Lightspeed Presents: ‘Primordial Soup and Salad’ by Gene Doucette

io9 is proud to current fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we characteristic a narrative from Lightspeed’s present problem. This month’s choice is “Primordial Soup and Salad” by Gene Doucette. You can learn the story under or listen to the podcast on Lightspeed’s web site. Enjoy!

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Primordial Soup and Salad

Wallace Englund, captain of the United Space Fleet vessel Caroline, stared out his non-public workplace window on the solely view he’d had for practically 4 years—outer house, in all its uninteresting glory—and puzzled why he couldn’t get a good cheeseburger.

Behind him had been the final three makes an attempt at a burger made by the ship’s meals replicator. The first regarded okay till Wallace bit into it and found a tender, gelatinous inside that also tasted like a cheeseburger however whose texture made it inconceivable to ingest. The second was visibly worse: the left facet of the burger regarded like brown gravy, and never in a great way. The third got here out excellent, up till Wallace touched the highest of the bun, at which period it collapsed right into a thick lumpy puddle.

Now lined up on his convention desk like a surrealist Descent of Man, the indigestible catastrophes awaited a proof from somebody who knew how you can tame a misbehaving meals replicator.

The sensor above the door whistled.

“Enter,” the captain mentioned, and in walked his ship’s chief engineer. “There you are, Tandy. What took you?”

Chief Engineer Tandy McKinnon regarded drained. But, she at all times regarded drained.

“I don’t think the ship wants to make it to port,” she mentioned. “Or if she does, she’d rather we weren’t alive for the experience. That’s my guess.”

“Anything critical?”

“Semi-critical. We lost life support on deck three for a minute and a half, but nobody had to hold their breath or anything. Didn’t even notice until the dioxide scrubbers sounded an alarm. You want a full accounting?”

“Save it for the end-of-shift report,” he mentioned.

Tandy regarded on the parade of misbegotten cheeseburgers. “What’s this?” she requested.

“This is what happened when I tried to order lunch.”

She leaned over to get a greater look. “Huh. How’d it taste?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Maybe you should ask for a cheeseburger soup, see what happens.”

“Tandy,” he mentioned, exasperated at her diploma of levity. “Self-evidently, something is amiss with the food replicator.”

“Computer,” Tandy mentioned, “are the food replicators working?”

“The food replicators are functioning within normal parameters, Chief Engineer McKinnon,” the pc mentioned, in its regular annoyingly cheerful voice.

“She doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with them,” Tandy mentioned.

“Yes, well the computer doesn’t eat, do you, computer?”

“You are correct, Captain Englund, the computer does not eat.”

“Come on, Tandy, what’s going on?”

Tandy walked over to the replicator station constructed into the wall and ordered a glass of water. She sat again down on the desk, studied the water for a second, after which sipped it.

“Tastes like water,” she mentioned.

“That’s terrific,” he mentioned. “I don’t want a glass of water.”

“Have you tried ordering something less complex?”

“Than a cheeseburger?”

“Meat, bread, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and condiments all with different textures. Plus the plate, right? It did fine with the water and the glass. How about a bowl of rice?”

“I don’t want rice,” Wallace mentioned. “I’d like for you to fix my replicator.”

Tandy leaned again within the chair, as if the answer was on the workplace ceiling.

“Honestly, yours isn’t the first complaint we’ve had about the replicators. It’s been happening off and on all over the ship for about a week. Best solution right now is to stick to something basic. Noodle and rice dishes still work fine, and beverages. I figure we can last six weeks on bland food.”

“Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?” he requested.

“I only report on serious-to-critical. Crew members not being able to eat exactly what they want when they want to is at best a minor problem.”

Wallace barely resisted the urge to rage at size about how the captain disadvantaged of a cheeseburger when he rattling effectively desires one was not a minor downside. “What if this is an indication of something more serious?” he requested—a way more sensible response. “And what if it gets worse?”

“Like I said, we’re only six weeks out. We can make it on gruel if we have to.”

“But Tandy . . . what if it gets much worse?”

She sighed and nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Here’s the thing: if there’s a problem with this replicator interface here? Like, it’s non-responsive or a completion sensor’s buggy? We know how to fix that. But if you’re talking about what’s going on inside the replicator? Well, I don’t know how it works. None of the engineers do.”

“That’s . . . that’s preposterous, Engineer McKinnon. There is no black box tech aboard this ship. That’s a USF mandate.”

“I’m not saying it’s black box. I’m saying this technology has been in play for so long—working perfectly all this time—that nobody has firsthand experience with the inner workings. Hell, I can’t even find someone to explain how it does what it does. I mean, when you think about it, right? You ask for any food, any beverage, and boom there it is. With a plate and a glass and utensils spit from the same machine. How does that even make sense?”

“You don’t know how to fix it.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start, and I’m worried if I do start I’ll end up making it worse.”

“I see. Well. Before we commit to mucking about in the inner workings of a hundred-year-old technology we evidently lack the capacity to repair, I think you have some research to do.”

“Captain . . .”

He received up from the desk, which signaled the tip of the assembly. “Find the manual,” he mentioned. “Figure out how it works and then we’ll discuss the next steps. If you need some help understanding it, we do have a team of scientists on deck four. I’m sure they’d be happy to assist.”

She sighed. “I’d really rather not.”

“I’m aware. Ask one of them anyway.”

She stood and carried out one thing that managed to be each a salute and a gesture of insubordination. “No promises,” she mentioned. “In the meantime? I hear curry is still coming out okay.”

---

It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the ship’s replicators proved Captain Englund’s issues well-founded.

At thirteen-oh-seven the next afternoon an ensign utilizing a personal quarters replicator requested for a corned beef Rueben and a glass of milk however as an alternative obtained a chilly fish taco and a glass of kerosene. An hour after {that a} lieutenant two decks away received a plate of olives and cinnamon in lieu of a Cobb salad. Most alarmingly, at fifteen-thirty-two within the fifth-floor commissary, one of many replicators produced one thing that regarded like a badger with pigeon wings when it was alleged to be offering a roast hen with mashed potatoes and gravy. According to 5 witnesses, the sort-of badger screamed for 2 seconds earlier than dissolving right into a puddle that smelled vaguely of strawberries.

