This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ws_18 on 2025-07-02 00:14:47+00:00.
Heeding Doctor Ukan’s warning about not bringing meat into the herbivore cafeteria, Jason decided to make that side of the room his first stop. It was already busier than it had been when they walked past earlier, but there were still only a couple of people ahead of him in line. The room was set up much like just about any other cafeteria he’d ever been in before. At the start of the line was a rack of trays and silverware, and from there were a few stations with different options available. Fruits, bread-like products, pastries, some type of oatmeal-analogue, pretty much everything one might expect to see at a breakfast buffet. Minus the bacon, eggs, and sausage, of course. Another section, presumably catered to the second or third-shift workers who wouldn’t be having breakfast now, bore a strong resemblance to a salad bar.
Jason scanned the ID card on his watch as he picked up a tray, emulating what the others in front of him had been doing. Immediately, a hologram popped up out of the device. It was a square, about one foot by one foot in size, and at first it didn’t seem to do anything other than project a slight shimmer of light into the air. But when he looked through the hologram towards the food, each item began to emanate a colored aura. Nearly everything on the menu glowed blue, but pretty much every variety of nut was marked red. Each label was accompanied by some text that appeared at first in an alien language, but as he looked at it the symbols began to shift around and merge into a giant blur. After a few seconds, the blur resolved itself into the form of more writing, this time in English. The blue indicated items that were safe to eat, and the red items would be toxic to him.
Basing his choice on nothing in particular, Jason grabbed a toasted bread product resembling a smaller version of a bagel, a fruit similar in size and shape to a pear but purple, and a handful of things that were helpfully labeled as ‘blueberries’ despite having little resemblance to the Earth variant bearing the same name. The alien variant was a similar shape and size to a blackberry, but featured seeds on the outside and leaves on top like a strawberry. Not knowing which items he might like and which ones he wouldn’t, he decided he’d be better off grabbing a little bit of everything. At least until he’d gotten a chance to try everything the cafeteria had to offer.
The hologram from Jason’s watch was slightly more helpful when it came to drinks, this time offering a brief description of each menu option rather than just a name and whether or not it was safe for Human consumption. He selected the one whose description was most similar to coffee, and the dispenser filled his glass with a watermelon-red liquid that smelled vaguely sweet. From there, he decided to check out the carnivorous options. On this side of the cafeteria, he was able to eat everything on the menu. Thankfully, it seemed like bacon and eggs, or at least some variant thereof, were universal.
Once Jason finished filling up his tray, he went out into the main seating area. There were maybe two dozen people already there, with at least that many more beginning to line up on both sides of the cafeteria. Not seeing any open seats at any of the currently-occupied tables, he decided to grab his own table over by the window.
Although his first time seeing outer space in person wasn’t quite happening the way Jason had hoped, it was still his first time seeing outer space in person. He knew before he even looked out the window that he’d remember this moment for the rest of his life. A lifetime of sci-fi movies had convinced him that faster-than-light travel would be accompanied by some sort of swirling blue tunnel effect, but it looked more like a still image of a starry background than anything else. If he picked out one of the brighter and larger - and presumably, therefore, closer - stars and stared at that one in particular, he could tell that it was very slowly making its way across his field of view. But there was nothing else to indicate that the ship was in motion at all.
He couldn’t help but wonder which one of those stars outside might be home. Doctor Ukan had said something about interstellar flights taking weeks or even months, which did leave him hopeful that Earth might not be too far away. At least on a galactic scale. At that speed, it would’ve taken a while to get very far. But when he remembered what else she’d said, that he could have been frozen in stasis for centuries before they picked him up, he wondered how close he really was. Maybe it really had only been a few days. Maybe that bright star he was looking at now really was the Sun. Or maybe he was on the far side of the galaxy by now, having spent a lifetime in stasis. The fact that Humanity hadn’t yet arrived on the galactic scene gave him some hope that he hadn’t been frozen for too long, but he had to admit to himself that he had no proof of that either way. For his own sanity, he had to assume the former.
