Alex was expecting yelling, or asking for clarification, even attempting violence, but what he got instead was silence. Complete silence, and the shuttle not making much noise was making it worse, he stood there looking at them awkwardly.
He was unsure of what to do now, all his idea on the most efficient way of deliver the news, ended with actually delivering the news, after that there were too many variables to consider. For one he didn't know them, not their culture, how they are, or even their names, now that was an oversight, he should have asked their names again before delivering the news.
The silence stretched until the point of ridiculous, well, maybe he was just impatient for their reactions, but it was still awkward, then the younger girl who knew Portuguese is the one who talked first
"Sorry, but do you mean, lost as lost forever?" He thought he was very clear before, but his best option was still to be as calm as ever and answer all of their questions
"Yes, that's exactly what I mean?"
"Is this some type of joke?" The only guy in the group asked, "You brought us here and then say we are lost and will never get back"
"No, I didn't bring you here, we were pulled by the wormhole"
"That you created" said the young girl again, the older lady was keeping herself quiet, he didn't know if this was a good thing or not, but, it didn't matter, he should just keep going.
"I didn't mean to pull you in it, it wasn't even supposed to open anywhere near earth, I actually don't know how that happened"
"Start from the beginning, explain everything" the older lady finally spoke, it was a sensible request, so he decided to explain as much as possible about the process
"I Developed some sort of portal, it increases the chances of wormholes being created, then expands and stabilizes it" he explained what he consider to be the basics "I placed the device in a star system that is about two thousand lightyears from earth. It has be3n working for two years, and the furthest I've ever managed to create a wormhole is 15 light years, so, the idea of it somehow connecting to earth is something I've never even considered"
He needed to make it clear that it wasn't his intention, he hadn't even considered it a remote possibility.
"So, are you saying that his was all somehow an accident?" Asked the younger girl "That we shouldn't blame you, who was creating wormholes, about the fact that one of the wormholes you created brought us to the other end of the galaxy? Is that what you are saying?"
He thought it best not to answer that question, the girl looked like she was undecided on whether to cry or get up from her seat and hit him.
"What was all that with taking us for a spacewalk, make us happy before so that we would soften up when you delivered us the news that we are basically doomed"
"I just thought it would be the more efficient way for me to deliver the news in a way you would believe, you thought that I somehow doctored the recording"
"How was that recording made?" 4he older lady asked
"This is a shuttle" he said waving his hands to indicate the place where they were "My main ship was parked further away, it is the one that was recording, this shuttle was in communication with it throughout the whole rescue attempt, one of the things it was being passed was what it was filming at the time"
"For you to be in that star system you had to have FTL(faster than light) travel capability, can't we use it to go back?"
"This shuttle doesn't have that, for interstellar travel I dock it inside the main ship. The main ship has, the problem is, we can't communicate with it nor with anyone, I've been trying ever since we got here, we are simply too far from anything for communication, even hyperspace communication" Alex explained.
"I want to understand everything, what happened, how everything works, I can't just take your word for it. I won't accept that I me and my friends are doomed just because you say so" Alex wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment, even if he believed that he has been trying to find a scenario where they go back for the last several hours, even before they woke up, and the prospects were not good, and it all depended on luck and if it ever happened it probably wouldn't be for a few years.
The problem is that it would probably take her years to understand, but he would still show her, at least show her how to access the knowledge she needed from the encyclopedia
"Ok, first we need to ascertain your level of understanding" he said "I don't know much about earth science has progressed"
With that they spent half an hour with him trying to understand they level of knowledge, he was surprised about what they knew, relationship between matter and energy, matter and spacetime warping some of the fundamental particles.
In this time he was also able to learn their names.
The two older light skinned couple were Alicia and Paul, she a scientist and he an engineer, the younger dark skinned girl that knows Portuguese is Angela, she didn't say what she did. She actually spent most of this time very quiet.
But their impromptu scientific exchange was interrupted by an almost ??growling?? sound and It didn't take them long to find the offending party, Angela's stomach.
He realized that they must be hungry "Why don't we go to the kitchen, we'll get something to eat there". He was having a good feeling about this. Well, maybe good was not the right word, but at least they showed that what he imagined to be the worst case scenario wouldn't come to occur.
