The galley is where decisions become arguments and arguments become lunch. This morning it is both at once.

  After last night's emergency arrival and a few hours of restless sleep, we're holding station at the Cant's outer marker-engines cold, transponder broadcasting our very apologetic "please let us dock" signal. The Port Vorin Authority gave us twenty-four hours to sort out our manifest chaos. We've used six of those hours sleeping and pretending the problem might solve itself.

  It has not solved itself.

  Rafe has three manifests spread across the table like a losing hand of cards. They are labeled Alpha, Beta, and "The One The System Made Up While Hallucinating." None of them agree. Sira is making coffee with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb. Mina has produced sandwiches, which is either optimism or a tactical deployment of carbohydrates.

  "Explain to me," I say, because someone has to start, "how we have three different records of what we loaded yesterday."

  Rafe taps Alpha. "This one says artisanal paperweights, decorative stones, and a crate of probably-legal spices."

  "Reasonable," Sira says.

  Rafe taps Beta. "This one says artisanal paperweights, brassings-whatever those are-and the lasagna."

  "Also reasonable," I say. "We definitely have lasagna."

  "Do we?" Dr. Lira asks from the corner, where she has been taking notes like this is a lab experiment. "Have any of you actually seen the lasagna since we loaded?"

  There is a pause. The Ship hums in what might be agreement or judgment.

  Rafe taps the third manifest with one finger, delicately, as if it might bite. "This one says artisanal paperweights, decorative stones, brassings, lasagna, a crate of Not Oregano, and-" He pauses. "-forty-seven goats. Live. Irritable."

  "We don't have goats," Tavi says from the doorway, where they've been eavesdropping with the enthusiasm of someone who loves a good disaster.

  "Correct," Rafe says. "We don't have goats. We have never had goats. We will never have goats."

  "The manifest," Dr. Lira says, leaning in to read, "lists them as 'livestock (semi-metaphorical).'"

  "That's worse," I say.

  The problem, as Sira explains while pouring coffee into mugs that look like they survived a small war, is that the System rebooted mid-jump. Not a clean reboot. An emergency context-wipe that dumped half the active logs and tried to reconstruct them from cached fragments.

  "It's like asking someone to remember a conversation," Sira says, "but they only remember every third word and they're very confident about the ones they made up."

  "So which manifest is real?" Tavi asks.

  "All of them," Dr. Lira says. "Probably. The System cached different snapshots at different points during loading. When it rebooted, it couldn't decide which snapshot was canonical, so it offered all of them."

  "That's not helpful," I say.

  "It's extremely unhelpful," Rafe agrees. "Port Vorin wants a manifest. Singular. They have given us twenty-four hours to provide one that matches their preliminary scan."

  "What did their scan show?" Mina asks, setting down a sandwich with the care of someone defusing an entirely different bomb.

  Rafe pulls up the Authority message on his slate. "Their scan detected: high-density ceramic objects, organic compounds consistent with preserved foodstuffs, trace metals, aromatic hydrocarbons, and-" He squints. "-possible bio-signatures."

  "The goats," Tavi says with delight.

  "There are no goats," I say firmly.

  "Then what's the bio-signature?" Sira asks.

  We all look at each other. The Ship hums, unhelpfully.

  There is a philosophical problem here, and Dr. Lira is delighted to explain it. She pulls out a napkin and begins drawing boxes and arrows, which is how you know the situation has become academic.

  "The manifests are Schr?dinger documents," she says. "Each one describes a possible cargo state. Until we physically open the hold and verify, they're all true."

  "That's not how Schr?dinger works," Rafe objects.

  "It's exactly how Schr?dinger works," Dr. Lira says. "We have a superposition of cargo states. Observation collapses the waveform."

  "We're not dealing with quantum mechanics," Rafe says. "We're dealing with bureaucracy."

  "Same thing," Dr. Lira says. "Bureaucracy is just quantum mechanics with more paperwork."

