Considering the size of the universe and the vastness of time, it is mathematically impossible that there would not be a perfect replica of each of us somewhere out there, eventually.

Steam hissed out into the air as the locking pins pulled free. The cryo-pod opened, revealing a young man. Coughing as he stepped out, he wobbled on his feet and grabbed onto a nearby bulkhead. Another pod beside him opened as well, its occupant, a woman, collapsing onto the floor and throwing up on the metal grate. A few minutes passed as they recovered from their cryo-sleep.

Crawling up the side of her pod, the woman managed to push herself into a standing position. She took a few experimental steps before plodding along towards the door. She grabbed a dark green long-sleeved jumpsuit from a rack near the door and slipped her legs into it before turning back to the man, who was still trying to get his balance.

"Hurry up." Her voice was hoarse, and would be for a few hours. "You don't want to be caught with your pants down." She put her arms into the jumpsuit and headed out the door as she zipped it up, then ducked back in to take a look up and down the man's bare form. "Damn..."

Leaving the cryo-pod room, the woman left her jumpsuit unzipped only a few inches and headed immediately for the bridge. Two others had made it there before her and were checking the ship's systems. Without even a word, she stepped to the front view-port and gazed out into space. Stars speckled the blackness all around, except for one particularly interesting area right below her. A planet, swirling with bright pink and green clouds.

Glancing over her shoulder, the woman called to one of the crew. "Nakashima. Why did we stop?"

A middle-aged woman with her hair cut short answered promptly. "The ship's computer says we dropped out of FTL due to slowly building energy readings... unknown form of energy. We should investigate."

The woman shook her head. "Science missions are for science vessels. I chartered this flight. I say where it stops. We were supposed to be headed for Gailawa in the Arbidium galaxy for the Helium clouds. Why the fuck are we here? Where even is here?"

The door opened and three more people, all wearing the same dark green jumpsuits, stepped onto the bridge. Two headed to their work stations, while the man from before joined the woman at the window. He crossed his arms. "So... what's going on?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. That's what we're trying to figure out. This bullshit is gonna fuck up our course and make everything harder." She called back to the crew. "Osakawa. Why are those clouds candy colors?"

A tired-looking man with a clean-shaven head blinked at the screens in front of him for a few moments before answering. "Because... they're candy-flavored. The atmosphere, according to sensors, tastes like strawberries and has high levels of... sugar vapor."

"Sugar vapor... what the fuck?" She turned to the man beside her. "Kyosuke, is he fucking with me?"

"What?" The man chuckled. "I don't think they'd joke around about something like that. Sugar vapor in the atmosphere is a very serious situation."

She sighed. "Damn it all. Akamiya, Ira, somebody give me an answer that isn't retarded, please!"

Kyosuke laughed. "I'm naming it Cake Planet until you come up with something better."

Akamiya, a young woman barely out of her teens with long light brown hair and sea green eyes, leaned forward to look at the readouts in front of her. "Wow... No, that's good. The surface is practically a giant cake. Several kilometers deep of nothing but cake. High temperatures from the core have baked it through, so we are really looking at a Cake Planet. We gotta record this. It's unprecedented."

"Is the air breathable?" A tall man with dark skin walked onto the bridge, tailed by a short blond woman. She wasn't really short, just looked like it next to him. The man stroked his large beard as he observed the planet below. "Well, I'll be. Pretty, ain't it, Miss Shizuki?"

Kyosuke looked back at the tall man. "I told you before, Captain. She's my wife, so you'll call her by her real name."

Sitting down in the chair at the center of the bridge, the man huffed. "Doesn't say Kamijou on the contract. It says Shizuki Company, which means Shizuki is in charge of the mission, and if there's no Shizuki, then I'm in charge because it's my ship and I'm the captain. Ya dig?"

Osakawa spoke up, still trying to shake off his sleep. "I say we go down there and dig. It's all made of cake."

The woman, Kyosuke Kamijou's wife, known professionally as Miss Shizuki, spun on her heel. "Captain Douglas, perform all the necessary scans on this rock and bring me a report. I will decide if it is worth staying longer. If not, then we shall continue on our way without a moment's delay. We have a job to do, and it isn't here."

The captain saluted casually. "Will do. Feel free to head on down to the mess. Hash and Brown are down there getting something ready for us to eat, and I'm sure they would let our benefactor sneak a few bites."

Heading off the bridge, she turned and pointed at Kyosuke. "Stay here. Make sure they don't leave anything out of the report. I want it full."

With a hearty laugh, the captain called Kyosuke over to him. "I thought she wanted out of here fast. Why's she asking to read a full, unabridged report on a planet survey?"

