Despite our finest calculations, the teleported probe seemed to have been blinked out of existence. The onboard instruments never sent a signal back, unlike our instantaneous reappearance courtesy of the Elusians. Given how staggering the speed of light was in Caelum, with each minute passing that we didn't detect a transmission, the more trillions of miles away the drone would have to be—to the point now that it'd be totally overshot out of this galaxy!

The jovial atmosphere had vanished from the scientists as they scrambled to determine what had gone wrong; the teleportation test may not have worked after all, unless we slingshotted it to the other side of the universe. General Takahashi was searching for any potential issues or explanations for the missing link. I was perplexed why the teleporter had eaten our probe and spit nothing out, like a bad vending machine. I wondered what Mikri would think of vending machines—would he fat shame them?

A machine that dispenses the food organics need constantly; there's a fun concept to run by the tin can. He should've jammed some snacks in there when I punched a hole in him—stuffed some Cheetos and M&M's in there that he can just pop right out.

"Sofia, Takahashi said to discuss any topics of confusion we have uncovered during the project," Mikri explained, running into the room holding multiple cardboard slides. "Might I share an example of poor organic judgment with you? I am quite confounded by the pointlessness and lack of rationale of its nomenclature."

Sofia looked interested, giving the android her full attention. "Go on, Mikri. I'm always willing to explain things and to hear your thoughts. If there's a misstep we've taken, I hope you'd bring it to our attention."

"Excellent. I do not understand…why you have so many different names for 'pasta' shapes."

"Oh Mikri, you big crusty tortellini with legs. You're asking the wrong meat tube." I cracked up into a fit of laughter, noticing how Sofia looked like a cat that had just been tossed into a swimming pool. "She's Spanish. She wouldn't know."

"Oh, so Cajun pasta makes you the expert here?" the scientist sighed.

"Naturally. I'm a man of culture."

"The culture of photo bombing, maybe. I apologize that I've dedicated my life to the study of the stars, not the culinary arts. We can't all be Vanare."

"I know. That's why we kidnapped him."

"Uh-huh. Mikri…why are you asking me this now? Is this really the issue we should be focusing on?"

Mikri wagged a claw toward her. "Yes! I have been learning about food since it is a constant requisite for you, and I wish to better understand how to fulfill your needs."

"Oh. That's…really sweet. What bothers you about pasta specifically?"

"The amount of words required to add to my memory are bloated, for no perceptible reason. I do not comprehend organics' ideas toward food and what drives your perception of quality; these factors often contradict each other! There are no other foods where you have different names based on shapes. Smaller muffins are still 'muffins.' Cereal, whether a flake, a puff, or a ring, is still cereal. But here…"

Mikri set up an easel stand in a hurry, before laying out three massive slides. I cackled as he laid out images of several tube shaped pastas, placing an "Exhibit 1" tag above them. The android's eyes were glowing with rage, like when he sealed the doors back in the abandoned Asscar facility. He tapped the large cut-outs pointedly, moving his claw from left-to-right; the first two images were nearly identical even to my eyes.

"Ziti. Penne. Rigatoni. These are the same!" The incensed Vascar took a confrontational step toward the curly-haired scientist, as several humans gathered around to watch the show with amusement. A few threw up their hands, conceding that he had a good point. "Why, Fifi?! Why?"

Sofia scratched her chin. "Texture, thickness, and how it's cut? I guess it matters for the types of dishes and sauces that can be used with it. Culturally, a lot of foods come from different regions with distinct identities. I imagine the importance of…local cultures isn't transferable to Vascar society."

"We need to make more pasta shapes. We should invent one that looks like a funnel cake: leave our regional impression," I remarked. "Call it funnelini. All Nola food has to start with 'fun,' am I right?"

"But humans as a whole are not even making more shapes! You are making the same ones and slightly changing the dimensions," Mikri beeped. "Surely you see the redundancy and can clarify the issue in the present."

"I don't see any issue. I like confusing you."

Sofia glared at me. "And I like explaining human concepts in a way that Mikri can understand why we created them. Cooking is a bit of an art for humans. Surely you can appreciate the history, the recognition of others' contributions, and the impact that slight differences can have on the overall feel of a dish."

"Your pleasure receptors are why you are finicky about food," Mikri noted. "However, these miniscule, indistinguishable differences in the angle they are cut or the width cannot possibly have tangible results on your sensor input!"

"Humans like to express creativity and have unique experiences from day-to-day. How do you know we can't distinguish between the pastas?"

"Then explain what's different!" The android slapped two more pictures on the wall. "Fettuccine. Linguine."

"Yes, they're both long and flat, but if I could look at them closer—"

The Vascar took an aggressive step forward, letting the other slides fall down and holding three new ones inches from her face. "Spaghetti. Capellini. Vermicelli!"

