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Donuts is as Donuts was — Attributed to Alexander Pope

You’ve never truly experienced a Solar System Cruiser’s Owen Space-Tyme (sic) Field Generator up close and personal until you’ve stood nude next to the Manifold during spooling.

Like I’ve been known to do.

Before the pilot induces the Fold. When the calculations have been done. And all is ready.

Before the Cruiser folds boundlessly from Space Normal into Owen Space, a place where distance is a negative Delta-V calculation. Like divide-by-zero becomes divide-by-infinity + 1, or something like that. I just keep the damn thing running. 

And how, if done right, the Fold induces a rapid rise in dough destined for yeast-based yummies, i.m.h.o.; all theoretically possible as the rules of rheology are inviolable in Owen Space, which you would think would spark “scientific revolutions and/or ‘paradigm shiftings’” (or at the minimum scientists with expanding waistlines).

But I digress.

Time later (l.o.l.) and our faithful Commander brings the Cruiser out of Owen Space and into a stable park orbit I.V.O. the Uranian moon Tatiana; our target, our BINGO. Where will survey from top-to-bottom said moon with an eye towards certain fluid dynamics and gas stabilization; you know, the usual. 

I check the NAV down in my hovel near the Owen Field Generator. Tatiana looms off of the port bow, the moon’s surface a ruddy red glow that reminds me of a big cider donut. 

Over the Comm: Crew, we’ve arrived on schedule. I want D.C.S. staging up and running by twenty-one hundred hours, ship time. 

She’s good, our Commander, I’ll hand you that even though she has no taste for beignets. 

Then: Oberon to the Flight Deck.

I re-dress into my flight suit. And make haste in a casual fashion to the Flight Deck. 

As I enter, the Commander locks onto me. 

Ah, good. Report.

I produce a sealed D-Box. The Flight Deck crew all turn around, their eyes on me, on the box.

The Commander purses her lips in anticipation.  

And?

As I slowly open the box’s lid, the smell of flaky pastry and marzipan washes over the Deck. 

The Commander closes her blue, blue eyes (the color of Uranus!!), takes the smell in fully before muttering under her breath: Methought I was enamoured of a bear claw.

And somewhere, somehow, I know Alexander Pope smiles. For to err is a sticking bun; to forgive is a jelly donut.

Or so I’ve heard.