It is a fundamental fact, throughout all of time and space, that The Morning After is dreadful.

It does not actually matter what event The Morning After follows—it will suck regardless. Of course, the conventional unwise tryst with its walk of shame is well known, as is the hangover with its ritual self-flagellation of scrolling through unremembered messages and compromising photos, but these are not the limits. The Morning After an argument, for example, with its brittle, icy air and shattered glass silence, or The Morning After grief, with its rinsed out, blank sky inertia. Even joy has its Morning After; the debt of happiness, the emptiness in the absence of anticipation, the lassitude of plans come to pass.

Phil's Morning After ironically came several days after the event, and he felt somewhat cheated by this; he would have much rather have gotten it over and done with quickly.

There is nothing quite like being the subject of disapproval for a significant other's parent—the instinctual defensiveness, the moment of affronted recognition, the sting of insecurity, the slight sense of loss as this nascent strand in your relationship tremors and dies, the hesitant desire to please. Having a meal in that sort of atmosphere is one of those Character Building moments that could qualify as mild torture in the right circumstance. What is less commonly acknowledged is that this dire strait can, in fact, be made worse if one is bold enough to drag three heavily injured aliens in to said parent's house in the dead of night. Particularly if said aliens seem to be recovering at a worryingly expedient rate for would-be world-enders.

A normal human would have never recovered from the injuries inflicted by the crash, their body irreparably mulched. Only four days had passed since the disaster, however, and the Vizion crew were already starting to look significantly less like minced meat.

On the second night following the crash, with the sun setting bloodily in the living room window and casting strange shadows in the hall, Viz dragged himself briefly back to wakefulness in an effort as Herculean as it was unprecedented.

With nothing else to dress the trio in, it had been deemed best to leave the aliens in their ragged, navy-grey uniforms. They had a great resemblance to limp Halloween decorations, all multicoloured and wrapped in bandages, and were hauntingly alive with twitches and stricken noises. Against their direction, Mrs Sundae had lingered in their midst, monitoring each involuntary flinch and hitch in breath, her lined face pinched; everyone else crowded supportively in the doorway.

Finally, Viz came to, disorientated and dazed. Mrs Sundae, with calm born of wary caution, knelt down in front of him.

"I want to give you pain meds," she told him in a clear, slow voice. "I know it's a long shot, but if I draw out the molecules, would you be able to recognise what you can have?"

It took a full minute for Viz to cobble together an answer. Black blood dripped from between his cracked lips when he did.

"'M a ch'mt'ch," he croaked. "Y's."

'Chemtech?' That was new; Viz apparently had a life outside of being a massive prick. The new fact sat oddly in Phil's mind, like a pebble in his boot; it made Viz three dimensional in a way he hadn't been before. Indeed, it seemed too small a thing for the shift in perspective it wrought. The phantom sensation of alien viscera was still slick and sickening beneath his fingernails.

Still, the result of that was they could (thankfully) knock the aliens out completely, thus putting an end to the disquieting zombie shuffles from the far end of the kitchen that had made cooking feel like a haunted stealth operation. The three of them had spent the intervening days medicated into a placidity reminiscent of piles of socks.

Now, though, it was morning again, and, against all ordnance of sense, reason, head injuries, and drugs, the bastards were beginning to actually wake up.

There had been a vague but unified effort to ensure Smiley's mother would not be left alone with the aliens, half-dead and helpless though they were. Today, this fell to Phil—Smiley had dashed out in the early hours of the morning, running late for her plethora of university classes; Zach had vanished in a comedically literal puff of smoke and was hanging around a lamp post outside, Walkman in hand; Phred, having used up all his leave several months ago for a prank, had been forced to return to work. Phil was reluctantly coerced into remaining behind by scraps of honour he didn't know he had and a chronic lack of other places to be.

Which might have been a mistake, because now, quite unfortunately, Mrs Sundae seemed to be expecting him to do something.

So here he was, doing Some Thing.

Staring is, in all contexts except an optometrist's office, a bold move. Assertive at best, rude far more often—a not inconsiderable number of people would consider it a direct challenge. With this in mind, Phil made the fact that he was doing it as obvious as possible as he watched Viz's various attempts to reorient the fingers of one of his hands. Unfortunately for this endeavour, Viz seemed to be doing an equally excellent job at ignoring him, assisted by his not inconsiderable blind spot, and so the two were at something of an unequally awkward impasse. To keep himself entertained in the meanwhile, Phil found himself carefully studying the alien.

