I wrote this years ago based on an actual experience with no thoughts of Dragaera - but perhaps it's vaguely apropos: Emergency Measures Friday, Saturday night I was too wiped out when I got home from the lab to go back out - I had some plain pasta, some tuna, some supposedly Swiss cheese. Tonight I go to my favorite French place. It's closed. Maybe Sophie wasn't in a cooking mood. The alternate French place, with its same-for-months menu and its waiter who asks me if I want my roast duck medium or well-done, is open - that is, there's a stool at the bar. >From here I see for the first time the cloak room and its shelf of bottles of Heinz, A-1, tabasco, and Grey Poupon. I taste the dark-red sauce of green peppercorns and cassis very carefully. Well, it's delicious, the duck's just past bleu, the infant carrots with the green left are a nice touch. And the wine withstands the pepper. In fact, after a glass most of the tie-ropes have been released, but there are still hours of evening to withstand, and with a second glass they're tossing the ballast-bags down. A man walks out of the cloak room without having entered it. He's dark, tall, wears a leather jacket and mercury-colored contact lenses or isn't human - two hooks were sunk below his cheekbones as a child so he could be hanged at night from the ceiling, explaining the tilt of his eyes, the permanent meaningless smile, the obvious easy familiarity with pain. The enitre overdecorated room with its relentlessly well-dressed customers is behind me, and I decide I don't need a coffee.