xp_logs | Klara and Monet | Friday afternoon

The scent of Klara's baking catches Monet's attention and they talk over tea while waiting for the apple strudel to be ready to eat.

Monet walked into the kitchen, following the smell of some sort of delicious baking, her favourite teacup in her hand. (Kurt had the wrong sort of milk.) "Dude. Whatever it is you're making, it smells awesome," she said, flicking on the kettle. "Tea?"

"Yes please," said Klara, looking up from the oven when Monet spoke. "It's my mother's apple strudel recipe. I hope this will be enough to allow everyone who wants to have some to enjoy it."

There were three baking pans full in the oven at the moment.

"Oooh!" Monet paused to make the tea and said "You've got enough of those there to feed an army."

"Oh, if I was going to make food for an army, I would have made at least twelve of those," said Klara. "But I am hoping three will be enough. Some people have big appetites."

She had grown up as the youngest in a large family. Helping her mother with cooking had been one of the first tasks she had been taught to do. Since they were feeding people who had been spending the entire day hard at work, she was used to feeding people with appetites.

"Seriously?" Monet asked. "Do you have milk or sugar?"

"Seriously," said Klara with a nod and a little smile. "I grew up on a farm without any of the modern farm equipment. I know how people's appetites can get. And just milk, please."

Monet handed a mug over and sat, crosslegged and floating in midair near the bench. "You know, I've always thought that that sounded absolutely horrible."

Klara considered that. Her old lifestyle was something she wouldn't willingly return to, but she couldn't consider it 'absolutely horrible'. There was something to be said for the simplicity and the tightly knit community atmosphere.

"I will admit that I have gotten attached to indoor plumbing and electricity," said Klara. "But farm work has its good points. It's good exercise, and it's nice to know exactly where your food is coming from."

As she got more comfortable with her powers, Klara wouldn't eat store bought fruits and vegetables. She had read a few articles on pesticides, and was able to grow her own nearly instantly anyhow.

Monet nodded. "I suppose but, dude. You guys didn't even have plumbing, or... That bit sounds horrible. Besides, I don't want to know where my food comes from. There's too much ick involved."

"Well, for the meat, yes," admitted Klara. "There is some 'ick' involved. I meant knowing that there are no harmful pesticides on the fruit and vegetables, and knowing that the food was not genetically modified. I read about genetically modified food in an article and..."

Klara shuddered. There was something unsettling about the idea of fish scales being genetically modified into strawberries. Fishberries sounded fundamentally unappealing.

Monet shrugged. "Some of it's pretty cool, but. You know I work for Elpis, right? Well, one of the programs we've got in Morocco is using a mutant who does, ehn, some kind of plant bizzo that I don't really understand, and he's breeding extra drought proof fava beans. It's his thing. He says they're kind of like GM food, only, you know, made by mutants, rather than Monsanto. Mutant GM food is a big thing, since there's a lot of areas where traditional crops don't do as well. He's also growing some that taste like oranges but we keep telling him that that's just too fucking weird."

Inwardly, Klara winced slightly at the obscenity. Her outward expression showed no discomfort. She had gotten accustomed to hearing swear words in her time here, even if she didn't use anything worse than "darn it" the vast majority of the time.

"I would be more comfortable than mutant GM food than food modified by scientists working for a corporation," Klara confessed. "I can grow plants much bigger than they would grow naturally on their own...so it would be hypocritical of me to be uncomfortable with that. I suppose it is the intent that matters the most."

"Really, why?" Monet asked, genuinely curious. "You don't know that the mutant knows what he's doing... There was this case in ...I forget where, where six people died after a mutant messed up the preparation of mescaline about six years ago." She tugged at a curl and continued, explaining "I had to read up about it, for the fava bean dude. Anyway, there's no guarantee that a mutant knows more about the chemistry of a plant than scientists do or that the mutant would test it. It's not like, says, Monsanto and the sterile seeds but more, sometimes, apparently one lot of chemicals looks a lot like another."

"Note that I said scientists working for a corporation," pointed out Klara. "I would be willing to trust scientists working for a non-profit organization. Corporations have an agenda - their own profits. When greed is a factor, there is no guarantee that the scientists will be working toward a solution that is most beneficial to the people using the product."

Monet twisted around slightly to place her mug on the bench and pushed off it, drifting across the room to Klara. "At the risk of sounding like my dad here, yeah, they want to make a profit. But, look. They also come fund a lot of interesting research and development programs and some of them come up with some pretty cool stuff. And sometimes they do things like sell sterile seeds. And then again, governments use scientists to do some really awesome things, like introducing myxomatosis to rabbits and then also some things like, argh, all those attempts to weaponise mutants. You can't be all 'corporations are bad'."

Monet dropped to the ground and stood, shaking her head. "Everyone does bad things. Not wanting to make a profit doesn't you out of that. Besides, anyone who ever said 'money doesn't buy happiness' was poor."

A number of retorts came to mind in response to that last line. Klara kept them to herself. She wasn't interested in starting up an argument and upsetting Monet unnecessarily. Not only was it not nice, but it was also not something Klara was comfortable with.

"I suppose you have a point," concded Klara. "I am still more comfortable with non-profit organizations, but not all corporations will resort to shady practices. Only some."

Monet shrugged. "Some not for profits do, too. Go read up on aid delivery in Somalia sometime."

The alarm on the oven timer buzzed, announcing that it was time for Klara to remove the apple strudel. It was a grating sound and Klara shut it off quickly, slipped over mitts on over her hands, and withdrew the three pans of apple strudel one by one.

"It will probably be about ten minutes before it's cool enough to eat," she said, having a sip of her tea.

"God damn, you mean I have to wait now? That is so not fair," Monet said.

Monet taking the Lord's name in vain made Klara wince inwardly even more, but she stayed calm and primly sipped her tea.

"Good things come to those who wait."

"Another cup of tea then?"