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(Interviewer):"So, how did this all get started?"

M: "Well, it was just after the first mobile version of the personal backup system had been developed. You might recall that the original commercial versions required a full size scanning cradle or chair, but of course the mobile version can be administered by a single injection and it costs only a few hundred. So lots of people rushed out and got themselves one, even though they couldn't afford the actual backup itself. They figured, why not, my insurance might pay for it, or my family, or some random charitable cause. So it seemed like a really good idea at the time."

(Interviewer): "I think most of our readers probably know that part of the background. But how did you get the idea for the restaurant itself?"

M: "Well, most of the staff in a restaurant these days are educated way beyond the requirements of the job. One of our kitchen-hands once said that if all of the staff pooled their talent, they could probably run a small international business. It seems he was right.... So, most of them were quite well informed and got it almost as soon as it was on offer. In the course of about a week, they all showed up with a sticking plaster on their neck and a slight headache. There were definite shades of that old movie from way back when, what was it called.. oh yeah, 'Pulp Fiction.'"

(Interviewer): "Come on, stop teasing our poor readers. They're all really hungry to know about the actual idea!"

M: "So, most days after their shift is over, the waitresses - they were mostly waitresses, still are, though we have a couple of waiters available - like to get together for a chat, maybe smoke a few cigarettes or have just the one drink, eat some leftovers or whatever's handy. Being a waitress can be both really stressful and really boring at the same time, since it's always the same, and that way they get to relax afterwards and cool down a bit. "Anyway, they were chatting about the idea of doing something to alleviate the boredom. It wasn't too well-defined at that point - they were thinking something like a shared gamble or dare, or maybe going out someplace, winner to get a prize. There was one waitress, a scrawny little blonde thing who was totally a lesbian. She liked to read books, she'd bring one in her backpack and read it before the official start of shift, or on compulsory breaks. Because of what happened, I remember exactly what she was reading that day, a novel by Phillip K. Dick called 'The Man Who Japed'. Which was why she suggested, purely as a joke, her own idea for a little competition. "We should do some conspicuous consumption," was what she suggested. "Naturally, no-one took it seriously at first. They asked her to explain what she meant, she did, there was a temporary shocked silence - and then they started really thinking about it. There was just something about the idea that they couldn't quite seem to get out of their heads. They started comparing notes and working out how it could actually be possible to do this. I only heard part of the conversation, I was quite busy that day, and I thought they were just messing around. But it turned out it was actually legally possible. One of the waitresses was a legal student, and she'd just been to a guest lecture all about the legal issues that personal backup ensued, and how they'd just been forced to change the law because it was such a good idea. It seemed that precedents had been thrown out all over the place."

(Interviewer): "So they all agreed to it? Right then and there?"

M: "No, of course not. But like I said, they kept thinking about it. A week passed, and one of them had a drink and felt daring and said she was in, if the rest of them would, and another thought it would be an incredibly extreme experience - she had pierced everything, you see, and was after a new challenge - and another had always wondered about the taste. Soon most of them were in, and the ones that were left were clever enough not to talk about it, because that way they could always say it was just a joke if something went wrong. I thought it was a joke myself until they went through with it. It seems they'd gotten the spare key off one of the kitchen-hands by telling him they were going to have a little private party. He wasn't supposed to give it to them, but he had no reason to suspect anything, they'd been working here for years. Between that and a small private backup firm that had just gone online, all they had to do was pool some of their takings and they had everything they needed."

(Interviewer): "And so we finally get to the meat of the story! What happened that night?"

M: "Well, I wasn't actually there of course, but I know several of them well-enough that I can probably reconstruct the story better than anyone else. Some of them have their own restaurants now in other cities, and they could probably go into much better detail, but you're here and so I'll do my best."

We are briefly interrupted by waitresses laying out tablecloths, setting silverware, and igniting the large propane burners that warm the room. Once our table is done M. resumes the account.

"So, to minimize any possible problems, they all waited until after we'd finished cleaning and closing up on a Tuesday. Monday can get busy sometimes, because workers who've just come back after the weekend decide, to hell with it, I'm not cooking for myself after that, but Tuesday and Wednesday tend to be quiet. They'd also made arrangements to cover each others shifts as necessary and so forth. There's a guy who patrols the area twice a night, but they knew when he'd come by and so they waited until just after that - they apparently had a few drinks while they waited, to brace themselves - and then they slipped in, lit up only the private room and one end of the kitchen, and got down to it.

"They'd brought in a blank backup by carrying it in on a porters trolley that normally got used for fifty kilogram catering-size bags of potatoes. The first thing they had to do was decide the winner, but they didn't want to choose until they were all there and had gotten started. I think the idea was that, that way, the group dynamic would be somehow binding and no-one would try to pull out at the last second. So they went to the private room, held a little ceremony around the circular central table, and then drew straws. The straws were the black bendy kind, and they put them in an opaque table vase, so they hooked over the edge and you couldn't tell how long they were. To make it even more fair, they cut across all of them at an angle so they were all different lengths.

