There was no grass on CX2389, only a soft blueish foam that cracked along the ground to reveal a bubbling purple gunk underneath. The haunting outline of CX2389’s near dead star lingered in the sky and was illuminated by the diffuse glow of the atmosphere. Well, not the atmosphere, but the yeast within it. The entire surface was alight like the twilight evening hours on Fara’s home world. It gave the air of something magic, and, perhaps, something sinister.
“This is going to make damn good bread,” Fara said with delight. She was sealing the last of twenty jars. They glowed around her feet, making her feel like the center of her own little universe. A bit of CX2389’s atmosphere was trapped in each one of them. She would be taking them on a journey across the galaxy, to her little moon-side bakeshop.
By every measure of life, CX2389 should be dead. Its star was more ash than fire. But, just as Fara had found on other worlds, life can thrive in the strangest of places.
That was her secret.
Fara was never afraid to try a new ingredient. So far, her gambles had proven delicious … and mostly harmless.
The respirator rattled on her suit. CX2389 wasn’t safe for any sapient lifeform to traverse unprotected. She tapped the screen of the biometric monitors on her arm. Blood pressure and heartbeat both read normal. The gauge for her blood oxygen momentarily spiked before quickly returning to normal. Strange.
As she set off from CX2389, the glow from the jars filled the small cabin with twilight and she had the sudden urge to share this beauty with the galaxy, for a price.
Fara lived in the city of Lievito on the smallest moon orbiting her home world. It was considered an in-between city. Pleasant for a night or two to marvel at the stone buildings carved into the impact crater basin but not enough to occupy a tourist’s attention for a full week. The densely packed buildings always reminded her of bacteria growing outwards towards an ever-distant sky. The glass dome secured over the basin rim meant that buildings wanting to expand had only one way to go: down. And Fara’s bake shop, Sinfully Sweet, was all the way on the bottom.
Many of her customers were travelers who were stopping on Lievito for the night before making longer journeys across the galaxy. She relied on them to carry her reputation on their tongues. Bottom dwelling businesses didn’t get as much visibility as those closest to the dome.
Fara was determined to change that.
She wrote to several prominent food critics under differing surnames mentioning the shop and suggesting a review. She used words like ‘quaint,’ ‘charming,’ and ‘mysterious’ to describe the shop rather than the more likely monikers of ‘tiny,’ ‘grimy,’ and ‘falling apart.’ What little money she had to invest went directly into her flavors rather than shop upkeep. It was a risk, but Fara knew if she could get just one critic to taste her work, the shop would become legendary. She would become legendary.
Her countertops may have been permanently marked with stains, and her front window may have had a layer of dirty film that refused to be washed away, but Fara knew the only thing that mattered was the taste of her food. That was where she shined.
“Honey Pus? What kind of name is that for a biscuit?” a stout old man asked as he hovered over a glass display case filled with golden biscuits.
“The honey comes from the finest bees in the Golath star system,” Fara said with a smile. That wasn’t necessarily true. It came from a planet near the Golath star system, CX3589. And the honey wasn’t honey, exactly. Though it did come from popping the pimples on the backs of over-large bee-like creatures. Semantics, really.
“Golath?” a familiarly irritating voice asked from the doorway. “Which world?”
Fara clenched her jaw as she glared at the bane of her existence, Dretta Renes. The health inspector. “None of your business,” she replied.
“Oh, I’d like to know,” the stout man said with excitement.
“Bar-,” she paused. Fara was about to say Baroke which was the largest planet in that star system, but the excited dance in Dretta’s starving gaze told her it was a trap. “Balka. Out by the belt.”
Dretta’s eyes returned to their usual dull glare. Fara smiled.
“I’ll take four,” the man said, his interest apparently peaked.
After the customer left, Dretta lingered in the shop. She sauntered between the display cases as though she could get the pastries to confess their origins with a damning glare.
“Thanks for the sale,” Fara taunted. Dretta ignored her as she examined a tray of hot and sour sticky buns. If only she knew what the icing was really made from.
“Six sapients have gotten ill and two have died over the last year after eating at your shop,” Dretta said, her eyes darting back to Fara to gauge her reaction.
“Ah, so they only ate my pastries? All of them? No other food?” Fara asked.
Dretta was right, sadly. Fara suspected six sapients had gotten sick from her food. Two may have possibly died, unfortunately. However, it occurred over such a long span of time it’d be nearly impossible to prove.
