When the energy progress bar jumped to ninety-two, Chen Hao's fingers were still resting on the edge of the control panel.
He didn't move, just stared at the slowly rising green line, like watching a snake finally stopping its twitching. For those few seconds when the power went out, the cabin was so dark it felt like it had been swallowed by the universe. Now the lights were back on, the machines were running, but no one spoke.
Carl leaned against the control panel, wiping blood from his arm with a cloth. The wound wasn't deep, but it had bled quite a bit, and his protective suit sleeve was torn. He finished wiping, threw the cloth aside, and looked down at the logbook, flipping through page after page as if he could actually find some new data.
Susan sat in a cushioned chair, her eyes closed, her hands resting on her stomach. Her face was a little pale, and her breathing was light, but she wasn't asleep. Occasionally, her eyelashes fluttered, as if she were listening to the wind outside.
Nana stood in the corner, the camera slightly lowered, the data on the screen still scrolling. No one asked her to check, and she didn't stop.
Chen Hao yawned loudly, almost deliberately. He stretched, and his bones cracked.
"If I keep sitting like this, my butt will grow mushrooms."
Nobody paid him any attention.
He slammed his hand on the table again and stood up: "I have something to announce!"
All three people looked up at the same time.
“From now on, for the next thirty minutes, anyone who mentions the words ‘system,’ ‘energy,’ or ‘malfunction’ will have to tell a corny joke.” He grinned. “I’ll go first—Why does the spaceship never get lost?”
No one answered.
He asked himself and answered, "Because it always has 'navigation,' and I don't have an object."
Susan chuckled, her hand still pressed against her stomach. Carl shook his head, his lips pursed, but his gaze softened. Nana stared at him for two seconds and said, "This pun is based on the similarity in pronunciation between 'navigation' and 'boyfriend,' so the logic is sound, but the humor isn't strong enough. I'd give it two stars."
“Your robot is even more ruthless than a stand-up comedy judge.” Chen Hao waved his hand. “Alright, let’s try something different.”
He pulled a crumpled sticky note from the drawer, wrote "Embarrassing Story Relay" on it, and stuck it next to the main screen.
"The rules are simple: each person tells one of the most embarrassing things they've ever done on the planet, and no one can repeat themselves. Whoever doesn't tell one will have burnt nutritional paste for breakfast tomorrow."
Carl immediately waved his hand: "I'm not participating."
“You’ve been eating nutritional supplements for three days now. It would be a disservice to the cafeteria if you didn’t eat more.” Chen Hao pointed to his arm. “Besides, you still have an injury on your hand. Wounded patients get priority.”
Susan opened her eyes and smiled at Carl: "Tell me one, consider it prenatal education."
Carl sighed: "That time at Supply Station Seven, I thought the cleaning agent was mineral water, so I opened it and took a sip. I vomited for half an hour and had to have a medical robot pump my stomach."
Chen Hao's eyes widened: "You drank that? The instructions say 'Strictly prohibited from oral consumption'!"
“The label was off,” Carl shrugged. “I thought it was electrolyte water.”
Susan laughed so hard she was shaking: "That time... I was in my second month of pregnancy, and I heard the base alarm going off in the middle of the night, thump thump thump. I thought it was the baby kicking me, so I recorded it to play for him later. But the next day the captain said it was a rat in the warehouse next door that triggered the infrared."
The entire cabin fell silent for a moment, then burst into laughter.
Even Nana's optical lens flickered, as if she were blinking.
“I have something to say too,” she said. “During the third database update, the cooking module failed to load. I made a nutritious meal according to an old recipe, but the temperature went out of control, and the final product was almost as hard as an alloy. The spaceship’s trash can had its inner liner replaced three times because of this.”
Chen Hao slapped his thigh: "I told you I didn't make that 'charcoal rice' last time! You did it!"
“According to the records, you once secretly ate some of the reserve cookies at 2 a.m., which was captured by infrared monitoring and played on a loop for three days as punishment.” Nana looked at him. “You also tried to bribe the monitoring system by slipping candy into the cameras.”
"That was a tactical bribe!" Chen Hao argued. "Besides, those cookies were almost expired anyway!"
"It's three days past its expiration date," Nana added.
“The shelf life is psychological!” He stood up and cleared his throat. “It’s my turn now. The most embarrassing thing… was that during an emergency evacuation drill, I panicked and used the escape pod as a toilet. I only realized the button was wrong after locking the door. The captain shouted over the loudspeaker, ‘All personnel back to position,’ but I was hiding inside and didn’t dare to make a sound. In the end, someone had to pry open the door with a maintenance lever and pull me out.”
Susan leaned back in her chair laughing, and Carl couldn't help but laugh out loud, his shoulders shaking.
"How old were you then?" Susan asked.
"Twenty-three," Chen Hao sighed, "the video I least want to replay in my life."
“Deleted,” Nana said.
"real?"
“It’s fake.” She paused. “The backup is in Volume Seventeen of the spaceship’s historical log.”
"I knew it!"
The laughter gradually faded, and no one rushed to speak. The cabin lights were still white, but not as glaring as before. Outside the window, the Milky Way slowly rotated, and a pale blue band of light streaked across the porthole, as if someone had casually tossed a fluorescent pen across it.
Chen Hao sat with his legs crossed on the edge of the control panel, holding the sticky note in his hand and gently fanning himself.
“Actually,” he said, “we’ve had a lot of bad luck along the way, but we’ve also really survived.”
Carl looked up at him.
"Did you say there's a power outage back home?" Chen Hao asked again.
No one answered.
This time, he didn't wait for an answer either.
Susan gently stroked her belly, a smile still playing on her lips. Carl, arms crossed, leaned against the wall, not moving. Nana stood still, the camera dimmed slightly, as if entering a low-power mode, but she didn't leave.
Chen Hao folded the sticky note into a small square, flicked it, and it flew out and landed at Karl's feet.
"The loser of the next round treats everyone."
Carl picked it up, glanced at it, and threw it into the trash can: "Where did we get these guests?"
"When we get back to Earth, I'll treat you to hot pot," Chen Hao said. "Real meat, not synthetic protein."
"You have money?"
“I can use facial recognition.” He touched his chubby cheeks. “After all these years, I must have some value.”
Susan chuckled: "Then you'd better eat more, so your face will be big enough."
"I'm already trying."
Nana suddenly spoke up: "A slight gravitational fluctuation was detected, with an amplitude of 0.03G and a duration of four seconds."
Everyone fell silent for a moment.
Carl immediately stood up straight: "Where?"
“The left rear corridor of the spacecraft.” Nana pulled up the structural diagram, “but the sensors show no physical movement; it’s probably just a minor vibration in the wiring.”
"Did something make a sound just now?" Susan asked.
"No," Nana said. "The ambient sound is normal."
Chen Hao didn't move; he remained seated, his hands resting on the table. He looked up at the ceiling, then down at his palms.
Just now, it felt like the whole ship trembled slightly for half a second.
He recalled the darkness before the power went out, the ground shaking when the steam erupted, and the white mist bursting overhead as he climbed the pipes.
He clenched his fist, then released it.
"It's probably just that the ship is old," he said.
Carl stared at the monitor screen, his finger swiping across the interface. Susan slowly sat up straighter, her hand still on her abdomen. Nana's camera panned to the main power area, and the data refreshed.
A few seconds later, everything returned to normal.
The green line continues to climb: 92%, 92.1%, 92.2%...
"It's alright now," Nana said.
No one responded.
Chen Hao was still looking at his hands.
That hand just trembled slightly.
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