Any surprise is a bad one; it speaks to a lack of observation. Calling the people responsible for them Observers is just insult on the injury--seeing but unseen, with an agenda no one can pin down. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like this place.

But he does like the smell of that coffee, and it was a rare commodity at home. The kind of thing you tried to grow or salvage. Quarantine Zones had entire rubrics for rationing things like coffee--comfort foods, non-essentials. The kind of thing you stocked in the ration lines when you wanted to placate, make up for the lack of real food. Younger generations wouldn't care as much, but the old timers, the ones who could make or quell a racket, they'd shut up for a bit if you put a warm cup of something in their hands.

For Owen, the smell is really all there is to it. Under all the debris of the last twenty-five years, there's a glimmer of home, mom pouring water over the grounds in the morning. Drinking it only dried out his mouth and made his stomach churn.

"Where do you think it comes from," he asks, picking up a hard-boiled egg in his good hand, the remaining fingers of the right peeling at the shell. "Our own chickens don't lay all of these, and the animals I saw further out don't look like anything I've ever seen."