"So, they drew, and the winner was the one who'd pierced everything. Even then they might still have talked themselves out of it, is my impression, but that particular waitress - I won't reveal her name, it would be a breach of her privacy - was totally up for it and the others were willing if she was. You can imagine the scene - her hyperventilating several times like she was about to base jump off a bridge, until she'd braced herself - everyone else getting the equipment ready."

(Interviewer): "That reminds me - how did they manage to operate the equipment?"

"One of the waitresses was a computer science major and another was a biochemistry student. They'd worked out everything in advance. I told you they were over-educated.

"But anyway, once they'd decided who the winner was, they got her to give them a drop or two of blood and applied it to the backup. Apparently it takes about an hour for the fully-grown blank to become identical to someone of the same exact mass, so they did all the usual things you'd do at a party to kill time - made themselves some light snacks, drank a little but not enough to spoil their appetite, that sort of thing. Each backup comes with the mobile system already built-in, to save time, and so they were ready as soon as that 'ding' sound happened and the case opened.

"Naturally they tested it first. It must have been quite a weird experience, alternating between two sets of eyes for the first time. I haven't done it myself, but one of the waiters told me that it's a lot like the video game "Jericho" by Clive Barker. There's a slight lag as data is transferred, which creates a sensory impression of 'zooming' from one body to another, due to the same effect that produces the feeling of an 'out-of-body' experience when you're nearly done for. Of course there's never more than one active you, because that would complicate things enormously.

"So, the waitress toggled back and forth several times, and once she was comfortable with it they swapped her over, put her 'real' body in the case to keep her safe and she got out wearing the newly made backup. Bear in mind that the backups have never eaten or drunk, which simplifies things a great deal, although they do have a freshly remade blood supply and similar.

"Apparently, the hardest thing was finding a large enough platter. There were lots of smaller ones for normal sized meals and functions, but they needed something much stronger. Eventually one of them remembered that there was an actual, solid metal platter of enormous size somewhere under the unused trays for the old bain-marie, so they got that out, gave it a quick clean, and put it on the kitchen bench and lined it with catering tinfoil. Once they'd done that, she hopped up onto it and you can imagine how it went from there."

(Interviewer): "Any chance of more details? I'm sure our readers out there are keen to know how the first ever Last Chance meal was prepared!"

M: "Well, I'm a manger, not a chef, but you have to remember this was the first time and it was being done by a group of waitresses rather than kitchen workers. They hadn't told the chefs, and the miscellaneous kitchen-hands had all declined to get involved. But they'd seen enough cooking between them to have a good idea of how it should go.

"Based on what I've heard - and apparently she was grinning like a fiend the whole time with sheer excitement - they got her to climb up on hands and knees onto the platter, then tied her ankles together with lots of heavy duty cooking twine. They ran a few knots up around her thighs, too, in order to help her to keep from struggling involuntarily and moving out of position. Then they tied her wrists to her elbows behind her back, so that she could lie directly onto the platter in a reasonably compact way.

"They then basted her entire body with a nice mixture of melted butter, a few light herbs and spices they'd agreed on in advance, fresh rosemary, and some salt and black pepper. Since the backup had never eaten, there was plenty of space for fillings and they got her to down a couple of litres of light barbecue sauce, mixed with a little soya and some dark beer. They put the same mixture in her other end, too, then plugged her up with some bread and onion stuffing. I couldn't possibly comment on what any of this must have felt like, and I won't repeat any of the things they claim she said during it. The only thing that everyone can agree on, including her, is that she clearly enjoyed the hell out of it.

"Once everything else was done and they'd surrounded her with a nice selection of vegetables suitable for roasting, they asked her if she had anything else to say - it seems her final comment was something to the effect that, 'this is gonna be so incredibly extreme, don't let me stop even if I want you to!' - and then pushed an apple as far into her mouth as they could get it in. It can't have been comfortable, but then she wasn't in it for comfort. It had already been argued whether for something that big, they'd need a meat-skewer and thermometer, but since the waitress was keen on piercings and the backup body didn't have any, she was more than willing. Since they didn't have any experience cooking this way, they used all the available thermometers, one up into each of her nipples, one up her ass and the final one inserted longwise up her clit. The word everyone used was 'quivering' - she apparently stayed absolutely still and just trembled intensely while they did it, without making a sound. When they were done, she supposedly took a deep breath in through her nose and then let it out slowly. 'She kept reassuring us with her eyes' was what one of the other waitresses kept telling me after it all came out."

(Interviewer): "And then of course they cooked her."

