Chapter One Hundred Eight: Shuttle Ride

"Right here." I tapped the rim of my empty glass. "Gimme another."

"You sure?" asked Brygos, uncorking his half-empty jug of rum. "Your slithery mates've already embraced the inevitable."

Inuyyak snored noisily from his bunk, and his snoring reminded me of a hissing radiator.

I didn't even know cobras were capable of snoring.

Glimmering Scales, his forked tongue lolling out the corner of his open mouth, slept silently in the bunk above Inuyyak. Part of Scales's tail drooped over the edge of the bunk, dangling over Inuyyak's face.

"They didn't even make it to Round Four," jeered Brygos. "Six shots apiece, and their lights go out like hatchlings learning to drink. Do you want to end up like them? No shame in admitting defeat."

"I don't lose to turtles." I slid forward my glass. "Let's fucking do this."

Brygos poured a double-shot of amber rum into my glass. "Do Humans ever die from drinking too much rum?"

"Not anymore." I held up my rum, making eye contact with the warped reflection of myself staring back from the glass's surface. "No Humans left."

"You're a Human," Brygos pointed out, filling his own glass with a double shot. "How can there be no Humans left when I'm sharing a shuttlecraft with one?"

I blinked. My reflection in the glass looked drunk, and who could blame him? He was swimming in rum. "If I died of alcohol poisoning, I would come back to life a few minutes later. We would have a good laugh, and then we'd pick up where we left off. A real Human would just stay dead."

"Why was the Witch a Human, then, but you are not?" Brygos picked up his glass. "In all the time it took us to bury her, she never rose from the dead."

"When Gwen died, no one else was around who knew how to revive her." I looked away from my inebriated reflection in the glass, reestablishing eye contact with Brygos. "Both her bodies died, and that was that."

"She could have been revived?" Brygos reached forward with his glass, inviting a toast. "How?"

I clinked my glass against Brygos's. "If you kissed her, then she might've returned to life."

"Kiss her?" Brygos frowned at me. "She was dead. Why would kissing a corpse ever be required for anything?"

"Hey, I think it's weird too." I shrugged. "I didn't make the rules."

After sharing a clink, Brygos and I smacked the bottoms of our glasses down onto the metallic table surface. We raised our glasses, clinked again, then I threw back my head and dumped the rum straight down my throat.

I gagged, swallowing loudly and wincing. "Fuuuck." Releasing a loud belch, I wiped my streaming eyes and clutched my stomach. "That hurt. This stuff tastes like shit."

"It does not," chuckled Brygos, who'd already watched me go through the same routine four times within the past two hours. "You just have a soft throat."

"Really?" I burped again. "You're saying it would taste better if my throat was harder?"

"If you're so concerned about taste, maybe you should stick to drinking juice."

"Juice doesn't make me happy." I picked up my glass and tipped the remaining droplets into my mouth. "Being drunk makes me happy."

"You don't sound happy."

"I don't want to hear this." I put my glass back on the table and slid it towards Brygos. "Pour me another. Or is your throat softer than you'd like to admit?"

Brygos stared at me like I was prey. "Are you taking the piss?"

"What does that even mean?"

"Want to know what happened to the last shitsuck who called my throat soft?"

"Obviously you killed him."

"I shot him in his fucking cloaca." Brygos uncorked the jug and poured another double-shot into his glass. "He survived, but I'll bet his pisses and shits still sting."

"Cloaca?" I wrinkled my nose. "What's a cloaca?"

A guttural laugh erupted from deep within Brygos's throat. "Good one."

"I'm serious. What the shit is a cloaca?"

Brygos reached over and poured another double-shot of amber rum into my glass. "You're telling me you don't have a hole to shit, piss, and fuck out of?"

"Um." I can honestly say I've never looked up how turtles do any of those things. Is that something I should have done before the world ended? "I mean, like, I do all those things too, but each function has its own orifice."

"Not all in one place?" Brygos slid my glass over to me. "That's fucking weird. How do you keep track of them all?"

"What kind of question is that? How do you keep track of having a big fucking shell on your back all the time?"

