"Good thinking, Joe," Skippy gave me some rare praise, "guessing what tastes good to humans has actually been an interesting challenge for me. And that ain't easy."

"Glad to help keep boredom away. Skippy, I have to say I'm truly impressed, that chocolate number six is pretty good, I could sort of enjoy that for breakfast. You did a good job on that, I was dreading the sludge idea, and now it's not so bad. Before I change my mind," or decide I was no longer hungry, "what chocolate do you think is the worst?"

Sludges, and that's what the crew decided to call it, because we're soldiers and that's what we do, weren't popular with the crew, they weren't a disaster either. And since we were soldiers, we made do, and came up with flavor combinations, the same way we mixed and matched MREs to make flavors the military never intended. One chocolate sludge plus one banana sludge was a chocolate-banana. Coconut sludge plus curry sludge, mixed and poured over MRE chicken and heated up, made an approximation of a Thai dish. Everyone agreed the fruit flavor sludges were the worst, although if they mixed the nasty strawberry with the bland banana, it actually tasted pretty good. This unpredictability of human taste preferences drove Skippy batshit crazy sometimes, he simply could not, for all his awesome processing power, get his taste model to work with reliable accuracy. It helped that, after a few days, he was able to eliminate the oily mouth feel and the chalkiness, the grainy or gritty part couldn't be fixed as that was necessary for digestive fiber, according to Skippy. The crew found ample opportunity to grouse about the 'food' aboard the Dutchman, something I thought encouraging. People needed something to complain about, complaining was a bonding activity, and it wasn't a serious hit to morale. A sludge in the morning, sludge for lunch, and people looked forward to 'real' food like an MRE for dinner. The crew, including Chang, Simms, Desai and Giraud, tried to get me to eat some real food, but I settled for an occasional cracker or cookie, trying to set a good example. When the crew saw the 'old man', which incredibly was me, stuck with sludge, they didn't feel so bad about subsisting on it two times a day.

Besides, I was holding out for a cheeseburger and I was accepting no stinkin' substitutes.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN    SPACE SUITS

Simms pinged me the next day while I was in the gym, I was needed on the bridge. When I got there, Simms started to get out of the captain's chair, I waved for her to sit. As the duty officer, the chair was hers. "What is it, Major?"

"Colonel, Skippy wants to divert us from a direct course to the next wormhole."

"Skippy?" I asked.