“Welcome, and good day, sir.”

I was greeted by a machine well-dressed from head to toe in the finest suit this side of the moon. The shimmering metal form signalled me to follow with a finger, and it weaved me through chairs and tables, both of us ducking under the low ceiling.

The tables we passed had chairs, and on these chairs sat or stood beings – a man like myself bent over a steaming bowl, a blorg using all two of its heads to read a menu two sides at a time, and also many machines with an appendage variety only found in calcium-abundant civilizations. These mechanical ones, their tasks before them were varied: some ate, some poured, some folded, and some even seized up and seemed to do nothing at all.

I was taken to a table that only had two sides free, the other two guests at my table were the wall, jammed in the corner as it was. My ferrous waiter pulled out a seat and I took it, tucked myself in, and then from over my shoulder arrived a small dictionary. With both hands I more hauled than held the book I was provided, and managed to get it to onto the table with about ten decibels of a wooden thunk. I looked for my waiter, but already they were back at the entrance greeting another guest: two porguls which were struggling to keep their vapours together in the warmth of the room.

“Moisture Gallows are worth it!” I read on the wall before me. A lasagne of posters had elevated the infrastructure here by at least a good inch. The topmost one was bright red, a human man held a cup in his left hand, his right (augmented by a mechanical extension) was reaching into a glowing purple pond, filling a second cup with the burbling substance it contained. I could not pull my eyes from what was on the man’s chest. Every part except his neck was drowned in a yellow latex jumpsuit. His hands even, were completely rubber-encased. Apart from two red stripes the outfit was plain the arctic poles. And on his chest, a tag, it had a seam around it, stitched onto the jumpsuit. Sewn into the tag in black thread were the words, Moisture Gallows Taster.

“Moisture Gallows Taster,” I began to say to myself, and then I was thrown back to my body in the dark, candlelit bunker, sat at the table with a dictionary – apparently – and a mechanical arm tapping my shoulder.

“Sir,” came a voice like through a grating. My waiter had returned.

“Sir,” I looked up at that visage of iron, flush it was, without a seam to it, as if birthed from flesh. “Do you need any help with our menu?”

“Menu?” I inquired, but in too low a voice for my waiter to hear. I looked at the tome before me on the table. On it were the words, JOB MENU. I opened it like I was peeling glue, on the first page was a table of contents which offered an alphabetical variety of options: “Agricultural”, “Aspirational”, “Automational.” Tracing the “Agricultural” option, I turned to page fifty-three and saw before me another list, each item adorned with a brief note of imagery:

“Agricultural Amalgamator: the A.A. operates a key function in cultivation of food: to manage the gathering and organization of food from all over the solar system into shipments to be sent beyond the stars.”

And further down:

“Agricultural Taster: it is not without the A.T.s that the denizens of this system have come to trust the goods we grow – be the one to assure this trust lasts, through the powers of your tasting sensory apparatus(es).”

Buried among the reams of definitions, I had forgotten the calm atmosphere of the space around me, left behind the swings of the light from the candles, the feel of the chair before me, the white tablecloth, the chatter of other table guests. I tried to picture someone – myself? – as an Agricultural Amalgamator, how that would feel.

I was brought out of this by the tinny notes of my waiter. “I see sir, you are interested in our Agricultural options. Very good. If it interests sir, we also have various specials today? The Autophotographer Mechanic, for example – very exciting opportunity, if I may say so myself. Only two spots available.”