"Idiot. I don't have a shell on my back. My shell is my back." Brygos raised his glass. "How can you stand not having a proper back? All you have is flesh and fucking jelly to keep your back safe. It's clearly a design flaw. How do you ever survive being attacked from behind?"

"Simple. Turn around and shoot the attacker in their cloaca." I clinked glasses with Brygos, struck the table surface, clinked again, and drank. "Jesus fucking Christ." I shuddered as the rum burned a fiery path down to my stomach. "You really shot someone just because they called your throat soft?"

"Sure, but also because he tried to cheat me with weighted dice," added Brygos. "No one ever rolls triple-eights five times in a row. Smarmy soft-shelled fuck. Thought he could take all my silver and insult me. Turned out, he was the cousin of some bigwig provincial magistrate who didn't give two shits about the ethics of cheating at dice. To this day, there's still a warrant out for my arrest."

"Wow." I hiccupped. "Is that how you became a corsair?"

Brygos nodded. "If I hadn't bumped into Aristophanes on my way to the docks, I'd be a gibbet skeleton right now."

I frowned. "You were recruited into the corsairs by an Ancient Athenian playwright?"

"Ancient what?" Brygos gave me a weird look. "Are you making up words? Aristophanes is the captain of my ship. He's the one who sent me. You'll meet him when we land. He doesn't write plays."

"If you say so." After a second hiccup, the effects of the four shots I'd just ingested began to catch up with me. "Oh, I'm drunk," I murmured, raising both of my arms above my head and spreading out my fingers. "Drinkly drunkucked. How 'bout that? This rum tastes like fuckin' hand santa—satanizer—sanitizer. Would it kill you to have a chaser?"

"Chasers are for hatchlings."

"Hatchlings?" I hiccupped a third time. "Why does your society allow kids to drink? Doesn't that lead to developmental problems?"

"Why wouldn't we?" asked Brygos. "I drank rum all the time when I was a hatchling, and I turned out alright."

"Sure." I took a deep breath, hiccupping partway through. "Fuck it." I slid my glass back across the table towards Brygos. "Another. Let's do a-fucking-nother."

"You're mad. I need to piss." Brygos rose from his chair and walked over to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. "And I need to shit," he added from inside the bathroom. "Might be a while."

"Sounds like a concession to me," I remarked to myself, picking up the jug of rum and taking a long swig. "Ohhh, fuck. It burns us." While coughing, I considered setting my breath on fire, but maybe that wasn't the best thing to do while aboard a shuttlecraft. "Ow."

Yeah, the rum tasted like shit, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some small pleasure in feeling the burn in my throat. I felt a lot better. The world seemed like an easier place.

I wasn't even thinking about how the rest of Humanity was extinct.

Whoops. Now I'm thinking about it. That's a fucking bummer.

What am I going to do in ten years? A thousand years from now, what will I be doing? If it is true that I won't die naturally, will I still be here in ten thousand years? How about a million?

"Okay, that's enough of that." I stood up, staggering around the table and across the cabin. "Fuck." I was drunk. "Said that already."

Standing up made a world of difference. Blood rushed to my head, and suddenly I began to realize how drunk I really was.

As I made my way down the short corridor to the front of the shuttlecraft, passing the bathroom and cargo hold, I needed to steady myself against one of the bulkheads. I stumbled into the cockpit and plopped into the copilot seat.

A gorgeous, glittering planet, rotating silently and slowly around its polar axis, filled about a third of the cockpit window's view. Covering most of the planet's surface was a vast ocean of greenish-blue water, dappled with one major continent and many smaller archipelagos of islands. Cloud systems crawled silently across the planet's sky, following the wind currents, and I even spotted a maelstrom of swirling storm clouds.

I stared at the distant hurricane, placing one of my hands against the transparent polymer of the front window. "Hello, beaut'ful world," I murmured, slurring together my words.

"Knight?"

"Fuck." I jumped in my seat, startled by Xolotl's voice. "Didn't see you there."

"Thiss iss not a large ssky-boat. Where elsse would I be? Outside?" Xolotl, sitting coiled in the pilot's seat, turned to look at me. "You reek of the drink."

