You might not need this information now but nobody can tell us about next year or next decade. I'm so glad you're doing well though!

They can’t? I think I misunderstood someone as saying people can see the future.

Some of them can, but they're not watching you.

How can you tell?

Precognitive insurance is an expensive service. By default only rich people and governments and particularly dangerous recreational events have it.

Why do I feel like there’s something wrong all over except when he’s controlling me? Like fear but it isn’t about anything specific and I’m not exactly more afraid. Is that somehow more of the thing where my heart doesn’t beat faster if he doesn’t let it?

Probably. Yeerks can decide whether to let their hosts' emotions influence their autonomic body functions or not. Anxiety or whatever it is you're experiencing is probably related to some kind of physical feedback loop he can interrupt.

He spends the rest of the wait looking at the fish.

Eventually a pool attendant finds him and lets him know that Ashkon is ready.

He'll go pick Ashkon up immediately.

In he goes! <Didja miss me?>

<Yeah.> He's kind of sad about that.

<I'm sorry.>

He appreciates that but doesn't know what to do with it.

<So if you don't have class, do you have anything fun to do?>

<A pool friend suggested that we should try 'fancy' coffee, with like, stuff in it. Would that work for you?>

He -

- the panic just doesn't come, of course, there's only vague unease that can't find any purchase anywhere in his body. After a moment he stops being surprised by that and actually considers the question. He doesn't want to take food from people, doesn't want to accept absurd luxuries that people joke about the frivolousness and expense of, doesn't want to remember and be sick. But he's not going to be sick no matter what he has to remember, is he? That's the obvious implication of what Nocawe said, and what he's noticed, unless he's wrong but presumably Ashkon will notice and point out if he's wrong. And nothing's been presented to him as expensive here, and this is only even a real choice if the people who told him there were no starving people here were telling the truth and not just fucking with him.

There is really no need to fuck with him. There is really no need to trick him unless they just specifically want to watch him squirm about it, and that's certainly a possible explanation for all his recent experiences but he's not going to react to that possibility by proactively making sure to squirm in advance. Whatever. He believes whatever these people say, the easy way instead of making them jump through hoops to make him, and the things they say add up to gluttony not really being a concern here.

<Would it be okay to try it even if I might decide it's horrible in the middle and want you to stop?>

<Yeah, of course. My friend thinks that you might have more stamina if you were ever consuming calories, and I'm not that much more interested in chewing than you are but coffee with milk and stuff seems like the next thing to try. There's no commitment in drinking a latte.>

<Okay. Whatever you want.>

So Ashkon goes and finds a nice coffee shop and orders a latte.

Sip.

It tastes bad.

Everything tastes bad, though. Or at least, black coffee tastes bad, and that's all he usually tastes other than water and the inside of his mouth, neither of which tastes good. He only likes black coffee because he started drinking it when he had fewer taste buds and less tendency to notice smells and got used to it gently. The latte is less familiar and therefore even worse.

He doesn't gag. And he's not sure it's really worse other than being unfamiliar. Maybe they should try another sip.

Ashkon will go nice and slow.

The taste is still... a taste, and therefore terrible, and it makes him start absolutely obsessing over how long it's going to take to finish it. And his stomach feels bad somehow in a way he doesn't recognize.

(If Ashkon has other experience with humans he might recognize some of these feelings as hunger.)

He doesn't ask to tap out, though. It's not going to hurt anyone else and if Ashkon wants him to have more stamina and this is the way to achieve that then who really cares how he feels about it. The way he feels about it was designed to hurt people, probably, unless he misunderstands what the demons were aiming for.

Somewhere hidden deep within the dearest and most hidden parts of his mind he finds a scrap of curiosity about what the other drinks taste like.

Ashkon takes three more widely spaced sips. Tragically he's never had a human host before. <I think maybe that's enough to push it for now, unless you really want me to keep going.>

Imaginary shrug. <You can do whatever but I don't really want that. I hope you end up wanting to try different ones, though?>

Possibly right now. He's sort of oddly interested in this now.

<Sure. There's a ton of kinds.> He tosses the latte.