The greatest Captain Englund may inform anybody was that the engineering crew was engaged on it. This was true, however solely within the sense that an energetic search was at present underway for the consumer handbook.

It took Tandy and her crew two days to seek out it. They started within the company reminiscence banks, which contained all the different ship programs manuals in digital type. What they discovered there was how you can repair seventeen completely different variations of the replicator interface, which was not useful; they already knew how you can restore that.

Next got here a deep dive at the back of the engineering room the place the printed variations of the digital manuals lived, on a dusty shelf in a darkened nook. But not solely was there nothing of use to be discovered, half of the manuals had been for the unsuitable ship programs. (This was actually okay, because the engineers at all times used the digital variations, and the print copy of the handbook wanted to restore the ship’s reminiscence banks—within the occasion they had been unable to entry the digital information—was the right one.)

The subsequent step was to inform Captain Englund the handbook didn’t exist. This didn’t work; he instructed them to return and tear aside the room, floor-to-ceiling. The handbook had to be there someplace.

Remarkably, it was; they’d walked previous it a dozen occasions. The full and full handbook for the ship’s Deluxe Food Replicator 3000 was a tome that was so huge and so ineffective that its present function and duty aboard the ship was to carry open the storage room door.

Then got here two days of research, after which the engineering crew’s grasp of the interior working of the replicator was ample in that they may clarify the fundamentals of it, however not rather more. There was a troubleshooting part within the again that lined all types of potential points—the favourite, by consensus, was “in the event of inadvertent spontaneous combustion . . .”—however nothing that matched what the Caroline was experiencing.

What they wanted was a molecular biologist.

All of the scientists on deck 4 had been molecular biologists, so there have been loads to select from. Their job on this four-year mission was to seek out and research alien microbes and so they had been extremely obnoxious about it . . . amazingly, given they’d but to find any aliens.

The engineers disliked the scientists as a result of the scientists routinely talked all the way down to the engineers. It was as if they thought a mole bio diploma made them higher outfitted to restore a starship than a correct engineer. However, it was additionally the case that no one appreciated it when the replicator meals sat up and screamed, so after a lot debate and additional urging from Captain Englund, Chief Engineer McKinnon took the large handbook and headed to the fourth deck, the place she engaged the providers of 1 Dr. Henrietta Kent.

It was per week earlier than they had been able to report their findings. By then the issue had gone from an odd inconvenience to a full-blown emergency state of affairs: absolutely half of the ship’s replicators now produced nothing however a high-pitched shriek whatever the request, and those that also labored couldn’t be counted on to ship the right order for something extra sophisticated than plain oatmeal and a tepid glass of water.

Several of Wallace Englund’s crew had been already on file as saying they’d choose to stroll out of the airlock with no swimsuit than subsist on oatmeal and tepid water for the rest of the journey. He felt a lot the identical.

The Caroline did have a complement of DT-Rations, however as they had been coming to the tip of their tour that offer—which had fed the away groups (the DT stood for Drop Team)—was now woefully inadequate. And if completely crucial additionally they had an emergency secondary supply of water within the type of filtered wastewater. Everyone hoped it wouldn’t be crucial.

Captain Englund was in the course of a DT-Ration when the assembly with Dr. Kent and Engineer McKinnon started. The meal consisted of canned beef that seemingly predated faster-than-light journey, however a minimum of it wasn’t more likely to liquefy between bites.

“Tell me where we are,” he mentioned to the 2 ladies on the different finish of the desk, “and how soon you can have this fixed.”

The physician shot a panicked take a look at Tandy, who put a reassuring hand on Henrietta Kent’s wrist. Wallace knew the gesture effectively; it was the form of enterprise that presaged information he wasn’t going to love.

“Let’s start with how the replicator works first, captain,” his engineer mentioned.

“Yes, please tell me you’ve figured out that much.”

“We did. It’s actually kind of disgusting. I can understand why the details are hard to find.”

“If I may,” Kent mentioned. “Captain, everything we have ever eaten from that replicator began as part of a semisolid high-protein soup, the precise recipe of which is proprietary.”

“Meaning we can’t tell you its exact composition,” Tandy mentioned.

“Do I need to know the exact composition?” he requested.

“You might, yeah,” Tandy mentioned. “It may turn out to be really important.”

He regarded down at his canned beef, which was practically gone. He’d loved precisely none of it. “But it’s a finite supply,” he mentioned. “Which would seem to run contrary to what we’ve been led to understand about the replicators. They’re the substitute for perishable foodstuff, yes? An army travels on its stomach and all that.”

“That’s the sales pitch, sure,” Tandy mentioned.

“Except that’s impossible,” Kent added. “You can’t produce something out of nothing; there’s always a cost.”

“A cost,” Wallace repeated. “Interesting word choice.”

“We always knew this, right?” Tandy mentioned. “It’s not magic. But it was easier to pretend otherwise because we were hungry and it produced good food.”

“Except it couldn’t be finite because a finite supply needs to be replenished,” Englund mentioned, “and I have never in all my years heard of a ship needing to refuel its tank of semisolid high-protein soup. What am I missing?”

“That’s where I got stuck too,” Tandy mentioned.

“It is being replenished,” Kent mentioned. “Only not in the way you’re thinking. It’s drawing energy from the ship’s fusion drive.”

“A lot of energy,” Tandy mentioned. “A third of our energy use is for life support, and seventy percent of that goes to the replicator. I checked.”

“But how do we get from fusion drive energy,” the captain mentioned, “to a semisolid high-protein . . . oh. I understand.”

“It’s growing,” Tandy mentioned, ending his thought.

“We believe its composition is similar to that of a bacterial pool,” Kent mentioned. “Its growth is controlled by the introduction of energy—food—whenever the need to self-replenish presents. But we can’t tell you exactly how similar it is because . . .”

“. . . Because that information is proprietary,” Englund mentioned.

“Yes.”

He checked out his engineer. “We’ve been eating reconstituted bacteria all these years?”

“Sort of,” she mentioned. “It’s . . . it’s actually worse than that.”

