Xenoverse origins / R-061
Buffy BanquetOrigin story
Buffy Banquet: The Last Dish on the Table
A buffet attendant's refusal to let any dish run empty awakens a dining room that mistakes abundance for an entitlement.
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The gravy boat ate the parsley first. Buffy Banquet blamed a guest. By the time the butter dish swallowed a spoon, she had run out of guests to blame.
Buffy's promise of endless service gives the dining room an appetite that grows with every dish she refills.
She stood between the buffet counters with a tray in each hand and listened to the entire dining room chew. Nobody at the tables appeared to notice. They were waiting for the next course.
It is normal service. It's just reached you.
From the dossier
Prologue — No Empty Places
Buffy worked as Buffet Replenishment Attendant at the Cruise outpost. She could judge the weight of a serving dish without looking at it and detect an empty basket from the opposite end of the room. Both talents had made her indispensable. Neither had taught her to stop.
The Goblin Council knew Buffy by name and by the handwritten promise displayed above her counter: NOTHING RUNS OUT WHILE I'M HERE. She knew which councillors considered generosity a virtue and which considered it a way of keeping other people busy.
For the Feast of Unrestricted Welcome, she had accepted a self-filling platter from the Council's hospitality office. The platter came wrapped in green felt. It required no ingredients, only a sincere commitment to abundance.
Buffy supplied that immediately.
The first replenishment was magnificent. Rolls rose from the silver surface like warm stones surfacing through water. A second platter produced pastries. A third supplied tiny pies with impressive architectural ambitions.
Her kitchen assistant asked where the food came from.
“That's the point of equipment,” Buffy said. “It does the inconvenient bit elsewhere.”
He had the sense not to repeat this in front of the plates.
By supper, nobody needed the ordinary kitchen. Buffy sent the cooks to their meal break and kept working, too pleased with her perfect counters to join them.
When the parsley disappeared, she refilled it. When the spoon disappeared, she fetched another. She had promised that nothing would run out. The dining room was listening with every empty dish.
Act 1
A Setting for the House
Act I — A Setting for the House
A serving fork slid across the counter and vanished beneath the rim of the largest platter. Buffy caught the next fork before it followed. Something tugged back with the offended strength of an institution denied its customary allowance.
She put a bread roll in its place. The silver relaxed.
The platter could create food, but creation had made it hungry. Worse, the appetite was spreading. Tablecloths puckered around crumbs. Chairs leaned toward unattended trays. The chandelier lowered itself a little whenever somebody carried a bowl beneath it.
Buffy tried feeding the room discreetly. It was a practical response that became less practical with each additional object demanding dinner. She filled spare plates, set them beneath the tables and asked the musicians to play louder.
The guests admired the attentive service. A councillor who knew Buffy from previous voyages congratulated her on making generosity seem effortless. She thanked him while stepping on the corner of a carpet attempting to drag away a pudding trolley.
Her assistant returned from his meal break and took in the scene.
“How many are we serving?”
“Everyone.”
“Does that include the ceiling?”
Buffy looked up. The chandelier had lowered another foot.
The self-filling platters were responding to her promise. Whenever she replenished something, the room interpreted the act as evidence that its appetite was legitimate. Whenever a guest praised abundance, another piece of furniture developed expectations.
She could remove the sign, but her commitment remained sincere. She still wanted every dish full. She still felt that small, sick disappointment whenever a guest discovered they must wait.
The room had not invented that feeling. It had simply acquired enough silverware to express it.
Buffy sent her assistant to fetch the ordinary empty trays. He asked how many.
“All of them.”
For the first time, she meant to leave something visibly unfinished.
Act 2
Supper for a Dining Room
Act II — Supper for a Dining Room
She laid the empty trays along the centre table. The guests assumed an elaborate presentation was beginning. The room pulled its chairs closer. Even the chandelier arranged itself above the place of honour.
Buffy set down a single roll.
The nearest plate swallowed it. Every other dish rattled in outrage.
“Exactly,” Buffy said.
She had made the same mistake as the Council: treating the room as a collection of demands instead of a guest with a place. Feeding every plate separately created an appetite without an end. She needed the dining room to understand that it was one thing.
The great self-filling platter belonged at the head of the table. Buffy carried it there, refusing the procession of smaller dishes that slid after her. Its silver surface reflected not her face but the entire room: windows, chairs, chandelier, counters, all arranged around a mouth-shaped doorway.
She put an ordinary plate upon the platter.
“Your place.”
The doorway opened. A cold draught carried the smell of cupboards shut for too long.
Buffy's assistant brought a modest supper from the kitchen: soup, bread and a bowl of stewed fruit. She served the room exactly what the kitchen crew had eaten while she worked through their break.
The guests began complaining. Their counters were emptying. A councillor rang a bell for additional generosity, and the chandelier dipped toward his hand.
Buffy caught his attention before he rang again.
“We have a guest who hasn't learned the arrangement.”
“Then put it elsewhere.”
“It is elsewhere. We are inside it.”
He set the bell down.
Buffy sat beside the platter with her own bowl. She was hungry enough that the first spoonful made her angry. She had denied herself a perfectly adequate supper while helping a dining room imagine it deserved an infinite one.
She ate slowly and let the counters run down.
Act 3
Service Ends at the Door
Act III — Service Ends at the Door
The room finished its soup. Buffy could tell because the windows stopped misting and the carpet lay flat. It ate the bread, then the fruit. The chandelier rose, reluctantly, to its proper height.
A councillor asked whether normal service might resume.
“It is normal service,” Buffy said. “It's just reached you.”
Some guests left in disgust. Others discovered that half-empty baskets still contained food. They passed dishes to each other rather than waiting for Buffy to duplicate them. The dining room watched this arrangement through its polished silver.
When the last roll vanished, Buffy felt the familiar impulse to refill the basket. Her assistant lifted a hand toward the kitchen. She shook her head.
The empty basket remained empty.
Nothing terrible happened immediately. She had to sit with the possibility for a while before she believed it.
Then the great platter produced a small silver spoon. Another followed. It returned the missing forks, the butter knife and several pieces of cutlery Buffy did not recognise. The room seemed to be clearing its throat through its possessions.
She accepted them without thanking it for basic restraint.
The Council's hospitality representative came down after the guests had gone. He expected an explanation and received a request to help stack chairs. Buffy knew him well enough to distinguish outrage from the fear of getting gravy on his cuffs. He eventually removed his coat.
Together they folded the green felt around the self-filling platter. Buffy did not send it away. Somewhere else was no longer an adequate description of responsibility. It would remain in a locked cupboard until she understood what its promise had purchased.
Before leaving, she replaced the sign above the counter. The new one announced meal times.
The following morning, a place was set outside that cupboard. One plate, one chair, one folded napkin. Beneath the napkin lay a beautifully written reservation.
The dining room had invited its mother to supper.
Buffy checked the number of ordinary soup bowls before deciding what to say.
When hospitality has no stopping point
At the Cruise outpost, the buffet is a public measure of the Council's generosity. Buffy treats an empty serving dish as a personal failure, giving a hungry enchantment exactly the opening it needs to confuse service with surrender.