Adventures of the Sentient Cake

[extrapenguin]

On AO3
Part of Remix Madness 2015
Based on avanti_90 's Adventures of the Space Stegosaurus

Summary: In the Imperial Residence kitchens, a cake acquires sentience.

The cake woke into consciousness gradually.

At first, it was mere batter, eggs and flour and sugar with assorted additives. It could barely notice its surroundings, and enjoyed the whirr of itself being mixed.

When it was poured into the cake pan, its thoughts began to sharpen. It became aware of things moving around, producing sounds, stirring things. One of the things put the cake into the oven.

The heat! Oh, the heat! It sharpened the cake's mind, baked it into perfection, gave it purpose. What does not kill one makes one stronger. The cake would find out where it – its consciousness – came from.

Too soon, the cake was removed from the blessed heat, and deposited onto a metal tray. It cooled, the air seemingly leaching purpose from it.

Then, tragedy struck.

One of the motile things – a small one – and some sort of soft-looking thing snuck next to the cake's tray. “The fiend plans to wipe the planet clean of life with a gravitic bomb! ” the motile one said. It waved the soft one in its hand and grabbed the cake's tray. If cakes could sweat, or, indeed, plead for their lives, this one would have been busy doing both.

Alas, the motile one continued. “With less than a minute to go, Steggie makes a run for it!”

The cake found itself whisked away from the kitchens' heat. Through many staircases and corridors, it was brought to a large bedroom. It would have been quivering in terror had it been capable of quivering.

The cake's tray was placed on a table. The motile one left. The cake had just begun to relax when the motile one returned with a knife.

The cake felt its mind empty. This was not how it would have wanted its life to go. Even the candles that burned at both ends still had the opportunity to light up the room for their short life! The cake had received nothing. It surrendered to despair when the knife first touched it.

 

And thus did the young Gregor Vorbarra come to eat an experimental Cetagandan assassination attempt.