The Hungry Garden

Chapter Seven: Bake-Off

So, here's what the coming week at work had in store:

I was going to be shut in a large oven and baked into a loaf of bread, which would then be sawn up into slices with me inside.

This was happening to me so it could then be done to a good friend, who requested it.

Did I mention that my job is absolutely fantastic?

At this time I was nominally based in Wilco's workshop with him and Chris, but mostly floated between there and the main house as needs dictated. I contributed to idea sessions in the workshop and helped with research and planning, but when Chris and Wilco went deep into technical robotics I left them to it and went off to help Uncle Morbid and Scott, who always had some project or other on the go.

This time Scott was in the kitchen lab at the back of the house, where Craig and Rebecca had been baking a series of test loaves of increasing size, experimenting with oven temperatures to find the lowest operational baking temperature that would still produce a decent crust. The idea was to mix up the dough in the concrete mixer in hangar 2, then turn it out into a large tin which Debs or I would be lying in. The tin would then be wheeled into the oven for baking.

Between us we made up a final test loaf in a turkey dish that took up the entire kitchen oven. It took about half an hour in a preheated oven, after which it was still wet inside and not completely cooked, but it had a hard crust that made it good for our needs.

This done, we went together to Hangar 2 to see the rest of the apparatus.

The concrete mixer sat in the corner like an old friend, but now shared the room with a couple of other things.

The oven had been constructed along the opposite wall, a metal chamber about three metres on each side, with a glass window on the door. It was basically a large toaster oven with no shelves, the heating elements set on the back and side walls from about a third of the way up. There was also a vent fitted into the bottom left side wall that would blow a supply of cold air along the floor of the oven – the idea was that this would keep the person lying there at a survivable temperature while the heat of the oven rose up above them, baking the bread.

Next to the oven was a freaky contraption consisting of several long jigsaw blades suspended from a machine rail running over the space where the baked loaf would be placed for slicing. The blades were set to retract slightly into the machine once they had entered the loaf, passing over the person lying at the bottom and dropping back down when the loaf was fully cut through.

The final piece of the set was the baking tin, about the size of a tin bath with an insulated wheeled base and sides designed to unclip when the loaf had been baked, exposing the bread. The ends of the tin had holes cut in them, so the victim's head and feet came out either end. While Craig and Rebecca went to measure out the quantities of ingredients for the bread mixture I lay down in the tin to try it for size, it was quite snug in there.

Our first test run would be carried out with the aid of Johnny the test dummy, who I'd last seen going through the crusher on my first day working at Morior. When the dough had mixed and kneaded enough in the concrete mixer we turned it out over the top of Johnny's body. The dough was pretty wet and filled the tin just over halfway after Johnny's torso had been covered. We wheeled the tin into the oven chamber, which had already been heated to the required temperature, closed the door and settled in to watch.

It took about forty minutes of baking until we saw the bread rise above the top of the tin and settle into a golden crust. Johnny the Dummy lay impassively inside the loaf, his head and feet sticking out in a surreal visual. We turned off the oven, let it cool down a little, then opened the door to go in and get the tin. We removed the sides to reveal a nice crust, then left it to cool for another five minutes or so. This done, we wheeled the Johnny Loaf into position in the slicing machine, locking it into place alongside the fearsome row of motorised blades.