If you asked any high schooler how long humans can survive without food, they'd tell you about three weeks. That may be true for the average person, but the complete truth is a bit stranger. The world record for the longest fast ever is 382 days, set by Angus Barbieri in 1966. But how is that even possible? If I go miss even a couple of meals, my stomach becomes very upset with me. Let alone an entire week, and fucking forget about an entire year, so what was this guy's secret? For starters, he may not have eaten anything, but he was drinking water and taking vitamins and minerals as required. Doctors were routinely checking in on him to make sure his organs weren't shutting down. But here's the true tea: this fast wouldn't have been possible for the average person. When he stopped eating in 1965, Angus Barbieri was morbidly obese. He spent the entire year slowly dropping all the extra baggage, until he achieved his target weight, losing a total of 276 pounds.
Weight loss programs always try to sell you on some bullshit diet, that blames your dump truck ass on eeevil chemicals, artificial sweeteners, sugar, fat, meat, carbs... literally anything. But really, you've only got yourself and the first law of thermodynamics to blame. Any energy that your body ingests and does not burn is accumulated as fat, at a rate of approximately 4000 calories per pound. People also like to blame their genetics for their weight issues, so how dare I swipe left on them. They have a point. Some people are better at absorbing calories from food, and naturally burn fewer calories throughout their day. Nobody says it, but this is a pure evolutionary advantage: it means they can survive on less food. So, there’s more than one side to this coin. Actually, when you think about it, fatties are just the ultimate doomsday preppers. You know that one guy who stores an entire year's worth of dried beans in his pantry just in case North Korea invades? Well, imagine if that guy carried that entire pantry around with him at all times. You too can experience that unparalleled self-sufficiency for the low, low price of being hideously repulsive. Unless you find someone who’s into gelatinous chicks, I don't judge. Okay, fine, I do judge.
I should stop thinking about starvation... it won't change the fact that we're officially out of food.
It was midday, the sun was high in the sky, obscuring the gigamoon. Even with that, it was still obvious that we were no longer on earth. At times, the road wound through stretches of grassland, and we could see that the ground was littered with craters of various sizes. Some of them were filled in with water, others with vegetation, and a few of them, eerily, did not seem to have a bottom. It was obvious what was causing all of them: There were always a few trails of smoke somewhere in the sky. I couldn't believe how many meteors this place got; If you'd told me the planet was in the process of being invaded by aliens, I would have believed you.
After all, I’m one of them.
Stella and I somberly finished our rations and geared back up to finish our hike.
"If you were on death row, and you could have anything you wanted for your last meal, what would it be?" I asked melancholically, as we started the march.
After thinking for moment, Stella responded. "Laxatives. I heard that when you die, your bowels push everything out, and that is not going to be the last thing my family remembers about me. So I'd… clean my room in advance."
I snorted, surprised. "Here I was, expecting something basic, like sushi. You're a very conscientious girl."
"One of my many virtues." she answered without a trace of irony.
"I was gonna say steak for me, but after hearing that... maybe Indian food. Tikki Masala. Go out with a bang."
Stella rolled her eyes. "Disgusting."
"Serves them right for falsely convicting me."
"What makes you think they'd do that?"
"Because that's the story of my god damn motherfucking cunt-punting life."
"Can we just walk... and not talk?" she said, visibly recoiling at my indiscriminate stream of verbal diarrhea.
It finally happened. After a full day of hiking, we crossed a weathered stone bridge that extended over a small stream and entered the main street of a small village. Civilization at last. It was late afternoon, and the sun was starting to dip below the horizon. Men with farming implements were heading to their homes after a long day in the fields. They looked remarkably... ordinary. Nobody was ten feet tall, covered in golden scales or boasting an extra set of limbs. In fact, the weirdest people by far... were me and Stella.
"Mommy, what is he wearing?" a little girl asked her mom. The mother gazed upon my fetishistic ensemble in horror and hastily turned the child's face away.
"Don't worry about him, sweetie, he's very ill." she muttered, shooting me a dirty look.
I looked away, ashamed.
Hope I didn't just turn that kid from aspiring astronaut into a future prostitute...
Stella snickered.
"You look even weirder." I pouted.
On the front porch of one of the many quaint wooden houses that lined the street, a large, heavily tanned, strong-looking bald man was massaging the sore calf of one of the workers. His hands began to glow with pale blue light, and a blocks of ice appeared in his hands. He strapped the ice blocks to the man's leg with a length of linen, then stood up and caught sight of us. Immediately sensing that we were out of place, he came over.
"Hey there, I don't think I've seen you all around here before. What are your names?"
"Hi, I'm Brad and this is Stella. We're sort of... lost."
"Hi lost, I'm John, the leader of this town. How did you manage to lose yourselves so far in the wilderness?"
"Well, I sort of... woke up in a cave. And Stella-"
"-fell from the heavens, like an angel." Stella finished.
Yeah, like an angel that pissed off God.
This made a lot more sense to John than I was expecting. He nodded and said, "Oh, okay. So you're from other worlds, then. That's not unheard of around these parts, Alterra gets lots of visitors from beyond."
"Alterra?"
"That's the name of the continent you're on. This town, Apis, happens to be very close to the geographic center of Alterra. We get visitors sometimes because of that, but they always get bored after a couple days and leave. Not much to do here except farm." he chuckled.
"So... do all of those meteors in the sky have people in them?"