Her ingredients were safe for the vast majority of sapients, she even tested them herself.
Dretta scowled. There wasn’t much more she could do.
The Lievito health department didn’t have the funds to travel to Balka and investigate Fara’s honey pus. When it came to testing her ingredients, the illegality of them was also her security. Ingredients from uninhabitable worlds were banned from use in sapient foods. Yet, uninhabitable worlds differed so greatly from sapient safe ones that no one had any idea how to identify them.
Then there was the fact that Dretta’s boss was Fara’s best honey pus customer.
“You’re on thin ice,” Dretta said as she turned to leave.
Fara knocked her boot on the floor. “Nope. Stone. Definitely stone.”
An angry purple cloud sat in stasis over a bowl of flour and water for several days. The yeast mixture it eventually yielded was much like the surface of CX2389. A bubbling blue crust with undertones of purple towards the center. It also gained another feature of its home world: a soft incandescent glow.
The yeast batter was warm and almost fizzy between her fingers as she added more flour and began to knead. It slowly stiffened to a ball and light radiated off it like a moon between her palms.
She decided to make a focaccia dough, hopeful that some extra ingredients on top could help disguise the yeast’s inherent musty odor.
When she opened the oven door the result was exactly what she wanted: a fluffy square of bread that glowed entirely on its own. She lathered the top in truffle oil and covered it in a blanket of roasted red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes.
Saliva was pooling on her tongue when she finished. Normally, Fara would only take a small bite when testing a new ingredient, but the smell was tantalizing, and her stomach was rumbling. The first bite became several almost instantly.
The dough was smooth and cakelike. It didn’t demand attention from the taste buds but was happy to hang behind the sundried tomato like an echo, lingering just long enough to whisper its presence. A near silent serenade. The smell had evolved as well. It wasn’t exactly a delightful waft of fresh baked bread, but it no longer smelled alien. It smelled, strangely, like home.
Fara looked down to find a spattering of crumbs in her hands. She couldn’t remember doing it, but she must have devoured the entire slice.
By Fara’s own rules, a taste test is followed by several days where she would study her habits and moods. Regardless of what Dretta believed, Fara didn’t want anyone to get sick.
Alas, she found a knife in her hands, slicing her way through the hard crust and portioning it out for the customers. It was too delicious to be harmful. A critic could stop by the shop any day and she couldn’t afford to hide away something so good.
The glowing dough sat by the window and customer eyeballs seemed drawn to it like little flies. She came up with the name on a whim, but it seemed to stick: Nightglow Pizza.
Fara was so busy ringing up orders that she didn’t notice the glow of her own skin until a customer pointed it out.
“Is that why it’s called Nightglow Pizza?” the customer asked as he handed over a ten-piece credit. “It glows for a night?”
Fara paused. Her arms looked like two lengths of river reflecting the light of the moons. When did that happen?
“You know what? Keep the change,” he said as he grabbed the slice from the counter and left. Fara didn’t react until the door slammed shut behind him.
Her fingers traced a glowing forearm.
The full cash register lingered in her peripheral vision.
She didn’t feel sick. It was the opposite. She felt more alive today than she ever had. Images of all the customers from this morning cycled in her mind. Were they all going to experience this, too? Doubt grumbled inside her as she eyed the pizzas in the display case. She could hold off on selling more, at least until the glow went away.
Then she watched the path of several folks change at the sight of the display. They soon became customers.
She decided the glow had to be cosmetic since she’d feel ill if it were something serious. Besides, a pizza that left you glowing would be a great marketing tool.
The next morning started as any other on Lievito. Bells blasted through the dome to indicate the start of a new day. That was more for the benefit of those at the top of the dome, with their sporadic doses of sunlight, than the bottom dwellers. On Fara’s level, life was always lit with the same vaguely pink artificial light no matter the time of day.
Regular customers shuffled into the shop for their daily dose of caffeine and sweets. Fara’s hands spent the morning covered in varying thicknesses of flour, butter, and egg mixtures. The only difference today was that her fingers glowed blue underneath. It hadn’t faded in the night.
When Lesso, Dretta’s boss, waltzed in on his lunch break, he seemed to be aware of Fara’s latest creation. His eyes were glued to Fara’s glowing arms as she handed him his daily honey pus biscuit.
