Space station Zeta Orionis was, it must be admitted, a strange place. Not only was it located on the far fringes of known space, many light years from Earth, it also had been designed by an exceedingly eccentric architect known only by his initials, NTBFW. This man, or woman—no one was sure which—must have had a grudge against the conglomerate that commissioned the station, because it was designed and built in such a way that it resembled an obese chihuahua. It was well known at the time that the CEO of the conglomerate, Ms. Francine von Chew, had accidentally killed just such a pet when she forgot to outfit the dog in its custom tailored space suit, and the dog—Pepe—subsequently exploded when Ms. von Chew left her gigantic mansion on Mars to take Pepe for a walk.

I’ve never met a cannibal named Harvey. When my mother gave me that name, I suppose she also doubted the credential could ever find itself attached to those banal phonemes. But nay she was wrong; I am eater of flesh, connoisseur of the Homo sapiens, taster of gammy knees and tennis elbows. It is I who dines on the crème de la crème of the food chain—the dastardly human. Does that make me king of the food chain, then? An emperor?