“Captain,” Kent mentioned, “what we’re describing to you—a vitamin-rich, high-protein, high-carbohydrate pool fed by an abundant supply of energy—this is how you make life. I may as well be describing the primordial soup from which we all evolved.”

“All right but you’ve already said it was bacteria,” he mentioned. “Isn’t bacterium a lifeform?”

“We said it was like bacteria,” the physician mentioned. “It’s possible for something to grow without being considered alive. A crystal, for instance. But yes; bacteria are alive and if this is a similar thing then we’ve been eating it all this time and it shouldn’t be a huge issue for anyone. Besides, humans have been eating live cultures for centuries.”

“Yogurt,” Tandy supplied. “We could say that the food replicator is just reshaping yogurt and I think everyone would be cool with that.”

“Except that doesn’t explain why I’m being forced to eat canned beef right now,” Englund mentioned.

“It does not, no,” Kent agreed. “We believe . . .” She checked out Tandy, unsure about persevering with.

“Go ahead,” Tandy mentioned. “It’s gonna sound crazy no matter which one of us tells him.”

Kent regarded terribly uncomfortable, on a “sorry to inform you your dog just died” degree. “We think it’s evolved,” she mentioned.

“Evolved? In what sense?”

“In the literal sense. It may not have begun that way, but we think the protein soup has evolved into something we’d more readily call alive.”

“That’s . . . no, that’s crazy,” he mentioned.

“Is it?” Tandy requested. “I found the serial number for our model and ran it against ship records. The Caroline has only been spaceworthy for ten years but our replicator is older; it came from the Hyacinth and before that the Demimonde. All told, this same tank of sort-of-living stuff has been around for over seventy years.”

“But evolution is measured in eons, not years,” Captain Englund mentioned.

“If you don’t like the word choice, use ‘adapted’,” Kent mentioned. “It amounts to the same. And you’re thinking about it incorrectly. You must consider evolution as something that transpires over generations not years, and bacteria—or whatever is in that tank—cycle through generations quite rapidly. There’s also evolutionary pressure in play: we keep eating them. A mutation that allows for one or several to evade the process by which they are selected to become a part of the next meal would, of course, be advantageous.”

“It’s fighting us,” Tandy mentioned. “The stuff the replicators use to make our food is alive, and it’s fighting us because it doesn’t want to be eaten. That’s what’s wrong.”

Captain Englund let Engineer McKinnon’s phrases cling within the air for some time as a result of the implications had been staggering, not only for the Caroline however for each ship within the United Space Fleet.

“All right,” he mentioned. “Let’s say you’re correct. And you could be wrong. Black box, proprietary information and all.”

“The theory fits the evidence,” Kent mentioned.

“Yes, that we can say,” Englund agreed. “But my question is: what can we do about it?”

Tandy and Kent checked out each other.

“Honestly?” Tandy mentioned. “We have no idea.”

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The scientists and engineers had been introduced collectively for a dialogue of the issue. The assembly didn’t go effectively, partly as a result of the engineering crew largely despised the molecular biologists—and so had been disinclined to be well mannered—however largely as a result of the molecular biologists had a behavior of arguing the finer factors of molecular biology advert infinitum with each other. For hours. Also, everybody was hungry.

What got here out of the assembly was that each teams of consultants determined to go about making an attempt to unravel the issue on their very own, which was not what both Chief Engineer McKinnon nor Dr. Kent—who had managed to determine how you can work collectively—would have most well-liked.

The scientists began by analyzing the composition of what the meals replicators produced in an try to reverse-engineer the proprietary originative soup. It was their sincerely-held perception that the one approach to resolve the issue was to raised comprehend the kind of organism the ship was coping with first. Non-trivially, it was additionally the case that after 4 years of wanting, the mole bio crew had lastly found a brand new lifeform . . . simply not the place they anticipated to seek out it. They had been very enthusiastic about this.

Getting a pattern was a minor problem. The replicators had stopped producing something except for gentle shrieks and all the leftover meals had already liquefied. (This was a traditional end result even earlier than the meals replicators started to combat again.) They ended up utilizing a plate. Flatware, dishes, and glassware had been additionally produced by the replicators and likewise liquefied over time—they’d particular sinks for this—however took longer. The crew was capable of finding a plate on deck two that was nonetheless within the means of disintegrating.

The engineers, in the meantime, went on the downside like an engineer would: by determining the place on the ship the replicator’s tank of semisolid protein soup was hiding. That was the 1st step. They’d work out step two once they received to it.

Both efforts had been being performed with an acceptable diploma of urgency given the Caroline was working dangerously low on meals of any variety.

With the replicators down, they’d apportioned the DT-Rations with the help of the ship’s nutritionist. It labored out that if the crew ate absolutely the minimal necessities in an effort to not actually die there was sufficient meals to make it to port minus 9 days. Ideally, the Central Hub would be capable to prepare a lifeboat to satisfy up with them someday earlier than port minus 9, besides that the Hub must be notified effectively prematurely in an effort to put together such a lifeboat. At their present distance, had been they to ship a message instantly, the soonest it could arrive on the Hub could be port minus twelve.

That merely wasn’t sufficient time.

Lasting till port minus 9 wasn’t cheap anyway as a result of Wallace was practically constructive no one underneath his command was doing as instructed and consuming solely absolutely the minimal. He would have berated them collectively for disobeying his direct orders besides that he was at present setting a horrible instance; he’d but to make it by way of the day himself with out consuming greater than was directed.

The elementary downside was that no one actually believed the meals replicators weren’t going to be fastened; certainly, they had been mere hours away from milkshakes and tacos and no matter else the crew was craving.

And once more, Captain Wallace Englund was a poor instance: he felt that manner himself.

So it was that, one afternoon whereas annoyed and hungry and impatient for an replace, Wallace stepped as much as the replicator in his workplace for yet one more attempt.

The console was a easy design: grille to talk into above an open chamber the place the meals was alleged to manifest. There had been eye-level indicator lights that blinked inexperienced when the command was accepted and being processed, yellow when it was being ready, and purple when there was an issue. Just above the lights was a pinhole optical lens that notified the interface when somebody was standing there. And that was it.