The one saving grace for the whole situation was that Ukan had said that they’d give him a ride home if they knew where to take him. Jason wasn’t much of an astronomer himself, but how hard could it be to find Earth on a map? Just pull up the alien equivalent of Google, type in ‘solar systems with 9 planets near me’, and start looking. If by some miracle it really was that easy, he was confident that he’d at least recognize pictures of the planets in his home solar system if the alien internet had any for him to find. With any luck, he’d be back home in no time.
By the time a pair of aliens wandered over to Jason’s table a few minutes later, he’d barely touched his breakfast. One of the aliens was maybe five or six inches shorter than him and somewhat resembled a bat, albeit with wings that looked more vestigial than functional, and the other was even smaller and squirrel-like. They had a long torso, short limbs, a gray-black fur pattern, and a long, thick, bushy tail.
“You’re the new guy, right?” the bat-alien asked, Jason’s translator choosing a male voice. “Can we join you?”
“Sure,” Jason replied. “I’m Jason.” By force of habit, he set his fork down and reached for a handshake, but evidently the gesture was not universal.
“Farranax,” the bat-alien introduced himself, setting his tray down across from Jason before extending his wings to display a purple striped pattern across the membranes.
“Hjelin,” the squirrel-alien said as she took the seat next to Farranax, the translator rendering her words in a female voice.
As soon as he heard their names, something clicked in Jason’s mind. “Doctor Ukan told me about you. You got here the same way I did, right?”
“We did,” Farranax confirmed.
Jason remembered that Ukan had also mentioned another name. “Where’s Oyre?”
“Probably just getting into bed about now,” Hjelin replied. “She’s second shift. But trust me, you don’t really want to talk to her.”
“Why not?” Jason asked.
“She’s a bit …” Farranax began, before Hjelin interrupted.
“Crazy?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Farranax said. “But she has some, uh, interesting ideas about the universe. If she starts telling you about that, best to just smile and nod.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” Jason replied. His own younger brother, Troy, was the same. They’d hardly spoken at all over the last few years, and every conversation they did have inevitably devolved into an argument about 5G microchips, or chemtrails, or stolen elections, or whatever the latest buzzword in the world of conspiracy theories happened to be. He wasn’t too keen on having any more arguments like that.
“Have you decided if you’re staying on board?” Hjelin asked.
In all honesty, Jason didn’t want to stay. He’d much rather go home, given the chance. But that didn’t seem like an option, at least for now. “I hope so,” Jason said. It was really the only thing he felt like he could do, given the circumstances. Take the job that comes with food and housing, or get abandoned on an alien planet billions of miles from home with nothing but the clothes on his back. When he thought of it in those terms, it was an easy choice. “Once the shift starts, I’m going to talk to Lakim in engineering. I was a mechanic back home.”
“Mechanic, huh?” Farranax commented. “That must put your homeworld at, what, stage four?”
Jason shrugged. “Dunno. We have computers and stuff like that, we’ve explored most of our solar system with probes, but we’ve never sent a person beyond our own moon.”
“Stage five, then,” Hjelin said. “I think you’re the first stage five we’ve picked up. Even Oyre is only stage four.”
“We’re both from stage three worlds,” Farranax added. “Most of the people who end up abandoned out here are from stage zero, one, or two. Too primitive to be able to join the crew.”
Although Jason understood the general idea of what they were saying, he felt like he was missing some context. Both of them referred to the stages merely by their number, as if that alone was enough information for him to understand exactly what they meant. He made a mental note to look it up in the ship’s computers after his shift. Instead of revealing his ignorance, he asked, “What happens to them?”
“Dropped off at our next stop,” Hjelin said.
“Yeah, the doctor told me,” Jason replied. “I meant after that.”
“The Alliance takes them in,” Farranax said. “They get enough governme...
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