Tentacles

“Button one?”

“Tentacles.”

“Button two?”

“Tentacles.”

“Button three?”

“Slime… no nevermind, just tentacles.”

“Give me a hint, here. How many of these buttons are going to be tentacles?”

“Well, at last night’s check… all of them.”

“All one hundred?”

“Yeah, plus the extra two at the end that weren’t there yesterday.”

“You’re saying last night’s crew found two undocumented buttons at the end of the row, having just opened a hundred different gateways full of tentacles, and they just decided to push them?”

“That’s accurate. Also tells you something about the night crew.”

“Alright, so we have a hundred and two buttons now. Every one opens the gateway, every one fills the airlock with tentacles. Do we have any away teams out right now?”

“None.”“That’s something at least. Have we had any in-house casualties?”

“Just an escaped rat that got in before the airlock sealed on the first button.”

“What exactly happened to it?”

“Nothing pleasant. We haven’t seen any mouths so far, but the tentacles are… aggressive.”

“What are the odds that this is all a coincidence and this will all just blow over by the time I have to make an official report?”

“Is this one of those trick questions, sir?”