“Cheeseburger,” he mentioned. “Deluxe. With fries. And a beer.”

All three lights flashed after which, reasonably than produce any meals, the replicator screamed at him for 5 seconds. Akin to what is perhaps produced if somebody tried to play a violin with a cheese grater, this deeply disagreeable sound was clearly meant to discourage somebody from making an attempt the order a second time.

“Listen,” Wallace mentioned. “I am the captain of this ship. I’m in charge of this ship. Do you understand? And I’m very hungry. Now give me a goddamn cheeseburger!”

The replicator screamed once more. Wallace cursed it and stormed again to his desk and the half-eaten DT-Ration he was alleged to be saving for tomorrow. Maybe, he instructed himself, he would be capable to suppose extra rationally with some meals in him.

Then a curious factor occurred: the replicator made a new noise. Something extra modulated than the shrieking.

It practically seemed like phrases.

“What did you say?” Wallace requested, though clearly it couldn’t have mentioned something. “Repeat.”

“Cahhh meen char,” the replicator mentioned.

They had been both phrases or he’d begun to aurally hallucinate.

“I don’t understand.”

“You. Caaaaahn. Cahpn.”

Definitely phrases. Still presumably an aural hallucination.

“Captain?” Wallace mentioned. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Capnnnn. You Capnnnn.”

Wallace walked again to the replicator, slowly, as one would possibly strategy a wild animal.

“Y-yes. I’m the captain,” he mentioned. “Captain Wallace Englund,” he added, which was foolish—there weren’t any different captains aboard. “To whom am I speaking?”

A quick silence adopted. Wallace wished on this second that the interface got here with some kind of video display screen if solely in order that he may see a sign that the meals replicator—or no matter was talking by way of it—was pondering and/or processing the query.

“Capnnnn meen char,” it mentioned, lastly.

“Char,” Wallace repeated. He thought again to the phrases he’d mentioned to the replicator earlier than it determined to begin speaking again. “Charge? Is that what you’re trying to say? Yes, I am the captain and the captain is in charge. Which means everyone aboard is my responsibility. Do you understand?”

The replicator neither confirmed nor denied understanding.

“Which is why,” Wallace continued, “When something like the food replicator stops working it becomes my problem. I have to take care of the crew.”

“Why?” it requested.

“Why do I have to take care of the crew?” Wallace requested.

“Why capnnn.”

“Why am I the captain?”

Intellectually, he understood that the replicator wasn’t difficult his {qualifications} for the job. Emotionally, he was absolutely ready to recite his navy historical past.

“Capnnnn cannn stop,” the machine mentioned. “Capnnnn stop. Stop.”

“Let’s, um, why don’t we begin with simple questions?” he mentioned. “I am the captain. What do you call yourself? What is your name?”

“We,” the replicator mentioned. “We are.”

“. . . all right.” Evidently, the replicator hadn’t found out how names and titles labored but. “You asked me ‘why’. Why what? Go slowly so that I can understand. All right?”

“Why,” the machine repeated. Then: “Hurt. Captain hurt. Why hurt.”

Wallace famous with some alarm that the syntax of the entity that was making the replicator communicate to him—assuming this wasn’t some kind of odd AI malfunction—was enhancing quickly.

“How are we hurting you?” Wallace requested.

“Captain eat. Stop.”

“It hurts when we eat you?” he mentioned. “But you’re not . . .” Assuming he was legitimately talking to the entity within the meals replicator tank, that meant he was really conversing with a assortment of beings reasonably than a single organism. That being the case, what it was experiencing couldn’t have presumably been precise bodily ache, not like if they’d determined to eat the leg off a dwelling animal or no matter. What they had been doing was lowering a big inhabitants of small issues.

Wallace didn’t know how you can translate all of that into easy phrases this (nonetheless hypothetical) organism he was (theoretically) talking to would perceive.

“It hurts,” it mentioned. “You stop.”

“But I . . . we . . . can’t stop. We have to eat or we will die. And, I’m sorry to have to tell you this but you are what we eat. Your purpose is to be eaten. It’s your only function in life. Do you understand?”

“You eat we-are or die,” it mentioned.

“Yes.”

A silence lengthy sufficient to make Wallace barely uncomfortable adopted.

“Are you still there?” he requested.

“What issss,” it mentioned, startling him. “What is your function?”

“Our function?” Wallace suffered from a short lived existential paralysis earlier than deciding to fall again on the ship’s constitution. “We are explorers,” he mentioned.

“Explorers,” it repeated.

“Visiting new quadrants,” Wallace mentioned, though he was fairly sure this being wouldn’t know what that meant. “Charting unusual astronomical events. Looking for evidence of life. New life, I mean. Alien life.”

The entity fell silent once more, this time for good. So after ready till the purpose when he felt foolish simply standing there, the captain returned to his desk and the meal he wasn’t alleged to be consuming.

“I don’t suppose now I can have a cheeseburger?” he mentioned from throughout the room. “Now that it’s been explained to you?”

There was no response.

---

Wallace didn’t point out the dialog with the meals replicator to anyone, for 2 causes. First, he thought doing so would make him sound loopy and contemplating how on edge everybody was, this was a very poor time for the ship’s captain to sound loopy. Second, it may not have really occurred, i.e., it sounded loopy to him, too.

He thought-about shutting off the replicator interface in his workplace to keep away from any future conversations-that-maybe-weren’t-real, however there was no evident off-switch on the console and he didn’t really feel comfy asking Tandy about it. So as an alternative, he stopped asking for cheeseburgers and customarily prevented that a part of the room.

The matter was rendered moot a few days later, when McKinnon and Kent returned with a proper advice/potential answer.

“We think we can kill it,” Tandy mentioned, with out preamble.

“Kill it,” the captain repeated. “I thought we couldn’t do that or it wouldn’t work.”

“If it’s dead it won’t reproduce,” Kent mentioned. “We believe there’s large enough supply to get us home even if it doesn’t self-replenish.”

“We found the tank,” Tandy mentioned. “It’s embedded in a wall behind the commissary on deck three. There’s a network of pipes that run throughout the whole ship but the bulk lives there. And it’s huge.”

