3/17/965
Cape Nagasakibana
[Transcribed from the Travel Journals of Vic]
The Palace of the Dragon God is a volatile place for time travelers. Davy said he didn’t think a visit here was very wise, but after Beetle found that washed up piece of wood with the words “Mirin” and “Soy” carved on it, I couldn’t pass up the chance to find a recipe from the Dragon God himself.
It’s so dangerous down here because time moves differently than it does on the rest of the planet, including the other anomalous time zones scattered across the Earth. According to legend, a day in the palace is akin to something like 100 years on the surface. It’s unclear how this will effect my ability to move through time, especially considering I am not explicitly invited to the the Court. Get caught, and I could be trapped, especially since the Spacetime Travel Band is not waterproof. I’ve spoken to R&D about this more than once. They have proceeded to do nothing about it, so honestly, if I get trapped down there, it’s Gerald’s fault.
Note from Gerald: The Hidden Tales Research and Development Department has created a wrist-mounted device that can transport its wearer anywhere in known space and time, including temporal and spatial anomalous zones, instantly. It is the crowning achievement of our organization and allows our field agents to witness and record history at an unprecedented level, creating the best archive of sapient history known in the universe. It is the most complex piece of technology every created. It cannot be submerged in the salty water of Earth’s oceans. It will break. This is not a design flaw, it is a fact of nature. Should one of our field agents anger an ancient ocean god with the ability to warp time itself and proceeds to get herself captured in a situation she cannot use her STB to escape, that is her responsibility. She knows full well the limits of our technology and the risks of her job.
The plan was to use a surface craft and just to comb the ocean floor in the general region the Palace is thought to be with a chonometer, looking for areas where time moves slower than normal, and then to head down in person using a cloaked scuba suit. It look five days to find the area in the first place, and another three to find the palace itself. The first day after discovering the anomalous zone, I looked for five hours before surfacing for lunch. Unfortunately, the surface team was nowhere to be found. I tried calling Davy but my communicator couldn’t find any network, even though I know there had been good network coverage in this area mere hours ago. It didn’t take long to figure out what was happening. We had figured that as long as the surface crew stayed within the anomalous zone, we wouldn’t get temporally separated, but that the wrong call to make. I figured out later that the closer you are to the Palace, the stronger the time dilation effects are. The surface crew either thought I died after losing contact for what must have been at least a week before they terminated the mission, or they guessed I got time-shifted and left me to figure out how to get home from however far in the future I ended up being. I hope it’s the later; I hate coming back from a mission to find out everyone in the office thinks I died. By the time I actually do kick the bucket, no one is going to believe it.
Anyway, I inflated my emergency raft and climbed in to eat some compressed protein bar and decide what to do. I didn’t know what time it was in the real world, had no way of contacting anyone, and a bad feeling that if I left this place now I’d never find it again. The only thing to do was move forward. I deflated the raft and stuffed it back in my pack. (I know I was ragging on R&D about the waterproofness thing, but using time to reverse the state of the raft from inflated back to deflated so I don’t have to try to deflate and pack up the raft while free-floating in the ocean was one of the best ideas they ever had.)
I searched for the next two days, surfacing to refill my air and get a snack and a nap a couple times a day. I was honestly starting to worry that the Palace was impossible to find without and invitation, when I finally found it. I followed a suspiciously beautiful sea turtle and sure enough, there it was.
The Palace of the Dragon God is a massive structure of green glass and blue coral. It’s nestled in a trench, with tall spires of smooth glass encrusted with pearls reaching for the waves. It’s guarded by a forest of red and purple kelp, swaying rhythmically with the current. The main structure is a lumpy dome, worn smooth by the constant motion of the sea. It’s rimmed with sharp blue coral stretching sometimes over halfway up the sides of the dome, creating a protective cage around the glass. Most of the glass is nearly opaque, except for small asymmetrical windows clear as air. The whole area is teaming with life; schools of jewel-toned fish with delicate fins longer than I am tall, sea turtles with white shells covered in intricate sweeping patterns of shimmering opal, and jellyfish with brilliant red and blue bells the size of cars and curling tentacles a hundred feet long. Through the clear windows I could see people, of a sort, walking inside.
