate,” Boone corrected her. “And the food sim doesn’t
make anything nutritious—it only simulates the taste and texture of what you
want without giving you the actual substance. As far as your body is concerned,
you might as well be eating or drinking water. Not exactly the breakfast of
champions.”
    K frowned. “What will we do then?”
    “We’ll cook. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, and
bacon. How does that sound?”
    “I have no idea. What do you want me to do?”
    “Here,” Boone said. “Let me show you…”
    To her credit, he found K was a hard and willing worker even
though she obviously had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. Boone put
her to work cracking the eggs into a bowl and whipping them with a whisk while
he made the pancake batter.
    Of course, this meal might be handed down from his ancestors but
he doubted anyone from Earth-that-was would recognize the ingredients he was
using to make the familiar fare. He only used two eggs even though he was
cooking for four—himself, K, Mom, and Loki. That was because the eggs were from
hens genetically modified to withstand the heavy G-forces of Colossus. By
Earth-that-was standards they would have been about the size of an ostrich
egg—an extinct bird Boone had only read about. Also, the flour in the pancake
mix was ground from spliced wheat and the ‘bacon’ was actually strips of
pre-cooked porcine substitute. But it was close enough as far as Boone was
concerned and as the smells of cooking began to fill the small mess hall, his mouth was watering to taste his efforts.
    K seemed interested in the food as well. “That smells…different,”
she remarked as Boone flipped another pancake onto the large oval serving platter.
    “Different as in good ?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
    “I don’t know.” She frowned. “But when I smell it, I start to
salivate and…and I feel strange here .”
She put one hand over her flat stomach. “Hollow somehow. Empty.”
    Boone was delighted. “You’re hungry, that’s what you’re feeling. Your suit was probably shooting you up with
appetite suppressants along with everything else. How else could they keep you
from ever eating anything?”
    “What’s hungry?” K seemed honestly curious and Boone was glad to
see that for once she didn’t try to deny that her suit had been giving her
meds.
    “It’s that hollow feeling inside. Your stomach is sending messages
to your brain to let you know it’s time to eat. Here, try a bite.” He tore off
a tiny piece of warm pancake and held it in front of her mouth. “Come on,
darlin’, open up.”
    Hesitantly, K parted her lips. Boone popped the shred of pancake
into her mouth before she could change her mind and then watched expectantly.
    At first she let it sit there on her tongue but then she seemed to
get the