The search for coffee

The pod chirped as ship's morning cycle began, the gentle white noise cutting off abruptly. Kat groaned, feeling like she'd barely slept at all. Her mouth was painfully dry, her head throbbing with the early stages of dehydration. The thought of drinking anything made her stomach clench—more liquid meant more trips to that humiliating bathroom contraption—but her body was giving her ****.

She stumbled to the galley in her rumpled shipsuit, her mouth tasting like she'd licked the floor of a detention cell. At some point, she was going to have to find the shower. The ship's air was too warm, making her skin glossy with sweat. The warmth made the strange musky scent of the ship even more pronounced, but it was bothering her a little less as she got used to it. She was also starting to notice that some areas seemed to have more or less of the scent, though she hadn't figured out the pattern. At least she had the place to herself for now.

The food synthesizer's interface was a maze of unfamiliar symbols and configurations. It didn't offer any pre-calibrated options, instead expecting the user to submit a nutritional template themselves. She had a vague recollection of the typical sequence for coffee, but when she punched it in, the synthesizer produced a thin brown liquid that smelled vaguely medicinal. She took a tentative sip and nearly gagged. Whatever it was, it wasn't coffee.

After three more failed attempts—one producing something alarmingly blue, another a grainy paste, and the third nothing at all—she turned to the cabinets above the sink. To her relief, she found a stash of something labeled 'instant coffee'.

Even she could figure out how to get the replicator to get her a mug of boiling water: one temperature setting, one substance setting. She stirred one of the packets into her mug, and in less than a minute, she had a steaming cup of what the packet claimed was coffee. It tasted terrible, but it was recognizably coffee-adjacent, and the caffeine hit was exactly what she needed.

As she sipped the bitter liquid, she noticed a small display on the galley wall showing the ship's layout. She'd taken a look at the schematics the day before, but hadn't taken the time to explore. It was probably about time to correct that.

With the terrible coffee clutched in her hand like a lifeline, she decided to do some reconnaissance.