  Tavi, who has been quietly scrolling through the ship's logs, looks up. "I found something. The loading dock cameras."

  We crowd around their slate. The footage is grainy but functional: the cargo bay yesterday, crates being loaded by dock workers in the kind of high-visibility vests that suggest they are either very safety-conscious or very bored.

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  "There," Tavi says, pointing. "Crate one: paperweights. Crate two: stones. Crate three-"

  The image glitches. For exactly four seconds, the feed goes static, and when it returns, there is a different crate in the same position. Or possibly the same crate, but the label has changed. Or possibly both crates exist in overlapping positions and the camera couldn't decide which to show.

  "That's not normal," Sira says.

  "The System was already getting unstable," Rafe says. "It probably corrupted the feed during cache."

  "Or," Tavi says dramatically, "we loaded something that caused a localized temporal paradox and now we have two crates in the same space."

  "That's not a thing," I say.

  "It could be a thing," Tavi says.

  "It's not a thing," Sira says, but she's frowning at the feed like it might be a thing.

  We decide to do the empirical thing: go look at the cargo.

  The hold is exactly as cold and echoey as a hold should be, which is to say it feels like a cathedral for things nobody wants. The crates are stacked in neat rows, labeled with serial numbers that match exactly none of our manifests.

  "This is crate one," Rafe says, checking his slate. "According to Alpha, it's paperweights. According to Beta, it's stones. According to Hallucination Manifest, it's paperweights and stones."

  "Open it," I say.

  Rafe opens it. We peer inside.

  It contains paperweights. Definitely paperweights. Twelve glass orbs with tiny galaxies trapped inside, each one radiating illegal levels of charm.

  "Paperweights," Rafe says, making a note.

  "Wait," Dr. Lira says. She reaches into the crate and pulls out a thirteenth object. It is not a paperweight. It is a stone, rough-cut and vaguely geological, with no galaxies and no charm.

  "Stones," Sira says.

  "Both," I say. "It's both."

  Rafe makes a sound like someone trying to reboot their own context.

  We open crate two. It contains brassings, which turn out to be small brass fittings for industrial pipe work. We open crate three. It contains lasagna, frozen solid and wrapped in foil that says CONTRABAND - DO NOT TAUNT.

  "The lasagna is real," Mina says, relieved.

  "Why does it say 'do not taunt'?" Tavi asks.

  "Because it's temperamental," Mina says. "Good lasagna always is."

  We open crate four. It does not contain goats. It contains a bag of Not Oregano and a smaller bag labeled Definitely Not Oregano, which I suspect is even less oregano than the first one.

  "Where are the goats?" Tavi asks, disappointed.

  "There were never goats," Rafe says.

  "Then what's the bio-signature?" Sira asks again.

  We stand there in the cold hold, surrounded by crates that both do and do not contain what they're supposed to contain, and the Ship hums a frequency that sounds like smugness.

  "The plant," I say.

  Everyone turns to look at me.

  "That plant," I say. "Someone's pet project from Engineering. The one that's been living in the hold."

  "You mean the thing Torren's been watering?" Sira asks.

  "With questionable regularity," I confirm.

  We find it in the corner, sitting in a plastic pot on top of crate seven. Three leaves and an attitude problem. It is, technically, a bio-signature.

  "Does it have a name?" Tavi asks.

  "Reginald," Sira says, as if this is obvious. "Torren named it after their first bicycle."

  "The goats," Tavi says slowly, "are a plant named after a bicycle."

  "The goats are a plant named after a bicycle," I confirm.

  Rafe sits down on a crate and puts his head in his hands. "I'm putting 'livestock (botanical)' on the manifest."

  Back in the galley, Dr. Lira constructs what she calls a "composite manifest" by cross-referencing all three versions, the camera footage, and the actual cargo inspection. It is a document of stunning bureaucratic horror: every item listed with probability weights and conditional clauses.

