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Shalin

Meat Brick

Shan sat in the Captain's chair, looking at status reports which flashed steadily across the main viewscreen. The 'Creek was in drydock for refitting and all the staff officers were on shore leave. The Captain was across the galaxy, the Commander was discreetly listed as 'elsewhere', and everyone else had gone their own way.

 

Having returned from a somewhat taxing assignment, Shan was happy to mind the empty ship. Time alone was a relief, and since the vessel was drydocked there were no emergencies, no adventures, nothing to make him late for dinner - and no one's life in the balance. Nothing but a steady stream of equipment and rework orders to sign, and somebody had to. He could write an 'x' as well as anybody.

 

Minding the ship in drydock, however, did bring home one petty annoyance - ship food. Being a fully fitted combat vessel, space was naturally at a premium. One didn't stack crates of chickens in cold storage - the space was needed for photon torpedoes. Instead a series of storage cells contained bulk nutrients which were systematically withdrawn, reconstituted, and instantly brought up to temperature upon request via wall-mounted dispensers; model TXD-58272, to be precise. To be fair to the service a reasonable effort was made to allow for some variety, but it all came down to food with one of three consistencies: a cantalope cube for the 'fruit', tomato paste for the 'vegetable', and ( most offensively of all ), tofu to supply the protein.

 

Having to tolerate ship food for breakfast and lunch while being able to savor a fresh dinner in the drydock lounge, the disparity of what the ship served against real food became painful before too long. The more Shan thought about it, the more sour he became. The TXD was a transporter, and transporters were capable of converting molecules to energy and then back into complex structures. The TXD was even capable of flavoring - so why was it that it couldn't put at least a little texture into their meals? Why? Why - why - why? Shan was a transporter technician - he knew that if only he could spend a few weeks with a dispenser in an engineering lab, he could make a unit that could produce food that was actually semi-appealing.

 

Then the thought hit him: why not?

 

The Chief Engineer was on leave ... everybody was on leave. He was practically all alone with the technical facilities of the entire ship at his fingertips. In less than twelve hours he had a dispenser in Engineering Workshop 7 and had stripped to the frame. It was exactly what he thought it was: a transporter - with all the working elements necessary to accept an energy feed and reconstitute anything up to the size of a healthy pig.

 

Rebuilding the unit, Shan altered the basic programming and began tests. His first product was a long block - blue in color with yellow splotches and two white spots with black dots which stared in two different directions. Shan could swear it was watching him. The texture might have been right, but Shan just didn't have the heart - or the stomach - to find out.

 

Trial after trial produced failure after failure; worst of all, the results were random. One produced an acidic pink blob which ate through the table. The next was a chunk so solid nothing could penetrate it. Shan pressed ahead with his trials, waiting for that golden failure that would begin dancing "Hello My Baby ..." before skittering off into the corner or dropping into a lump, but thankfully that didn't happen.

 

It took three days of examination before Shan had a flash of inspiration. Running a series of simulations on the ship's main computer, the answer suddenly became obvious. The problem wasn't the mechanism - it was the memory. Examining the processor, Shan held the functional circuit between two fingers: a small square, 15 by 20 mm, and barely 2 mm thick. It held all the basic patterns for the crew's nutritional requirements by species, and the processing circuitry needed to generate basic food structures. However: although such units could process in zeta-antons, the unit he held was rated to a little over a giga-anton. Regeneration of molecular structures needed a lot of processing intelligence: to do what Shan wanted, these units would need ten times the capacity. At ten credits a unit and with countless dispensers scattered throughout Starfleet, it was a luxury that Command just wouldn't think was that important.

 

Shan smirked evilly. There weren't that many units scattered through the ship, and he was signing the work orders. Buried within a computer upgrade order, the needed chips would be identical in shape and size to the one he held. An upgraded dispenser would be physically indistinguishable from a standard unit.

 

After ordering the parts Shan moved his project to his quarters, focusing his efforts on reprogramming. Within four days his 'meat brick' had evolved into a processed turkey loaf with sufficient texture to be appetizing - at least to someone who liked turkey loaf. Variant flavors were quickly developed including barbeque pork and roast beef, with complementary sauces and gravies. The new processor design could supply these with a reasonable simulation of mashed potatoes. The 'fruit' serving now could resemble grapes in form and texture, with flavors ranging from 'natural' to pomegranite, citrus, or apple. Although not as developed as he would've liked, it was the best he could do with the time he had left. He accepted his results - there would be time to improve the programs further later on.

 

Shan noted the changes in the Engineering records, identifying the reworked dispensers as TXD-58272-CX1. Finally enjoying a dinner from the ship's dispenser, Shan smirked with satisfaction. The crew was certainly in for a surprise when they came back.

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