Soup. hot. no bowl
Weapons Officer, Jr Ensign Aliyah Hasanoglu says to the replicator before briskly walking to a safe distance. Unlike her fellow overworked compatriots in the weapons dept, she was never one to take her anger out on holographic baddies. Her friends chided her paranoia around holodecks, but it had nothing to do with fear. To her, fake violence against fake entities just makes for fake relief. She craved genuine mischief, and the Alpha Quadrant isn't going to fall for want of a replicator. Just get some cathartic vengeance, claim the machine broke, and make all those hungry nightshifters and shits in maintenance feel a fraction of her frustration. She hears the replicator hum. Expecting to hear the crackling of circuits and error messages, instead the computer gleefully chirps... "soup (default) minestrone, hot, no bowl."
Aliyah emerges from the defensive position in the corner to turn around and look at the soup. It's there in a conclave soup bowl, but the bowl is absent. She inspects it, it smells like a seasoned but slightly bland bowl of soup, the noodles and the carrots all bob and wobble in the broth as is their custom. The savory vapor emanates from the soup. The broth forms a meniscus against the chinaware wall, but there is no wall. The soup doesn't even sit on the bottom of the replicator. The broth and vegetables diligently settle in a flat bowl like shape a few centimeters above the replicator. You reach out with your finger to poke the soup wall only to pull back with a cry of surprise and pain. the soup is hot, she thinks.
But only thinks apparently, her finger isn't red, it isn't even red from the tomato broth.
Curious now she puts her fist into the center of the soup, anticipating an awkward conversation about 3rd degree burns with the ship's MO. She feels the hot sensation again and...that's it. She knows what a burn feels like. She better, they covered half of her body after her computer console exploded in a typhoon of sparks. This didn't feel like severe burns, there was no almost freezing-like sensation, no sudden flair of searing pain, no numbness. Her hand felt like it was covered in the sensation of touching hot soup for a brief second extended over several minutes. It was more discomforting than painful.
Aliyah pulled her hand back. Again no burn-marks, no food-stains. Now she was curious, and said the first thing that came to her head.
"Computer. snow cone. strawberry flavored...Hot."
The computer chirps and replicates a red snow cone. It was the kind of snow cone she got with her brother in the simulations of 20th century state fairs. It looked just like her favorite. Sparkling ice crystal's with the vibrant only long since banned food coloring could provide. Everything was the same except...steam? Like the soup the snow cone released a white vapor smelling of snow cone. When she put it to her tongue it tasted just as a snow cone would, but as hot as the soup. Aliyah throws it away.
"Computer. Beef Wellington. Soft serve."
A sumptuous golden-brown Beef Wellington with its aroma of wine and faint hints of mustard emerges. Aliyah taps her finger against the Beef Wellington, expecting to hear the thump of the solid puff pastry. Instead her index finger sinks into the shell. She pulls it down and the Wellington ripples and warps. The smudges of pastry along with a layer of beef, which warmly coagulates around her finger. Mischief had long since been supplanted by morbid curiosity. She ordered more and more things with bizarre combinations: chocolate cake with the texture of raw chicken, eggplant sunny side up, celery with the bone in, white wine crisps, macaroni made from caviar, root beer al tartare, rancid roadkill curry. every surreal combination served with a cheerful whistle. And apart from that "replicated flavor" no one in Starfleet could place, each with a perfect replicated flavor in the shape or form of something else. Something impossible.
Aliyah stands there with her Salvador Dali Delicacies thinking what it could mean. Then with sudden inspiration she recalls an old user safety tutorial her brother told her.
"Computer. Enter Debugging and safety mode. Display and Suspend Holographic Features"
After a pause, the computer chirps again: "debug mode on. Assets:off. Texture maps:off. Sensory stimulation:off. Hard Light Suspension: Off. "
"Computer. Soup. No Bowl."
An array of moist globules spew onto the replicator tray. Some are flakes with a semi metallic sheen. Some are dull, dry, sticky particles aggregate together into a flopping moist drooping tower.
Almost hesitant to try the mucus-like substance, but deciding she must know, Aliyah licks her finger and presses it against the semi organic mixture, and presses the sediment layer adhered to her finger against her tongue. The taste faintly hints of soup, but chalky, and faintly metallic. There is also a flavor that is familiar to her, ubiquitous even, but she can't place it from a single meal.
Aliyah remembers this taste in every replicated meal she has ever had. She recognize the flavor in the aftertaste from the synthohol when her friend was incarcerated for refusing Commander Sisko's command to create a bioweapon against supposed terrorists. It was reminiscent of an aftertaste from the last awkward meal shared with her family. After her parents begged her to return home, but before her brother fully plunged into holo-addiction. She recalls the taste in the ice cream she had when her lover of 5 years abandoned the junior officer for a position on the USS Cairo without as much as a goodbye. The flavor lingered on the back of her tongue when you heard that your family's home planet was ravaged by the Jem'hadar. It mixed well with the bitter sentiment of knowing her parents died alone and her brother's last moment were spent in the arms of his holographic harem. Aliyah finally could tell what that taste was, that saccharine yet cold artificial flavor she had spent her career in Starfleet getting a taste. And after the sacrifices she made, all the hardships she endured and all that she lost, this flavor is what she would have to return to.
"And they don't even have to hide it," she thinks to herself, "It's been there this whole time, but they know no one cares." Right now the crew is happily chewing this powder and slurping their goop, willfully pretending their hard light suspension of nutrient paste is a king's meal. No one wants to wake up from a good dream.
But she can't ignore it. Aliyah couldn't get this taste out of her mouth. There is nothing real to wash away the taste. She could never explain the flavor, but she could identify it. Now she knew what it tastes like, and she knew how to improve the flavor. All it needed was a dash of treason.