Abandoned

As I was quietly resting, the buzz of an incoming call from my personal terminal snatched me from dreamland. Opening it up, it was Josh texting about the meeting venue.

I looked up to the top of the personal terminal to check the time. More than an hour had passed! Messaging Sazzy to jolt her awake, we both headed back towards the dining area.

Reaching there, Tim and Josh were speaking to each other, sharing a personal terminal as they talked. Josh was the first to notice we were coming, and kept the personal terminal. Then he pointed in our direction to alert Tim of our presence. Seeing us, Tim then lit up a grin that could rival the lantern ferns overhead.

The moment we joined the two, Josh immediately went down to business.

"We'll be entering the cooking area right now. But be careful not to touch the walls carelessly, or you might get hurt or burnt."

The two of us said goodbye to Tim, who had to leave due to some urgent business. Watching the sad expression of his as he left, I couldn't help but smile and chuckle. Turning around, I saw Josh staring at me with a slight frown. However, he soon covered up his emotions and the two of us walked towards the cooking area.

Walking down the mine-shaft looking entrance, I soon realized that this was a man-made cavern. The sides were decently smooth, although they had several sharp areas that proved Josh's point.

"In all of the camps, we build these cooking areas to prevent the smell of food from attracting unwanted attention. It also serves as food storage as well."

Josh pointed to a small room that was branched out from the main route we were currently walking on. Peeking in, I could see several meats hanging on hooks, as well as several open boxes with either dried meat or nuts in them.

"Some of the rooms are also used as preparation rooms. In another sense, anything related to food is stored here, semi-underground, and constantly updated on the camp's inventory page to make sure that everyone can be sure we have enough food rations to survive on."

Pointing at another branched off room, I could see that there were bowls and barrels of food mixtures either in the process of being processed or were getting ready to turn into mixtures.

"By being transparent with everyone in our small group, it allows all of us to not only be less nervous about food, but anyone can also spot any mistakes that any group members make before it is too late. But this information is only available to camp members. The other camps don't have this information since it's useless for them. That also includes people who do not plan to join the camp permanently."

Continuing down the main route, the air became more humid, and soon I could even smell the scent of food being cooked.

Almost suddenly, once we turned a curve, the small tunnel opened up into a large oval space that had several ponds of steaming hot water. These ponds had dozens of bowls floating in them.

We moved into the cavern and walked towards a table where a woman was currently preparing a kind of dish. But as soon as she noticed we were coming, she paused her actions and gave a nod towards Josh.

"This is Caroline. She's usually in charge of cooking for the entire camp. You may come to her if you need to discuss food related topics, since talking to a professional would always be a better option."

Caroline smiled politely at me when she was introduced. And after her introduction, she continued what she was doing as we headed towards the steaming ponds.

"This is how we cook food in Ferus. Through steaming the food on these special plates."

Josh grabbed a plate from a stack that was sitting near one of the pools. Then he handed it to me.

"These frames of these plates are made of a special kind of wood that can handle high temperatures and does not spoil upon prolonged contact with water. Then animal fur is attached to the plates, with the inner skin facing the inner side of the plate. After that we attach small pieces of leftover fur from other handcrafts on the side to form little pieces of fabric that protrude from the bowl to make them easier to retrieve."

"Once food preparation is done, the dishes are assigned to a group member, who then sets them to float and steam on the ponds until they are done. On the side of the bowls floating, you can see a colorful ribbon tied to one of the protruding fabric. This allows each group member to keep track of the plates, and how long they have been cooking for."

I handed back the plate after observing it carefully, and Josh placed it back on the stack he took it from. Looking carefully at each group member, they all had survival belts that had the colorful ribbons attached to them. And the ponds they were watching were full of bowls floating around with their ribbons trailing behind them in the water.

Once a dish was done, the group members would take their long metal stick with a hook at the end and hook onto one of the protruding fabric from the dishes. Then they would slowly bring the dish to shore and pass them to another waiting group member near the center. This group member would write something on his personal terminal as he removed the food from the plate, transfer it to one of the normal bowls without hooks, and then cover the bowl to keep the food fresh.

