When he woke up, Paul realized that that he fell asleep seating on the floor and Alicia fell asleep using his lap as pillow. He had dreamed of this many times, but, this was not the way he wanted his dreams to become reality, in the middle of a nightmarish situation made real. Because that was what he thought about the situation.

He knew Alicia was using the scientific research as a way to stave off panicking, he knew her well enough to see that, so, he decided that he needed to plan ahead.

Like always, Alicia was focused on the science side of things, so he had to focus on the engineering side. And that meant the ship. But whatever he thought he kept hitting the same roadblock, he didn't know enough about the technology to even begin to think of possible problems they might face or options they would have.

Since he couldn't plan that far ahead he decided to focus on more immediate goals, and the ship wasn't the only unknown variable, its pilot was also a very big unknown.

He couldn't deny that their lives was in Alex's hand, after all he could just open the hangar door and get rid of them, it's a gloomy thought but true none the less. He knew that if Alex hadn't rescued them he would have been fine, so that's one point in his favor, but, he was still an unknown who had power over their lives.

He needed to get to know the person who could be a risk to his main goal of keeping his friends safe, and do it in a way to not alienate him.

So starting today he was going to start interacting with Alex a lot to get a feel for his character and learn how this ship worked.

It took him a little to realize that Angela was not on the shuttle, since the seat was facing away from him, when he started to wonder where she was he heard noises, he looked toward the door and realized that it was ajar. The noise woke up Alicia and after they realized that the yelling was between Angela and Alex they hurried over without much preamble.

When they got there they heard Alex speech about his lifespan of 400 years and the fact that he won't have food for 300 of those years. This was surprising which exacerbated even more fact that they didn't know much about Alex

Luckily Alex calmed himself down and went to the kitchen, they looked at Angela and Alicia asked

"What happened, are you alright?"

"No, I came down to use the toilets, but after everything just hit me, and I was crying, when I heard Alex approaching I just snapped"

"Oh, sweetie" Alicia said while going to Angela for a hug, Paul stayed put letting Alicia help calm her down. He hoped that this didn't make it harder to follow on his plan.

After a couple minutes the girls decided to take a shower, when they entered the bathroom they realized that they didn't know how things operated, because it looked like it wasn't a normal shower, so, they went to Alex for him to teach them.

When they reached the kitchen they found Alex looking down resting his forehead on his hands that were resting on top of the table. When he heard them come in he looked up, his eyes were red, but when he saw them he got up and straightened himself.

Paul immediately realized that he didn't want to talk about how they found him so, he jumped in and asked how the showers worked, the forced smile on Alex face indicated that he appreciated it.

This incident at least allowed Paul to see that Alex was troubled with all of this as well, he just didn't want to hide it for some reason.

Alex showed them how the shower worked, it looks like it used your body temperature and the environment to choose the appropriate water temperature. And it wasn't really a shower, it was more like a multidirectional mist spraying and the mist already contained some type of soap embedded, after you lathered and scrubbed yourself did it spray you with water and activate the shower to hose you down. It looked like the whole function was designed to save as much water as possible, even though there was a water recycler as Alex called it, it was still good to know.

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

From what he said, it looks like his people excel at recycling just about anything, they don't have big junkyards with ancient machines because the only old non usable machines that exist now are preserved in a museum, other than that, they recycle a lot.

They didn't have anything else to wear, luckily Alex has extra suits of various sizes for them to wear these were two-piece formfitting and thick, he said it regulated temperature and dealt with sweat. He called them inner suits since its usually used inside outer suits like space suits

From the way he said it, it seems that they have other types of outer suits. But he said the suit can be used normally and he had a machine in the that could clean them.

The girls showered first and he went later, even though the shower stalls were designed to isolate them to isolate from each other and give privacy, he preferred to remain outside and wait for them to finish.

After the shower they went back to the kitchen and it looked like Alex had prepared doughnuts for breakfast.

 Alex opened conversations asking them about what they were doing in the shuttle, it was a reasonable question, even though Angela looked like she didn't like it, Alicia cut her off before she said anything.

Alicia explained about the space collider, it is the biggest construction project ever attempted by humanity, well, humanity on earth. It is ten times bigger than the old Large hadron collider. The only reason it was even attempted was the improvements that were made on the new versions of Fusion reactors. It's the biggest source of electrical power on earth or mars. The new versions were smaller but had an output that was acceptable to build it. The main reason it was built was because they wanted to prove a theory that would allow to unify the quantum realm and special relativity. The experiments needed to be done in a place with extremely low gravity.

Alex was acting very impressed by the level of technology earth has, it's like his people didn't think earth could become this advanced when asked about it he simply answered "Well, actually my people have always been surprised on how slow earth technology was progressing for so long, its actually refreshing to know it has evolved to this level, even though over hundred years ago some of my people had theorized that you would develop much faster now". That was interesting, so, his people thought earth was slow, and they somehow know enough to theorized their possible scientific progress.

Another aspects that made it possible was the amount of space transport companies, it started with a few companies, but in the last one hundred and fifty years more companies joined the market, driving prices down and allowing the development of technology and fuel that would help keep costs down, and with the help of more advanced AI technologies and 3D printers it reduced the cost even more.

Then they reached the part about the disturbance they felt and how the wormhole opened and pulled them in.

They were silent after that part for a while. It looks like Alex was trying to analyze something in his head. But after a while Paul asked about his story.

He explained that his people have been trying to make a traversable wormhole for almost two thousand years. The few time they've been able to create the wormholes it either collapsed upon entry of any object or it crushed whatever probe they sent.

He was fascinated with it since he was a small kid, but came up with the idea of how to solve it when he was trying to design his own warp engine, it took him 10 years to accomplish it. He opened a research company with himself as only employee, and did the research. The funding he made by selling two engine designs that would make ships move faster, one for the general public that improve efficiency by 2 percent, and one to the army which increased it by five percent. The amount of money he made was enough to build it, since his design was actually cheaper than previous attempts due to new technology that was developed. He also has a side business is transporting cargo or tourists to distant planets.

 "How could you have built everything on your own in ten years?" asked Paul

"That's is the easier part, builder bots, I don't actually need to be there for the building process. I make the design, buy and transport the materials, pick the site then let the AI and builder bots do the rest" he answered. Earth had robots in construction and assembly instructor, but not general purpose ones that could build anything you want, even if it is in space, this level of technology is impressive, even more so if it's so available that a person can simply buy them and program them to do what you want

 "Ok, that extremely advanced" Paul said

"How come you speak English?" Angela asked, it was the first time she spoke since their argument.

"Every one of my people is required to learn a second language while in school, not matter which, I chose English and Portuguese" Alex answered

"What if people don't chose the same language, how can you put them all in a class?" Alicia asked

"We don't. We have interactive programs that teach us the language, interact with other people who chose the same language over the network. I have the program on the ship, and am using it to brush off my English before going to sleep" he answered

"That's helpful" Alicia said

Paul was also happy with the results for now. He was still curious about a lot of information like how to his people left earth, and about knowing more about Alex himself, but he still had the time, after all they were going to be spending a lot of time together.

His priority now needed to be about their continual survival,  so, starting today he's going to ask Alex everything he could think of about the ship.