Although his spirits had inevitably sunk, and he didn't feel like eating ice cream at all, Yu Lian still forced himself to calm down. He ordered Rozes to notify all the senior officers about a meeting, then, sticking to his original plan, had a huge tub of mixed vanilla and strawberry ice cream brought over.
There was no helping it. As a mature adult, the less he wanted to eat, the more he had to. It was a way of keeping his stomach from being controlled by negative emotions. And the more tense the situation, the more important it was to think calmly. Maybe having enough blood sugar would help him think... There wasn't much scientific basis for that claim, especially where psions were concerned, but sometimes a little ritual was still necessary.
When the service robot brought the ice cream, Yu Lian took a huge bite. The cold sensation spread across his taste buds along with the sugary, fatty calorie bomb. He watched the robot leave with a cheerful sound, then couldn't help calling out to another robot: "Gray, you must have heard already, right?"
That ancient civilization-guidance AI nanocluster had mostly vanished into obscurity ever since boarding the Fuxi. Every so often, she would suddenly pop out while he was sleeping and scare him half to death. Of course, some of the crew also whispered about strange rumors like "the ship's spirit" and "the Valkyrie's phantom." If things kept going this way, in a few decades they might even have a long-standing urban legend of the cosmos on their hands.
Yu Lian, however, knew that she was everywhere. Her eyes and ears were everywhere aboard this ship, too.
Sure enough, the moment he spoke, Miss Gray sprouted from the floor beside him like a mushroom. As always, she