Charlie woke up in the back of the restaurant, still exhausted from work the night before. His mother was already baking, prepping and cleaning. His father was chopping meat with his large cleaver.

“Charlie, come help us cook.” his mother beckoned.

Even so tired, Charlie felt energy surge through his body. He hurried to his mother, finally tall enough to peer over the counter.

“This is the recipe.” she smiled down at Charlie, seeing his eyes light up as if given the greatest gift. He’d always loved recipes. For him, it was as if he was seeing through the dish to all its ingredients.

“But where are the rest?” Charlie asked.
“The rest of what, sweetie?”
“The rest of the ingredients, Ma.”

Charlie’s mother looked at him perplexed. She grabbed the paper the recipe was scribbled on and studied it closely to be sure nothing was missing.

“Ohh, Charlie, I usually don’t put salt or pepper on the recipe for a dish like this. We can season to taste.”
“No, Ma. Look.”

Charlie pointed directly at a line that read ‘2 Eggs’ and looked up at his mother with genuine hope in his eyes.

“Charlie, you don’t need ingredients for eggs. They come that way.”

Charlie was dissatisfied with this answer, but ignored his curiosity. As he got older, these questions grew more and more discomforting. Charlie yearned for a deeper recipe, for understanding at a more fundamental level.

Dinner service on a Friday night, it was as busy as the three had ever seen it. Charlie’s father was shouting from the kitchen and his mother was running frantically from the dining room to the kitchen. Charlie was old enough to serve the customers, but he was stuck preparing a dish.

“Charlie, just cook the food, it’ll turn out perfect.” His mother took a moment to soothe her son.
“You’re right Ma, but you don’t understand. It could be better.”

Charlie walked out of the restaurant, his father screaming for him to come back and his mother quietly sobbing.

Big City universities offered many different learning programs, but Charlie had his sights on just one class. He stepped into a room of three students and a teacher, expecting more to arrive, but that was it. It was in this classroom that he would go beyond recipe and reach the true core of all things.

The professor taught rigorous mathematics and physics. Charlie struggled to keep up at first and failed the class multiple times. To his very last dime, he paid for the class. When finally, he got it. He studied the math and the theory as if a recipe, and did the work to seek the deeper level. Every concept was deconstructed. Every particle ripped apart to reveal another. He found himself going so deep that there was nothing left.

Charlie felt a dead end. For weeks he asked what more there was at the deepest level. At the smallest scales and the emptiest voids, he needed to know the ingredients.

He sat in his chair in class, pondering this, paying no attention to the teacher. Then he realized; at the lowest level, there was nothing. In everything, there was nothing. It was a balance his brain began to comprehend and just like that. POP

An egg dropped from midair onto the floor. His very first subject of scrutiny was summoned from nothing. Everyone was stunned, jaws dropped and they looked at each other as Charlie left the room in a hurry.

On the street, he lost control. Food spawned in the air and dropped onto unsuspecting civilians. Cars crashed and people ate against their will. He entered the room he rented and slammed the door. The small dormitory was becoming more and more full with every kind of food Charlie knew. He was running out of space. He needed to focus.

Charlie rubbed his belly and thought of the most elegant dish he could make. His stomach glowed dimly and the dish floated from the air into his hands. He had done it. Every ingredient to every food was now inside his brain.

Returning home, Charlie watched his mother working through a window, sadness in her motion. He stomped inside and saw his father chopping meat slowly, lifelessly.

“Ma, Pa. Look. I figured it out.”

Charlie spawned for each of them their favorite meals. They were stunned for a moment before taking a bite. The food was the most delicious thing either of them had ever eaten.

Charlie ran the restaurant once his parents passed, inheriting his father’s signature cleaver. After many years of success there, he starred on his own cooking show not as Charlie, but as the superhero chef, Chop.