M: "Yes. They'd preheated the largest oven and removed all the internal shelves as soon as they first arrived, and between all of them they could easily lift the tray. She just fit in and of course had no incentive to move, because touching the interior of the oven would have meant fast-and-painful burn rather than slow-and-gentle cook. To avoid any possible issues, they'd tied a length of the leftover twine to the handle of the oven door, so she could close it on herself by moving only her hand. She could theoretically have escaped at any time if she'd really wanted to."

(Interviewer): "I'm told it was one hell of a meal."

M: "The mobile backup hardware is heat-resistant to nearly a thousand degrees, once it has self-assembled within the body. But when it ceases to receive any input for more than five minutes, it automatically goes searching for any available backups and uses a 'continuity-downloader' based system to restore the user to the nearest available host without losing continuity of personality. That way, no copy of you ever actually 'dies' and you're always online - it's only the 'hardware' that expires. 'No worse than trimming your fingernails' as that famously awful advertisement once put it. So once the 'winner' of the waitresses little content had been thoroughly cooked, she just wound up out-of-body for a couple of minutes until getting pulled into her original skin again. She recovered in time to take part in what was then a rather unique experience - eating her own well-cooked flesh. She even helped with her own final basting."

(Interviewer): "There's been a lot of talk about what it must feel like to get cooked."

M: "At the time, there were possible issues regarding the legal status of shutting down a backup of someone. The idea was that you would only need a backup if you died or met with some sort of misadventure, so you were still 'killing' someone even if there were perfectly sound reasons for them to want you to do so. But since she could attest to voluntarily cooking herself whilst still alive, it got around the rules and no-one could do anything. Later, of course, they sensibly made further changes to the law to avoid the sort of absurd cases that would otherwise have arisen."

(Interviewer): "I meant the actual physical sensation. It sounds - rather extreme, as she put it."

M: "Since I haven't ever done it myself, I wouldn't know, but there were plenty of interviews in various sensationalist magazines, once the initial scandal was over. Since by then they'd had time to play an entire round, and all of them had taken a turn to be dinner, the consensus description was probably pretty accurate. So - somewhere between the hottest sauna ever, getting a totally permanent sunbed tan, and passing out whilst hallucinating intensely in the midst of the desert under the midday sun. It's possible to bail out to your original body early, if you're still coherent enough to frame the commands, but the whole point is apparently the experience. Well, that and the dinner - they all agreed their own meat was incredibly delicious, although it's not something you should eat more than every couple of weeks. It's so rich it puts something of a strain on the digestive system, and so our diners are advised to consume a special type of fruit wine with their meals to aid the process. Our ladies are very filling."

Around us the late shift is starting up, as the first few customers make their way in. Nearby, one of the girls waiting tables makes her way to a pole set into the floor inside a small firepit and begins her routine, dancing around the pole and teasing the clientele by thrusting her hips down close to the flames so they kiss her thighs. She's wearing only a tiny pink miniskirt and top, no panties. They seem to be made of some sort of heat-resistant material, with the words 'fresh' on the top and 'meat' on the skirt. I suspect it may be about time for me to go.

M: "Are you certain you don't want anything to eat? It's on the house! We have slow-grilled, spit-roasted, oven-cooked, you name it! "

One of the waitresses comes over and flips her notepad open with a dexterity born of long practice. She checks the specials and gets started. "Hello, I'm Brandy and I'll be your meal for the evening...."

---

This little story was inspired by some screen shots posted by GuyOni of the infamous "Final Taboo Underground Restaurant" in IMVU, which takes the eat-the-waitress theme and runs with it all the way to the nearest propane-fuelled grille. Now, personally I disapprove of eating people - it's so very disrespectful, unless you're starving in the Rocky Mountains during a party being held by a guy named Donner, or you've just crashed in the Andes with a Chilean sports team.

But the idea just seems to have taken hold, and I've seen a surprisingly many artworks depicting all-too-literal spit-roasts of peoples characters. "A terrible waste of perfectly good females," as one commenter noted, but it got me thinking - how exactly could such a thing get started? How would it work? And under just what circumstances would it be a legal, if slightly fringe, social vice?

The answer, it seems, combines equal parts Dexter Morgan and Richard K. Morgan (no relation). In RKM's novel 'Altered Carbon' you can download to a new body as necessary, but the copying aspect of it creates moral qualms, so I've invented the idea of the 'continuity-downloader' which resolves the issue by providing personality continuity. It's a feature I know I'd insist upon.

Other fun references include 'Pulp Fiction' (they took out his soul, that's why there's a sticking plaster on his neck!) 'The Man Who Japed' (for a new meaning to 'conspicuous consumption') and Clive Barker's 'Jericho' (great plot but terrible coding). The practical details of how to deliciously cook a shapely female mammal are based on the disturbing artworks of NecroMuncher (which of course I do not endorse, because again, eating people is wrong).