Kyosuke shrugged. "IQ 186. And she reads really fast. If we do find something cool, she'll be all over it."

Hitomi Kamijou, head of the Shizuki family name, sat alone at a table in the mess hall. There had been nobody around when she arrived, and she had quickly discovered the Hash and Brown she had been told about were, in fact, a joke. There was a machine in the middle of the room, and it was heating up some hash browns. She hadn't tasted the particular preparation before. Although it was surprisingly tasty for something with an ingredients list limited to only potatoes, she found herself in a foul mood. Her mind was preoccupied with the unnecessary stop and how much it might cost her.

Finishing off her third hash brown, she looked down at herself. Her body was covered in the dark green jumpsuit that contrasted with the bright soothing blue of the lighting and the dull middle grey of the bulkheads. She found her mind straying from time and money wasting and over to thoughts of time already passed. How long, she wondered, had they been traveling already? How old was she, technically?

She didn't have long to wait. Captain Tyrone Douglas waltzed into the mess, a cigar clamped in his mouth and his hand on a medium-sized datapad. He stopped across from her, putting one hand on his hip and holding out the datapad with the other. "Found out everything she's got hiding under that pretty dress. The old girl's got a few neat surprises too. You can read the whole thing if you like, but I'll just give you the highlights."

Hitomi accepted the datapad, beginning to read its contents while munching on a fourth hash brown. "Tell me." She could read and listen at the same time.

He sighed loudly, reaching up and straightening his mustache with his now-freed hand. "We're right on course, so anyone missing us would find the ship eventually. About forty-five percent of the way to Maykro, Arbidium's port world. Meaning we're twenty-seven years into our trip. Your company should have the Helium mining equipment almost set up by now and your favorite pop star back home is most likely a wrinkly old bag. The particular spot we're in, according to Nakashima, is a rogue globular cluster about three hundred thousand lightyears away from any charted thing with more mass than a tuba. The globular cluster itself is charted, but only in that we know it's here and somebody's already attached their name to it. Some douche named Marlon. Too bad, though. I was looking forward to 'the Tyrone Cluster'."

Hitomi reached down for a fifth hash brown. "Amusing. And the planet?"

Douglas just chuckled. "Ah, yes... atmosphere is breathable, but has high concentration of pure fructose molecules. It's a sugar planet. One for the books. Really weird shit going on near the surface, stuff I ain't gonna bother remembering, and it results in a thick crust, if you can call it that, of nearly edible material almost identical to your grandma's chocolate cake. A little too high of a concentration of toxic chemicals means it's still a bad idea to stuff your face with the dirt. Nearly no heavy metals except in the core. That's why we noticed enigma number one."

Hitomi looked up. "Enigma?" Really, she was more interested in the implications of 'number one'.

He grinned. "A tiny little deposit of Gold, literally just sitting out in the open on the surface. Less than one or two grams. We'll be down to check it out shortly, and then it's on to enigma number two."

She realized he was going to make her ask. "And what's that?"

Straightening his posture, he cleared his throat. Suddenly, he had taken on a purely formal tone. Business. "It appears a large object of some sort impacted the planet surface, creating a crater over one hundred kilometers in diameter. We estimate the impact to be approximately nine billion years old. The object is still there and appears to have some vague structure to it. It's either alive or artificial. I'm betting on artificial, because it's not giving off any of the normal signs living things do."

Hitomi set the datapad down. "Well, fuck. I suppose we go down there then. Remind me, Captain, what our crew is."

"Hmm..." He seemed slightly caught off guard by the change in subject. "You and your husband are the passengers... Well, there's me, Nakashima, Osakawa, Ira, Akamiya, Akihara, and the boys down in the engine room. That would be Fukawa, Kagima, Tamahoshi, and my brother Rory. Yeah... yup. That about covers it. We have a hamster, too."

She kept her face impassive. "No Hash or Brown, then."

"Err... no, ma'am."

"Hmm. Let's try to keep things truthful around here." Standing up, she made to start walking away when he called her back.

"Ma'am? There is one other matter."

Hitomi turned back to face him. "You can't stop my husband from playing his violin, so don't even ask."

He shook his head. "Wouldn't dream of it, ma'am. No, it's about enigma three. There are five life-signs on the planet, and only five. They're a few klicks from our selected landing site, in the direction away from the impact crater. We'll be taking the rover, so we can cover the whole area relatively fast, but seeing as it's isolated life the way it is I thought it would be best if you, as mission commander, made the call. We can't lock what species they are, so there is a small risk of hostility."

Letting out a long sigh, Hitomi gave in. "We'll check it out first. That crash hasn't moved in nine billion years. It won't get up and leave in the day or so it takes us to get there."