"Ehrm." Belching loudly, I slouched deeper into the copilot's chair, attempting to prop my feet up on the copilot's console. "Yep. I'm crunk, and y'knowwhat?" My feet slipped off the copilot's console, thudding back to the floor. "No regrets."

Xolotl returned his attention to the front window's view of the slowly approaching planet. "Make thiss a habit, and you will regret it."

"Whatcha gonna do?" I frowned as my vision grew blurry. "Stab me again?"

Xolotl grimaced. "We will be landing in twelve hourss. You should ssleep."

"Too soon?" I asked, and Xolotl did not reply. "Oh c'mon, Xoltotlol, buddy, I'm fucking with you. Lighten up."

"I will not," said Xolotl. "After you and the SSeer abandoned me to the labor camp, I sspent yearss drowning mysself in alcohol, and although at the time I thought it helped, it did not. Nothing good comess from using the drink to esscape unhappy ccircumsstancess."

"Jus' say no, kids," I said, hiccupping again. "Say no to drugs." My vision continued to blur, and by now I could no longer focus on Xolotl. "Ohhsshhummm…" I tried to breathe in deeply, but in a strange way I could no longer feel myself breathing. "I think I…"

"You have abused yoursself," accused Xolotl. "How did you possibly manage to unite our tribess when you have ssuch a lack of sself-control? It iss painful to ssee you like thiss."

I opened my mouth to reply, and out spewed a geyser of projectile vomit, plastering Xolotl with parts of me I never intended for him to see. Then I slipped out of my chair and tumbled onto the floor.

If Xolotl was angry, and I'm sure he was, I did not see it.

The cockpit grew distant.

I felt dissociated, as if I was drifting away from my own body.

Darkness overtook me.

I looked around, but there was nothing to see.

Only an empty, endless void.

I tried calling out, but I'm not sure if I was actually making noise or merely imagining the sound of my voice. Either way, I heard no response. When I tried to touch myself, I wasn't sure if I was really touching myself or simply recalling the memory of doing so.

Did I still even have a body?

For a while, the invisible spark of my consciousness drifted through the silent void. At least, I assumed I was drifting, but to be honest, I had no idea. There was no way for me to tell if I was moving or stationary.

What the fuck is this? Am I dead?

C'mon, don't be ridiculous. I can't be dead. How the fuck could I have possibly died?

What was I doing before I wound up in this void? Think. How did I get here? Was I with anyone?

More time passed in silence, although I could not say how much time. For my sanity, I chose to believe it had only been a few minutes.

Do I still exist?

What a stupid fucking thought. Of course I still exist. I'm here, aren't I? I'm talking to you, so obviously I exist. The concept of nonexistence already exists. The concept of nothing is already something. How could it be possible to not exist after having already existed?

I do exist.

Right now.

I am here, existing in a void, with no company beyond my own thoughts, and god fucking damn it, I am going to get out of here.

Let's imagine moving forward. I am now moving forward.

Is it working? Hard to tell.

I decided to pretend it was working, and a red point of light appeared in the distance.

"Holy shit!" I screamed, accelerating rapidly towards the light. "Something exists!"

The point of light steadily grew larger and larger, gradually expanding into a humongous bubble of radiant red energy. Rather than a flat, static red, the celestial bubble's surface light fluctuated gently in an unending dance between moving currents of scarlet, vermillion, rose, ruby, crimson, burgundy, and maroon.

I floated silently in the void, dwarfed by the immense size of the mesmerizing bubble of light, gazing into the shimmering depths. "Is this a dream bubble? Anyone home?"

Searing bolts of white light erupted suddenly from a single point closer to the bubble's surface, vanishing in the time it took me to look in that direction. It was difficult to see, but I still wanted to investigate, so I flew directly towards that spot. Within seconds, I caught sight of a human figure silhouetted against the dream bubble's roiling light, and my heart nearly leaped out of my chest.

I was no longer alone.

"Hey!" I called out to the silhouetted figure, but they did not acknowledge me. "Yeah, you! Hey!"

The silhouetted figure was trying to fly into the bubble, but they seemed to be having difficulty getting through the dense light close to the bubble's surface.

