The common area had become more lived-in since their first meal together. Someone, probably Maddie, had rearranged the furniture into a more comfortable configuration, and there were small touches of personality beginning to appear. A jacket draped over a chair. A data pad left on the table. The residue of people actually living here instead of just occupying space.

  Jessica arrived to find Deke already there, poking suspiciously at the food synthesizer's interface. He'd changed out of his field gear into something more casual, though his posture still carried that straightness he couldn't seem to shake.

  "This thing hates me," he muttered, jabbing at the screen. "I asked for a burger, and it gave me... I don't even know what this is." He gestured at a plate that held something vaguely burger-shaped but in colors that didn't exist in nature.

  "Let me try," Jessica offered, moving to the synthesizer. She'd been experimenting with it over the past few days, learning its quirks. "The trick is being really specific. It interprets loosely if you're not."

  She input a careful description, beef patty, medium rare, sesame seed bun, specific condiments, and the synthesizer hummed to life. What emerged was closer to an actual burger, though the bun was still slightly the wrong texture.

  "Better," Deke admitted, taking it. "Thanks. You'd think a ship that can travel through time could figure out a cheeseburger."

  "Different priorities," Jessica said, making herself something that approximated grilled chicken. "They're Aelith. They don't eat Earth food. The synthesizer is doing its best with references it doesn't really understand."

  They settled at the table. Deke took a bite of his burger, grimaced slightly, but kept eating. "So," he said after a moment. "We gonna talk about it?"

  "About?"

  "Trent. Being left on an alien planet two hundred years in the past because he pissed off the boss."

  Jessica picked at her chicken, moving it back and forth on her plate. "What's there to talk about? He was warned. He did it anyway. Vorrin followed through."

  "Yeah, but..." Deke set down his burger. "That's cold, you know? No second chance, no discussion, just done. Left behind."

  "He had his second chance," Jessica pointed out. "The storm was supposed to kill him. Kill all of us. Getting rescued was the second chance. He wasted it. I may not agree with it, but Vorrin made himself very clear when we came aboard."

  Deke considered this, then nodded slowly. "The General would've agreed with Vorrin. Can't have dissension in the ranks. Makes everyone doubt, makes missions fail. You deal with problems decisively, or they spread."

  "The General?"

  "My dad," Deke said, his tone going flat in a way that suggested complicated history. "Colonel, technically, but everyone called him the General. He ran things tight. No room for screw-ups, no patience for people who couldn't follow orders." He paused. "I joined up young, trying to... I don't know. Make him proud, I guess. Didn't work out."

  Jessica heard volumes in what he wasn't saying. "Is that why you're here? The storm?"

  "Yeah. I was," He stopped as the door opened and Maddie came in, looking brighter than she had any right to after the day they'd had. There was a tuft of blue floof fur stuck to her sweater.

  "Oh, good, you figured out the food thing!" Maddie said, immediately going to the synthesizer. "I've been living on what I think is supposed to be oatmeal but tastes like sadness. Can you show me?"

  Jessica walked her through it, and soon Maddie had something that resembled pasta, if you squinted and didn't think too hard about the color. She joined them at the table, beaming despite the questionable food.

  "The floofs are so happy," she said. "I've been watching them. They found the water feature Orryx put in their habitat, and they're just... splashing. Like kids at a pool. It's the cutest thing I've ever seen." She noticed them looking at the fur on her sweater. "Oh. Yeah. The coral one, I'm calling her Poppy, came right up to the viewing glass, and I swear she was trying to play with me through it. Some of her fur was stuck to the seal when they were setting up the habitat."

  "You named them," Deke observed.

  "Of course I named them! You can't just call them 'the blue one' and 'the coral one' forever. The blue one is Cirrus. Like the clouds." She took a bite of her pasta, made a face, but kept eating. "We saved them. That makes them ours, kind of. We should at least give them names."

  Jessica found herself smiling. Trust Maddie to find joy and hope in everything, even alien creatures in an impossible situation.

  "Speaking of saved," Maddie continued, "I still can't believe we're here. Like, really here. On a spaceship. That travels through time. After we all almost died." She looked between them. "Do you ever just... stop and think about how impossible this is?"

  "Constantly," Jessica admitted.

