Super Meals: Part Thirteen

           Doctor Ralph had time – it was still early evening, after all, and the hotel kitchen had prepared for him an excellent meal, which he had eaten alone in his room while listening to an instructional audiobook on how to speak German.

            Doctor Ralph had money – as the “Head Chef” of a major global fast-food chain, he was amply paid in both salary and stock options. Domestically, in liquid assets, he had roughly $8.2 million. If you were to factor in his offshore accounts, overseas holdings, Panamanian dummy corporations, and myriad investments, he was worth almost ten times that much.

            Doctor Ralph had curiosity – he was fascinated by what he referred to as “this laboratory called Earth.” It was what led him into chemical engineering as a profession in the first place, and he thought of himself like a modern day Nicolas Flamel (who was a real person and not just a Harry Potter character). He didn’t believe in alchemy in the traditional style, but he knew science, and he knew that you could mix together the building blocks of life and matter itself to create wholly new things.

            What Doctor Ralph did not have, however, were answers. At least, not enough answers.

            Through his studies, meticulously recorded on his custom spreadsheet, he had discovered the answer to the question “How do you give a man bulletproof skin for 20 minutes?” He did not, however, have the answer to the question “How do you give a man bulletproof skin for 20 minutes without his stomach eating itself and ejecting his intestines through his bellybutton?”

            So he needed more research.

            He was currently trying to pass bills through the state legislature of several bible-belt senates, but was having trouble getting things finalized. While the deep south had absolutely no problem whatsoever giving him permission to conduct experiments on prisoners that were almost guaranteed to be lethal, the legislators he had bribed or bullied into helping him were greedy to a man (Doctor Ralph knew better than to ask a woman to help him, not that there were any in the governments of the southern states). While he had meticulously planned and crafted his bills after months, if not years, of research so that they would be passed without question, his chosen vehicles of delivery were apparently trying to see exactly how much of a raise they could give themselves as riders to these bills.

They would tack on a suggested pay raise to Doctor Ralph’s proposed law, and it would get voted down.

They would tack on a one-time bonus for themselves, and it would get voted down.

They came very close to getting a profit-style share of the state’s revenue if it exceeded a certain amount, but that, too, was voted down.

So Doctor Ralph could not experiment on prisoners.

Back at the home offices of the fast food megacorporation, Doctor Ralph had done a remarkable job of cleaning up the streets of the city by selectively pulling crackheads and homeless people into his laboratory and experimenting on them. Social engineers and urban developers were baffled at the drop in panhandlers and junkies that once roamed the streets, but Doctor Ralph simply smiled to himself and thought of his spreadsheets.

Unfortunately for Doctor Ralph, though, word had spread on the streets about the men and women who approached the vagrants and vagabonds offering free fast-food care packages in exchange for just a few hours of their time, and they had all gone to ground or moved away.

So Doctor Ralph could not experiment at home.

It was fortunate, though, that Doctor Ralph, as the “Head Chef” of a major global fast food chain was called upon to travel quite extensively throughout the world. He made sure that whenever a new product (he never referred to their wares as “food”) was launched at a new location, he was always on-hand to observe the festivities and take notes on how well the products were received.

And if a few locals went missing and were never heard from again, well, nobody would ever expect Doctor Ralph Quinlan, holder of several PhD’s and “Head Chef” of a well-known and highly respected (to some) fast food chain.

He did have to curtail his research a bit, though, when even he started noticing that whenever his employers made page five of the local newspaper (it was never a big enough story to warrant the front page, but a new product or a new location got at least some mention), there was inevitably a missing person story on page nine.

So when Doctor Ralph came to this particular small town to investigate the death of a transient, nobody from the local population knew he was coming, and his presence would go entirely unreported while he was there.

This was the perfect time to conduct research.

Doctor Ralph called a local rental car company and ordered a car. He had one, already, but it was in his name and rented using a company credit card, so he couldn’t use it for his experiment. A robotic voice answered the call and prompted him through the order process until it said that there would be a car delivered in 20 minutes and hung up. He was uncertain if he had ever spoken to a real person throughout the call.

19 minutes later, Doctor Ralph got into the elevator, went down to the lobby, and exited just in time to see a green-shirted young man running towards the front desk with keys in-hand.

“Excuse me!” called Doctor Ralph. “I believe that’s my car?”

The young man stopped, looked at the tag attached to the key, and asked “Mister Robert Afett?”

“Bob, please,” said Doctor Ralph, extending a hand. “Call me Bob.”

The young man shook his hand and said “Okay Bob, here’s the car,” and handed over the keys (and also breaking protocol by failing to check the ID of the recipient, but this was exactly what Doctor Ralph had counted on). “There’s about a half-tank of gas in there now, and if you return it with less than that you’ll be charged for gasoline at the highest price in the area, so you’ll want to make sure it’s gassed before you bring it back.” The young man leaned in then and lowered his voice, saying “The cheapest gas in town is down on 2^nd, just past Morton Street.”

“Thank you very much!” said Doctor Ralph, beaming. The young man smiled and nodded, gave a wave, and ran back out of the hotel where he jumped in a car that was waiting to drive him back to the lot.

Doctor Ralph got into the car he’d rented under the false name, a plain, beige sedan, and drove away from the hotel.

It was dark now, the sun long gone, but it was a small town so Doctor Ralph didn’t take long in finding the seedier side of it. Men and women dressed almost laughably stereotypically roamed the sidewalks and loitered on streetcorners. Every time he stopped at a red light or stop sign, a dozen eyes looked up expectantly, hoping he’d roll down a window and call out to one of them.

It wasn’t until he turned North on 13^th street that he made up his mind.

At an intersection he spotted three women lounging on the corner. Doctor Ralph rolled down the passenger window and the tallest of them walked over to his car and leaned in. “You looking for some company, stranger?” she asked, smiling.

Even Doctor Ralph would have to admit that she was beautiful. Angular features and a crooked little smile that made him think of the Japanese term “Wabi-Sabi,” or “the beauty of imperfection.” She wore glasses, and from this angle he couldn’t decide if they were prescription or merely decorative.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Bethany,” she replied. “Wanna buy a girl a drink?”

“Dinner, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“Sounds like a deal to me,” she said, opening the door and climbing in. “I haven’t eaten in a while and could definitely go for a bite. Where’d you have in mind?”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m on a bit of a schedule, so it’ll have to be some fast food.”

“I’m okay with that. You got a place for us to go after we eat?”

“Not yet, do you know a place?”

“There’s a cheap place on 9^th, just past Main. They rent by the hour and don’t ask questions. They’ll even take cash if you don’t mind kickin’ a little extra to the guy at the front desk.”

“That sounds perfect,” said Doctor Ralph. “I’ll get us some food and we’ll sit down together and eat, then see what happens next…”