“Welcome to the galley! This is where I make the magic happen,” I said to Quail after summoning his avatar to the local terminal.

“Lukus, this looks like a sunken swim-up bar. Is that a cabana, and are those deck chairs over there, and is that a sushi train? What sort of travelling interstellar circus is this so-called exploratory vessel?! And when exactly are you planning to grant me free roaming access through the ship’s systems?” Quail bemoaned.

“Take it easy, Quail. As I already said, let’s get you introduced to the rest of the crew over dinner first, then I’ll grant you more access. As for the other stuff, yes this is a swim-up bar. Need I remind you that one particularly gluttonous crew member is aquatic, and others are amphibious? Also, yes that is a cabana with what appear to be deck chairs, though what they really are is furniture adapted for use by multiple morphologies, and what you referred to as a sushi train is the synthesized food delivery system. For a three-ring flying circus, we’re quite sophisticated.”

“Very droll, Lukus,” Quail said dryly, “however you are correct. I was acting unprofessional. I shall seek to better myself, and I shall begin by bettering my understanding in a more dignified manner.”

“Good, and good timing because here comes the first diner of the evening,” I said.

Emerging from the water like the decapitated head of Cthulhu, Karen surfaced from the shallow depths and took a seat on her semi-submerged bar stool. Her bar stool had a large hole through the centre giving it an unfortunate resemblance to a toilet seat, but it was designed to let her comfortably eat using her parrot-like beak while seated. Karen waved a boneless sucker bedazzled arm in a friendly hello as she opened her bag with another arm while a third arm slithered inside like a danger noodle. She then withdrew a human sock puppet, with her arm already inserted in the rear like hardcore Japanese tentacle erotica. The sock puppet vaguely resembled me in terms of hair, skin colour, and even clothing. It reminded me of a voodoo doll, but thankfully I felt no sympathetic insertions. She then began to blend into the background, changing colour to match my specific viewing perspective. And then, as always, but never as expected, the sock puppet cleared its throat like a ventriloquist doing warmups.

“Ahem. Ahem. Ahem,” the human sock puppet cleared its throat theatrically. “Good evening, Lukus. It’s a nice high tide. What’s the chef’s special tonight?” the human sock puppet asked in a prim female voice as the camouflaged Karen pawed at the menu screen with a suckered arm. “I’m very hungry!”

“Ahoy, Karen. Yep, the tide is swell. I’ll share the special with you in a tick, but right now I’d like to introduce Quail to you,” I said, gesturing with both arms towards the terminal with Quail’s avatar.

Quail proudly puffed up before saying, “Hello my good lady, Karen. I’m…”

But Karen interrupted, “Oh, something new! I’ll have it! I simply must have it. Oh, hmm, yes, I see. They’re very small birds indeed. I will need a lot to satisfy my hunger. But I shouldn’t get too greedy. I must have self-control, so I’ll only have two hundred whole raw quail served at seventeen degrees above ambient temperature, please. Hold the feathers,” the human sock puppet said in blissful satisfaction.

“Um, righty-oh. Let me just check if I can do that,” I said to stall. I then did the only thing I could do when faced with a large superintelligent predator that consumes approximately twenty-five percent of its body mass each day. I checked to see if I could give her what she wanted. To my surprise, the protein printers had a quail pattern I could quickly edit as requested. Of course, they had more than enough feedstock as the protein synthesizers were always at work due to popular demand. So, I programmed the requested meal and executed the order.

“That will take just a few minutes to prepare. Please enjoy your entrée,” I said while withdrawing a whole synthetic salmon I had prepared earlier from beneath the counter. I carefully placed it in front of Karen. It lasted for about a quarter of a second before one of her arms grabbed in and submerged it, bringing it to her underside centralized mouth to nibble.

“What just happened?” Quail quietly asked.

“What happened is you got real popular real fast,” I teased softly. I knew from some experience that with my back turned to Karen, and with my body blocking direct view of the terminal Quail was on, with low voices it was possible to have a private conversation in front of her. For some reason, she tended to use visual clues to recognise if any speech was occurring and would only then start listening. Plus just thinking about food coming would be quite a distraction to her.

“No, really. How did we go from polite introductions to wanting to eat multiple hundred raw quail just because they resemble me?” Quail asked. “I’m most confused.”

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“I take it you don’t have much experience with octopuses – or maybe just non-humans in general? Well, as a rule, non-humans, uplifted or not, are very food-fixated. Carnivores even more so. I made the mistake of delaying a food choice to try and introduce you. And you made the mistake of naming yourself after an uncommon bird best known as a delicacy and signing onto a ship with hungry meat-eaters,” I replied.