  "I try not to," Deke said. "Easier to just keep moving forward than think too hard about it."

  "But don't you feel lucky?" Maddie pressed. "I mean, we were dead. We were supposed to be dead, anyway. And instead we're here, eating weird space food and watching adorable aliens and getting second chances. That's... that's amazing."

  "You weren't lucky," Deke said quietly. "None of us were. We were chosen. There's a difference."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Khamm and Vorrin picked us," he explained. "Out of everyone who died in that storm, they chose us specifically. Why? What made us special? What made us worth saving when everyone else wasn't?"

  The question hung in the air, uncomfortable and unanswerable.

  "Maybe it was random," Maddie offered. "Maybe we were just... convenient."

  "Nothing about this operation seems random," Deke countered. "They're careful. Methodical. They had reasons."

  "Does it matter?" Jessica asked. "It seemed like Khamm made her offer to more than just the fou..” She caught herself. “The three of us, we just accepted. We're here. That's what counts."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "It matters to me," Deke said. "The General always said understanding the mission parameters was essential. Know why you're there, know what's expected of you, know what success looks like. Right now, I don't know any of those things."

  Maddie pushed her pasta around her plate. "I was at work when it happened. The storm. My boss, Mr. Hendricks saw the warnings and decided to go home early. Told me and the other servers we had to stay, keep the restaurant open for anyone who came in during the storm." Her voice went quiet. "Like anyone was going out to eat in a hurricane. But he went home to his family, and we stayed. The building flooded. I made it to the roof, but..." She shrugged. "Khamm found me there. Offered me a way out. I took it."

  "Your boss sounds like an asshole," Deke said flatly.

  "He was," Maddie agreed. "But in a way, I'm glad? I mean, if he hadn't made me stay, I'd have gone home too. And my apartment was on the ground floor. I might have just died there instead. At least on the restaurant roof, I was still fighting. Still trying. That's when Khamm made her offer." She looked at them. "What about you guys? Where were you?"

  Deke straightened, and Jessica could see him slipping into a different mode. The storyteller, the performer. "I was doing evac," he said. "Storm was coming in fast, and there were still people in the flood zone. I'd helped get most of the elderly residents out of a retirement complex when I heard it, a kid screaming. Two kids, actually. Siblings."

  Jessica watched him carefully. Something about his tone felt rehearsed.

  "They were trapped in a house that was already flooding," Deke continued, his voice taking on a heroic quality. "Second story window, water coming up fast. Their parents were... I don't know. Gone already, probably. So I went in." He gestured as he talked, painting the scene. "Had to swim through the first floor, water up to my chest. Found them huddled together, terrified. Got them to the window, but the current was too strong. Had to make three trips, got the girl out first, she was smaller, then went back for the boy. By the time I got him out, the house was collapsing."

  "That's incredible," Maddie breathed.

  "Just doing what needed to be done," Deke said, but there was pride in his voice. "Got them to high ground, made sure they were safe. Then the real surge hit. Caught me in the open, dragged me under. Next thing I knew, I was waking up on this ship."

  Jessica noted the inconsistencies; he'd said two kids initially, then specified a girl and a boy, but his ages for them had shifted during the telling. The details were too clean, too action-movie perfect. But she didn't call him on it. Everyone needed their own version of events, their own way of making sense of the senseless.

  "What about you, Jessica?" Maddie asked. "You were in that beach house, right? With the reinforced windows?"

  "Yeah," Jessica said, pulling the quarter from her pocket without thinking. Her fingers found its familiar shape, the warped metal that had been compressed by the weight that should have killed her father. "I was storm-watching. It's something I used to do with my dad. He died a few years back. This quarter..." She held it up so they could see. "It's all I have left of him, really. Helps me feel close to him."

  Maddie leaned forward, looking at the flattened coin. "What happened to it?"

  "He worked construction… cable snapped and he was almost crushed. The quarter was in his pocket, must have fallen out when he was pulled out of the way… took the full brunt of the hit. He kept it after, said it was lucky." Jessica ran her thumb over the warped surface.

  "That's amazing," Maddie said softly.

