question:  Why doesn't the narrator care about having eaten in the past day and a half?
context: I admit it: I didn't know if I was coming or going—but I know that if I stuck to the old man, I was a comer ... even if he was a goner! The golden Moon and the silver ship, symbols of greed. I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose, one finger at a time. If a half dozen winos in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie. Doc's thin frame, layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side. "'Memory Jump,' you mean. All my great-grandfathers have it. I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three doors down. It had happened a few times right after I first found him, but now it was worse. The tubercular clerk looked up from the gaudy comics sections of one of those little tabloids that have the funnies a week in advance. You don't have any quarter, not if I say so. I found I couldn't focus both my mind and my eyes through the electric flashes of agony, so I concentrated on Doc's voice and trusted my hands would follow their habit pattern and construct the symbols for his words. Beyond Six, Seven, Eight ... They told everything I needed to know to become the most powerful man in the Solar Federation. When I got to thinking it was just a dream and that I was dragging this old man around North America for nothing, I remembered who he was. I remembered that he was somebody very important whose name and work I had once known, even if now I knew him only as Doc. Pain was a pendulum within me, swinging from low throbbing bass to high screaming tenor. I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that crawled through my veins. He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back across his face.
output:  He is preoccupied by his stronger need for coffee
options:  He does not actually need to eat to survive  He is an evolved human who does not actually need to eat to survive  Water is more important than food, so he needs to find that first  He is preoccupied by his stronger need for coffee