“I don’t see how this is my fault at all. How was I to predict this reaction!” Quail complained.

“Sorry, mate. I didn’t mean to blame you. Look, translations will sometimes say more than you expect. For example, Karen interprets her side of the conversation with a lot more nuance than what is explicitly said. It’s like every word is packed with potential cross-references, but not every reference is going to be correct all the time. So, when I primed her for a choice of food in a moment, then followed that with the name of a famously edible bird that she had never tasted before, she very rapidly knew everything about that bird from context, but she completely missed it was said as a proper noun. But hey, you live, and you learn. We have five more tries, and I reckon even Karen will understand once she has had her fill.”

Just then there were four bell chimes as four trays, each filled with fifty featherless synthetic raw quails, came sliding out of the food printer on the conveyor. I quickly moved them to be lined up in front of Karen. She began to eat the quails one at a time with four alternating arms. A free arm reached inside her bag and pulled out an Orca sock puppet before submerging it.

“Oh, hi, Dede,” the human sock puppet said. “These quail are lovely. They slide right up my throat! You simply must try these birds for dinner, Dede. They are just divine!”

The large head of Huntress with Deep-Fin that Devourers emerged from the water next to Karen. The Orca sock puppet also emerged headfirst out of the water. And then a series of clicks and whistles came directly from the large aquatic mammal.

“Oh, em, gee, Karen, those look so scrumptious,” the Orca sock puppet said in a Valley Girl accent. “Hey, Lukey, I’ll take, like, six, no wait, like, seven times whatever she is having. Hmm, and these are like birds right? Can I get mine, like, half-and-half with and without feathers… and I don’t mean half with and half without… I mean, like, half of each bird, like, understand? Mkay. I simply love the crunch and texture of feathers. But I can’t be having too much of a good thing. Doctor’s orders, right? Right! Speaking of doctors and feathers ­- Hey there, Hanni-baby! How are you doing?”

I was already programming in the order as given, skipping the trays. I would need to let the conveyor empty directly into the overflow chute for this one. Looking up I saw M.V.Dr Hannible Saw had entered the room on the dry side via the door, and he had his nose in the air sniffing. Glancing at Karen I saw she had already donned the dinosaur sock puppet, not that I should need it, but Dede would hear her translations of the Doc via his puppet.

“Vot ist zat for a vunderbar smell?” Doc asked in a thick German accent. Apparently, natural sound mimics need to exercise their range, so today he is Deutsch, and tomorrow he will hail from elsewhere. “Ich muss unbedingt haben, was die Frau Karen schmaust!” he exclaimed in full-on German mode. I hoped this wouldn’t turn into another dino-führer incident.

“I absolutely must have what Ms. Karen is feasting on!” the dinosaur sock puppet said, and admittedly it was helpful to me after all. I started programming the Docs order too.

“Dede, your order as requested is on its way. It will just take a few minutes. Doc, yours will be right after. Please accept an appetiser to eat while you wait,” I said while passing along their respective pre-prepared starters. “By the way, the main is called quail.”

Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack was the sound Crabtain made with his free claw as he scuttled sideways with a tack-tack-tack through the hatch at an eight-legged sprint while holding his captain’s cap on with the other claw.

“Quail?” was what the crab sock puppet, which had appeared on another of Karen's arms, asked, translating into English.

Clack-Clack Crabtain clacked out as he made his way towards the dry side of the bar, overtaking the Doc.

“Properly aged, of course. And with a side of salad,” the crab sock puppet demanded.

Clack!

“Captain’s prerogative,” the crab sock puppet declared. “Me first!”

“Munch ttoooo wwiisshhss ttoo ppaarrttaakkee iinn tthhee ffeeaasstt,” a pair of tarsiers, pink and green, said in harmonized union using their chest comms to translate while owlishly turning their heads one-eighty degrees to look at me like possessed pocket-sized Teletubbies. I was surprised that the pair of munchkins had been slothfully hanging on that post, perfectly still, just facing away the whole time. I’d just thought they were part of the background.

I saw Karen reach two arms into her bag. One belatedly came out with the tarsier sock puppet, the other…

A buzz echoed through the air vents, growing louder. Buz-Buzz-BUZZ!

“We will accept the flesh of quail as tribute!” the wasp sock puppet cried in glee. Ivy had entered the chat.

“Well, that escalated quickly,” I said aside to Quail. “But I suppose this is what they call brand recognition, so we can probably still make this work.”