The first thing they noticed was the running, stumbling humans, exiting a building. The second thing they noticed was that the humans that weren't too busy choking and gasping were shouting "put on your livesuits!" and "we need particle masks!"
Once the fire had been extinguished and the building was airing out, the story of What Happened This Time was told.
It was a story involving Carolina Reapers and a malfunctioning kitchen fan. Every human involved had the same thing to say at the end of it all: "It's a pity we had to get rid of everything. That salsa would have been delicious!" -- Anon Guest
Put two Humans in a room and they really need a sane supervisor -- Increasingly popular Alliance saying.
The Humans-Only kitchen was a wreck. On the plus side, the fire suppression systems worked, extinguishing any flame before it "got out of hand". Humans liked fire, sometimes a little too much, and had made art out of food that either caught fire in the process of making it or was served whilst combusting. They thought it was neat, and called it en flambee. The maniacs.
This was not a case of something being a little too "en flambee" for the Humans. This was beyond "a little grease fire". The environment inside the Humans-Only kitchen now scanned as uninhabitable owing to a combination of carbon dioxide, capsaicin, carbon monoxide, pepperin, and just plain carbon. At least one of the teary-eyed Humans had lost their eyebrows in the blaze. All of them were in a state of distress. Captain Throkk didn't really have to ask what had happened, but considered it necessary anyway.
Five different, "It wasn't my fault"s later, there was something of a timeline. Human Baz had joined the Seed-a-month club, which sent five seeds of plant life compatible to their species and environment to each recipient every month. The seeds came with detailed planting and growing instructions. This, the Humans were certain, was necessary therapy and it gave their air recycling gardens some nice variety. Many of these seeds incidentally grew food plants.
...for interesting definitions of 'food'...
Among those crops was a healthy crop of a pepper known as Carolina Reapers. As if the name wasn't enough of a give-away, these particular peppers came with a health warning for excessive amounts of capsaicin. And given that Baz had 'green thumbs', they all had to come up with something to do with all that technically-edible vegetable matter.
The obvious solution was Six-Alarm Salsa. Never mind that this was a solution only obvious to the Humans. The next point in the narrative was that Human Jo had been using most of the sweeter fruit to make a variant of Space Lightning that they called Kikapu Joy. The standard joke about what bodies had gone into making the beverage possess 'body' did not fly very well with Captain Throkk.
This particularly fragrant vintage was also added to the salsa to "give it a bit more kick"... at which point it went quickly from "en flambee" to "WHOA SHIT" in a matter of seconds. Fire extinguishing methods only made it angry.
It was then that the capsaicin in the room aerosolized and effected all Humans in that sealed environment. The Kikapu Joy also aerosolized at a near-perfect stoichiometric balance. Not helped by Human Zin dropping the flakking bottle.
Not entirely his fault, insisted Human Zin. Ze, like everyone else in the room, had been making a mad dash to the airlocks. Or, more correctly, the same airlock. Because people already in a panic have an IQ that can be measured in double digits.
This only explained most of the superficial bruises, lacerations, and swelling.
The worst part, according to the Humans, was that the Six-Alarm Salsa was now a ruined mess of carbon and flame retardants, and therefore inedible. Given that the entire kitchen had to be sanitised and purified, the Humans would not have been allowed to try it even if they had deemed it "salvageable".
Given the chemanalysis of the remains... that may well have been a good thing.
At least until one of the Humans figured out what they thought of as a critical misstep in the entire process... and they gathered all the 'vital' ingredients to try again.
With that thought in mind, Captain Throkk sent a copy of the Humans' recipe so that the ERT's could be prepared for the inevitable next time.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / CSlanec]
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