“Gentlemen, ladies, what do we suppose this is?” asked Ichabod, gesturing to the curved metal apparatus that had dropped from above.

“I do propose that it is a sign from the good lord, telling us that the virtuous will ascend into heaven,” said Father Troot.

“Only if you believe in myths and fairy tales,” said Professor Funa replied. She glared at Father Troot. “Myths and fairy tales. Surely it is a sign of intelligent life from above, a being capable of using tools and manufacturing a hook!”

At this last claim the Council of Wise Fish degenerated, as it so frequently did, into name-calling and fin-waving.

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Casimir used Emblem and his bed as a battering ram on the zombie in the hallway. It went flying. Emblem almost went flying, too, except that he reached out a hand to grab the rails on the bed.

“Put mumble the fucking mumble rails,” Emblem said.

“Sorry!” Casimir said. He slid the metal bars into place and rammed his way down the hallway toward the elevators, his paper gown flapping open in the back. The zombies in front of him got the cart and the zombies behind him got a view of a full moon.

The hospital seemed to be abandoned of anything but zombies. Zombies in lab coats, zombies in scrubs, zombies in paper gowns, and zombies in maintenance jumpsuits all wandered the hallways. Most of the lights were out and Casimir could only see because of the sun streaming in the windows. They reached the elevators and Casimir began slapping the call button.

Emblem grunted, tearing Casimir’s attention away from the elevator.

“Won’t work on generator power, numbnuts,” Emblem said.

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A binary star system swirled in space. On a planet near the blue star, there were very tall aliens with eyes on long stalks that waved in the hydrogen cyanide air. On the planet near the red star, there were very short aliens with eyes in their feet that kept close watch on the sulphur worms that burrowed through the yellow, cake-like ground. They thought sulphur worms were delicious.

They hated each other very much, because the tall aliens frequently tripped over the short aliens, and the short aliens had a close-up view of the tall aliens trodding on their favorite snack. Imagine if a very tall man came into your kitchen, tossed a plate of cookies on the floor, and began to perform a flamenco on them, for the tall aliens moved to and fro via the flamenco.

Needless to say, when a third alien arrived, they arrived into a highly charged political situation.

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“Stupid jovian piece of shit,” Arctarine said, floating in space and surveying the damanged engine of her freighter.

“You know what they say about the Jupiter shipyards,” Kudret said, his voice crackling a bit over the radio.

“What’s that?” she asked, watching Very Important Pieces of her neutrino engine float off into the void of space.

“Like the planet itself, the engineers value quantity over quality. Lookit how big that damn thing is. And count the number of things worth visiting there, even including the alehouses of Europa.”

“That doesn’t really make me feel any better,” Arctarine said. “I’m still a freightmistress without a functional ship.”

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Casimir stopped dreaming that he felt like shit and began to actually feel like shit. His mouth tasted like headache and vomit, a pain on the back of his skull throbbed with each beat of his heart, and part of his arm was numb.

He opened his eyes to a flickering flourescent fixture overhead and realized that he was in a hospital. Several of the light fixtures were dark. Only the one above his bed still had power. Lucky him. There was one other bed in the room, and on the white sheets lay a man in a filthy leather jacket, even filthier canvas pants and boots held together by what looked to be sinew and optimism. He hadn’t even been changed into a hospital gown like Casimir had, nor bandaged up.

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An ooze gurgled.

The ooze wondered at the world around it. When it had seen enough, the ooze became bored.

Then there were two oozes. The two oozes traveled the world, enjoying the sights, smells, sounds, textures and flavors of the world that they discovered in their travels.

The two oozes began arguing over what they would visit next, so then there was a third ooze, who introduced a new opinion instead of breaking the tie.

A fourth ooze came along, they abandoned their travels. They occupied their time first with bridge whist, auction whist and then finally contract whist.

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