John shook his head. "Nope, it's very rare. But frequent enough that people know about it. Since you woke up in a cave, that means you're probably a Calderan: a creature - sometimes human, sometimes not - that emerges from voids that bubble up from the ground. Since your lady friend came from a meteor, that makes her a Crateran, which is the same deal as a Calderan, but from the sky instead. The vast majority of people are born on the continent; that makes them Alterrans. Just letting you know now, because people will be asking, especially after seeing your pretty hair." he smiled at Stella.
Stella smiled back. "Does Apis have a refuge for people like us?" she asked.
"Yes we do, there's an orphanage not far from here. Haven't had any visitors from other worlds in years, but you'll fit right in with the rest of the kids. How old are you, anyway?" He asked as we started walking down the street.
"Uh... I'm 31." I responded, knowing full well how stupid that would sound.
"I'm... 27." Stella said with equal enthusiasm.
John grinned. "Incredible. You're both about +15 then, you're gonna have really bright futures."
"What?"
"Oh, don't worry about it for now, I can explain later."
As we passed row after row of small wooden homes that smelled like dinner, another thought occurred to me.
"Hey, John.. I saw you doing something to that guy's leg earlier. How did you make the ice appear?"
John's eyes twinkled. "I learned how to use ice magic when I was a kid, during my year of study at Castella. You know, I could never believe that some outsiders had seriously never seen magic before. Until I met a few, at least. A world without magic sounds pretty dull..."
"With all due respect sir, you've never had a smartphone."
He raised his hands in defeat. "I'm sure your world has its perks as well. Oh, looks like we're here."
We stopped in front of a large, wooden building lined with rooms like a motel. We were at the outskirts of town, the boundary between civilization and vast forest.
John knocked on the main entrance and cupped his hands to his mouth. "HEY MAGS, YOU IN THERE?" he shouted.
Moments later, an old woman opened the door. She was tall, with great posture and fluid motion for her age.
"Evening John, what can I..." she began, before noticing the homeless demon and underage masochist standing next to him. "Who are these brats?"
"Couple more mouths to feed. This one here's a Calderan," he said, gesturing at me, "and this one's a Crateran." pointing to Stella.
"Both kinds showing up at once? Never heard that one before." she shrugged. "Well, come on in, let's get you fed. Thanks for bringin' 'em here, John."
John nodded. "Yes, ma'am. You kids have any other questions before I head off?"
I paused for a second. There's definitely something I was...
"Oh yeah!" I realized, "Is there anyone in town who can remove these shackles?"
"No can do. This purple metal here is mythril, it's too tough to remove with standard tools. You must've pissed off someone really powerful to land yourself in all this." John smiled apologetically.
My stomach sank. I shot a nasty look at my chastity belt.
Get used to it, nerd. It seemed to respond, glinting smugly in the dwindling sunlight.
Where do babies really come from, anyway?
I asked my dad this question when I was a little kid, while we were sitting by the fireplace, in that developmental phase where I was asking about anything and everything that caught my interest. I'd heard the popular theories about storks and diamonds, but none of it seemed to add up.
My dad looked at me, surprised. "Well, you see, son... when a man and a woman tolerate each other very, very much..." he began awkwardly, "The woman will... take off her clothes, and... the man will give her money. Only half of the money son, remember that."
I nodded eagerly, wishing I had some paper to take notes. "And what exactly is under her clothes?"
"A coin slot."
My god... it all made sense.
"But never let a woman know how much money you have, son, or she will ask for all of it up front. To the woman, she isn't getting half before, half later. She's getting all of your money now, and all of your money later."
I sat transfixed, desperately bypassing my hippocampus to commit everything to permanent memory.
"To attract a woman, son, you must appear to be the kind of man who earns so much money that your stash completely replenishes itself in between the 'before' and the 'after'. Object permanence is a difficult concept for women to grasp."
I nodded vigorously, having only recently discovered for myself that objects do not stop existing when you can't see them. Unfortunately, the sarcasm part of my brain hadn't developed yet.
"Thank you, father." I responded formally, matured by my newfound knowledge and clarity. The man gives the woman money, the woman goes out and buys the baby. Also, girls are idiots. Why didn't I think of that?
"One further query, if you would be so kind." I implored.
Dad nodded, amused.
"Why do girls have long hair?"
"Well, naturally..." he sat back, smirking, "It's to hide the horns."
I woke up early the next morning yawning, my father's voice fading from my thoughts. I had my own room in the orphanage; the other kids were much younger and slept in bunk beds in other rooms. Apparently, the orphanage doubled as a hotel for the occasional tourist, so the accommodations were great. Stella also had her own room.
I slipped on a rough spare tunic and went down to the kitchen to find her and Maggie, the orphanage caretaker, preparing breakfast. I glanced at Stella's protrusions and smirked.
To hide the horns.
Stella caught my look and frowned. Then Maggie noticed that I was up and about.
"Good morning, Bradley. How did you sleep?"
Eh... a bale of hay with some sheets is better than the floor of a cave, I guess.
"It was great Maggie. Anything I can do to help out here?"
"Actually yes," she said, pointing at a large bucket in the corner of the room. "Take that bucket and fill it in the stream. Oh, and if you have a knife or something, take it just in case."
"Just in case what?"
Maggie shrugged.
I nodded and retrieved my dagger from the nightstand in my room. Stella had reluctantly given it back to me in exchange for some of my coins. Which was fine, she deserved to have a little bit of something to get her started out here. The dagger was cold to the touch... must have been a draft...
Then, with a skip in my step, I grabbed the bucket of water and sallied forth on my very first fetch quest.
