Sourdough

by Robin Sloan

  I reached down with oven mitts and lifted the loaf from the baking stone, almost expecting the face to relax in relief. Its expression remained fixed, because it was, of course, not a face but a crispy crust. I plopped it down on the countertop, fished out my phone, and snapped a picture. I was about to send it to Arjun, but something made me pause. There was real pain in the phantom face. It wasn’t funny. It was disturbing. I deleted the photo.

  In the bread book, Broom counseled that it was essential now to wait, to let the bread cool, to allow the glutens to complete their final binding, but I was hungry and I didn’t want to stare at the face any longer. With my bread knife (which CUSTOMERS WHO BOUGHT THIS ITEM ALSO BOUGHT), I sawed through the loaf at its widest point and, like a vision in the clouds twisting apart in the wind, the illusion broke. I looked at the bread’s cross section, the crumb, and I giggled a little. It didn’t look like the pictures in the book; this sourdough was not so perfectly inflated, its bubbles not so lacy. But, seriously … not too bad!

  I made another cut, peeled away a rough slice, and blew across its surface, tossing it from one hand to the other. It was too hot to eat, but I began to eat it anyway, and it tasted just like the bread that came with the double spicy.

  This was Beoreg’s sourdough. There was no disputing it. But as I took one mincing bite after another—I’d been waiting hours—the fact asserted itself: I’d made it myself, from nothing but flour and water and salt and a dollop of the Clement Street starter. The net cost of ingredients couldn’t have been more than a dollar, and now I had this enormous loaf of bread, my favorite bread, my serenity bread. I was disappointed not to have any spicy soup for sopping. I didn’t even have any butter. I ate it plain.

  That loaf of bread was the first thing I’d ever prepared myself that did not come out of a box with instructions printed on the side. My apartment was suffused with its smell, the smell I knew and loved. I wanted to fish out my phone and dial the old number and cry out to Beoreg before he could put me on hold: I did it!

  Instead, I wrote an email. Just a short message—Look what your number one eater made!—dispatched to the address he’d written on the menu, to which I attached a photo of myself, proudly holding up a sliver of a slice of sourdough, my cheeks full of the rest. Was it cute? It was cute. I sent it.

  The twisted face in the crust was forgotten as I carved and ate, carved and ate, until the whole loaf was gone.

  SHARING THE MIRACLE

  THE NEXT MORNING it felt like it had been a dream, but there was the mess I’d left on the countertop, and there was the aroma, still lingering: evidence of the work I’d done, the thing I’d produced. I emailed Peter at General Dexterity to invoke one of my theoretical vacation days—I could almost hear his gasp across the city—then switched my phone to airplane mode and baked two more loaves.

  This time, the dough was not so gloppy, the process not such a disaster. I waited serenely, watching three episodes of the dark serial drama while the dough fermented and rose, and another episode while the twin loaves baked.

  But when I opened the oven door and pulled out the rack, I had to suck in a sharp breath. My first thought was: You have had a tiny stroke. Possibly stress-related. I’d read about neurological conditions that made it so you couldn’t recognize people’s faces; was I suffering from the opposite? Some sort of hyper-recognition? I looked around the kitchen, fixed my gaze on random objects: Cupboard. Faucet. Refrigerator. Did I see faces? I did not see faces. The power outlet looked like a little dude, but power outlets always look like little dudes.

  I looked down again at the loaves on the baking stone, which, just as before, carried in their crusts the overwhelming illusion of dark eyes, upturned noses, fissured mouths.

  Upon closer inspection, these faces were different from the last loaf’s. They weren’t disturbing. Their eyes squinted merrily and their mouths curled into ragged, jack-o’-lantern grins.

  The bread knife was the solution to all my problems. I sawed and sawed until the faces were no more.

  * * *

  IT’S ALWAYS NEW AND ASTONISHING when it’s yours. Infatuation; sex; card tricks. How many humans have baked how many loaves of bread, across how many centuries? I’m sure Beoreg baked calmly, matter-of-factly, without paroxysms of cosmic delight. But that didn’t matter. For me, the novice, the miracle was intact, and I felt compelled by some force—new to me, thrillingly implacable—to share. I tied the sliced loaves into neat bundles with twine and bounded outside, still wearing the sweatpants I’d slept in.