“A marketing gimmick,” Fara started to explain but Lesso held up his hand.
“I’ll hear all about it from Dretta,” he said with a sigh as he crunched down on the biscuit. Fara smiled. Though it was never explicitly said aloud, they seemed to share the same opinion of Dretta.
As Fara stocked the nightglow pizza window display, her glowing hands momentarily hesitated. Perhaps this effect would be permanent. Perhaps sapients could be getting sick. For a moment her fingers tried to pull the slices away, but then she remembered the nearly endless line of customers the day before and she put the slices back down.
She was sure it was fine. There was nothing wrong with her, after all.
Soon after, her first repeat Nightglow customer barged through the door. Fara knew she was a repeat from the glowing skin which highlighted her angry face.
“Look at me,” the woman cried. It was difficult for Fara not to. The woman could be mistaken for a star had she been perched high enough in the sky. It was far brighter than Fara’s own skin. A vague memory of the customer’s face surfaced in her mind. She bought several slices of Nightglow and Fara had assumed it was for other sapients. Apparently not.
“Ahem. Well, see, I can explain,” she stammered.
“Explain? I’m reporting you to the city! This is unacceptable. Just look at me!”
“You look gorgeous,” Fara replied. They were the first words her lips could form, and they weren’t untrue.
“I do?” the woman replied. Fara nodded. Their eyes locked. Suddenly a bit of courage, or perhaps desperation, bubbled up in Fara.
“And you don’t want to file a complaint,” she said.
The woman tilted her head. “I don’t?”
“No, you don’t.” Fara wasn’t sure what she was doing. It didn’t even feel like her mind was telling her to say it. But suddenly, there was an almost imperceptible bulge in the woman’s pupils. A ripple in the glow around her skin. The anger in her face rounded to an almost eerie calm.
“No, I don’t,” the woman said.
“You don’t?” Fara repeated, almost in disbelief.
“No, in fact, I’d really love to buy some more. My friends will adore it.”
Fara perked up. “Let me show you our new selections!” She motioned to the display, not wanting to give this odd turn of events more time to shift the other way.
Fara couldn’t explain the customer’s sudden change of heart until other strange happenings occurred in the shop.
When a Nightglow customer was debating an order of crispy sour buns or bubbling chocolate poppers she jokingly replied, “Why not both?” Her eyes had locked with his. His pupils widened. His glow flushed.
“Okay,” the customer replied and handed over the credits at once.
Then there was the time an argument broke out over the best flavor of Nightglow. The customers were two glowing-skinned regulars debating between the mushroom and onions or the mozzarella.
“Personally, truffle is my favorite,” Fara replied. The argument ceased and both agreed that truffle was the only flavor for them.
The glowing regulars swarmed the building regularly, bringing in their family, friends, and sometimes even strangers off the street.
Within a few weeks nearly every bottom dweller in Lievito had glowing skin. And, as Fara eventually came to realize, once a customer’s skin started to glow, she had a certain level of control over them. Control may not have been the right word. Persuasion would better describe her interactions with them. The effect didn’t seem to work in reverse, but she hadn’t eaten another slice since that first one, just to be safe.
Whispers of doubt crept in every morning when she set up her Nightglow display. Should she continue serving the pizza knowing the influence it gave her?
Then she remembered that the shop had never been so popular, and the cash register had never been so full. Was her customers’ openness to her suggestions such a bad thing? Did sapients not regularly follow the trends of a celebrity because of their suggestions? How was this any different? Fara was becoming something of a local celebrity after all.
It was a month before Dretta came knocking with a warrant in hand and Lesso in tow. Fara knew this day was coming, though she had hoped Lesso would come in on his own first. The plan was riskier this way.
“There is no way this is coming from habitable worlds,” Dretta barked.
She saw Lesso’s eyes flicker to the honey pus biscuits momentarily before he peeled them away, a pained look on his face. He hadn’t been to the shop in weeks.
“Even I can’t overlook this one,” he said. Fara could feel the sweat starting to bead inside her glowing palms. Her plan hinged on him.
“There are plenty of legal ingredients that create a glow. I’m not about to give up my secret recipe.” Her voice was as calm as she could make it, but Dretta’s smile told her she wasn’t successful.
“Nothing makes a sapient glow like this,” Dretta said. Lesso gave a grim nod.
