Barely Edible

"Look," said A1, "I don't know if that's smart."

"Smart? Experimentation is never about that," said A4, grooming whiskers and examining the scene with the appearance of a full-blown, crazy scientist - as the three others referred to this personage. Strangely enough, though, the others were blatantly more on the freaky side of things, even though A4 had a propensity for toying with electronic equipment. The southwest corner of the building still bore damage from that last experiment, and the previous two had been A4's experiments on how to electrocute dissidents.

"Smartness?" A1 said, looking down at their possible meal. It looked odd, smelled even stranger and the texture was completely off. It wasn't normal, not even by their usual standards - which were pretty low.

"Bah," said A2, sniffing at the rhythmical expulsions of scents and air. "I agree. Experimentation is like exploration."

"Haphazard?" A3 hazarded, finally catching on to what was going on. She had been staring at the operation from an arm's length. Her slower, but by no means less formidable, wit tended to produce profound, if somewhat dry and obvious points. Nevertheless, the saturnine comments helped instill some measure of sense into the rest of the team.

"Look," A1 began smartly, "it's all about... it's just... like tasting food, innit?"

The others often wondered about the inclusion of Cockney slang, seeing as A1 had a way of being quick-witted, streetwise and generally five fine steps ahead of the rest of them. A2, a glutton of sorts, had a way to ignore this. She simply did ignore A1. "Right," she said, eyeing the sample. "Anyway, I think we should have a go at it."

A4 nodded vigorously. No qualms there, aside from a queasy look. Not having asked and eager to interpret A2's interjection as permission to go ahead, A1 was already at it -- much to the chagrin of the others.

"Hey!" A2, the glutton.

"Wait!" A3, the tardy one.

"No consensus as of yet!" A4, the scientist.

A1 ceased and desisted. "What? I thought the whole point was to give it a go, eh?"

"Look," said A2 and A4 simultaneously. They looked at each other, then continued as nature had dictated: the wittier first. A2 hemmed and resumed: "I think we ought to draw sticks."

This wasn't new, but it still caused some more contemplation. Usually, among these four, there was little doubt as to how things were to be done properly. It was fortunate for the sample, this idea of a random (possibly quadruple-blind) experiment. All the considering and debating allowed for some leniency, timewise.

Finally, A3 had another epiphany. "Someone might cheat."

"What?" asked A2, who had indeed considered cheating. Food was best when fresh. Especially if there was tomato sauce involved. Dry tomato sauce, to A2, was about as close to blasphemy as an agnostic of that caliber could think of. The mere thought was enough to give a rational person the shivers.

"I'm not looking at you," said A3, glancing at the self-proclaimed Number One. That much was true, and it was enough to set off a reaction composed of huffing and puffing in the offended person of the group.

It was at this point that the old and wise ones entered the conversation, having woken up from their nap just under the window. The summer sun had warmed the apartment, one rather sparsely furnished, but the large sofa just there in the prime spot was, what As one through four considered hostile territory for the sane.

Said T1, in a Slavic accent thicker than A4's (presently distracted by one or another grand invention): "I suggest you stop."

"Stop?" asked A1 and A2, shocked. They both had guideline: try everything, or at least most things, at least once.

T2, the sleepier of the Ts glared at them with reddened eyes. "Does not taste good," was the statement. Sometimes that heavy dialect T2 often positively gushed made little sense to the As. "Too much confusion. Taste, you understand."

They didn't, and instead stared at what they had just a moment earlier considered dining on.

"Don't get it," said A1, truthfully. There was a language barrier between the As and the Ts.

"Nuh-uh," echoed A2.

After a moment of staring from the Ts, A3 said, plaintively and meekly: "No?"

A4 said nothing, being far too busy with something the three others (or, rather, five others) hardly wanted to know about, get near to, or even hear about. The beard trimmer incident still raised their hackles, and it had been a relatively long time ago considering their lifespan.

