Dinner — the powdered-milk conspiracy

texture · 11 Nov YDAU, 1810h

• When: 11 November YDAU, ~1810h (dining-hall supper)
• What: Hoarse and cold-ridden (Seldane bottle by his plate), Troeltsch mounts an increasingly paranoid dinner-table case that the kitchen has secretly switched them to powdered milk, adducing swished-glass residues and a childhood "domestic trauma" — a big sister who ran away when his family switched to powdered — and tying it to a general theory of image-management and possible Eschaton-punishment. The table mocks him mercilessly (Pemulis: "Fake a cold and stay in bed playing sportscaster with the TP, in protest?"). He then accompanies Hal over to sign the crutched Ingersoll's cast, glad mainly to escape a conversation about sex. The narration's joke is on everyone else: the skim milk really has been pre-mixed powdered since Tavis took the helm four years back — Troeltsch is right, for the wrong reasons.