Viz, he decided, looked faintly bizarre without his glasses—and, considering the glasses in question, that was saying something. His lonely eye was a large and perfectly round, a glossy, black sphere that seemed somehow more out-of-place in that hard face than the machinery filling the other socket. Viz being somehow made of metal made more sense than the prospect of him being organic and vulnerable. Whenever he blinked, which seemed a slightly painful affair that he did as infrequently as possible, the conduits flared with a small volley of sparks. The wide split of his mouth was too uneven a rictus to look natural and, without the angles of the glasses, it threw everything else into a faintly disturbing unbalance. There was something about him reminiscent of a button-eyed voodoo doll. The stitches twisting his lips into their discordant snarl were messy and genuine, unlike Quiz's neat fakes.

(Because they were fakes—tidy little loops of thread that weren't holding together wound or keeping anything in place. They sat either side of his mouth like snakebite piercings, like a poor attempt to imitate Viz.)

Phil wondered about that, sometimes... the blue alien was so out of place... Where the hell did he fit in to this enterprise?

"How long?"

"What?" Suddenly wrong-footed, Phil blinked himself back into the room to find Viz meeting his gaze. He wasn't sure how long they had been looking at each other, but it had made something instinctive in him feel slightly uneasy.

"How long," Viz wheezed, barely comprehensible. "Has it been... since we saw you?" One of those grimly determined blinks, a small spasm of circuitry. "You look older."

"Oh. About seven years."

That single eye briefly unfocused and Viz nodded slowly to himself; Phil could see him shuffling a deck of cards in his head, a plan written on the back of each one: Nine of Diamonds, Four of Clubs, Ace of Spades...

Sensing he had been discarded, Phil resumed his examination. Altogether, the aliens cut a fairly forlorn and desolate picture, slumped in the far corner of the kitchen by the bucket of recycling, and one being awake did little to remedy that. They exuded a general air of exhausted misery that Phil was certain was not warranted this early in the day, regardless of how many failed landings you had recently been involved in.

"Is there something you want, human?" Viz's expression of disdain was steady as a heat mirage but still indelibly there. "You're staring."

"Yeah, actually. I got a list if you're not going anywhere?" With a touch of mockery, he left a considerate pause, as though Viz might announce a desire to head to the shops or drown himself in a river, but there was nothing. "First off, it's Phil. Phil Eggtree, if I'm feeling pedantic—and I am. It's gonna get real confusing real quick if you try and call everyone 'human' or 'earthling' or some other weird, slightly derogatory nickname."

"Noted," the red alien sneered.

"Secondly... why Earth? Of all the places to destroy, why here? Why because of me? I was a kid! I didn't know any better than to not leave early... but also why the hell is that the metric for ending the world?! What's wrong with you?! Of all the planets, in all the universe, with all the reasons in the world, why did you come here? Why am I the one stuck with you?"

There was a tinny scrape of chair leg on lino and Phil felt his guts wilt slightly. Ah yes—Mrs Sundae, sat just behind him; the one person he hadn't wanted to mention the doomsday scheme in front of. And certainly not so cavalierly; that the strangers in your kitchen had attempted planeticide was the sort of news to be broken gently and at arm's length. A burn of glaring eyes started at the base of Phil's skull.

Either unconcerned or ignorant to this development, Viz considered the question for a second, exposed eye darting involuntarily to his crewmates and lingering on their sleep-still faces. When he spoke, he did so slowly, each word as clear as it could be through scorched lips, and Phil wasn't certain if that was because Viz was attempting to impress upon him the severity with which he spoke, or if the weight were the result of the effort it took to speak at all.

"Earth was never in serious danger... or at least, it wasn't intentionally. We were using you to see what humans would do... when placed under various degrees of stress... you were selfless, inquisitive, without... judgement. Promising ambassadors for your species. The CryoBeam... misfired. Diz's inventions don't always... work as they should." Phil absorbed this all uneasily. He believed him—or he believed parts of it... he believed Viz trusted what he was saying. In this instance, however, Phil had the darkling suspicion that Diz's device had worked precisely as intended. "The rest is private."

"I'm asking you why you wanted to explode my world and you're really hitting me with 'confidential'?"

"Yes." Viz was better at staring than Phil; this seemed incredibly unfair for a guy with such mismatched eyes.

Shrugging, Phil adopted a nonchalant air designed to aggravate.

'We have other ways of making you talk.'

"Alright, well it's not like you're going anywhere. I'll get it out of you eventually."

"You will not." Apparently done with the matter, Viz lay back against the cabinets and closed his eye.

"I'll ask Diz," Phil persisted. "Or Quiz."

For some reason, Viz found this prospect very funny. The fit of hysterics took him with the violence of a seizure, limbs rattling against the floor, his gash of a mouth a rotted pumpkin grin. Laughing was probably not advisable in his condition; this did not seem to be enough to stop him though. Hacking coughs broke through the hilarity and Viz doubled over, still smiling; Mrs Sundae's agitated help was shakily waved off.

The rough noise bounced from cabinet to cabinet, and Phil could feel his nerves tightening with every reverberation, but there was a second inclination buried there too—the urge to somehow pick Viz apart and understand the joke.

