The teleporter was broken, though we kept receiving transmissions each evening at 18:00 like we’d been doing for nine months. Everything came out as jello, in the same day-glo hues and artificial flavors as the original recipes. None of us knew how to fix it. I quickly learned that included our mission team back home, and that’s when I gave up worrying about whether we’d ever eat solids again in favor of contemplating the meaning of life in the belt, of matter’s endless transformability, and what epitaph would best sum up our pitiful and ridiculous ending.

They came, they saw, they forgot a mold.

A tomb now suffices for whom jello was not enough.

The teleporter had only ever been a one-way machine, designed for the colonies to send provisions to our outpost, unreachable as it was on Ceres.

We were all getting sick of jello. We hoped someone had at least added vitamins to it, but I had my doubts. Everyone was looking peaky and jaundiced by day twenty-two post-alternative options.

At some point, worrying stopped being productive. In hindsight, I believe that point occurred when the guidance coming over the radio no longer contained the reassurances of competent engineering-speak.

"Have you tried jiggling it?" Obviously, jello was on everyone’s mind.

"Remove all the array sensors and wipe them off with a clean cloth." Then toss a pinch of salt over your shoulder.

"Turn it off, wait ten minutes, and turn it back on." I can’t wait until my shift is over so I can get hammered while searching for new jobs.

After two months of this, our chief scientist Elsinor entered a state of full-time delirium. She’d convinced several of us to toss our servings into an empty crate—a simple proposition, as unappetizing as the pseudo-food had quickly become—and was swimming through it with a scuba mask fashioned from the helmet of an extra surface suit. We could only watch helplessly and make sure she didn’t drown. The medic stood by shaking his head weakly and logging something into his notes while letting out a stream of heavy sighs. I caught a glimpse of what he’d written later—pure gibberish.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

What I’d do for a slice of bread. Broccoli. Meatloaf.

Then one day Elsinor, still in her scuba mask and covered in globs of pink, orange, and green, walked into the teleporter herself. Like a pack of sun-stroked lions, we watched silently from our languid perches, too fatigued to bother stating the obvious: it wouldn’t take her anywhere.

Except, it did.

Elsinor booted it up, flipped the transmitter, and phased out in layers until only her afterimage remained for a minute or two, ghostly and smirking at us.

Some of us finally mustered the energy to furrow our brows and stand wobbily. We looked around at one another, at the radio, at the now empty teleporter where Elsinor had been. Each time I turned my head, my vision blurred as it struggled to catch up.

"Huh," said Joel.

"That’s weird," Kalamity added.

"AHAHHHHAHHHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Svenson rushed the teleporter in a burst overwhelming us with its sudden noise and speed. "HHHHAHHHHHHHHHHAHAHHHHH!!!" he continued yelling as he toggled the switch on and off repeatedly, too fast, until warning lights flickered on the sides of the machine.

He’s going to break it, thought a distant part of my brain. Oh well. No more jello, I guess.

Then a sudden silence signaled Svenson’s severance from our situation. He was gone.

The remaining six of us blinked at one another. Then Joel left, and Kalamity, followed by Axl, Norb, and Ray.

"Well, Pascal, I suppose it’s your turn old buddy," I said to myself, since there was no one to say it to me. I took a final look around the empty station, taking in our wall of photos from home, the shriveled plants under the grow lights that had never taken to Ceres—if I had the energy, I’d shake my fist at them—my bunk with a scrap of my childhood blanket still resting on the pillow. "Goodbye."

But before I could put my heavy, so heavy, boot onto the base plate of the teleporter, my wristlet beeped. It was 18:00. The air inside the box of the machine vibrated almost imperceptibly, then turned into a cube of yellow gelatin. I watched it shimmy for a moment before it settled.

Then I squinted, because something was in the center of the cube. Something hard and opaque. Something… solid.

My arm plunged in up to the shoulder automatically. I grasped the cold, rounded object, and tore it out through the sticky mess.

A can of spam.