Brainy Breakfast

"You need to eat soon," interrupted the doctor, and he moved to the panel and extracted more packets from the crew of the Odyssey and inserted them into the machine for processing. Soon the next container of semen was ready for your consumption. You also noticed that there were so few packets left, that they would likely run out sometime today.

You grabbed the bottle from him and began raising it to your lips when you remembered that it might trigger increased mental acuity. "Is there some way I can help with the substitute semen research?"

"At this point, the main work is to find a sequence with suitable replacement compounds that will provide enough nourishment for your body," explained the doctor. "I can display all the primary vectors on this console, and show the current results on the adjacent one. If you can eliminate or isolate any of the compounds it would be helpful."

"I probably won't be able to remember, but I can try to record it on something that doesn't melt this time. Do you have something like chalk, and a blackboard?"

He motioned toward a panel and produced a small white rectangular block, and then waved his hand and surface below the consoles turned black. "One piece of calcium carbonate, and a black surface. Will that suffice?"

You took the block, drew a circle on the counter, and nodded your approval. "Here goes!" you announced and pressed the tube past your lips. As expected, the bottle immediately began pumping the creamy delicious liquid into your mouth, and you hungrily gulped it down. Once again, it tasted extremely sweet, better than any desserts you'd ever had. While you savored the flavor, you started to detect the heightened awareness that accompanied your improved cognitive powers. It felt like time was slowing down, and everything around you had nearly stopped. Time to get to work.

Quickly you analyzed the input data and the results. It took a few moments to grasp what they were trying to do, but soon you figured out the basic pattern. The experiments were using over a quadrillion known types of semen from different species and comparing them to find ways to arrange common building blocks that could then be replaced by other compounds more readily available. One of the main problems was that due to the slight differences, very few common ingredients could be found. After a few moments, you realized this was a dead end. A better approach would be to flip it around and look for ways that the compounds could be combined to closely mimic one of the semen types. You also realized that your heightened mental awareness could end at any moment, and you didn't have time to write out words, so you quickly drew two lines of symbols. On the first line you drew 10 ^ 15 S ? [1]...[N] = 0 to symbolize that the current approach of searching the billion semen strains looking for enough common blocks would yield no results. On the next line you drew [1]...[N] ~ (S[1]) = ~ 1 S' to show that some number of blocks substituted for 1 type of semen could produce an approximate semen replacement. Then to the side, you began to write the key where S =...

<SNAP>

Time around you seemed to suddenly return to normal speed. The chalk felt warm to the touch, but at least it wasn't burning like the stylus had. Then you put down the emptied container you were holding and looked at what you'd written.

"Can you interpret this?" asked the doctor.

"Um...it's an equation, I think. Sort of like algebra, I guess. Ten to the 15th. Um...1 quadrillion. Is that significant?"

"The research is using approximately 1 quadrillion semen types."

"OK, that makes sense, so maybe S stands for Semen type," you continued. "Then it is question followed by boxes , or maybe blocks 1 to N?"

"The analysis is looking for common blocks in the semen types," explained the doctor.

"And that is equal to 0. So it looks like the formula might be implying that searching for common blocks in the quadrillion semen types won't get a useful result," you deduced. The Grey doctor seemed to slump slightly at hearing this. "The second line has a different equation. It has blocks 1 to N followed by approximate S one in parentheses and that equals one S prime. So some number of blocks together are approximately similar to 1 semen type which yields the replacement semen? That's the best I can come up with from whatever the hell I wrote."

The doctor seemed to frown slightly. "We've attempted multi-compound replacements of single semen types before, but the results are not close enough to provide sufficient nutritional value. The physiology of the subject would..." he paused. "...need to be accustomed to a high degree of non-semen sources in their diet. That's it. If you are from a D-grade planet, then your body may not need as precise of a semen replacement. You've probably been exposed to a wide range of non-semen food sources and have an inherent immunity to all the contaminants and harmful byproducts they include. This could work."

It had better work. Otherwise, the Starpoint's semen shortage would be getting a lot worse by tomorrow.