  My apartment was the lower of two units carved out of a dingy house on Cabrillo Street. My neighbor Cornelia lived upstairs. Our front doors were side by side on the face of the house, and I knocked on Cornelia’s now. We didn’t see each other that often, so when she appeared, her expression was cautiously curious.

  I presented the twine-wrapped loaf and explained: “I … baked this for you?” Had I really? Was it possible? Did the universe permit feats of such profound creative alchemy? Apparently, it did.

  Cornelia was, if not quite as impressed with me as I was, still at least medium-impressed. “What a nice surprise,” she said, accepting the gift, and lifted it to her nose, murmuring “Mmm” appreciatively, which is exactly the right thing to do when someone presents you with the second loaf of sourdough they’ve ever baked in all of history.

  “I didn’t know you were a baker,” Cornelia said.

  I told her I had not been until yesterday. She raised an eyebrow, seemed to reappraise the loaf in her hands; her impressed-ness modulated upward a degree.

  There was still another loaf to share. I went to the house next door, its resident unknown, never before seen or even considered. No one was home—or they were, but they were spooked by the appearance of a wild-eyed woman in sweatpants alive to the miracles of the universe, cradling a mysterious bundle, with traces of dough drying on the front of her tech company T-shirt.

  The next building, then. There were three doors, and I rang the bell attached to the first. A man came to the door, flabby and whiskered, a bit drowsy looking. Behind him, deeper in his apartment, I saw a television paused on a frame of a movie; from the color palette and aspect ratio, I guessed early 2000s superhero.

  “Hello,” I said. “I live down the street. I was baking. I made too much.” I held out the loaf.

  He looked skeptical. “Nah, thanks. That’s okay.”

  I wanted him so badly to take it. “I used the starter from Clement Street Soup and Sourdough. Did you ever order from them? Two brothers? Double spicy?”

  The movie-watcher shook his head slowly, and the muscles under his eyes were wary. “Sorry. I’ve got to go.” He closed the door, and I heard one, two, three latches click into place.

  If I wanted to share this miracle—and I did—it would have to be with people who knew me.

  * * *

  AT THE SLURRY TABLE, when I unveiled my gift, Peter scooched his chair back apprehensively. “I don’t eat bread,” he reminded us. He said it like a ward against evil.

  The other Slurry slurpers had no such compunctions. The slices I had sawed were thick and fluffy, and we slathered them with plum jam swiped from Chef Kate’s fancy toast station.

  Garrett relished the sourdough most of all. The sounds he made were borderline NSFW.

  “You made this?” he said, mouth agape. “Like, from a kit? Does it come frozen?”

  Garrett lived in one of the new micro-cube apartment buildings on Sansome Street, and his living space didn’t have any kind of kitchen. Instead, it offered a wall-mounted touch screen connected to various delivery services expedited to sub-five-minute timescales through a contract with the building’s owner. Garrett operated at a level of abstraction from food that made me look like Ina Garten.

  I explained the process by which living sourdough starter gave the bread its texture and flavor. Garrett’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “It was … alive,” he said softly. Wonderingly. He, like me, had never before considered
where bread came from, or why it looked the way it did. This was us, our time and place: we could wrestle sophisticated robots into submission, but were confounded by the most basic processes of life.

  Chef Kate was making the rounds, chatting amiably with her lunchers. Generally, when she did this she avoided our table, reticent to confront the disgustingness of our food preferences. Today, Arjun called out to her—“Chef Kate!”—and she changed her course to approach us, her gaze darkening.

  “Lois bakes bread now,” Arjun announced.

  “I didn’t think you kids ate solid food,” Kate said.

  “That’s only Peter.”

  “Correct,” Peter said.

  “Well,” Kate said. “Can I try some?”

  All gazes swiveled to Garrett, who had just consumed the last slice. He looked guilty but in no way repentant.

