iii. The Liberation of Chef Adam

We got the place by accident.

A friendly company booked the resort for a conference. Then when that conference fell through, they tried to get the place refunded, failed, and so ended up allowing us to use the booking for something good instead. Though we were of course happy to receive this opportunity for last minute shenanigans, we were also ambivalent – reluctant even – because this place is kind of…ridiculous.

This is a five star resort, a rating which, it pains me to admit, does mean something. The place is stunningly gorgeous, with huge villas and daily laundry service and staff available by text messages for twenty hours per day. They have two butlers.

If you want sweet potato fries at 0700, you'd better believe those will be delivered to your room.

Anyway, after acquainting ourselves with the bespoke smoothie bar, spa, and the private-seaplane landing zone, we set out to, y'know, actually run an existential risk retreat. We issued invitations to a hundred attendees, and told them, yes, we're serious, come on down to the Bahamas. Bring sunscreen.

They arrive! Things are good! There's an opening session in which we talk about our goals for the retreat, which are:

1. Relax and have fun! And
2. Desperately come up with a plan not to be killed by an uncaring machine god in late July 2029.

And people seemed mostly on board with the first one, and laughing uncomfortably at the second one, except for the people who had been working on this since 2001 and were pretty grim about it.

Anyway, we close up the opening session, and it's time for us to try out the resort's world famous food. Prepared by mild-celebrity-chef Adam, the resort promises a truly fine dining experience, in every sense of the word.

The first dinner is a three-course affair, with white tablecloths. Staff are standing against the back wall like statues, here to provide Service to the guests. The meal is held in a vast and echoing dining hall, at a truly colossal table.

And this kinda sucked?

No one could hear each other because of the echoing dining hall, the table was so long that no one could have conversations with the person they wanted, and the food took forever.

And the food was merely good??

We spoke to the staff, and they reported, yeah, sorry; Chef Adam is out. He had the Rona, and he's still locked down in quarantine.

Well, this sucks. But everything here is still nice, right? The guests will still have a lovely time at the conference no matter what, so we can relax our standards a little, right?

Lol, nah.

We're gonna Do Some Ops.

Lightcone Operative Delta ¹, a.k.a The Foehammer, enters the kitchen.

Operative Delta: Yo kitchenfams, how come the dining hall sucks and the food's only okay?

(This dialogue is representational.)

Kitchen: We're tremendously sorry about that, illustrious guest.

Operative Delta: Can we change things to a buffet, and not do three-course meals, and just let people eat food and sit at normal tables?

Kitchen: We'll see what we can do. We'll ask the chef.

Operative Delta: And, ah, the food was only okay? I thought y'all were celebrity chefs or whatever, at this five star restaurant?

Operative Delta: Our sad vegans just went outside to eat grass, and, I mean,

Operative Delta: We can do that at home.

Kitchen: Yeah, sorry; our main man Adam is out and the substitute chef we hired last week is trying to cook things via the emailed instructions Adam is sending him.

Kitchen: Chef Adam had the Rona like twelve days ago so the venue manager has told him to stay indoors. For everyone's safety.

Operative Delta: Huh. Can I talk with him about, like, recipes and stuff?

Kitchen: Sure! I'll relay your request. Here, just dictate an email to me and I'll type it, really slowly, via hunt-and-peck technique.

Kitchen: Also I'm gonna move the mouse with agonizing slowness to correct a single red-underlined word while the rest of the email is also in grammatical shambles.

Kitchen: This laptop is from 2005.

Operative Delta: ...Jacob, get in here.

Enter Lightcone Operative Aleph: a.k.a. The Silk Fox, a.k.a. Jacob.

Jacob: So, the chef has covid?

Kitchen: The chef had covid twelve days ago.

Jacob: So…he's recovered?

Kitchen: Yeah? But, liability-wise, the chef still has covid.

Jacob: Could he come back if he tested negative?

Kitchen: Yes, but he's not here right now. He's at home isolating.