  "He taught me that family is what you make it," Jessica continued. "Not about blood or obligation, but about showing up. About choosing to care." She looked at the quarter. "He had been adopted when he was young, and even though he didn’t look like them, he never felt like an outsider… neither did I growing up. He showed up for me every single day. Even when I was difficult, even when I pushed him away, even when the world said it wouldn't work. He showed up."

  "Sounds like a good man," Deke said.

  "He was." Jessica pocketed the quarter again. "He taught me about storms, too. We'd find sheltered places, parking garages, carports, places where you could hear the rain but stay dry, and we'd just listen. He said that was life in its purest form. Not controlled, not tamed, just... being."

  The door hissed open, and Orryx slithered in, his prosthetic arm carrying what looked like fresh ingredients. "I thought I might find you here," he said, his reptilian features arranging into what might have been a smile. "The ship informed me you've been wrestling with the food synthesizer again."

  "It keeps making things wrong," Maddie said.

  "That's because it's working from incomplete data," Orryx explained, moving to the synthesizer and interfacing with it in ways Jessica didn't understand. "The previous human crew helped me program some better templates before they left. Let me see if I can..." He worked for a moment, his natural hand and prosthetic moving in tandem. "There. Try now."

  Maddie requested pasta again, and this time what emerged actually looked like pasta. She took a bite, and her eyes widened. "Oh my god, it's actually good!"

  "The synthesizer learns," Orryx said. "The more you use it, the more data it has to work with. Give it time, and it will master Earth cuisine. Or at least come close." He paused, looking at them. "You're not the first on this ship, you know. Others have sat at this table, struggled with this synthesizer, tried to make sense of their new reality."

  "What happened to them?" Deke asked.

  "They moved on," Orryx said carefully. "Their paths took them elsewhere. But they left behind knowledge, templates, small kindnesses like properly programmed food. You're building on what they started."

  Jessica thought about that, the idea that they were part of a continuum, that others had walked this path before them. It was somehow comforting and sad at the same time.

  "Khamm has called a meeting for tomorrow morning," Orryx continued. "You'll be choosing your next mission. I'd recommend resting tonight. The first mission is always the hardest, but the second..." He trailed off meaningfully. "The second is when you truly understand what you've committed to."

  He left them with that, slithering back toward the habitat level with his usual quiet efficiency.

  They sat in silence for a moment, processing his words.

  "So we just... keep going?" Maddie asked. "Pick another species, save them, repeat?"

  "I guess that's the job," Deke said. "We signed up for this. Might as well see it through."

  Jessica thought about her father's quarter, about choosing to show up even when it was hard. About making a family where you found it, even in impossible places with people you barely knew.

  "Yeah," she said. "We keep going."

  They finished their meal in more comfortable silence, the food getting progressively better as the synthesizer learned their preferences. Outside the viewport, stars drifted by, unfamiliar constellations in an unfamiliar sky, but somehow starting to feel like home.

  Maddie was first to leave, citing a need to check on "her" floofs one more time before bed. Deke lingered a moment longer.

  "That thing you said," he started, not quite meeting Jessica's eyes. "About family being what you make it. About showing up." He paused. "The General never really got that. Everything was duty and obligation with him. Never just... caring because you wanted to."

  "Is that why you left the military?"

  "I didn't leave," Deke said quietly. "I washed out. Couldn't handle the pressure, couldn't be what he wanted me to be. Spent the last year working security, trying to figure out who I was without the uniform." He stood, pushing his chair in.

  "Guess the storm answered that question. I'm whoever I choose to be now. Fresh start."

  After he left, Jessica sat alone in the common area, her hand in her pocket, fingers wrapped around the quarter. Tomorrow, they'd pick another species to save. Another impossible mission. Another chance to make a difference or make things worse, it was never clear which until it was too late.

  But tonight, she'd found something unexpected. Not family exactly, not yet. But the beginning of it. People who were showing up, trying to figure it out together, making something out of nothing.

  Her father would have smiled at that… that was the essence of construction, he claimed. Weekends volunteering for charity builds with strangers, just embracing community and bringing something into existence by simple will.

  She pulled out the quarter one more time, holding it up to catch the starlight from the viewport. The metal gleamed, scarred and imperfect, but whole.

  "I'm showing up, Dad," she whispered. "Every day. Just like you taught me."

  Then she put the quarter away and went to bed, ready to face whatever tomorrow's mission would bring.