"He's convinced me. They're basically the same," I agreed. "I could make pasta that you'd know the difference. Football-shaped pasta. Feather duster pasta. Feet pasta."

"Feet pasta? What a horrible day to have ears," Sofia shuddered. "Mikri, you've made your point. I'll let you chalk it up to organics being silly if you can move on from the topic."

Mikri raised his arms triumphantly. "Excellent! I will notify the network."

"Wait, no, don't—"

"Takahashi is ready for you," an aide said from the meeting room, ending this glorious conversation.

I gently left Mikri's demonstration materials on the easel, beckoning to him. "Game faces. We need to find out what the fuck happened to this probe."

Surrounded by scientists, nerds, and robots, I wagered that my guess at what happened to the probe wouldn't hold much water. What seemed almost a certainty, barring some property that set the teleportation field on a massive time delay, was that our drone wasn't going to resurface. Enough time had elapsed that any reasonable person would assume we hadn't sent it far enough to be unable to communicate at this point. General Takahashi had been following the project closely over the toiling months, seeing uses for the technology; she'd be frustrated with the setback.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Any hack scientist can make an object disappear just by vaporizing it. To be able to bring it back and tell it where to go is the true test, and this is…an unexpected hurdle.

Sofia crept inside, wary of attracting the general's ire for the test failure. "Good day, ma'am. Any news or intelligence on where the hiccup was? There was nothing visibly wrong, even looking back at the data."

"I know you're all at a loss, but what makes you think I have the damn answers? We got in touch with our contacts on Doros, to see if they might've had any better luck, and our diplomats suggest they're rather unhappy with humanity. Perhaps the Girret do have some news for us," Takahashi explained, as we filtered in. "I don't want to waste more time sitting around. I'm going to patch Representative Redge in."

The Girret appeared on the projector, drawing himself to full height with fury. "You! Reckless barbarians—even when you're not dimension-crashing. When I said to send it close to us, I didn't mean to come micrometers away from assassinating me!"

"Here I was, thinking you were a consummate professional," I remarked. "What are you hissing about? We did no such thing."

"Oh, didn't you? Then what on Doros was this?!"

The Girret shared a screen video of himself curled around a pole, which seemed to be both a podium and a support aid; he was speaking to some crowd near paraphernalia that advertised his re-election. This must be a campaign rally, and a large reason why he didn't want to appear favorable to android-sympathizers. I noticed several supporters holding multiple signs with all of their arm pockets, looking like a fucking message board. Good Lord, why did everything about them have to be so icky?

"It is under my watch that Prince Larimak, heir of the Vascar noble lineage that has spit on and trod our people into the crowd, has been deposed. The Girret will not bow down to them anymore. I dare also to look the humans in the eyes, and tell them that they will not be our new masters either!" Redge pronounced, to raucous cheers. Buddy, you had fuck all to do with Larimak going down.

Sofia frowned. "We never wanted to be your masters."

"Just watch the video!" the live Redge hissed, still sounding livid.

His recorded counterpart continued on, unwinding from the pole to slither across the stage. "I do not want us in war or open conflict either; I walk the line of neutrality and aplomb, where others would rattle their tails and get us locked into turmoil. Doros will be safer and stronger than ever under my guardianship, building off of my first term in office. You should think long and hard about who can keep otherworldly threats at bay. Who will watch out for your children, or stop our research from becoming apocalyptic as the Serv—"

The Girret politician startled on the feed, as a flash of silver blinked into the air over his head. He toppled over to one side in what might've been the funniest thing ever, looking like a wiggly, purple pool noodle that had launched itself through the air. A flat, compacted hunk of metal smashed through the stage, and continued on into the ground like a meteor; that was indicative of Sol metal versus Caelum materials. Redge fought off his honor guards, slithering over to the crater to stare at the smoking hole left behind. The feed paused, as the diplomat became more incensed from me bursting out in a fit of laughter.

"What's so funny, Preston?" Redge spat.

I pointed at the feed, before slapping my knee and trying to rein it in enough to speak. "Oh my goodness! Ha, of all the places in Caelum it could've ended up, it pops in right over your head! That can't be an accident. I mean, when you said to send it to you, the precog must've been guiding all, 'These coordinates. You'll test his reflexes nice and good.' You're like a floppy ninja, man!"

"I like ninjas," Mikri beeped, an admission which earned a surprised stare from me. "What? They wear emo clothes and live in darkness. 'Peak' lifestyle."

"Knock it off!" Sofia bit back a smirk, doing her darndest to look apologetic. "We are…terribly sorry, Redge; we couldn't have done that intentionally if we wanted to. It's an unfortunate, beyond-improbable coincidence. I hope we can find a way to smooth this over, and compensate for the…public fright."