I squinted as the shimmering eddies and swirls of red light coalesced around the silhouetted figure, intensifying into a blinding white brilliance.

While the silhouetted figure conjured about themselves a protective cocoon of powerful violet light, the buildup of searing white light was unleashed. Out of the dream bubble's concentrated light exploded another lightning strike of crackling white energy, swatting away the silhouetted figure like a gnat before arcing harmlessly into the void.

The silhouetted figure's cocoon of violet light dissipated as they hurtled in my direction.

"Hey, you!" I hollered over to the silhouetted figure. "Who are you? Where are we and what are you doing?"

The cloaked figure froze, turning towards me and noticing me for the first time. Slowly, they approached, asking, "Adam?"

My heart skipped a beat when I heard her voice. "Cass?"

"Please tell me you are real." Cass lowered her hood, and as I looked into her violet eyes, I saw what appeared to be the weariest soul in existence. "If you aren't real, don't say or do anything else. Just go away."

"But…wouldn't going away count as 'doing something else'?" I asked.

Cass looked at me without blinking. "I don't understand."

"If I'm not real, I won't be able to 'not do anything else' and 'go away' at the same time," I explained. "They cancel each other out. Thankfully, it's all a moot tangent, because I am real."

"How can you be sure?" asked Cass.

"Either I'm real, or you must have an incredibly vivid imagination," I replied. "If I am a figment of your imagination, then I have to say, you know me very well. You are depicting me perfectly."

Cass blinked, staring at me for several seconds. "You sound like Adam."

"Duh. What about you? Are you real?"

"Of course," Cass replied, "although I have never figured out a way to prove it."

"Well, since you can't prove it, I'm declaring a mistrial. Case closed. Court adjourned. I'm real, you're real; we're all real, and you really look like you could use a hug. May I offer you a hug?"

Cass nodded wordlessly, and I embraced her. We held each other silently in the light of the massive red dream bubble, drifting silently through the endless void for what may have been the most precious few minutes of my life up until this point.

"Thank you." Cass finally broke the silence, releasing me, and although she still looked very tired, there was no longer a hollowness behind her eyes. "I have not seen anyone else for a very long time."

"How did you get all the way out here? Are you dreaming?"

"No, but you are," replied Cass, turning back to face the dream bubble. "I need your help."

My eyes flew open and I bolted upright, gasping for breath.

Xolotl, Glimmering Scales, and Inuyyak had their backs turned to me, and I had only a moment to take in the strange sight of Brygos's impending death.

"See?! Look!" Brygos, pinned against the bulkhead by Xolotl's invisible grip, struggled in vain to move his arms and point. Xolotl's knife hovered menacingly in midair, inches from Brygos's face and moving slowly closer. "He's not fucking dead!"

"Tell me another one," rumbled Inuyyak.

"I've heard enough," declared Glimmering Scales. "Shall we allow thiss murderouss vermin lasst wordss?"

"No need for that." Xolotl, still soaked in my projectile vomit, pressed the point of his knife against Brygos's neck. "You have told your final lie."

"What the shit?" Invoking the Force Aspect, I pushed Xolot's knife away from Brygos's neck. "When did you all decide to start acting like billionaires facing a wealth tax?"

Glimmering Scales, Xolotl, and Inuyyak all turned towards me, blinking in surprise.

"Knight?" Xolotl lowered his knife. "How iss thiss possible?"

"Simple," I muttered, wincing at the headache blossoming inside my skull. "Drink too much and you fall asleep. Then you wake up without remembering how the night ended. Humans call it blacking out."

"You did not black out," asserted Scales. "You choked on your vomit. While we tried to clear your throat, your breath sstopped and your heart sstilled. You died."

"Ah." Frowning, I tried to recall my dream. "Whoops." Cass had definitely been in my dream, and although I remember speaking with her, I forget what we said to each other. I should've written it down. "Well, I'm back. I guess this death was so lame it doesn't count. Can you go ahead and let Brygos down from the wall?"

"I second his motion," interjected Brygos. "Let Brygos down from the wall."