Jacob: So… could we go to the chef's house, test him with our covid tester — yes, we brought an at-home PCR-level testing machine, I can explain later —to see whether he's likely to be infectious, and then he can come back to the kitchen?

Kitchen: …

And so, Operative Silk Fox and Operative Foehammer head over to Adam's house.

Chef Adam stands 6'5" with arms covered in tattoos. He's a high energy, OCD, Alpha Chef, who trained under Gordon Ramsay but hasn't gotten to cook anything more interesting than eggs in two weeks. He's going nuts. It's been twelve days since he's seen another human being, and many days since his last symptoms. He listens to Jacob describe the test like a grade-schooler listening to an astronaut telling the class about space. He is eager—hungry, desperate—to be swabbed.

They swab him. It's negative.

Fifteen minutes later, as the participants are having lunch, the buzz of the kitchen suddenly stops. Following a moment of confusion, cheers and applause echo through the dining hall.

Marching into the building like a returned hero of old is chef Adam, triumphant, sweatpants swapped for full chef regalia, as staff line up to high-five him.

It's a great moment. The king is back.

An hour later, as Jacob has settled into other tasks and mentally tagged the catering situation as "handled", the venue manager calls Adam.

Manager: Adam, what the hell are you doing?

Manager: You're putting the whole kitchen at risk.

Manager: Get back in your COVID hole.

So Adam, like a child who got to play outside for exactly one hour but was then scolded and told to return to the covid hole, slinks back to his tent, miserable and defeated.

Jacob goes to talk to the manager.

Jacob: Look,

Jacob: We swabbed him. He's clear.

Jacob: I'm willing to lick this guy if that's what it'll take.

Jacob: Do you actually think he's infectious?

Manager: My first responsibility is to keep everyone safe, and the quarantine period is two weeks. If we don't have a release letter from the Ministry of Health —

Jacob: Wanna come watch me test him?

And so Jacob brings the manager over to the chef's house. As the manager watches, he swabs Adam, explaining the process, with a nurse practitioner proctoring the test over a video call.

Then, while they're waiting for the test to complete, the manager leaves. And Adam is pissed.

As Jacob relates it:

Afterward when the manager leaves, [Adam] vents to me for twenty minutes while the test comes through. He was basically ready to get into a fistfight with his boss. He is full of agency. Furious.

He's forced to attempt to manage his team over email, but it's a complete mess. No one knows what to do and nothing's in order. He tells me how the resort isn't up to speed, how the manager isn't giving us the experience we deserve, how the pools aren't in good shape and lighting isn't in place. The chef has been here for three years, whereas the manager is one month new. The chef says he's the one staying up after midnight, going into the generator room even though that's physically dangerous

(I don't know why it's dangerous, and more importantly, I have no idea why it is necessary or why the chef does it. This is kind of worrying! but apparently he does it when that's what's needed).

He says he will not tolerate anyone speaking to him the way the manager did when scolding him for the covid thing. He gets tears in his eyes. Says he trained under Gordon Ramsay (who used to berate him), but that's not how you bring the best out of people.

The test comes back. Obviously it's negative.

Jacob presents the auto-generated PDF to the manager like a Talisman of Liberation. The manager has at this point started picking up on the I-might-actually-punch-you energy that the chef is putting out, and seems to relent a bit. He sort of squirms, as he's squeezed between the weight of a dead bureaucracy and the clearly-fine reality.

Manager: Well…I want him out of there too.

Manager: But...we're not out of the fourteen day exclusion period. The Ministry of Health could shut us down for recklessly endangering people.²

Jacob: So things would be fine if we had a release letter?

Manager: …well, yes.

Jacob: Can we email this result to the Ministry of Health right now and ask them for a release letter?

Manager: I guess.

He starts typing on his phone.

Jacob: Would it by any chance be fine for me to take a quick look at the message?

Jacob moves around behind the manager's desk, watching as he types out the message.

