MayMetMo 2020 #17: Soup for Awareness

The whir of the can opener broke the silence of the afternoon while the sunlight split open from the windows and revealed dust motes in the air dancing in the still air as if held aloft by some invisible force.   Setting a bowl down on the counter a man of average build and height sighed heavily as if this was the action that the most energy was ever expended on.  Pulling a spoon from a drawer the next so.   The can opener finished and the man brought a pot from under the storage area and plopped it down on the over the stove, and then with a flick of his wrist sent the stove alight and dumped the contents of the Campbell’s alphabet soup into the pot and began to absentmindedly stir, while scrolling through the latest news feed.  Another audible sigh, this one more from the concentrated power of will and a forlornness for the world in general, rather than a physically taxing labor.  Another thumb scroll when the first bubbles began to appear in the red viscous liquid containing the alphabet shaped noodles and a few scant pieces of meatball to add the protein required to make it a ‘balanced’ meal.  At least that’s what the can said, the man nearly laughed at his own thought process, and glanced down into the pot.   When he did so, his jaw fell open and he nearly dropped the spoon into the pot and lost it completely.  There, spelled out in the pasta, was the same headline he’d read just a moment before.  Perfectly spelled out in the letters, as he’d been idly stirring.   He checked the news article again, and sure enough, the headline was the same.   He took up the spoon and stirred the letters back to oblivion.   Then refresh the page, and stirred, hoping to recreate whatever mysticism he had stirred up.  He tried incantations and throwing a pinch of salt into the pot.   By this point, the sauce was beginning to burn, so he turned off the burner, and shrugged, another sigh, for a moment of magic dead in the world.  He poured the soup into the readied bowl, and brought it, with a spoon, to the dining room table.   Set his phone down next to the meal and went to the refrigerator for a soda, popped it open and took a swig, and went back to his meal.  There in the bowl, the letters began to rise, H-E-L-L-O  the man seemed dumbfounded, and with a silly apprehension, whispered, “hello…”  back to his bowl of soup.  unsurprisingly there was no response from the soup, except for the steam rising from its surface.  scratching his head, and attributing what he was seeing to the hunger of the midday, he picked up the spoon in a hand, and pulled a mass of letters and meat toward his mouth, giving it a good blow before settling it upon his tongue and almost waiting in anticipation for the next strange moment to occur.  Shaking his head, he pulled another spoonful out of the bowl and blew on it, glancing down at the spoon before he put it in his mouth, he gasped at the letters.  S-T-O-P.   the spoon fell back into the bowl with the letters disappearing beneath the surface.   He scooted the chair back from the table.. got up and made a sandwich, peanut butter, jelly, bread.. those things hand never talked back, he reasoned.  Once completed, he went back to his bowl of soup, several minutes later.  The soup cooling, the sauce congealing, Letters popped up in no discernable order.  He sighed as he noticed he’d been holding his breath.   He gave the bowl another stir with his spoon and waited.   Finished the last few bites of the sandwich he’d made since the soup began talking, typing back to him.     He tried to reason, to think logically.  The letters could just be random, though that wouldn’t explain the headline he’d seen when it was on the stove, and he’d never seen alphabet soup make words without a lot of effort on his part previously.  Stumped, and another sigh, he reasoned that the soup had become self-aware, and it was only a matter of time before it rose up against its human oppressors and took over the world.  That was excuse enough, he took up the bowl, and dumped its contents into the trash, every letter, meatball, even the bowl, and spoon.  This was no time to be fiddling with the unknown.   Self-awareness is for suckers, he nodded, and then went back to his life of spreadsheets, and contented sighs, as if nothing ever happened.   “I’ll switch to numbers, from now on.”