Glimmering Scales narrowed his eyes at Brygos. "Knight, thiss one very clearly poissoned you."

"I did not!" protested Brygos. "No one poisoned anyone! We were only drinking! Red and Purple over there drank the same stuff, and they weren't poisoned."

Inuyyak bared his fangs. "Call me Purple again."

"Jesus fucking Christ," I muttered, massaging both sides of my aching head. "It wasn't Brygos's fault. I drank way too much. He tried to slow me down. Get him off the wall."

Brygos slipped suddenly off the bulkhead, released by Xolotl's invisible grip. He hit the floor with a pained grunt, landing directly on his shell. "Fuck me, did you have to drop me on my back?" After flailing his limbs in a failed attempt to roll onto his stomach, Brygos stopped moving and took a deep breath.

"Need a hand?" I offered.

"No." Rolling as far as he could to one side, Brygos began to hyperextend his neck. "Fuck off."

"Whoa." I watched Brygos stretched his head all the way around the top of his shell. "Damn, you have a long neck. That's sick."

Glimmering Scales grimaced, exposing the tips of his fangs. "Yess, that iss nausseating."

"Truly ssickening," agreed Inuyyak.

"No," I tried to explain, "sick can also mean-"

"Oh, fuck off, all of you." Brygos pushed his head into the floor, using the extra leverage to flip himself onto his belly. "Why don't you stop flailing your tongues at me every ten fucking seconds?"

"It iss how we ssmell." Glimmering Scales's forked tongue flitted out of his mouth for the briefest of moments before disappearing. "I can tasste all of your odorss, and they are putrid."

"At least I don't spend my life wriggling around in the mud like a limbless fucking worm," retorted Brygos, getting back onto his feet.

"You think ssupporting yoursself with misshapen trunkss of flesh iss an advantage?" Inuyyak made no effort to conceal his laughter. "I could ssnap each of your fleshy sstalkss with a thought."

"I'd like to see you try, you fucking twat," replied Brygos taking a step towards Inuyyak.

Inuyyak responded with a gentle telekinetic push, knocking Brygos off-balance.

"Fuck!" Once again, Brygos fell scrabbling onto his back, howling obscenities at his tormentors. "You piss-guzzling shit-pustules!" he howled, arms and legs flailing. "I'll kill you! I'll rip your fucking skin off!"

Glimmering Scales collapsed against the bulkhead in a fit of sidesplitting laughter. "My sskin!" Scales howled, tears streaming from his eyes. "Careful, Inuyyak, he'ss going to rip off your sskin!"

Low, gravelly laughter rumbled from deep within Inuyyak's chest. "Perhapss my sskin will be ripped off if you flail harder," he suggested to the apoplectic Brygos.

"Okay, come on." I stepped forward and grabbed hold of Brygos, hauling him back up to his feet. "Let's all take a deep breath and-"

Brygos shoved me aside and lunged abruptly at Inuyyak, tackling the burly violet-scaled Northerner.

"OOF!" grunted Inuyyak as he fell onto his back, caught by surprise. He reared back and headbutted Brygos, momentarily dazing the angry turtle-consort. "Not bad for a welp."

Something about the unfolding spectacle of a sentient cobra and a sentient turtle trading insults while fighting spoke to a deep and absurd part of my soul. "Am I in the middle of an acid trip?" I watched Inuyyak seize Brygos with an invisible grip, lifting the angry turtle-consort off his feet and hurling him across the shuttle cabin. "Nothing about this scenario is even remotely normal."

Brygos hurtled across the room towards Xolotl, only to be stopped in mid-air by Xolotl's invisible grip.

"Watch where you throw your garbage," Xolotl said to Inuyyak, turning Brygos around and sending him flying back the way he came.

Brygos crashed into Inuyyak, sending both of them tumbling into a heap. Dazed, the two consorts sat up and rested back against the bulkhead to catch their breaths.

"All done?" I asked.

"Well done," wheezed Glimmering Scales, recovering from his torrent of laughter. "Not even the executionss brought me ssuch intensse mirth."

"Alright, everyone, come have a seat." I grabbed the jug of rum from the table, taking a swig and sitting cross-legged on the floor of the shuttlecraft. "We need to squash this beef."

