“Primordial Soup and Salad” by Gene Doucette

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Story can be read on-line: https://gizmodo.com/lightspeed-magazine-short-fiction-sci-fi-gene-doucette-1849628484

Rating: 4/5

On a space ship on its way back home, the captain and crew begin to complain that their ship’s food replicator is not producing the food they expect. Then it begins to get worse: the replicator stops working and only screams at them.

Getting to the bottom of it, before they run out of food to eat, would require the crew to learn how the replicator works, leading to the discovery that the bacteria that makes the replicator possible may now be more than just bacteria.

But it would be the fateful decisions and messages the captain of the ship makes to try to solve the problem that would undermind the whole decision making process on the ship and turn their relationship with the food replicator upside down.

Story read from 2022/12/20 to 2022/12/20