Super Meals: Part Eleven

When Doctor Ralph got back to his hotel room, the first thing he did was remove his jacket, shirt, and pants and hang them up in the closet. He had brought two full suits, but he preferred to get as much use out of them as possible and he hated ironing.

Then, in his undershirt and shorts, he took his laptop out of his carry-on and set it up on the desk, connecting to the complimentary Wi-Fi. It was a top-of-the-line touchscreen with a micro-mouse that connected through Bluetooth and a soft keyboard that unrolled from the case, and once it was fully connected to the world he tapped the screen and ran a handful of apps that provided as much internet security as humanly possible.

Once he was sure that he couldn’t be monitored and all of his data was fully encrypted, he opened a file from his secure server entitled “Known Reactions and Victims Research.” It was a spreadsheet, and it had over 100 entries already, so he scrolled down to line 187 and clicked on the empty line.

The first six columns of line 186 read:

Male – age 24 – 5’6” – approx. 160 lbs. – Type O+ - brgr+ketch+tom+wht ched

            The seventh column, however, was much more detailed:

Subject ingested special order at roughly 5:35pm local time. By roughly 6pm, subject developed fever, heavy sweating. Subject’s clothing began melting by approx. 6:15pm. According to police reports, subject used new ability to melt the lock on a hotel pool at approximately 6:20pm and entered the water. Reports further state subject was screaming about “the burning” and dove into pool fully clothed (relatively speaking; clothing had mostly burned or melted away by that point). Witnesses attest that upon entering the pool the water began to boil, driving other swimmers to evacuate and call police. When police arrived on-scene at approximately 6:30, entire contents of pool (estimated at 14,000 gallons) had evaporated and the subject was deceased, leaving a burned shadow on the bottom surface of the pool.

            The entire spreadsheet was full of information like this, and Doctor Ralph, remembering what he’d read at the county coroner’s office, made another entry. This one was about the homeless man and his mutated ears.

            When he was satisfied that he had entered all the information he could remember as accurately as he could, he saved the spreadsheet and opened a web browser to search for the local courthouse. It didn’t take him long to find the information he needed (he’d done this hundreds of times already in other cities all across the country), and then called and left a message for the county clerk to tell one of the judges who he was, that he needed access to the coroner’s report, and then he name-dropped some rather high-priced lawyers (all on retainer for the fast food corporation) who would make the next phone call, should he be denied his court order.

            After he hung up, he spent some time scrolling through the spreadsheet, reviewing the different entries. He was gave most of his attention to column six (which listed various food combinations), skimmed column seven, and felt his frustration grow as he scrolled through 187 entries of column eight.

            Column eight, 187 lines deep, had the same entry in every box.

            Deceased; within 24 hours.