"Unfortunately, due to food security reasons, you have to bring your own ingredients to cook. However, as long as it's not dinner preparation time, you are free to use any of the plates and hooks here to cook. It's just that the location and layout of the cooking area is a little confidential. So, during your stream, I would suggest having the whole thing here underground. We can prepare a larger table for you if you want."

Saying so, Josh fiddled around with his personal terminal, and I heard a buzz from my own terminal. He then took out a block of wood that had some characters skillfully carved on it.

"This is a special pass for entering the cooking area, since it's usually quite guarded. If anyone bothers to ask what you're doing here, you can show them this. Also, I just sent the free timings of the cooking area to your personal terminal so you can come here anytime."

Getting everything sorted on the spot, Josh then introduced me to the manager of the cooking area, Mary, before leaving.

"The leader always acts cold, but he cares about everyone in his own way."

Watching Josh's leaving figure, Mary said with a smile as she led me to one of the pools and introduced me to the group member in charge of it. Then, grabbing a chair from somewhere, she gestured for me to sit before hurrying off to do her duties.

Abandoned by everyone, I stared at the group members bustling around. Looking at the time on my personal terminal, it was quite close to dinner, And glancing at the free time slots for the cooking area, it seemed that it was not very occupied right after dinner. Makes sense.

Closing my personal terminal, I looked over at Caroline kneading, folding and mixing the food. There were others like her scattered throughout the area, all within short walking distance to several pools. Caroline was the closest one to us.

I saw her grab a spoon full of sugar syrup, smear it all over some dried meat, and then turn the meat over with a pair of chopsticks before smearing it with sugar syrup again. Once both sides were shiny, she took a handful of nuts that had been smashed beforehand and sprinkled them on top of the meat. She placed the meat flat on a piece of leaf, which had another piece of meat underneath. Finally, once a small tower of meats was built, she wrapped them in a big leaf and put it on a dish. She then handed the dish to another group member.

This group member approached the pool that I was currently sitting at and handed it off to the person in charge of the pool. The pool person then took one look at the dish, grabbed one of the ribbons on his survival belt, the green ribbon, and tied it to the plate. He then gently but expertly put the plate on the water and pushed it out near the center.

At the same time, he scanned the pool quickly before using his metal hook to grab one of the plates with a red ribbon and brought it to shore.

Pulling up my personal terminal, I tried my best to keep track of what dishes had what color ribbons, as well as what each ribbon stood for.

Keeping one eye on the plate with the green ribbon, I also tried to learn how they prepared their food, what ingredients they used, the steps, as well as how much of it was needed. But since everyone was working so fast, I soon narrowed my focus to one dish at a time.

First was the dish with the green ribbon. I would frequently turn my eyes back to keep track of it, and try to see if there were any visual cues that would indicate that the dish was done. It was obvious each colored ribbon indicated different timings. But the question was how?

Did the person in charge have to keep mental track of the time, or was there a visual change on the ribbon that would indicate that it was time to bring it out.

Seeing the dozens of plates floating around and the business of the people here, I suspected it was the latter. With how much the Lupos had made so many things efficient, they probably streamlined this process as much as possible without any machinery.

After a while, I noticed that the shade of green of the ribbon seemed to change. From its original dark green, it was slowly turning a lighter shade. And it was obvious I wasn't the only one who noticed. After a couple glances at the dish, the moment the ribbon started to turn a very light shade of green, the person in charge of the pool took out his hook and brought the plate to shore.

So it was a change of the shade of color?

Looking at the time, only around 10 minutes had passed. So green represents 10 minutes. If green was 10 minutes, then I could probably guess the duration of each color based on their position on the group member's survival belt.

On their belts there were a total of 10 colors. And as the colors went more inwards, they also got progressively lesser. On the belt, green was the second color. And if it was 10 minutes, I would bet that the color before it, blue, was around 5 minutes. Anything under that seemed to not require a ribbon.

I had some dishes in which the group member did not attach the ribbon to, just casually hooked it onto a small hook near the edge of the pool and let it float there for a while before bringing it back up.

However the color after green, which was orange, could either be 15 minutes or 12 minutes. Both of these options probably had a fair chance to be right since even in my previous world 12 minute dishes did exist after all. And a difference of 3 minutes was quite big for certain dishes.

While pondering, I went back to looking at Caroline. Time to follow another dish!