“Fireflies from Stagnata,” Fara replied. It was a good cover story. Stagnata was well known for its unique sapient-safe ingredients.
Dretta and Lesso exchanged a curious look. Fara dashed to the kitchen and grabbed a jar of glowing yellow mush from the shelf. Anyone who cooked with Stagnata fireflies knew they lose their glow in the oven. Fara was counting on that information being too obscure to be an issue.
When she brought it out, Fara could nearly hear the teeth in Dretta’s mouth crack as she clenched her jaw. Lesso’s deflated demeanor fell away and he smiled at Dretta.
“See? Stagnata fireflies!” he said.
“Shh!” Fara said with faux exasperation as her eyes darted to the other customers in the shop. They all had glowing skin. She was among friends. “I don’t want anyone to know my recipe.”
“We should watch her cook with it,” Dretta replied. Fara’s fingers gripped the jar like a vice.
“That’s going to take a while, oven’s full at the moment,” Fara said. Her voice trailed off as she glanced back to the kitchen. It was now or never. “In the meantime, would you like to try my latest creation?” She ran back into the kitchen again before either of them could reply.
She returned with a slice of her newest Nightglow flavor: Honey Pus Delight. Lesso’s eyes widened.
“No, we wouldn’t,” Dretta said.
Lesso held up a hand, “She said she’ll let us watch her bake with it.” His eyes were nearly salivating. “Isn’t that right, Fara?”
“Right you are,” she lied with grace, holding the slice out to him. The tendrils of steam danced towards his nose. There was a slice sitting in the warming tray everyday just for Lesso.
Lesso nodded and ripped the slice from Fara’s glowing hands.
“Lesso!” Dretta said with disgust.
Right on cue, Lesso let out a delighted moan from his overstuffed cheeks.
Dretta glared between him and Fara, two targets vying for her anger. “I’m going to get your supervisor, Lesso,” she said as the door slammed shut behind her.
“No, she won’t,” Fara muttered.
“Hm?” Lesso said through his mouthfuls of delight. The glow was already starting in his cheeks. Fara had been refining the recipe and making it more potent.
“I said I never want Dretta to bother me again,” Fara said without caution. Lesso looked confused at first but soon the rest of his face flushed with a glow. His pupils dilated. He nodded silently as he ate the last bite.
Fara was about to clarify what she meant. She may have hated Dretta, but she didn’t want her hurt. Maybe reassigned or perhaps fired in a humiliating public display, but not physically harmed. As she opened her mouth, however, a legendary face entered the shop. He glided when he moved, as though the concept of gravity was beneath him. His face was contorted in his typical scowl. Smiling was an inferior practice for him. It was Isaac Trout. The top food critic in all Lievito.
Fara’s mouth hung open.
“I will get rid of Dretta,” Lesso said in a robotic voice. “She will never bother you again.”
Fara waved him away, angry he’d interrupted the glorious moment that Isaac Trout crossed the threshold of her shop.
“Are you the one with the glowing pizza?” Isaac asked in a permanently annoyed tone. This was it. The moment Fara had been waiting for. The pizza display behind Isaac silhouetted him with an angelic glow.
Fara nodded.
The door to the shop slammed. Lesso was disappearing down the street. Fara was released from her trance. She had to stop him. She had to clarify her suggestion.
“One slice. It better be worth the trip down to this glorified sewer,” Isaac said while holding out his hand. All it would take is one bite and Fara would be in control. Word of Fara’s shop would spread across the solar system. Perhaps, even the galaxy.
Fara gazed between his hand and the door. She pursed her lips and guilt swelled in her stomach. She knew what she had to do.
Her feet made to move but the soles of her boots remained cemented to the floor.
A chill rippled through her. She could have sworn her skin momentarily burst with a glow. It was the same reaction her customers had to her own suggestions, but it had never happened to her. The furrow in her brow smoothed and the purse in her lips slackened. A smile returned to her face. “Coming right up,” she said. Her concern disappeared.
Behind her, a few feet away in the kitchen, sat the jars from CX2389. If the yeast inside had lungs it’d be breathing a sigh of relief. Fara’s surprising conscience nearly ruined its expansion plans, when everything had been going so smoothly. This was the first occasion it had needed to exert control on the devious little sapient.
The yeast had moved through the last solar system too quickly and had been stuck on CX2389 for ages. This time it would take its time, moving through the galaxy bite by bite.
