The bread, a fresh sourdough loaf. Thieu had baked it himself, using an oven he didn’t yet own in his kitchen ten years on. The dough, though, came from Grandpa’s old French-style bakery, gently pilfered out of the mixing bowl during the hostage crisis while Gramps was dealing with a customer.

The tomato was surprisingly easy. Thieu planted a seed and same back three months later when it was a plant laden with fruits. It took a few tries, reusing the seeds in each attempt as they withered or were stolen by pests, but soon enough a usable, even tantalizing, tomato emerged. The lettuce involved a similar process.

The cheese was even easier. Just a matter of leaving it in an undisturbed spot for a decade to fully cure, once Thieu had grabbed a wheel-in-progress from a local cheesery.

The meat, though. That should have been tricky. Thieu wasn’t about to wait for an animal to grow to adulthood or slaughter it on his own. But then, he caught a glimpse of himself–maybe a few years older–dropping off a package with a wink and a nod.

Put together, it was the world’s first non-linear sandwich, and a potent symbol of Thieu’s new technology. But as much as he wanted to eat it, Thieu had to admit that the sandwich was a potent bootstrap paradox, and eating it might end all time as it currently existed.

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