The All-Consuming

The All-Consuming

By Lucius Shepard and Robert Frazier

Mr. Akashini stood blinking, as if absorbing this information, then threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “Very good! A restaurant downstairs!” He wiped his eyes. “You have mistaken my meaning. I want you to bring me food from the jungle. Here. This will help you understand.”

He crossed to the cot, where a suitcase lay open, and removed from it a thick leather-bound album, which he handed to Arce. It contained photographs and newspaper clippings that featured shots of Mr. Akashini at dinner. The text of the majority of the clippings was in Japanese, but several were in Spanish, and it was apparent from these – which bestowed upon Mr. Akashini the title of The All-Consuming – and from the photographs that he was not eating ordinary food but objects of different sorts: automobiles, among the a Rolls-Royce Corniche; works of art, including several important expressionist canvases and a small bronze by Rodin; cultural artifacts of every variety, mostly American, ranging from items such as one of Elvis Presley’s leather-and-rhinestone jump suits, a guitar played by Jimi Hendrix and Lee Harvey Oswald’s Carcano rifle – obtained at “an absurd cost,” according to Mr. Akashini – to the structure of the first McDonald’s restaurant, a meal that, ground to a powder and mixed with gruel, had taken a year to complete. Arce did not understand what had completed Mr. Akashini to enter upon this strange gourmandizing, but one thing was plain: The man was wealthy beyond his wildest dreams, and although this did not overly excite Arce, for he had few wants, nevertheless, he was not one to let an opportunity for profit slip away.

All-consuming. Photo by Elena

“I am listed in the Guinness Book of World Records,” said Mr. Akashini proudly. “Three times.” He held up three fingers to firmly imprint this fact on Arce’s consciousness.

Arce tried to look impressed.

“I intend,” Mr. Akashini went on, “to eat the Malsueno. Not everything in it, of course.” He grinned and clapped Arce on the shoulder, as if to assure him of the limits of his appetite. “I wish to eat those things that will convey to me its essence. Things that embody the soul of the place.”

“I see,” said Arce, but failed to disguise the puzzlement in his voice.

“You are wondering, are you not,” said Mr. Akashini, tipping his head to the side, holding up a forefinger like an earnest lecturer, “why I do this?”.

“It’s not my business.”

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)