  Chef Kate hooted. “I never thought I would see the day. One of the Slurry kids baking bread. The rest eating it. Dude.” Her “dude” was a thumping approval. “Lois? Bring me some. I want to taste your wares.”

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, when I returned home: a new disaster.

  The Clement Street starter had dried out. It was now less a slime and more a crust on the walls of the crock. Its surface was dark and rippled. It smelled like nail polish remover. It looked dead.

  In a panic, I threw together a batch of the flour-water starter food. It felt like I ought to drip it in slowly, just a bit at a time, as if I were bottle-feeding an ailing kitten. (I have never bottle-fed an ailing kitten.) (I did once coax Kubrick back to life with a spray bottle.) (You have to work pretty hard to push a cactus to the brink of death.) I dripped, dripped, dripped the floury paste into the crock, and as I did, I spoke to the starter.

  “Come on,” I murmured. “It was just one day. You’re supposed to be able to handle that. The bread book said I could leave you alone for a week.”

  You must play the music of the Mazg, Chaiman had said. I set his CD to playing on my laptop and tapped a key to increase its volume—plink-plink-plink. As I fed and coddled the starter, it began to perk up. Its color lightened. One tentative bubble formed on its surface.

  Relief. But also exasperation: Beoreg and Chaiman had gifted me with a starter that was strange and potent, and also extremely high-maintenance.

  I left the starter to recuperate and fished from the cupboard a bottle of pinot noir (purchased for the hedgehog on its label), then retreated into my living room to sit with my eyes closed, sipping. The wine tasted vaguely like dirt. Not in a bad way. When Chaiman’s CD ended, I poured the last of the wine into my glass, then played it again.

  The CD’s seven songs were slow and meandering and seemed to fade one into the other. Some were sung by groups of women, others by groups of men, and one was a mixed chorus. The style was all the same: sad, so very sad, but matter-of-factly so. These songs did not blubber. They calmly asserted that life was tragic, but at least there was wine in it.

  I realized suddenly that my apartment reeked of bananas. I followed the scent to the kitchen, where the Clement Street starter had more than doubled in volume and was surging out of the crock, puffy tendrils oozing down the green ceramic. I heard a crispy, crackling pock-pock-pock; the starter was not merely bubbling but frothing.

  It is only barely anthropomorphization to say it looked happy.

  I could understand that.

  I retired to my bedroom, where I kicked off my pants and flopped down onto my futon. I was drunk and tired and happy. More than happy: delighted. Proud of myself—not just for making the bread, but for sharing it, and for making a few friends, even if they were all programmers and Loises. Maybe programmers and Loises are all you need.

  * * *

  I WAS MIDWAY TO SLEEP when I heard a sound in my apartment—a whispering creak, like the bending of a board. It sounded again, louder. A dose of danger-chemicals flooded into my blood and I snapped wide-awake, eyes sharp, nose flaring.

  I think some people call out “Hello?” when they hear strange sounds in the night; this has always seemed foolish to me. If the strange sound does indeed emanate from something fearful, then it already has the drop on you. Better to stay quiet; better to even the odds. I hopped up onto the balls of my feet, crept to the doorframe, slowed my breathing, and stretched my senses to listen.

  The sound continued. It was less a creaking and more a high back-of-the-throat sound. Mmm-mmm-mmm. My pulse was throbbing in my neck.

  I peeked out into the main room. My eyes flicked from the front door to the back window. Everything was shut tight. This is one virtue of a small domain: you can survey it all at once.

  The sound was resolving into something residential, but I still didn’t know what. The wind whistling through a crack somewhere? I relaxed and padded out to investigate.

  I followed my ears into the kitchen, where the sound was louder. Up to the countertop; louder still. I zeroed in on the source: the Clement Street starter in its crock.

  As I watched, the surface of the starter trembled. It had become smooth and glossy in the moonlight.

  It went, Mmm-mmm-mmm.

  Even up close, the sound was faint. I leaned my face in, trying to discern its source. Was the crock itself flexing as it cooled in the night? Was the sound coming from a pipe behind the wall? I lifted my hand to move the crock so I could find out if the sound moved with it, and just as my fingers touched the ceramic, the Mmm-mmm-mmm rose and became a coherent note, then two, then more, soft but clear.

