Ryen looked down at her plate with interest and delight. Picking up her fork, she licked it clean of the pink sauce and tapped it gently against the cube. Leaning in close, she watched it jiggle back and forth for a bit until the motion gradually ceased. She tapped the cube a little harder and watched its movement again. [b]”Interesting…the material properties are almost like…”[/b] Raising her fork, she gave it a good push. The cube threatened to crack by remained whole. [b]”Fascinating.”[/b] Scooping up the cube she leaned in close, studying the diffraction gradient. Around her, her other crew mates were busy stuffing their cubed samples to the mouths but Ryen was in her own little world. Under her finger, the surface was smooth and lukewarm and had the slightest give. Meanwhile her mind was awhirl with the facts Lazlo had told them about the cube’s digestive properties. Did it have enzyme to help the intestine? Or was it more like when certain birds ate sand and dirt? If it affected teeth, why didn’t it cut through soft tissue? What was it made of?

[b]”What do you think? Like it?”[/b]  Ryen almost jumped out of her seat. She sheepishly looked over at the captain as the rest of the crew turned their attention back to her.

[b]”It’s… interesting.”[/b]

[b]”So are you going to taste it or are you going to play with it all day.”[/b] This comment came from Quincy who was standing curiously closenext to the shoot for the ship’s incinerator. There was something about the gleam in his eye that Ryen didn’t like.

She looked down at her fork again. When she’d asked Lazlo for a piece, the thought of actually putting the substance in her mouth had never come to mind. Her green eyes flicked around to the rest of the crew. Ellie’s face looked sympathetic, Gunther’s wary, Lazlo’s a cat-like indifference. Tentatively, Ryen shaved off a piece which, as predicted, took on a cube-like form. Using her tongue, she gently mashed it against the roof of her mouth until it formed smaller and smaller cubes she could swallow. Around her people seemed to be holding their breath in expectation.

[b]”It’s alright.”[/b] she announced, activity choosing not to take another bite. [b]”It’s a bit… busy.”[/b] She eyed Lazlo, wondering what his game was. Did the guy truly like that sort of thing? Was he testing them? Or was he trying to impress them with his knowledge about bizarre and exotic foods? All and all it was a strange choice for breakfast the first day aboard the ship. Maybe he had chosen the dish, simply because he could?

[b]”Did it taste like steak?”[/b] This came from Gunther. If Quincy had an addiction to cigs, Gunther certainly had one to cooked meat.

[b]”No,”[/b] Ryen said and thought back, [b]”Peppered Snatchback, apple-pie pudding, and at the end…  my mother’s favorite flowers- Old Earth roses. Defiantly not steak.”[/b]

[center]---[/center]

Ryen tapped the pen against her mouth and uncrossed her legs again. This wasn’t as easy as she’d originally thought. Ellie had been right. The missing planet’s name was Beclaeobus but that had been days ago and she hadn’t made much progress. Oh she had the general gist of things but the pattern of words in her father’s journal seemed to go arise every time she got to an important person, place, or subject. Often enough, even context clues couldn’t tell her which. It was clear that her father had started the journal before he and her mother had met but a few years into his scientific career. Not surprisingly, it contained some references to artificial intelligence. Ryen couldn’t help shake the feeling that the experiments described in the first few pages didn’t seem to be exactly on the up and up. Ryen knew or at least had thought she’d been the only person her father had installed a memory chip on. However, it seemed like she hadn’t been his only human test subject by far. She had never thought of the possibility before but now that the journal was forcing the issue to light, it made sense. Would her father have put his only child under the knife if he had no experience previously? Was her brain chip the first of many? The only one he’d been able to keep when he fled? Was it some sort of fluke? A trial run? She didn’t know but suspected the answer lied in the still thousands of uncyphered words. So far she’d been able to decode ten pages at best. 

The journal had been her main way of passing time aboard the ship since Lazlo had most of the ship’s technological bays off limits and the FES Maria currently needed little mechanical upkeep. Other times she’d spend hours with Quincy, Ellie, and the rest in the mess hall playing games or just talking about by gone times. Gunther told the best stories even if they tended to end rather abruptly. Ryen rubbed her eyes, foreign symbols endlessly repeated under her eyelids.

[b]”We will be arriving at our destination in approximately one hour.”[/b] the AI chimed, [b]”Please make all necessary landing preparations.”[/b]

Ryen sat up and peeked outside her window. In the far distance a Federation cargo ship could be seen, heading in the opposite direction. It’s red metallic sheen separating it from the darkness of space.