He had to admit that he let himself be influenced by the fictions his people has about earth, some of them depict earthlings as nothing more than violent barbarians. He knows it is fiction made by people that have never been or earth, but, by the accounts of the people who went to the expeditions to earth, the level of violence there was astounding, so, it's not surprising his people's fiction depicted earthlings as even more violent than Lycans. But it seem, either they have grown in the decades since the last expedition went o earth or these are simply from the non-violent group of earthlings.
Of course he was not worried about they being able to gang up on him, after all, even if he was not the best close combat fighter the fact that they were baselines means they are not a threat to him.
On the kitchen he went to the food processor and decided to choose an option that was quick. He would also use some of the last non processor food he has here, rice and beans, it would probably be familiar to them.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
"How much food is there?" Alicia asked "How long will it last?"
He could understand her concern but at least on that part they were Ok, well the earthlings at least, but they didn't need to know of his predicament, it wouldn't affect them anyway.
"This is an explorer type shuttle" he said with a little pride in his voice, they don't know what he means but everyone should be grateful he was in this shuttle and not the other one or else they would all be dead "It has enough food to feed 50 people for 4 years, with rationing it would last 100 years" he concluded
"How is that possible?" Angela talked for the first time in a while "This ship is big, but I would think it would take more than that to hold that much food, and in one hundred years the food would be spoiled"
"Well, the ship doesn't actually store food, it stores compounds that the processor uses to create food, the compounds don't spoil, and the food created have energy content and balance out what the body needs"
"How about energy? How long will power last, and what is the effective lifespan of this ship?" Alicia asked
"The ship can theoretically last for centuries, but with the energy our problem isn't how much it has, its different, it's the possible wear and tear, I actually think 8ur best bet would be to not do a lot of tours and spend most of our time in one place, that way we can turn off almost everything and just keep what's necessary for life support"
"What do you mean?"
"This ship is powered by antimatter cells, if we don't do a lot of tours they will outlast us, but more importantly, there is supposed to be a periodic maintenance every ten years because of wear and tear of the parts responsible to directly convert antimatter into energy, if we stay in one place we can use capacitor banks to last for a long time, that way we'll only need to use antimatter every once and a while reducing the wear and tear"
After that the food was done, when he served, Angela saw the food and asked "The food machine creates rice and beans?"
"No, Just the yellow stuff on top" he explaining pointing to the round yellow dumpling looking processed food "The rice and bean I had before, I rarely use the food processor if I don't have to, the food usually is very bland tasting"
While eating, Alex decided to simplify his life because he couldn't think of spending all of his time as a teacher "I can give you a tablet so that you can learn all you need to understand in the encyclopedia"
"You can't possible have all that information in the necessary detail in the encyclopedia" said Angela
"Actually, I do, The standard encyclopedia is the biggest knowledge sharing tool for my people, and also among the top five most accessed databases ever, it contains my people's accumulated scientific knowledge, every ship has a copy of it, minus some extremely sensitive information"
"If your people are that advanced then the amount of information stored would be in millions of exabytes, how could you store all that in a ship"
"Crystal memory, basically it's a one cube one with one meter size that is created with the information already stored, it takes a few thousands molecules to store ah, " he stopped trying to remember the term "what do you call the smallest unit of information?" He asked
"Bit, for binary information, its either zero or one"
"Ok, one bit of information, one layer can store a large number of this, and there are a very large number of layers. The reason it takes much space is that the mechanism to read the information is also embedded in it"
"So, the information is static? never changing, what happens to new information
"Yes, the cubes are static, new information is just stored in normal memory, most recorded information in the library doesn't change anyway, an article or book published a thousand years ago won't change, at most it will just be reclassified and that takes time, so, my info is almost up to date, when I want info the ship will first search locally before trying to access the network, it saves time, so, yes, I have most of my people's scientific knowledge base here on the ship."
"Wow, There was a scientist, Richard Feynman on earth who actually said something like that, we are miniaturizing computer ships, but haven't thought about creating permanent storage of that magnitude am, and just one cubic meter is enough?"
