Rule 34 - Charles Stross [42]
You spend a few minutes gawping at the gleaming stainless steel machine—it looks like a dissected automatic washer/dryer—that sits in pride of place on the shop counter. It’s some sort of German vorsprungdurch-technik microprocessor-managed brewery in a box—put in raw materials, select program, leave for a month, drink the output—but you don’t have a thousand euros to spare for it. Then you poke around the shelves for a bit, hunting for the items on your shopping list. The shopkeeper’s still yacking to the woman, who seems to be some sort of local beer monster, and pays no attention to you until you get to the throat-clearing toe-tapping stage. “Aye, sir? What can I do you for?”
You ignore the slip of the tongue. “I need these. And, uh, a siphon. And an airlock, I think.” You’ve been doing your homework, but you’re not entirely sure what an airlock looks like until he steps out from behind the counter and produces a transparent plastic hingmy.
“Boiled water goes here,” he says, showing you how. “Then you stick it in the bung like so. If you’re just getting started, you might want one of our starter packs. What kind of beer were you after?”
“Um, I’ve already got one,” you say: “a present.”
“IPA or Lager?” asks the woman, chipping in. “Is it bottom-fermenting or top-fermenting?”
You look at her blankly. The shopkeeper clocks what’s up and none-too-subtly eyeballs the nosy lass to butt out. “It’s okay,” he says quietly, “I’ve got a starter FAQ on the website. In five languages.” He passes you a card. “If you want, I’ve got a friend who can rent you some cellar space—”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” you say hurriedly: “I just need the, uh, apparatus?” Obviously he kens the ethnic angle, thinks you’re wanting the opportunity to quaff a wee bevvy at home with no betraying six-packs.
“Well that’s okay, then. Twenty-four ninety-six, please.”
You hand over the cash and flee, then realize once you’re out of the door that you forgot to ask for a bag and you’re going home clutching a huge plastic bucket labelled FERMENTATION BIN and decorated with pictures of overflowing beer glasses. And he forgot to offer you one! Have these people no shame?
Bibi, for a miracle, is in the kitchen when you open the front door. You head upstairs at a dash and hurl the incriminating bucket up the loft steps before she has a chance to see it. You’ve still got to figure out how to get twenty litres of freshly boiled water up to it, and how to keep it warm afterwards, but at least she doesn’t have to know about you conducting your filthy haram experiments under her roof.
There is, of course, the old electric kettle, if you can remember where it’s lurking. It’s corroded and leaks alarmingly around the water gauge, but you don’t think Bibi threw it out. You clamber down the ladder and go into the kitchen to hunt around. Finally you think to look in the cellar, where the mains distribution board, the gas meter, and several piles of junk lurk villainously in wait for unshod feet. The kettle is resting under a layer of moldy plaster dust in one of the slowly deliquescing cardboard boxes. The cellar smells of damp brickwork, and your sinuses clamp shut in protest before you can beat a retreat. Which is why Bibi finds you in the kitchen, clutching a dusty kettle and breathing heavily through your mouth, when she bustles in with a wheelie-bag full of groceries.
“Help me unpack this,” she says breathlessly, then notices the kettle: “Oh good, are you taking it for recycling?”
“I need it for the office,” you say, then the breath catches in your throat as a convulsive sneezing fit takes hold. “Aaagh! Choo!”
“Not over the saag, you naughty man!” She thrusts a wad of tissue at you. “This bag needs refrigerating. When you’re feeling better?”
You blink red-rimmed eyes at her. “The cellar is damp.”
“Oh dear, has the dehumidifier filled up again?”
“What dehumidifier?”
“The one we borrowed from Martin, silly. Don’t you remember?”
She looks at you with a speculative expression that puts you in mind of a stableman