  The starter was singing.

  Its surface was vibrating like a pot just before boiling. This cold-simmering substance was somehow sustaining a quavering harmony.

  It was singing in the key of Chaiman’s CD, the key of the choirs of the Mazg.

  It crooned into the darkness, then faded.

  There was a silence in which I processed the fact that this crock of gray slime had been singing; in which it followed its performance with a tidy farting noise; in which it settled into quiescence; in which I moved first my fingers and then myself away from the crock, across the room, to stand against the far wall.

  I wish I could say the moment was hazy or dreamlike, but I was sharp with the battle-readiness familiar to all humans of all eras awoken by strange noises in the night.

  I approached the crock again, peered inside, and whispered, “Hello?”

  The starter’s surface had lost its shiny tautness. It sang no more.

  I considered the possibilities. An accident of gas could, I reasoned, produce a sound—boiling pots bubbled merrily—but it would be plosive. It would go pop, poof, or plop. Possibly boof or bloop. Maybe—maybe—ffft or frap; a farting sound could be explained. I let my tongue and vocal cords go slack, forced air out of my lungs, and simulated these airy sounds. Boof. Plop.

  But the starter had not gone boof or plop. It had murmured Mmm-mmm-mmm in a clear, coherent voice. You needed lips to make Mmm, you needed a brain to find a note. That was complicated equipment.

  I looked down at the Clement Street starter. It was not complicated.

  I set the crock’s lid in place and padded back to bed. Sleep came slowly.

  * * *

  IT’S A MESS when strange events smack into the windscreen of a resolutely rational mind. It would have been tidy to believe that it was a ghost speaking to me through the malleable medium of goopy dough. There’s a whole story there: I could have organized a séance, hired a specialized kitchen exorcist, et cetera. But, of course, I do not believe in kitchen ghosts, or sourdough angels, or 500-degree devils, and so the event I had witnessed had to be explained by actually existing physical and/or mental phenomena. I simply could not come up with any.

  The next day was Saturday, and I spent most of it trying to devise a way in which the starter’s song might have been a bit of dream shifted into waking—the mental equivalent of an off-by-one error. But the sound was sharp in my memory.

  I ejected Chaiman’s CD and turned it over in my hands. Its title was ha
ndwritten. There was no label, no publisher, no bar code. There were no clues.

  I opened my laptop and searched in vain for information on world writing systems. I found a comparative table of scripts, but at the top of the page it warned that there were thousands of written languages on Earth, some of them with just a handful of writers, and it would be impossible to list them all. Nothing in the table matched the script on the CD, the script on Beoreg’s menu.

  I’d received no reply to my email.

  The starter did not sing that day. It did not evince any special glossiness. It did not respond to questioning. I didn’t try to bake. Instead, I watched it closely, stirred it with a spoon, stuck my nose into the crock. It was mute, though fragrant.

  Bananas.

  CHEF KATE

  ON MONDAY, I rose early and baked two loaves that emerged from the oven with faces happy-cheeked, cherubic. I wrapped them in paper towels and stuffed them into my backpack.

  I also carried the crock with its fragile passenger along to the office and set it on my desk next to Kubrick the cactus. I threaded a pair of earbuds between my laptop and the crock, dangled them inside, and played Chaiman’s CD at minimum volume.

  The cafeteria was nearly empty, with only a few early risers (or never-slepters), who sat quietly with code and yogurt. In the kitchen, Chef Kate and her small staff were subdividing a pile of potatoes, collecting tater-tot-sized pieces in plastic tubs. Reggae played on a whoomphy Bluetooth speaker.

  Chef Kate had come to oversee the feeding of the Dextrous by way of a cool restaurant on Valencia Street, wooed away from fine dining by lavish stock options and normal work hours. For Andrei, she was a trophy. His chowhound ways were well-known, as was his dream of seeing his robot arms working smoothly alongside sous chefs in all the open kitchens of the city.