"Well, two, the shuttle's artificial intelligence also needs that much space for its basic knowledge"
After that Alex showed them how to use the tablet to search the database, he was just lucky that English was one of the other two languages he knew besides Lanti, he actually had never thought he would ever need it. Luckily he had both English and Portuguese language profiles in the ship's database since it wasn't part of the static library. Maybe if he ever gets back he can recommend for it to be added, because if they ever get back, its more than likely that they would be in contact with earth.
"This is for kids" Alicia said after she chose another topic
He went to see what she is talking about and realized the problem, he would need to tell the ship to increase the expected age range "Sorry, since the ship can't identify who you are or what you know it automatically selects the kids version of the content, I'll set it up to increase the expected level"
"So, it shows me a version with kids animation trying to explain the about atoms, and how come the audio is in English"
"Yes, well, for the same content there are multiple versions that depend on your age range, previous knowledge or background, and the text and audio is automatically converted to English by the system, my people created a language profile of various earth languages, luckily I have both English and Portuguese profiles in the shuttle's system, it allows the system to do automatic translations"
After that, they decided to go back to their shuttle, he didn't understand their motivation for it, but, at least they were not acting in any way he needed to be careful about, he actually saw this reveal going much worse
----------------------------------------
Paul was happy Angela insisted they go back to the shuttle, they needed time to process what happened. It was a whole lot to process and he was sure that there was more curve balls to come later.
They went back by way of the flying cart as Alex had called it. Angela was the one reacting more to this, the kid barely spoke after they learned about their situation, he and Alice will need to keep a close eye on her and support her whenever she needed it.
One thing he was able to realize is that Alex, despite his size is also younger than them, at least him and Alicia, it might just be an impression and aliens aged much slower, but that was the impression he got, and that was considering his behavior, maybe twenty something. The only thing he knew is that he needed to protect both his friends with however much he could do in a situation like this.
"So, what do you guys think?" Alicia asked when they got inside, it looks like she was doing what she did whenever she had a problem seeing a path forward, brainstorm, which made her an excellent leader for the space collider project, probably even better than her mentor.
"What am I supposed to think?" Angela said pressing both her hands on her forehead, it's a habit she had whenever she was overwhelmed and panicking "some mini giant Alien just abducted us and said we are stuck in the other side of the galaxy, which means I will never see my mum again." She said then she plopped herself down on a seat and rested her forehead on her hands
"Well, yeah, stupid question, but, all is not necessarily lost" Alicia said, but Angela interrupted her
"How can you say that? Don't you see the situation we are in, stuck in space ship with a stranger we don't know and without the possibility to go back"
"We are still alive, after seeing the recording I realized how close to death we came, and we wouldn't even see it. We can try to learn as much as we can about this situation we are in, maybe we'll see a way he hasn't"
Angela now spoke very quietly like she was afraid of what she was saying "do you think, we can actually find a way back? He is the one who invented the wormhole device and he said there is no way"
"I don't know if we can, but we have to try and he doesn't know everything, for o e he doesn't understand how his wormhole brought us from earth"
"I agree with that, and we must stay together and keep calm as much as we can" Paul chimed in
"You are the eternal mediator Paul, you always saying that to people" Angela said with a chuckle, it was good at least the panic receded for now.
They spent the next hour trying to come up with various ideas and possibilities, but, it was apparent that they knew too little.
Alicia decided to use the tablet to learn as much as possible, Angela was just seating there staring into nothing, and after a couple hours of that she fell asleep.
After Alicia realized Angela was sleeping, she came and sat next to him, putting her head on his chest, it's strange that they were going to have their first date when all if this happened, he had actually set up a location in the station for their date, but now it wasn't going to happen, but she was his best friend, and Angela was hers, so, right now they were all he had.
He had mini panic attacks whenever he tried to think about their possible futures, if they couldn't find a way back, stuck here in this shuttle wasting away until they died. But he needed to be strong and not add to the problem, so he kept it to himself.
Alicia is learning the science behind all of this to see if she can figure out a way to get them back. He made his peace long ago with the fact that she outclassed him and most people on earth in terms of knowledge about physics, so he needs to find a way to make himself useful and keep them safe.