‘You eat like a bird!’ the General laughed as he heaped hearty servings of all of the various dishes on offer onto his polished stone plate. ‘Don’t be scared, go on! This stuff is great for you, all of it!’
Margaret laughed nervously and took a helping of some exotic-looking stewed greens.
‘I’m er, I’m just not feeling particularly hungry right now,’ she said, keeping her eyes focused on a spot on the table ahead of her. ‘I’ll just try this, and maybe have more later.’
‘As you wish,’ the General said, still heaping generous portions onto his own plate.
For a while they talked about how the city was run, with the General explaining in detail how almost everything functioned now as it had in the days of Old T’Kalanjathu, with clean running water being piped down from mountain springs via aqueducts and ancient systems of pipes, how human waste was efficiently converted to fertiliser for crops, how crops were grown in symbiosis with nature, wild plants and the soil, how refrigeration without electricity was done, and how cooking and other energy requirements came from refracted sunlight and water turbines.
Margaret nodded as she digested this information, and started poking gingerly at her food, trying a few cautious mouthfuls. She was surprised to find that the strange-looking vegetables were actually quite palatable, albeit in a way that was quite different to any flavours she was used to from back home. She soon started shovelling down her food with gusto, pausing halfway through a mouthful to see the General staring at her with an almost cheeky smile on his face. Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment and she looked away quickly, making sure to chew a lot more slowly after that.
‘It is good food, is it not?’ he chuckled, and murmurs of affirmation rippled around the table as everyone ate.
Margaret noticed that the General was eating a lot more food than any of the other guests.
Look at how much that guy is putting away! Is it because his body needs to metabolise so much more energy to fuel these transformations into an elephant? No, no, no! This is crazy talk. How can I even be considering this? God knows what kind of drugs he’s been secretly feeding you, Margaret, but he sure has done a whack-job on your brain. Come on! These are the drugs talking! Somehow, you’ve been doing a hell of a lot of hallucinating without feeling sick or high. Maybe that’s why this guy has all these virologists and microbiological engineers working with him … he’s developing some sort of military grade, perfectly camouflaged, remotely activated hallucinogen to use against his enemies. What a weapon that would be! And it’s certainly working against me, if it is indeed present in my body. Maybe I’m some sort of guinea pig in this whole scheme of his, maybe—
‘Dr Green?’
Margaret snapped out of her daydream of thoughts and paranoia as Dr Ogilvy called out her name.
‘Oh, er, yes?’
‘I don’t mean to be rude, but are you finished with your dinner?’
Margaret had cleaned up her plate and was feeling quite refreshed and satisfied after the hearty and nutritious meal; she was, in fact, feeling a lot better than she could remember feeling in quite a long time.
‘I’m done, yeah. Thank you kindly for the meal, it was really great.’
Dr Ogilvy smiled.
‘We treat all of our guests as royalty, and I promise that you will have many more amazing meals in the days to come. However, at the present moment there are things that we members of the Antidote need to discuss in private. I’m sorry to seem rude, but what we are going to be discussing is top-secret, classified information.’
Margaret nodded.
‘I understand. I’ll uh, I’ll go.’
The General stood up.
‘I too must apologise for this seeming rudeness,’ he said. ‘We do not mean to exclude you, Doctor. As I have mentioned before, we are in need of your expertise. We just cannot reveal everything to you at this particular moment, though.’
Margaret felt a matchhead of anger flare up inside of her, but realising the vulnerability of her position here, she quickly doused it.
‘That’s perfectly reasonable, sir,’ she replied in as calm and even a tone as she could muster.
‘Thank you.’
The General barked an order in a strange language at the two teen soldiers who were standing guard at the entrance door. Both of them saluted, and one of them came marching over to Margaret.
‘Hi Tesla, er, Sergeant Tesla,’ she said, recognising the boy from earlier.
‘Dr Green, I am to escort you back to your quarters. Come with me, please.’
The boy’s face was stony and emotionless, but there was no hint of a threat in his voice.
‘All right Tesla, you lead the way.’
Sergeant Tesla led Margaret once more through the winding and often confusing network of corridors and steps, not giving her much time to pause and take in her surroundings as they journeyed at a quick clip through the labyrinth of strange architecture. The combination of moonlight and starlight, coming in from the plenitude of large windows, as well as the glow from the bio-luminescent fungi on the walls, gave the place an eerily dreamlike atmosphere. This, along with everything that had happened in the last few days, had Margaret feeling as if she was somehow straddling the divide between the tangible solidity of reality and the surreal artscape of a nightmare, with a foot firmly planted in each conflicting sphere of consciousness.
‘Come on Margaret,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Get a grip on yourself. If you’re feeling weird, it’s from the drugs.’
‘Your room, Doctor,’ Sergeant Tesla announced when they arrived.
‘Thank you.’
She smiled at the boy, and he couldn’t help returning her smile before he remembered that he was supposed to be stoic and granite-cold. Still, the smile persisted in his eyes even though