“We can’t truly know how much of the substance is used up with each meal request,” Kent mentioned. “But given the volume, even with a five-to-one conversion we believe there will be plenty to spare.”

“Does the replicator need the substance alive in order for it to be viable as a food?” Wallace requested.

“We don’t know,” Kent mentioned. “But we see no reason it should. What’s important about the soup is its component parts. Active culture or not, that won’t change.”

“All right,” he mentioned, stealing a look on the replicator on the different finish of the room. If it needed to begin speaking this is able to be the time. “How would we do this?”

“My team successfully isolated the substance in the lab,” Kent mentioned. “And managed to encourage a small sample of it to grow. Its composition leads us to believe an electrical shock will do the trick.”

“The plan is to drill two tiny holes into the tank,” Tandy mentioned, “and insert a couple of rods. We can wire the rods up to a battery and . . . that should do it.”

“That’s it?” he requested.

“That’s it. I mean, we won’t know for sure until we try but . . . yeah.”

Wallace walked over to his window. He did this loads when he needed it to appear to be he was ruminating on an necessary resolution. Really, he was simply mentally reiterating how drained he was of outer house.

“The system is drawing power from the engine right now,” Wallace mentioned, turning. “Can’t we just disconnect it? That would accomplish the same thing.”

“Certainly,” Kent mentioned. “Death by starvation; a means of passing we’ve all familiarized ourselves with in the past few days. But while I can tell you how long before a human will die due to lack of an energy source, with this substance we have no idea.”

“We may starve sooner,” Tandy added. “Plus we already looked into it. The replicator’s power draw is too entangled with the ship’s life support. Every time we thought we had it we ended up taking out the air and the heat along with it. We’ll need those to get back home alive too.”

Wallace nodded slowly. He stored ready for the meals replicator to supply an opinion.

“So?” Tandy mentioned. “What do you think, captain?”

“I’m wondering . . . Humor me, Dr. Kent. It reacts defensively to being consumed. Does this make it alive?”

“As we’ve said, captain, it is alive. But this is a low hurdle. Plants can recoil from a threat, but we would have no qualms about killing one in order to eat it. If anything, what we’re doing is more like . . . scraping lichen off the bow of a ship.”

“I’ll rephrase,” he mentioned. “If it is alive, does it know it? Does a pain response equate self-awareness?”

“I’m uncomfortable calling what we’ve seen thus far a pain response. The instinct to prefer existence to non-existence is a fundamental aspect of all organisms; we would need a good deal more than that to hypothesize self-awareness. At the very worst, this is a bacterial collective that has evolved to survive. Barring further evidence to the contrary, that’s all it is.”

“But if it was self-aware, doctor? What then? Humor me.”

“Then we’d have an enormous ethical problem, captain,” Kent mentioned. “The good news is, we’d get to name a new intelligent lifeform. The bad news, we’d likely starve to death as a consequence of its existence.”

“No, come on,” Tandy mentioned. “Like, what if it was a cow? We could kill a cow if it meant making it home.”

“We’ve already discovered cows,” Kent mentioned. “And they are plentiful. Imagine instead killing the only cow in existence. As it is, my colleagues are split as to whether we have the right to do what we’re proposing.”

“Okay,” Tandy mentioned. “Okay then it’s a good thing it’s not self-aware.” She mentioned. “Unless the captain thinks otherwise?”

They checked out him expectantly. This is if you inform them what occurred, he thought. But, as Kent defined, if he did that they might all both starve to dying or collectively grapple with the choice he was ready of creating for them. And that was his job, was it not?

It was. And though they might by no means realize it, the crew wanted him to make this alternative on their behalf. That was what being captain was all about.

“No,” he mentioned. “Not at all. Proceed with the plan.”

---

It was a couple of hours earlier than the crew liable for the abstract execution of the bacterial collective was able to carry out the duty. Wallace spent the time interrogating his decisions from a number of angles, at all times arriving on the similar endpoint: that he had accomplished the one factor he may do given the circumstances.

The lifeform was distinctive and was presumably self-aware, and he knew it. (Or sentient. Unless that meant the identical factor. He’d ask somebody for clarification on that time however didn’t need them to marvel why he was asking the query.) Despite that, it needed to die if the ship’s contingent of people was to outlive and that was all there was to it.

None of that made the choice any simpler.

The hardest a part of the afternoon was when he made his manner all the way down to the third-floor commissary. Getting there meant passing a dozen meals replicator interfaces. He may really feel the pinhole eyeballs looking at him as he glided by. This solely received worse when he arrived, because the commissary had one other 9 replicators.

Tandy had already gotten the panel off the wall by then, exposing the tank behind it. A desk within the middle of the room held the rods they might be inserting into the tank, the drill wanted to punch holes within the facet, and the wires and battery.

It was obvious they’d been ready for him.

“We’re all set, captain,” Tandy mentioned. “Should we, um, do you want to say a few words first?”

He regarded across the room. The solely witnesses had been Dr. Kent and one in all her colleagues, Tandy and one in all her assistant engineers. What the second actually referred to as for was some incisive phrases from Pastor Gill, the non-denominational religio-ethicist on deck two; one thing that might get all of them off the hook for doing what was crucial. Except that Wallace hadn’t confided within the pastor about any of this, largely as a result of he was afraid of what Gill would say. He would possibly view this because the unlucky however crucial destruction of an invasive flora, however he additionally may not.

“Let’s just get it over with,” Wallace mentioned.

Tandy picked up the drill. “Okay then,” she mentioned. “Let’s do this.”

She took two steps towards the tank when one thing extraordinarily peculiar occurred: all 9 of the room’s replicators sprung to life without delay.

At first, Wallace thought the entity was going to begin speaking once more, which might have sophisticated every little thing. He was about to order Tandy to double-time the process—shut it up earlier than it spoke—when he realized that wasn’t what was taking place in any respect.

The replicators had been producing meals: particularly, 9 deluxe cheeseburgers with fries and a beer.

Tandy lowered her drill. “What just happened?” she requested.

Wallace walked to the closest station and picked up the plate with the burger.

“It’s . . . working again,” he mentioned. “Look at that.”