"Captain Carter's unprofessionalism is inexcusable, and he will be reprimanded for it," Takahashi assured the Girret. "The Earth Space Union had no clue that the probe wound up on Doros. This was an untested technology, but I assure you we'll take a vector with more precautions for you and your people in mind. Please help us to learn from this, and refine the unpredictability of this mechanism."

Redge's eyes smoldered, though he backed down a bit. "I know you're dimension-hoppers with great power, but you need to be more careful! Unless it is your honest wish to stomp through all that's in your path. I don't take my life being put in danger lightly."

"Of course, and you shouldn't. You have our full cooperation in any protocol changes you want to make."

Sofia raised her hands in a placating gesture. "It's no excuse for negligence, but we're learning about technologies way beyond any of us…and hope that this won't prevent us from continuing to work together. There have to be some risks taken for our collective science to make the leap; I'm confident that we can do better, though. If you don't mind my inquiry, the probe looked flattened in that film. Am I safe to assume smushed instrumentation is why we didn't receive its signal?"

The Girret tried to look like a hardass for a few seconds, before relenting and pulling up photographs of the retrieved wreckage. "It's remarkably compressed, like it was affected by immense gravitational forces. No spaceship, of Caelum or Sol materials, could have survived this journey. Our scientists are baffled by how the Elusians made your ship withstand the passage through. Perhaps it was naivety and arrogance to think we could match their technology."

This certainly threw a major wrench in our current ideas about how teleportation should work; there was more to it than just punching a hole in spacetime with negative energy. We hadn't picked up anything else on sensor readings that shaped all of this research. Why hadn't the Elusians' warp tunnel crushed Sofia and I into a lasagna noodle, like our attempt had done? There had to be some mechanism preventing gravity from accruing, though it was tough to say what when it was undetectable. We'd have to figure it out organically.

"We're not going to give up because of one setback. Obviously, we were missing a piece of the puzzle," I commented.

Mikri whirred in thought. "This suggests that the tunnel only remains open during the initial action, for a brief moment. Afterward, high gravitational forces cause the portal to collapse and crush objects within. These transdimensional passages are inherently unstable. The Elusians have theirs remain open through a constant supply of negative energy, consistently present on the inside. However, to do so…"

"We'd need to already have objects on the inside to keep it open. It's paradoxical," Sofia agreed; the two of them were speaking an alien language to me. "How do we put the chicken before the egg? I don't even know if that's the issue. The Elusians opened a new portal for us, and it remained passable seemingly on its own. What even…could have been there to hold it open, except for our own ship—which certainly wasn't it?"

"I do not know. Grant me time to calculate potential methods of holding such a tunnel open, then to apply them to that scenario. I will consider all factors. Do not worry, we will solve it together. You told me the story of penicillin's discovery, so perhaps the answer will even stumble into our matrices by accident."

"Good plan. I'll get a petri dish and frisbee throw it into the teleporter," I told Mikri.

"You are a breathing petri dish. I could sign you up to be vaulted into the field."

"Here I was, thinking you didn't want me in danger. Sure thing, cowabunga!"

"Cowabunga. This danger is deserved. For the feet pasta."

Takahashi buried her head in her hands. "We'll look into this, Representative Redge, without doing anything that man suggests. I'll see that he's removed from future discussions between our people."

"That…will not be necessary," the Girret said, letting a chuckle slip out for a brief moment. "Preston is a strong personality. If I cannot handle it, then I am not one, correct? I can adapt to a source of moderate amusement."

Moderate? Excuse you, murder noodle…

"We appreciate the information. Now, at the least, we have a dataset on how far and at what bearing the probe went with that specific data input." Sofia gave the Girret a polite smile, nudging me so that I mirrored the gesture. "We'll be in touch as soon as we can tell you what happened. Putting all of our heads together, I believe there's nothing we can't figure out."

"Except for pasta," Mikri whispered inaudibly.

Redge's tongue flitted out, as he glanced at someone over his shoulder. "I admire your optimism. We'll look over your drone as well. Our scientists are happy to have some Sol materials to pick over, quite frankly. Goodbye, humans; until we speak again."

The Girret politician disconnected, and the gathered scientists immediately began clamoring about various theories for what the fix might be against portal gravity. I excused myself with a quiet smirk, knowing there wasn't much more to add. It would be better to spend some downtime with Hirri, asking him what he thought of the teleport launch, than listening to a bunch of nerds yap. Whatever had gone wrong, we had the brightest minds in Sol and Caelum united to sort it out. I was looking forward to humanity finding the answers, and proving to the Elusians that we were worthy to follow in their footsteps.

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