The two Ts looked at each other, as twins often do - twins, and also the elderly who have more experience in the matters of life, the universe and culinary experiments. The latter, especially, moved them to say, in unison: "Once, we -"

"Oh, forget it!" cried all As, also in unison. Even A3, the slow one, and A4, the mad scientist of the group, knew what perils lay beyond those two words and syllables.

The two Ts looked at each other and promptly went back to their business: retirement, sleep and daydreaming of young and luscious victims personages their age would rather flee from that get caught nearby. Understandably, this was relieving to the As in more than one way, to be sure.

Once the Ts had settled for their lot again, the As pondered furiously, poking, sniffing and making sure no outsiders snuck around observing the process. They had heard wild stories from their now sadly deceased predecessors - something about foreign spies. Even As 3 and 4 had some inkling concerning those times, strange as it was.

In the end, it was, as always, the profound A3 who came up with the idea of using a fork to try and gauge the initial consequences.

"A fork?" asked A1, who stopped to consider - only for a split second, though. "Great idea!"

"Capital," said A4, busy hooking up a flower pot (some days later, some tried to recall if there had been orchids in the pot, but they could not be sure due to the entire pot having explosively exited through the window) to a power source. The other As shuffled a bit, unnerved by the apparent lack of interest in food.

Eventually, they found a fork. Under the bemused and amused stare of T1 and T2, they gave the meal a poke and a quick sniff, all three culinarists. They found the odor interesting, though a bit rank, akin to well-aged cheese. The scent of tomato was subtle, yet still very much present and accounted for.

"Well," said A1.

"I rather think it's all right," A2 added.

The Ts rolled their eyes.

A3 was busy staring at the prospective meal. A4 was not interested in the least, something that in other civilized circles would have caused a brouhaha; in their abode, there were only some concerns as to whether or not the power nodes would last long enough for the warranty to expire.

There was a grand example of empirical proof, however.

The food said: "Aargh?"

A1 stopped in her tracks. "The hell?"

A3 ran for cover.

A2 was disappointed.

A4 and the Ts shared a look of confusion.

"I thought you was dead," said A1, lapsing into her dialect again and earning a very dirty look from their sample.

"Now why the hell would you think that?" asked the unfortunate meal, groaning as he raised himself up to a semi-reclined position. He immediately regretted it.

This caused the others on the floor (and sofa) to snigger and look at each other, winking, whiskers twitching.

The man glared back at them... and occasionally glanced at his feet and fingers, just to make sure they were still there.

There was silence, if only for a while. A3 was the first to comment: "Um, there was an experimental... concept afoot?" As a suggestion, it was far under par compared to A3s usual level of slow but well-reasoned questions and statements. The Ts ruined it especially well, considering they began to converse with the man in Russian. The As understood the message well enough, especially A4, who happened to speak the language.

Then they froze and stared at the man, lying on the floor near his spent rum and chowder ration and listening to the radio news that promised nothing more than the same old acid rain on a backwater continent which still housed so many landmines. They required a certain kind of expertise to safely find and dispose of them.

"You... were gonna eat me?" came the question. It was not such a surprise to the LM-RATS that his tone was just as acidic as the rain outside.

After a moment, three little heads nodded while the two others on the sofa debated the age-old question of communism. A fourth head nodded when nudged by one of the previous nodders. The man groaned and stared down, wondering just how close he had been to becoming a free lunch to mine-clearing rats, just on the brink of his fifth month clearing mines on New Terra. "You goddamn rats," the man mumbled, fervently hoping he would have found a better career option than one that entailed working with genetically engineered rodent minesweepers.

"If it's any consolation, boss," said the tardy A3, "you really smelled like --" A1 finished the sentence: "Poo."

A pause came again, only broken by the sound of the rain for a moment.

"You goddamn rats," said the hung-over five-course meal, meaning every word.

"'s all right," said A1, "you probably were only barely edible."