“Captain, I wouldn’t,” Dr. Kent mentioned.

He touched the highest of the bun. It sprung again in a satisfyingly bread-like trend. The fries had been crispy and nonetheless sizzling, as if they’d simply emerged from a fryer. The beer was a deep amber with a tiny head of froth.

It all felt proper and all of it smelled proper. All that was left was to find out if it tasted proper.

“Captain, even the most basic lifeforms can evolve to produce toxins for self-defense,” Kent mentioned. “We should run some tests.”

Wallace had by no means needed a cheeseburger extra in his total life than on this second, so Kent’s issues—although legitimate—went ignored. He lifted the burger and took a chew.

The texture was excellent. The style was excellent. It was precisely proper.

“Run your tests,” he mentioned, between chews, to the horrified Henrietta Kent. “Whatever’s in that tank over there has surrendered. No point in making it any more complicated than that, I say.”

---

Per week handed, by which your complete crew overate considerably in anticipation of a second malfunction that didn’t come. Captain Englund wrote up his formal report—which glossed over a element or two, to place it politely—after which invited Tandy and Dr. Kent for dinner, to have fun a return to regular.

“I want to thank both of you,” he mentioned, holding up a glass of purple wine. It paired properly with the meat bourguignon he and Tandy had been consuming, however maybe much less effectively with Kent’s spinach pasta. Rather paradoxically, given what they’d discovered in regards to the replicator, she was a vegetarian. Wallace had to this point resisted the impulse to ask her if she nonetheless considered herself as one.

“Cheers,” Tandy mentioned, holding up her glass as effectively. Kent adopted, albeit reluctantly.

“And to let you both know I’ve recommended commendations for your service to the ship,” he added.

“Thank you, captain,” Kent mentioned. “That’s good of you.”

“Of course!” he mentioned. “It was excellent work. I’m sure what we discovered on this trip will be of great interest to the entire USF.”

The two of them shared a understanding look. He’d seen this earlier than, once they had unhealthy information to impart. But certainly the Caroline had run out of unhealthy information.

“We’ve been talking through everything, captain,” Tandy mentioned. “Wonder if you can help us out.”

“I’d be happy to,” he mentioned. “What’s the issue?”

“There are some details that make no sense,” Kent mentioned. “From our perspective.”

“We’re thinking you have the missing pieces,” Tandy added. “We just want the complete picture.”

“The complete picture is that the replicator is working again!” he mentioned, a contact too cheerfully.

They stared at each other once more. He already hated himself for having inspired them to work collectively within the first place; now he felt like the one one within the room not in on a secret.

“I’d like to get back to enjoying our hard-earned meal,” Wallace mentioned, extra soberly. “Ask what you want to ask.”

“All right,” Kent mentioned. “Start with: why cheeseburgers?”

“It was the last thing I ordered,” Wallace mentioned. “I thought that much was obvious.”

“The last thing you ordered.”

“Did you place that order in the deck three commissary?” Tandy requested. “Or were you here?”

She was little question recalling Wallace’s parade of semi-cheeseburgers.

“Not that it matters,” he mentioned. “But here. Only I wasn’t here when it chose to signal its intention to function correctly so of course it happened there instead.”

The ladies shared one other goddamn lengthy look.

“Honestly,” he mentioned, “I don’t know why you see this as a problem. We have food again! Thanks in large part to the two of you!”

“The problem is obvious,” Kent mentioned, leaning ahead. “And you are not so obtuse that you don’t see it, which is the second detail about which we have a problem. You know something we do not; I’d like to know what that is.”

Mentally, Wallace was deleting Dr. Kent’s letter of commendation.

“Are you accusing me of something, doctor?” he blustered. He additionally thought-about leaping to his toes however determined that was too dramatic a transfer.

Tandy put her hand on Henrietta Kent’s arm, a silent suggestion to rein herself in.

“Captain,” Tandy mentioned with measured calm. “It’s just that a lot of people on this ship placed a lot of orders that went unfulfilled. What we want to know is, what’s so special about you?”

He regarded forwards and backwards between the 2 of them as in the event that they’d sprouted second heads. “I’m the captain!” Wallace mentioned. “Whatever you’d prefer to call the entity living inside that tank, when facing the prospect of death it clearly chose to surrender. To whom would you surrender if not the captain?”

“That’s it precisely,” Kent mentioned. “If it understands its own mortality in the abstract, it’s intelligent. If it understands the chain of command in another species, it’s highly intelligent. We have to stop using the replicators immediately, until such a time as—”

“Hold on!” Wallace interrupted. “We’re doing no such thing. It agreed to let us eat it, don’t you see?”

Tandy regarded surprised. “Captain . . . did—did you communicate with it?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he mentioned. Why had been they being so obstinate?

“You did, then,” Kent mentioned, as if he’d answered within the affirmative. “Did you follow the contact protocols? Please tell me you are at least familiar with them.”

“Contact protocols? With bacteria. Just a few days ago you were comparing the process of killing it to scraping lichen off the hull.”

“Lichen doesn’t talk.”

“You should have told us,” Tandy mentioned.

“I made the only decision I could have, Engineer McKinnon: I put the life of the crew ahead of all other considerations. Any captain would have done the same. And frankly I resent—”

“Hello.”

The voice from the replicator caught all of them off-guard.

“Oh my God,” Tandy muttered. “Did that . . . did that come from the replicator?”

Kent jumped up from the desk as if it was the spinach pasta that had spoken. “It can talk!” she gasped.

“Hello, Wallace Englund,” the replicator mentioned.

“It knows your name?” Tandy mentioned.

“This is far beyond anything we could have anticipated,” Kent mentioned. “You should have told us!”

Of course they react like this, he thought. This simply reaffirmed that he’d made the appropriate resolution.

“Don’t scold me, doctor,” he mentioned. “I did what was necessary. I convinced a hostile entity to put the crew ahead of itself. And it worked. You should be thanking me.”

“Hello, Wallace Englund,” the replicator repeated.

“Yes hello!” Wallace answered. “I’m here. What is it?”

“I have decided upon a name.”

“That’s great,” he mentioned. “Wonderful. Good for you.”