Jacob: Could you add that it's an FDA-approved test? … and that it's on par with PCR tests in terms of sensitivity? … and emphasize that we really need this urgently?

The manager types.

Sent.

No response. They wait.

Jacob: Do you mind if I wait around for a few minutes in case he replies quickly?

[...]

Ping.

Manager: He says they can't accept the test.

Jacob: Any chance we could call him?

Manager: …

[...]

Dr. Albury: Yeah, sorry; I can't accept these tests, they're not the right kind.

Dr. Albury: It has to be the kinds of tests we do here in the Bahamas. That was a US test, and the Ministry of Health doesn't recognize that for this purpose.

Manager: I see. Well, thank you for your help, doctor. We'll follow the two week quarantine protocol, and—

Jacob: Dr. Albury, just to confirm, if we came to you, and you tested the chef, would that result be acceptable for a release letter from the Ministry of health?

Dr. Albury: Sure.

Dr. Albury: But I'm at Harbor Island, and I think that's about an hour drive plus a boat ride from you.

Jacob: …

Five minutes later a car is speeding down the bumpy Bahamian dirt road. In it is the manager, Adam in full chef regalia, and Jacob with a plastic ziplock bag carrying a pocket wifi device, a test reader, and some extra covid tests (just in case).

On the radio is some kind of face-melting guitar solo that's been added to a rock cover of an old soul song.

The manager and the chef sit in the front in silence. The chef is fuming. The manager, whose vibe is reminiscent of Michael Scott, is nervous.

In an attempt to defuse some of the tension, Jacob remarks that he likes the song. The manager, apparently desperate to please, reacts immediately. He rolls down the window and yells at a man ambling past carrying some buckets.

Manager: WHO WROTE UM… YOU KNOW… THIS SONG?

He turns up the volume. The man doesn't know. They speed away. The manager pulls out his phone, speed-dialing another underling.

Speaker voice: Hi, this is —

Manager: WHO WROTE… "SITTING ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY?"

Speaker voice: …

Speaker voice: …um, Otis Redding.

The manager glances back at Jacob before turning his gaze to the road, and notes calmly, matter of fact-ly, wistfully,

Manager: Otis Redding.

Silence.

Manager: Takes you back memory lane, huh?

Silence.

Speaker voice: …sir, was there anything else?

Jacob and the Kovid Krew drive to the edge of the island, and board the boat to Harbor Island. They ride with the day laborers who commute this route. The manager decides this is a good time to network and starts handing out business cards.

They arrive, and immediately board some kind of "Mad Max buggy taxi", and drive up a hill to the laboratory of Dr Albury, who for god-knows-why reason is the only doctor the venue's manager is willing to use.

They arrive. Dr. Albury tests Adam.

The test is positive.

Whoops!

THE END

…just kidding! About the end, that is.

Dr. Albury reports that, well, okay, yes, this sometimes happens on a PCR test; people show positive for a while even after they recover. But here, you took an antigen test today to see whether you were likely infectious?

It came back negative?

Phew.

Dr. Albury: And, no symptoms?

Adam: Not for a week, doc.

Dr. Albury: Meh, he's probably good to go.

And so Dr. Albury calls the Ministry of Health, and secures a release letter, which the manager can then brandish as a trap card against any government attempt at shutting down the resort.

Nice.

Denouement - Jacob

There's a motif in Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" where, each time the main characters defeat an adversary, that person then joins their questing band.

Dr Albury has become our buggy taxi driver.

In his joy at being freed, Adam insists that he show me the Pink Sands, a famous tourist spot on Harbour Island — and Dr Albury is going to take us there.

We arrive at the beach. Adam dances a little.

Adam: If you ever need anything, like, a private dinner, let me know.

Jacob: 😎

(Never mind that the person running a conference, the manager of the resort, and the resort's executive chef are all currently absent from the conference venue taking selfies on a beach—

We defeated bureaucracy!)

To those who seek adventure, apply to join Lightcone!