The second night I went to sleep in my quarters, Skippy told me there was a surprise in one of the cabinets. "Holy crap, Skippy." I exclaimed when I opened the cabinet. It was full, jammed full, of plastic tubes, each about a third full. "What the hell is all this?"

"Flavor experiments. There's a label printed into the tube on each one."

Looking more closely at a tube, I saw 'Chocolate #14' in tiny print. "Fourteen types of chocolate?"

"Twenty two, actually. Like I said, chocolate is a very complex flavor. Also I tried multiple types of butterscotch, caramel, strawberry, curry, jalapeno, cheddar, banana, apple cinnamon, salsa, and more, there's a list on your phone if you care to read it, which I know you won't. I am not confident of the fruit flavors, if you want me to be honest."

Carefully popping the cap off the tube, I sniffed it. "How many of these tubes is a meal?"

"Depends on your level of exercise, as a rule for a male your size, one and a half full tubes is sufficient, three times a day."

Sniffing it again, I tried to decide between gulping it down before I could taste it, and taking a sip. Since I had volunteered to act as a taste tester for the crew, I tipped the tube until a couple drops slid into my mouth. "Not bad, not bad. Reminds me of a Swiss Miss hot cocoa packet that got left in a hunting cabin for a lot of years, until someone found it in the back of a drawer. Stale and musty, and the little marshmallows have turned into crumbly rocks."

Skippy laughed. "I didn't realize you were a sludge connoisseur, Joe."

"Smoothie, Skippy, call it a smoothie." Sludge had an unpleasant mouth feel, both oily, chalky and somehow grainy at the same time.

"Try chocolate number six, my taste model predicts you'll like that one better."

"Got to finish this one first. Yum."

"No need for that, we have plenty of sludge aboard, enough for years."

"Oh, wonderful." Number six did taste better, I compared them side by side, alternating sips. "You're right, six is more of a dark chocolate, and it has less of a chalky aftertaste. And less oily, more of a silky mouthfeel."

"Excellent! Drink up, Joe, only twenty more types of chocolate to go."

"Tell you what," I couldn't face the thought of another twenty sludges right then. What I wanted to do is gulp a couple down quickly and get it over with. "Tell me the, like, six chocolates you think taste the worst. People like different things, so what I think is the best chocolate may not be someone else's favorite, but I can eliminate the truly nasty ones." The last thing I wanted was for someone's first sip of sludge to turn them off to the whole idea. "And identifying the bad ones will help you calibrate your taste model, right?"