Робин Слоун: Sourdough

I found Agrippa farther back in the bunker.

“I saw it,” I told him. That’s all.

He looked at me—his face changed, eyes narrowed, then opened again—and he nodded once. “Good. Now you know what to do with your starter.”

Did I?

I sat with the ceramic crock in the deck chair next to the Airstream. It was nighttime, past ten. The sun was down, but the Port of Oakland lit the airfield with a purgatorial glow. I wondered how the goats handled the strange light. They must have adapted.

Agrippa and I were sipping experimental beers. I was a little bit drunk.

“I think … my starter needs a warrior spirit,” I said.

“It has a warrior spirit,” he said. “It was born with it.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You need to give it something to fight.”

“Like what?”

“A rival. Another culture. Something from Big Sourdough.” He paused. “Is there such a thing as Big Sourdough?”

I considered the question. The answer came to me.

“I can use King Arthur,” I declared.

“That’s flour, right?”

“Yes, but, but but but”—I was getting excited—“they also sell a starter, they say it’s a hundred years old … They ship it to you. It’s really popular. They must make it by the barrel.”

“Ohhhh,” he said. “Perfect. Get some of that. Put them in the arena together.”

“What if the King Arthur wins?”

“Hey now! You gotta believe in your starter,” he said. “It can hear you. It’s right there. You need to have a warrior spirit, too! Lead the way!”

I stood up. Stared down into the crock. The pale gray scum was no less pale, gray, or scummy than ever before. “Are you ready to fight?” I asked it.

“There you go,” Agrippa said.

“Are you ready to fight?” I cried.

“There you go!”

“Are you ready to fight?!”

I held the crock over my head and stomped my feet. A starburst of shadows spun around me, cast by the lights of the bridge and the port and the city and the brewery, all the lights of civilization.

Agrippa got up, too, and started howling and dancing along. The goats stayed on the far side of the airfield—wisely—but Hercules the alpaca wandered closer, curious.

WHAT NEXT? Beyond the great rocky island, the world was shifting, and now the richest trade routes crossed other seas. Fewer ships stopped at the jetty; fewer sailors bought beer and bread. But the Mazg were still full of ambition! They had hardly begun their story. They used their accumulated wealth to acquire ships of their own, and armed themselves, and became pirates.

For a while, this was extremely successful. When Mazg pirates stormed a ship, they had the advantage, always, for while the other crew was sick from moldy rations, the pirates were strong from rations made of mold. The great rocky island was now a single enormous fortress-pantry, teeming with the fluttering, wobbling culture that sustained the Mazg. They sang their songs louder. They sang them faster. They were hungry. They were unstoppable!

They didn’t realize the danger they were in. Something important had been lost. In case it’s not obvious—it’s easier to communicate this when you tell the story out loud, like my uncle does—this story wants you to think that maybe that something was humility.

After a long season of piracy, one of the roving ships of the Mazg returned to the great rocky island only to find that the great rocky island was gone. In its place there was a floating forest of fungus with fluttering ribs and wobbling tendrils, many times larger than the great rocky island had ever been. While they watched in horror, it fluttered and wobbled and … burped.

Lost was the kingdom of the Mazg—eaten, in the end, by its own food.

That last ship fled to land. The Mazg aboard carried in their crocks the culture of the cave, and in their memories the songs. Everything else was lost.

It’s just a story. There’s another one, about a girl named Mazga who steals the culture from the queen of the dead. In that story, the songs are the memories of sad souls, and they are needed to trick the culture into believing it’s still in the underworld. Shehrieh likes that one better.

Me, I like the pirates.

THE FALL OF CAMELOT

THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR COMPANY began as a Boston-based importer in 1790 and introduced its own American-grown wheat flour in 1896. Since 2004, it’s been one hundred percent employee-owned, which is pretty cool. The company’s headquarters, now located in Vermont, is an enormous twelve-sided building called Camelot.

From Camelot’s website, I ordered the King Arthur sourdough starter (a single ounce) and paid extra for expedited shipping. The UPS driver delivered it to Cabrillo Street in a plain brown box. Inside, there was a very small plastic tub with a white screw-on lid.

I carried the King Arthur starter to Alameda, transferred it into a larger container, and began to feed it on the same schedule as the Clement Street starter. It grew eagerly, bubbling and expanding. Where the Clement Street starter smelled faintly of bananas, the King Arthur smelled strongly of flour, with maybe a touch of vinegar. I got the sense that’s how sourdough starter was supposed to smell. Its surface was wet and gloppy; there was no suggestion of the silvery tautness that was the signature of the Clement Street starter’s occasional sentience.

I tried to see it through Agrippa’s eyes—imagined the King Arthur starter a civilization on the rise. Was it bland, a bit boring? Maybe, but so was my own human civilization. I imagined myself as a cell down there among the teeming trillions. Maybe I was happy. Maybe I was excited for the future.

Then I carried the King Arthur starter across my workstation to meet its neighbor. It was time for an apocalypse.

I portioned off a section of the Clement Street starter, noting its despondence, and dropped it into a fresh tub—a great arena—then added the King Arthur and swirled them together. The mixture turned an even gray. For just a moment, I wondered if I had made a miscalculation, and if the King Arthur, with its Protestant work ethic, might be the stronger substance.

I whispered encouragements to the home team. “You’re Alexander the Great. Rising China. Everybody better get out of your way.”

The starters spasmed in slow motion. The tub frothed with gas, emitted gouts of scent new and strange: not only bananas and flour but also orange peel, Earl Grey, gunpowder. Was I detecting signal flares launched above a vast battlefield? Or was it the wreckage of war—the broken remnants of armies cleaved apart? Was I smelling corpses?

It took an hour. By the end of it, the scent of flour was gone, and the Clement Street starter was frothing, victorious. I hadn’t seen it so lively since the early days, before the Marrow Fair, before anything.

I added this rampant culture to a tub with flour and water and salt and I mixed the dough myself. It bucked and surged; it was uncanny. I formed a loaf and nothing stuck to my fingers. Silvery and taut, this was sourdough on a wartime footing.

The finished loaf emerged from the Faustofen perfectly round and buoyant. Its face bore a new expression: an even, distant look, hollow-eyed like a statue from antiquity. It was a face full of grim purpose. When I tapped it on its back, I heard an echoing boom.

LOIS! I haven’t heard from you in a while. How is your robot doing? How’s the starter?

TEND YOUR GARDEN

THE CLEMENT STREET STARTER had changed, perhaps irrevocably. Before, I sustained it with inert flour. Now it would accept only living fuel, and only in large quantities.

Every morning was a new conquest. The starter was jubilant, and I was back on track, production-wise. I had the volume of starter I needed, which meant I could mix the amount of dough I required, which meant I could bake enough bread to supply Chef Kate every day and, with luck, meet the demand that was imminent.