Contract

Salted

Dinner that night was odd because Joseph didn't show up, at all. She was brought out a plate of very plain chicken and rice. There was almost nothing appetizing about it in the slightest. She did check it for bugs or other weird ingredients and found none. This at least left her appreciative of the fact that he hadn't had them serve her something disgusting. As underwhelming as it was she knew it could be much worse so she didn't have a problem eating it. That was, if that was what she was supposed to do. She glanced around the room before even picking her fork up. The staff that brought in the food left and didn't say a word to her. When she did come across them in the house, which was rare, they didn't even acknowledge she was alive. She'd stopped trying to engage with them already.

"Mama? Where is Joseph?" She asked, looking at a monitor that was on the wall across from the table. There was one behind her as well but this one was easier to look at from where she was.

"Joseph will not be joining you for dinner." Mama said, appearing on the screen a moment later. She still looked the same but the dress she had been wearing was a different color. Before it had been blue and now it was a dark shade of emerald green. "He is preoccupied with work."

"Oh, is that normal?" She asked, "Can I eat without him?"

"You are permitted to eat since you were on time to be served." Mama said. She nodded and picked up her fork so she could eat. After she took her first bite someone on staff came out and set a glass of white wine down in front of her as well as a glass of water then left again. That was nice. At least the wine would give some flavor to this meal. "You will have to finish everything. I will be monitoring you in place of Joseph."

"That's fine, I'm hungry and it is actually very good." She said and took another bite of the plain and considerably dry chicken. It wasn't even that big of a piece but there wasn't any use complaining to a computer about that. "So how often do you join contract holders for meals?"

"It is not common," Mama said, "By now, 94% of holders have left the estate to get away from Joseph and attempt to cheat the diet plan by the second dinner."

"That doesn't get him to terminate the contract?" She asked.

"No. Just causes punishment." Mama said. "You are one of the rare ones who has stayed. Congratulations." She knew that one of the others had to have been Rika but she also knew she wasn't supposed to ask about that. She probably shouldn't have been talking to Mama at all since Joseph had yelled at her just a few hours back over this. She still didn't see how it was possible she was annoying what was essentially a machine, though.

"How advanced of a program are you? Can you tell me the meaning of life?" She laughed and took another bite of food before reaching for her wine glass.

"I believe that the answer would be whatever meaning you place on it is the meaning that you may be looking for." Mama said. That was as much of an answer as it absolutely wasn't one. Kind of sounded almost like something Joseph would say. He was pretty good at not really answering questions when they were asked. It wasn't a bad thing to say either, just not really helpful.

"Yeah that sounds about right." She sighed and finished what little was left of her chicken. She took a few more sips of wine before starting to eat the rice. "How do you find a needle in a haystack?"

"One would think a powerful magnet would do the trick quite fast." Mama said.

"What about a strand of hay in a needle stack?" She asked.

"I am unsure who would arrange this sort of challenge but I believe a magnet would work with that as well." Mama replied sounding unamused. Not that she ever actually sounded very amused to begin with. She laughed and took another drink of wine. It was really good stuff. The wine was amazing, and it seemed that everything there was home grown. She still hadn't seen every area of this house. He could be engineering grapes for this sort of thing, he'd already told her he was growing maggots for some reason.