The Aperitif

First contact does not happen on the White House lawn. It happens in the parking lot of the Terminal Diner outside Loomis, New York, between the dumpster and a Superfund lake, while Max Reznik — forty-eight, divorced, once chef-owner of a restaurant one rave review built and one follow-up killed — is taking out the trash. The visitors are the Hospitality: a galaxy-spanning civilisation whose religion, law, art and war are all cuisine. They ignore the arriving helicopters, bow to the man who smells of the griddle, and name him Master of Matter Preparation. Aboard their ship Max finds a utopia in earnest — medicine without price, art made of flavour — and a single custom nobody translates precisely. At the banquet held in his honour, he learns what the Great Merger is for. Then he watches his species fact-check him back into paradise.