I made my way closer, taking care to hide in the kelp, though it didn’t seem as if anything had noticed me yet. Down at the base of the dome, where it intersected the ground, A shimmering barrier of blue held the water back from the only opening immediately apparent on the structure. I crept up on it slowly, and seeing only a few people in the park on the inside, slipped quietly through the barrier. As soon as I was on the other side, I stood stone still, waiting for anyone to acknowledge me. There was a young woman and two people who appeared to be her friends sitting on a bridge over a small river. The woman had long, jet black hair streaked with a dark green, and peeking out from underneath it, on her neck, she had gills. Her fingers were webbed and she had the same opal designs on her skin as the turtles outside the Palace. She was beautiful. Her friends, while lacking in the opal patterns, were beautiful too, with chin length black hair and laughter like a bubbling spring.
I moved slowly and quietly through the park, looking for the kitchen. In the last several years I’ve worked for SNACK, I’ve gotten pretty good at locating kitchens in foreign structures. The park was surrounded on all sides by buildings, so I picked the largest, most impressive looking one and snuck inside. From there it was fairly simple: I wandered around until I found someone who looked like staff and just followed them until they entered a small door and wandered a complex series of passageways until we arrived at the kitchen. I was still totally cloaked, so I found a place in the pantry where there wasn’t much food being stored and sat and waited for everyone to leave.
It took several hours of waiting in painstaking stillness and quiet, but eventually the last chef snuffed out the light (They were using some kind of magical light-producing orb, it wasn’t fire or electricity. Pretty standard light orb stuff.) By now I was totally dry, so I just started leafing through all the recipes I could find. I found this one first, and had just finished copying it down before I heard a scream from behind me. I whirled around, and there was one of the cooks, pointing at where I was standing. From his point of view, my tablet was floating in midair. I stashed it quickly and hurried out the door. I wasn’t fixing to get trapped down here. I made it all the way out of the building, passing some guards who didn’t see me for obvious reasons, before running into the young woman from before right out in the park. She cocked her head, staring right at me, before asking me what I was doing in her home. I told her I was collecting bits of her culture so it might be preserved, and that it didn’t matter what I was doing since I was just leaving anyway. At this point I gave up on stealth and just sprinted for the exit. She didn’t follow me, and I had the sneaking suspicion she understood.
It was dark when I surfaced. I inflated the raft, fished my STB out of it’s protective case, and kicked on the motor. I just moved in a straight line until my band stopped displaying static. All told, I was 532 years, 54 days, 12 minutes and 46.79 seconds displaced from when I started the mission.
When I got back to the office, everyone was surprised to see me. Jimbo told me he heard I died. Seemed a bit too pleased about it, if you ask me.
-Vic
Teriyaki Chicken
Ingredients
- 8 trimmed, skinless, boneless chicken thighs
- olive oil
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 TBS grated fresh ginger
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 6 TBS brown sugar
- 6 TBS sake
- 4 TBS mirin
- 2 TBS sesame oil
- 2 TBS corn starch
- 2 TBS water
- 3 cups rice
- 1 cucumber
- 2 avocados
- 1 mango
- 1/2 pineapple
- 3/4 cup chopped green onions
Procedure
- Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces
- Start the rice, either on the stove or in a rice cooker. If cooking it on the stove, cook it in 6 cups of water covered for 25 minutes
- Brown the chicken in olive oil, about 15-20 minutes, until brown and slightly crisp. As the chicken browns, it will release liquid. Draining this excess water about halfway through the browning process will help achieve a better crust on the chicken pieces.
- While the chicken is browning, cut the fruit and veggies into small cubes, set aside
- Add garlic and ginger to the pan, sauté about 30 seconds
- In a small bowl, combine soy sauce through sesame oil, whisk to combine
- Add the sauce to the pan, stir to coat the chicken
- Cook for around six minutes, stirring frequently
- Mix the corn starch and water and add it to the pan. stir until a glaze forms, about a minute, then remove from heat immediately
- Serve chicken over rice topped with the fruit and veggies. Add a bit of extra soy sauce, salt, pepper, or some siracha if you want