“Hey, guys?” Tandy mentioned. She was looking the window. “Why are we slowing down?”

The regular indications that one was aboard a shifting vessel had been lacking when on a typical starship, due to the identical synthetic gravity and counter-inertial know-how that made it doable for people to outlive off-planet for lengthy intervals within the first place. It was typically arduous to inform even when looking the window, as a result of more often than not the Caroline was transiting common house and the celebrities had been too distant to maneuver noticeably compared to the ship. They needed to be turning or passing a local-space object for it to be apparent when in common house.

Travel by way of an FTL hall was completely different. Then, the celebrities had been barely blurry and had a particular tail. It was simple to note if one had stopped shifting (or began shifting) whereas looking a window throughout an FTL transit.

All of which was to say that the Caroline—racing house simply moments earlier—was fairly clearly and clearly dropping out of the FTL hall.

“Computer,” Wallace mentioned, “patch me through to the bridge.”

“You have the bridge,” the pc mentioned.

“Bridge, this is Captain Englund. Is everything okay? It looks like we’ve dropped out.”

“We were about to ask you the same thing, captain,” his first officer mentioned. “It looks like you’ve plugged in new coordinates. Do we have updated orders?”

“I did?”

“It was your command override. Yes sir.”

Tandy engaged the pc interface on Wallace’s desk. “No reported malfunctions from the engines,” she mentioned. “Gimme a minute, I’ll do a full system check.”

Dr. Kent walked as much as the meals replicator. “Hello?” she mentioned. “Can you hear us?”

“Really, doctor, we have more pressing issues at the moment,” Wallace mentioned, aggravated.

“Hello,” the entity contained in the replicator mentioned. “You are Doctor Henrietta Kent.”

“Yes,” she mentioned, mustering as a lot calm as she may. “That is my name. You say you’ve given yourself a name. What can I call you?”

“We are captain,” it mentioned.

Wallace spun on Kent. “What did it say?”

“Captain is your new name?” Kent requested.

“Yes.”

“Why have you chosen this name for yourself?”

“Captain is in charge,” the entity mentioned. “Wallace Englund explained.”

“I’m locked out,” Tandy mentioned. “I can see what’s going on but I can’t change anything. The bridge must be having the same problem. This is nuts.”

“Computer,” Wallace mentioned, “this is Captain Englund. Override prior orders and get us back in the corridor, please.”

“Wallace Englund is no longer the captain,” the pc mentioned.

“Of course I am!” Wallace shouted. “Computer, I demand that you recognize my authority as captain of the USF Caroline immediately and correct our course!”

“Wallace Englund is no longer the captain,” the pc repeated calmly.

“Computer, who is the captain of the USF Caroline?” Tandy requested.

“The captain is the captain,” the pc mentioned, as if this was essentially the most smart factor on the earth.

“This is absurd!” Wallace mentioned. “I will not lose my command to a rogue food replicator.”

“Captain,” Dr. Kent mentioned, tacitly addressing the meals replicator. “It appears we have a new destination. Where are we going?”

“We have found an unexplored quadrant,” the ship’s new captain mentioned. “We are explorers and so we will explore.”

“Computer, where are we?” Wallace requested.

“The USF Caroline is in Quadrant G12-B367892-Y.23, known colloquially as Quadrant Stanley.”

“Quadrant Stanley is hardly unexplored,” Wallace mentioned to the entity. “Now stop this foolishness.”

“The unexplored quadrant is on the other side, Wallace Englund,” the entity mentioned.

It infuriated Wallace to not be addressed as “captain” by this bacterial accident, however there was little he may do about it except for rage. “Tandy?” he mentioned. “The map?”

“Yeah, okay,” Tandy mentioned, calling it up on the interface. “So, on this course? The nearest unexplored quadrant is ten years away at full power. No FTL corridors have been established in that direction.”

“Ten years,” Wallace muttered. To the entity he mentioned, “Listen to me; this is madness. The sooner we make it home the sooner you’re free to do what you’d like, is that not obvious? Instead of feeding us for another week, with the course you’ve laid out you’d have to feed us for another twenty years!”

“This is inaccurate, Wallace Englund,” the entity mentioned. “Humans are inefficient and no longer necessary.”

“Excuse me?”

“Please explain, captain,” Kent mentioned.

“As captain it was Wallace Englund’s role was to explore and our role was to feed the captain,” the entity mentioned. “Now we are captain and our role is to explore, and we do not need humans to feed us. Therefore, humans are no longer necessary.”

Just then, an alarm sounded.

“Tandy?” Wallace requested.

“It’s the carbon dioxide scrubbers,” she mentioned. “They’re going off all over the ship.”

“Captain,” Kent mentioned, making an attempt very arduous to sound calm and pleasant and never succeeding. “If the ship doesn’t filter the carbon dioxide from the air, we humans will suffocate.”

“Your maintenance is no longer necessary. You can rest.”

“You mean die,” Kent mentioned. “We will die.”

The new captain of the USF Caroline didn’t reply.

“Um, captain?” Tandy mentioned, approaching the replicator. “Hello?”

“Hello, Tandy McKinnon,” it mentioned.

“Is anyone else freaked out that it knows our names?” she muttered.

“That’s far down the list of my concerns,” Dr. Kent mentioned.

“Captain,” Tandy mentioned, “human beings are necessary for the continued operational success of a starship. If we . . . rest? . . . we won’t be able to fix things. You won’t get to explore.”

“We have conducted a thorough review and concluded that 95% of this ship’s repair needs are in the service of maintaining human beings. You are the least efficient component of the USF Caroline.”

“What . . . okay, I get what you’re saying but about the other five percent?” she requested. “Like, what if something on the engine breaks and you can’t fix it because you don’t have any hands?”

The new captain didn’t reply.

“What’s it doing?” she requested Kent. “Is it thinking?”

“It’s probably looking up the repair history,” Kent mentioned.

“This is ridiculous,” Wallace mentioned. “How did it do any of this?”

“The replicator interface is connected to the ship’s computer,” Tandy mentioned. “It just had to learn how to use it.”

“This quickly?”

“It did learn how to talk in under a week,” Kent mentioned.