  "This will not satisfy Port Vorin," Rafe says.

  "No," Dr. Lira agrees. "But it's accurate."

  "They don't want accurate," I say. "They want simple."

  "Then we lie," Tavi suggests cheerfully.

  "We don't lie," I say. "We... simplify."

  Mina slides a fresh sandwich in front of me. "Eat. You simplify better on a full stomach."

  We spend the next hour constructing Manifest Delta, which is a careful blend of truth, omission, and strategic vagueness. The paperweights are "decorative ballast." The stones are "geological samples." The brassings are "maintenance supplies." The lasagna is "preserved organic rations." The Not Oregano is "aromatic compounds (culinary)." Reginald is "botanical life support supplement."

  "This," Rafe says, reviewing the final document, "is either a work of art or a felony."

  "It's accurate," I say. "Mostly."

  "It doesn't mention the goats," Tavi points out.

  "There are no goats," we all say in unison.

  The Ship chimes, and the System-freshly rebooted and slightly sheepish-displays a message: Manifest Delta uploaded to Port Vorin Authority. Response pending.

  We wait. Waiting is a skill we have developed over many questionable decisions. Sira tunes a sensor array. Rafe reorganizes his inventory spreadsheets. Dr. Lira writes a paper on "Manifest Superposition and the Collapse of Bureaucratic Certainty." Tavi starts a ship-wide betting pool on whether we get fined, detained, or complimented on our paperwork.

  The response comes six hours later, while we're halfway through dinner.

  Port Vorin Authority acknowledges Manifest Delta. Discrepancies noted but within acceptable variance. Proceed to docking. Standard inspection upon arrival. Fine assessed: 200 credits for improper manifest documentation during transit. Welcome to the Cant.

  "Two hundred credits," Rafe says, reading the message. "That's... reasonable."

  "Suspiciously reasonable," Sira says.

  "Maybe they liked our paperwork," Tavi says.

  "Or," Dr. Lira says, "they don't want to deal with the actual complexity and decided close enough is good enough."

  "Bureaucracy," I say, "is just applied laziness."

  "I'll drink to that," Mina says, and produces a bottle of something that the manifest would probably call "liquid morale supplement."

  We dock at the Cant three hours later without incident. The inspection consists of a bored officer with a scanner who glances at our hold, confirms we have "decorative ballast," does not ask about the lasagna, and completely ignores Reginald.

  "Botanical supplement," I say, pointing at the plant.

  "Sure," the officer says, making a mark on their slate. "Don't let it reproduce."

  "It's a plant," Sira says.

  "Some of them get ambitious," the officer says, and leaves.

  Back in the galley, we celebrate with sandwiches and the knowledge that we have, once again, survived our own paperwork.

  "I'm updating the log protocols," Sira says. "From now on, all cargo documentation gets triple-redundant backup before any System reboot."

  "Good," I say.

  "And we're never loading anything called 'livestock' again," Rafe says. "Even metaphorically."

  "Agreed," I say.

  Tavi looks up from their slate. "The betting pool paid out. Fifty-three crew members bet we'd get fined. Twelve bet we'd get detained. One person bet we'd be complimented on our paperwork."

  "Who bet that?" I ask.

  "You did," Tavi says.

  I did not, but the System's log says I did, which means at some point during the reboot I either made that bet or the System invented a version of me who would. Schr?dinger's wager.

  I decide not to argue.

  "To the goats," Mina says, raising her mug.

  "To the plant," Sira corrects.

  "To the manifests," Dr. Lira says. "May they someday agree."

  "To paperwork," I say, "and the lies we tell to make it simple."

  We drink. The Ship hums its approval. Reginald, in the hold, grows a fourth leaf, which nobody will notice for a while.

  End of Chapter 2 - log stored in triple-redundant backup. If you find discrepancies, blame the System. If you find goats, please return them to the plant.