Somewhere in a hotel inside ███ ███████. . .
Morgan leaned against the wall of a hotel lobby, arms crossed, phone in hand. They were a tall, toned, pierced individual. Their friend Quinn, of short and impish stature, was crouching down near the wall, rubbing the flat end of a spoon against it.
Morgan shifted their weight from one foot to the other. “So, now that we’ve driven like five ENTIRE HOURS,” they proclaimed exaggeratedly, “Would you mind telling me why we’re here?”
“I just need to find the loading zone, give me a second,” replied Quinn.
Morgan sighed dramatically.
Quinn’s spoon phased into the wall. “Aha!”
Quinn pushed through following it. First their arm disappeared through the solid plaster with nary a ripple, then their torso followed. Shortly thereafter, a wheel of cheese popped out of the floor, juddering through the carpet in a similar manner.
“Wow?” said Morgan, “What the fuck.”
Quinn emerged from the wall, and scooted back to admire the cheese. “So, this hotel has a weird loading zone where you can clip into the underground cheese caves , right? And I’m using that with an exploit that lets me reset the coordinates of an object to near my location. Thus: cheese wheel.”
“Okay, first off. I know you think the universe is a simulation but how do you know that it’s not just, like. Another weird. Spacial anomaly. Thing. And secondly: what the fuck are the cheese caves?”
Quinn resumed rubbing the spoon against the wall as they began to explain. “Well, you see, It all started with president Jimmy Carter–”
“The simulation?” interrupted Morgan.
“No, the cheese caves. Jimmy Carter wanted to raise the price of milk to give farmers a break from capitalism. So the government started buying cheese from farmers, increasing the demand.”
“Makes sense.”
“Yeah, but then they had to do something with the cheese. So they put it in a cave.”
“So. . . that’s it. Government cheese cave,” said Morgan.
“But that's not all. They kept buying cheese! And they keep putting it in that cave. 40 years later, there’s 1.4 BILLION pounds of cheese in that cave. Just sitting there .” Quinn made an exaggerated ‘mind blown’ gesture.
“Holy shit,” said Morgan.
“They’ve tried to get rid of it, but they don’t want to lower the price of cheese. So they can’t just give it away.”
“Uh huh,” said Morgan, listening rapturously.
“So they ground it up into those kraft singles to make it cheaper and put a bunch of it in food assistance programs. Which is where ‘American Cheese’ comes from.”
“Huh. . . “ Morgan considered this information, ”So, like. They're just hogging all this cheese. And turning it into shitty fake cheese.”
“Yeah!”
“So now we’re here. Taking the cheese.”
“Yeah!”
“And what are we going to do with it?”
“Cheese golems,” Quinn replied matter-of-factly.
Quinn successfully intersected with the wall again. Another wheel of cheese softly ejected from the floor.
Morgan tapped Quinn on the shoulder to get their attention. Quinn removed themself from the geometry and stared innocently up at Morgan.
“So. . . “ started Morgan, “Did you drag me all the way to Missouri just to fill my truck with cheese?”
“Uh. Yes.”
“I get a cut, right?”
“ Hell yeah,” replied Quinn.
They high fived.