Twenty Questions

Time: Shortly after Potato Surprise
Location: Aboard the Brimstone, in transit

"All right. I have something." Shax nestled into the corner and put his feet up on the galley bench. Teaching the ship's AI to play Twenty Questions was just to pass an incredibly boring stretch of Copernicus flight. He reasoned it would be easy to win since even Ivana's circuits shouldn't be able to make the jumps of intuition necessary.

After a moment's silence, Ivana asked, "Now I'm supposed to ask if it's animal, vegetable or mineral, hotstuff? Are all chlorophyll based life forms considered vegetable for the game? And do all the adorable little fungi get smushed into animal, then?"

Shax furrowed his brow at the nearest speaker. "I think you're making this too complicated, my dear. If it's organic and moves at a visible pace under its own power, we'll call it animal."

"I'm just trying to get the rules down, Captain." Ivana sniffed in offense. "Human games can be so vague and wobbly."

"In the interest of moving along here, I will tell you that my thing is an animal."

Ivana's voice became insufferably smug as she said, "It's a hellcat."

"What? No. That's not how this is done."

"It was a hellcat. You're lying Captain Innocent Face. There's just this teensy kick in your pulse sometimes when—"

"Fine. It was. But that's still not how it's done. This is a process of elimination exercise. If it's not this subset, then it's that subset sort of thing."

"I see. The object is the process." Ivan sent a cup of coffee out on the conveyor, her voice eager and chipper again. "Did you want to start again?"

"All right. Once more from the beginning." Shax sipped at his whiskey-laced coffee with a contented sigh. "Ah, bribes. Thank you, Ms. Ivana."

"You're very welcome. Now is it animal, vegetable or mineral?"

"Animal."

"One track mind this morning. Is it a Sol system species?"

"Yes."

Ivana snickered. "That narrows it down to about a hundred and thirty thousand possibilities. Is your animal chordata?"

"I beg your pardon?" As discreetly as he could, Shax attempted to look up the word.

"Phylum, sweetie."

Chordata…vertebrates… "Oh. Yes. Yes it is."

"Mammalian?"

Shax gave the speaker a side eye. "Yes."

"Is it an otter?"

"That's…" Shax plunked down his coffee mug. "If you've installed some sort of telepathic software, you know that's not at all cricket, Ms. Ivana."

"I'd need bio components that I don't have for that," Ivana said in flounce mode. "Don't you accuse me of cheating, Captain. You were looking at otter videos earlier. It was a reasonable guess."

"Oh. So I was. My apologies."

"Really, I'm surprised you were so obvious. Did you want to try again, Captain Tightbuns?" Ivana cooed, all but stroking Shax as she spoke.
​
"No. Thank you for indulging me." Shax did his best not to scowl and sipped at his coffee. "It's a stupid game anyway."