"What iss that?" Glimmering Scales coiled up on the floor next to me, grabbing the rum jug out of my hands and taking a drink of his own. "What iss beef?"

"It iss a Human word for unressolved grievancess," explained Xolotl.

"SSilly word," chuckled Scales, holding the rum jug out to Xolotl, who declined and ducked into the bathroom. "Beef. Beef."

"Beef," echoed Inuyyak, accepting the rum from Scales. "A greasy word. I do not like it."

"Sounds like slang for failing," remarked Brygos. "Or fucking."

"Maybe even a combination of the two, but with grease," interjected Inuyyak, taking a deep drink from the rum jug. "Very unpleassant."

"Look at this," I remarked. "See what you're doing? Talking without trying to beat the shit out of each other? We need to do this all the time, especially after we land. You're the first cobra-folk any of Brygos's people have ever met. If we fuck up first contact-"

"You already fucked up first contact," interrupted Brygos, grabbing the rum from Inuyyak and taking his own swig. "The first thing you all tried to do was shoot me."

"If we fuck up second contact, this could get bloody." I motioned for Brygos to pass me the rum, but all the turtle-consort did was take another drink. "Then it'll take years to set things right, and we don't have that kind of time."

"No more grabbing me with invisible hands. No more knocking me on my back. We're fucking done with that, yeah?" Brygos took a third belt of rum, corked the jug, and stowed it in a floor compartment. "If my people see you try anything like that, they'll feed you to the marauders."

"If," replied Glimmering Scales.

Xolotl emerged from the bathroom, no longer soaked in my projectile vomit. "Your people would not ssurvive our people'ss wrath," he said, joining our impromptu floor circle. "Thiss iss fact, not threat."

"Well, since I have free will, and because my hands are working fine, I could kill you in your sleep," retorted Brygos. "That's fact, not threat."

Xolotl bared the tips of his fangs. "That iss clearly a threat."

"Nope, it's just a fact," maintained Brygos. "I don't need to kill you in your sleep, and I'm not going to kill you in your sleep, but if I wanted to kill you in your sleep, I absolutely could."

"I could kill you right now while you're awake," stated Glimmering Scales. "I will not break off your ribss and use them to sscramble up your innardss, but if I wanted to, I could do it with a thought. That iss fact, not threat."

"Okay, can we just…? Jesus fucking Christ." I exhaled loudly, massaging my temples. "No one in this room likes hearing someone else talking about killing you; hypothetically, humorously, or otherwise. Can we all agree on that?"

"I ssuppose," conceded Xolotl.

Brygos nodded. "Sure."

"Yess," admitted Glimmering Scales.

"I actually find it to be incredibly pleasing." Inuyyak grinned, a glint of nostalgia in his eyes as he reminisced about memories of who knows what. "Under ccertain mating-related ccircumsstancess."

"Oh." My frown deepened as I tried to imagine snake sex. How does that work? There are so many things I never looked up on youtube before Humanity was inconveniently wiped out. "Well. Okay, fair enough. But I don't think you'll be fucking anyone on Brygos's planet."

"That iss mosst likely true," agreed Inuyyak, "but I'm up for jusst about anything."

"Um." I blinked, trying to shake out the mental images of a cobra fucking a turtle. How could that possibly work? There's no way. I usually pride myself on having a very active imagination, but not right now. "Jesus fucking Christ. No."

"I have to assk: what iss a Jesus?" Glimmering Scales chimed in. "For all the time we have known each other, you continually repeat thiss word over and over again as if it iss ssomething we should know."

"Jesus was a famous person from my planet who tried to bring empathy into a harsh world," I replied. "He was a pretty cool guy, but with an incredibly toxic fandom. His fans tried to make him into a god. They wrote a bunch of fanfiction about him, and then they used that fanfiction to oppress and control other people."

"Who is Christ, then?" asked Brygos. "Why is it always Jesus fucking Christ? Does Christ ever fuck Jesus?"

Wordlessly, I reopened the floor compartment and grabbed the two-thirds empty jug of rum, uncorking it and taking another drink.