By Nicholas Driscoll.
Art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
We decided on Six Degrees of Bacon, a restaurant specializing in innovative bacon-related dishes, and I biked on down with the lizard jogging at my side. The name of the restaurant comes from its six signature dishes from six “schools” of cooking. So, for example, they have Best Wurst Bacon, which is a German dish, as well as Bacon Pho Sure, a Vietnamese bacon breakfast soup. If you try all six of the signature dishes on your scratch-and-sniff Bacon Report Card (each item has a corresponding pig sticker that goes on the card), you get a special graduation hat. It’s pink, of course, with a pig-tail instead of the usual string tassel.
“I want to get the hat,” said the tyrannosaurus as we walked up to the drive-in window. “Get me all six signature dishes.”
“One of the six dishes is an entire pig cooked on a skewer,” I said. “Wrapped in three flavors of bacon. It’s called the Heaven Bacon.”
“I think I can eat an entire pig,” he said.
“Ah, yeah, I suppose you can,” I said, and I took out my dinosaur ambassador card. “King T-Rex” gets special discounts after all.
The kid at the drive-through window in his pig-ear hat didn’t look too surprised to see a man in his pajamas on a bike in the street, but then he noticed Rexy and his jaw dropped.
“Can we get an order of all six degrees?” I asked. “He wants the hat.”
The old lizard smiled down at the kid.
“You want a Heaven Bacon for breakfast?” asked the kid. “I can’t sell that through the drive-up window.”
“I can walk inside,” I said. “I understand an enterprising individual can get a “wee wee wee wee all the way home” box even for the full Heaven Bacon, right?”
“It’s more like a crate,” said the kid.
“Just skip the crate,” I said. “Roll the pig out on the sidewalk. It would be easier for the dinosaur here to eat it that way.”
The old lizard nodded, and the kid nodded back blankly.
“I need to check with my manager quick,” he burbled.
“Alright,” I said. “Go for it.”
“What are you ordering?” the dinosaur asked me as the kid babbled excitedly with a baffled-looking Hispanic dude wearing the manager badge.
“Nothing,” I said. “Lost my appetite when I nearly got ate myself.”
“Yeah, I almost lost my appetite, too,” said the dinosaur. “But we all need to eat, you know.”
I was thinking darkly that I should get a bonus for enduring insults to my tastiness when the kid came back.
“Alright, we can wheel out the Heaven Bacon for you,” he said. “Do you want footloose trotters on the side?”
I looked at the dinosaur expectantly and raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know what those are,” he said.
“Pig trotters,” said the kid. “Uh, that means pig feet. You can get them in six different flavors—salt, BBQ, Szechuan spicy, teriyaki, blue cheese, or cracked pepper. Small, medium, large. The art on the box is really cute. It’s dancing pigs dressed up in funny costumes.”
“I want a large of each flavor,” said the dinosaur.
“Wow,” said the kid.
I wondered just how far the royal food budget was going to take us.
We then had a brief conversation about drinks, but I convinced the old lizard and the kid that even the super jumbo Whole Hog size drink would only just dampen the tip of the dinosaur’s tongue. When the rex asked me if I wanted something to drink myself, I finally relented and got myself a hickory smoked bacon flavored coffee.
“About the hat,” said the kid. “Uh, we definitely don’t carry your size, I’m afraid, Mr. Dinosaur, sir.”
“Oh,” said the tyrannosaurus. “It’s not for me. I want my ambassador to wear it as part of his official uniform.”
I made a note to demand that insult bonus system from Mayor Pilky next I saw her. Maybe the price of a full Six Degrees.
I glanced at the dinosaur and his irritating smile.
Two of them. The price of two “Six Degrees” sets.
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