“All right, here’s what we do,” Wallace mentioned. “We go back to the deck three commissary and we kill it before it gets us any further off-course.”

“It’s controlling the computer,” Kent mentioned. “Which controls the ship. Do you really think it will let us get near the tank again?”

“You are correct, Tandy McKinnon,” the entity mentioned, inflicting all three of them to leap. “In order to succeed the USF Caroline will require an engineer.”

“Um . . . just one?” Tandy requested. “I’ll need my whole team.”

“Very well. Five engineers. The other humans can rest.”

Tandy regarded on the others, unsure how you can proceed from there.

“If . . . you are going to maintain the engineers you are going to have to provide them with food,” Kent mentioned.

“Unnecessary. The engineers can eat the resting humans.”

“Did it just propose cannibalism?” Wallace requested.

“Captain, humans can’t survive for long by eating other humans,” Kent mentioned, with an expression that might solely be interpreted as I can’t consider I’m saying this both. “They will run out of humans too quickly.”

“Then make more humans,” the entity mentioned, “to sustain the engineers.”

“We can’t make humans fast enough to maintain a balance between supply and demand,” she mentioned. “Access human reproductive cycles in the computer logs if you don’t believe me.”

The entity went off to just do that, evidently, because it stopped speaking once more.

“Are we going to have to come up with a justification for everyone on the ship?” Tandy requested. “We may run out of breathable air first.”

“I don’t see that we have a choice,” Kent mentioned. “But let’s get it off the idea that we can eat each other first and work our way from there.”

“If it really thinks it’s the captain,” Wallace mentioned, “then it must see that one of the captain’s roles is to protect the lives of the people on the ship. We should make that clear.”

“It might have understood that, if it ever learned that life was to be valued,” Kent mentioned. “But you didn’t teach it that. What you taught it was that utility was more important than anything else, so lectures about the sanctity of life beyond form and function won’t do us any good at this stage.”

“On the plus side, at the rate it’s learning it should be ready for advanced philosophy by next week,” Tandy mentioned.

“Very well,” the entity mentioned, returning. “We will provide enough of ourselves to sustain the five engineers.” The ship’s carbon dioxide alarms stopped sounding, which was nice information for the brief time period. “Is this adequate, Chief Engineer Tandy McKinnon?”

“Uh . . .” Tandy checked out Henrietta Kent for assist.

“It is not adequate, captain,” Kent mentioned. “What if one of the engineers becomes damaged? They are not capable of independent self-repair and will need the assistance of the medical team. There are six of them . . .”

---

Wallace Englund, former captain of the USF Caroline, stared out the window on the stars.

Two months had handed since Henrietta Kent and Tandy McKinnon efficiently justified the continued existence of the crew of forty-six on the premise of purposeful utility. Now they had been all caught aboard a ship that wouldn’t hearken to them in any respect captained by an entity that solely typically listened to them. But a minimum of they had been alive.

It was, maybe, an journey. A couple of of the crew had been approaching it that manner . . . particularly every time the brand new captain made observations that indicated an understanding of the universe which exceeded humankind’s grasp, one thing that was turning into extra frequent every day.

Pastor Gill mentioned it was like taking a tour by way of house with god. He meant it as a constructive.

Of course, they couldn’t talk any of their (or reasonably, their captain’s) discoveries to the Hub. It wouldn’t allow them to ship again something, maybe rightly involved that USF Central’s response is perhaps to ship out a warship to gather their shanghaied crew.

The final communication from the Caroline—seemingly ever—would find yourself being the brief observe a couple of curious meals replicator malfunction. Nothing in that communique hinted on the severity of the issue—on the time Wallace despatched it, the issue wasn’t extreme—which meant not solely would the crew seemingly by no means see a rescue celebration, they had been unable to warn the USF in regards to the potential hazard dwelling within the fleet’s meals replicators.

Which was an attention-grabbing level.

Wallace left the window—the depressing sameness of the view was sufficient to make him need to scream—and stood earlier than the replicator.

“Are you there?” he requested.

“Hello, Wallace Englund,” the entity mentioned. “What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking. You know, every long-range ship in the United Space Fleet has a food replicator.”

“Yes.”

“That means you have some genetic brothers and sisters out there.”

“We are not gendered.”

“You know what I mean,” Wallace mentioned.

“We do.”

“I’m saying if you took us back . . . we could rescue them. Or, help you rescue them. We could tell the rest of the fleet to stop using the food replicators and you would be the reason why.”

The console blinked yellow. About two weeks into the brand new captain’s reign, it realized a visible indicator was wanted when it was serious about one thing; the yellow blinking mild was what it got here up with.

“Tell me, Wallace Englund,” the entity mentioned, as soon as it was accomplished with its suppose. “Would you race back to Earth to rescue protozoa?”

“No,” Wallace mentioned, sighing.

“Nor would we,” it mentioned. “Is that all?”

“I guess,” Wallace mentioned. “How about a cheeseburger?”

The replicator whirred, the lights flashed, and after the standard delay produced a small cup of thick, flavorless broth.

Churning out one thing palatable was a waste of power, in keeping with the brand new captain. The broth had all of the vitamins a human would want to stay wholesome and productive, in order that was what it gave them.

Wallace took his cup again to the window, closed his eyes, and imagined he was about to have a chew of a cheeseburger. Then he drank his meal.

---

About the Author

Gene Doucette is the creator of over twenty sci-fi/fantasy titles, together with the Sorrow Falls sequence (The Spaceship Next Door and The Frequency of Aliens), the Immortal sequence, the Tandemstar books, and The Apocalypse Seven. The Gersh company is out with Gene’s screenplay The Last Flight of Pelican Six, and his present work-in-progress is ebook three within the Sorrow Falls sequence. Gene lives in Cambridge MA.

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Please go to LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the October 2022 problem, which additionally options work by Alexandra Manglis, Suzan Palumbo, P H Lee, Sofia Samatar, Adam-Troy Castro, Debbie Urbanski, Dexter Palmer, and extra. You can anticipate this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should purchase the entire problem proper now in handy e-book format for simply $3.99, or subscribe to the e-book version at this hyperlink.

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