"As... as if th-they'd tell you!" A dribble of blood ran down Viz's chin and began falling in droplets to darken his jacket. Jagged amusement lit up his black eye like a point of metal appearing through dark waters to impale a swimmer; Phil considered the possibility that Viz was still high. "Q-Quiz doesn't even... know... th-the whole story."

Frowning, Phil filed that little bit of information away into that small, analytical corner of his brain that was constantly looking over his shoulder for shiny bits of clue like a particularly judicious magpie. If Viz wasn't going to play ball, and Quiz was his usual ignorant self... well that left Diz. He didn't really want to have to ask Diz; he had a feeling asking Diz would be a very bad thing to do.

For a long moment, Phil considered the prospect, turning it over in his mind like a coin with the numbers worn off... and then he made the executive decision to drop it. The question he'd wanted answered since childhood could wait a little longer... he wasn't going to beg.

"So, what happens after this?" He asked instead, after Viz had gasped himself into silence. "You can't just stay here."

"I assure you, I have no intention of that." Viz sounded slightly offended by the suggestion. "We had already remained in your star system... far longer than I'd have liked." A dry sigh rasped through the burned gulch of his throat, a noise like tearing paper and his eye shuddered closed. "Once we get back in to orbit... we'll be gone."

Mollified, Phil nodded and let the subject drop for more vital matters.

"Who were the guys Quiz was with?" When Viz only looked confused, he elaborated. "When Quiz came to be our new overlord, he showed up with two purple dudes I literally never saw again. Buddies of yours?"

"Oh." Viz closed his eye again. "Holograms."

"You have those?"

"We certainly had them... before Quiz wandered off. Were the two projections identical?"

"I think so. To be honest, I was more focused on Quiz and the multiple laser guns he installed in our classroom."

"Unbelievable... four hundred settings and he uses it to make copies..."

"That's what you want to focus on? You do realise you've nearly died since then—maybe be a little more worried about that. Also, you're really lively for a guy whose guts I was poking seventy hours ago, what gives?"

"Tissue repair nanites... standard issue injection."

"You got inoculated against spaceship crashes? Wild. You can get splattered across six miles of tarmac and be fine, but I get three different flu jabs and still wind up sneezing come winter. Life is unkind."

"My heart... bleeds for you."

"You joke, but that is actually a thing that happened last night. Also your lungs fell out. Like, at least three times. I put them back in back to front at first, but they should be good now."

"Stop talking... about my... lungs."

"You got it. Hey—if you're all aliens, how comes you all speak English."

"Do you ever shut up?" Viz groaned. The laughing seemed to have exhausted him.

"I'm a curious guy. I've got seven years worth of questions here, Viz, and a captive audience. You sure you don't want to tell me why blowing up Earth was on the To-Do list?"

"Rot," Viz instructed bitterly.

"Your funeral. So, why English? Did the gits colonise space? Are you from the dark and distant future where the upside is we traverse the stars, but the downside is everyone is British? Second question; are you guys ants or lizards? You seem like both. Is being English part of the identity crisis?"

Viz started to respond (though that response was far more likely to be 'fuck off' than anything constructive) but a voice beat him to it. It wasn't a voice that sounded as though it knew it was answering a question, for it didn't speak with any of the inflection one would associate with such a thing, and the words were blurry and soft. It sent chills skittering along Phil's nerves.

"All language is... endlessly recycled..."

Diz—awake again, at last. Awake and speaking, which was altogether more conceptually worrying than 'awake and staring blankly at a wall for four hours' (his previous best effort.)

Though he had succeeded in lifting his head, Diz didn't seem to actually be looking at any of them. There were bruised, plum-hued smudges across the visible angular eye, the other covered by the bandage which had been holding his head together. Like this, he was Viz inverted, a mirror self. Once more, his voice was eerily calm, apparently unruffled, thick like a bitten tongue and full of the drowsy, molten clouds of someone still half asleep. He didn't sound like something that would kill you; he didn't sound like anything particularly alive either.

"... We had to learn... your dialect and... grammar patterns..." Diz continued. "But it's... not that different, really..."

A slither was working its way down Phil's spine at a decent clip, a sensation like stepping barefoot on a hurrying snake. The thought of Diz lying there, silently, listening disturbed him far more than it ought have.

A megalomanic Viz might be, but at least Phil knew for certain he was nuts; Diz was a liar, and Phil was full of the uneasy awareness that he really didn't understand the green alien at all.

"Heyyy, Diz... how long have you been awake, exactly?"

"Oh, a while... a while... I could hear you... talking..."

Having the alien confirm every one of his suspicions was, unsurprisingly, not a reassurance. Indeed, Phil took it as his cue to bow out momentarily and let captain and lieutenant deal with each other.

(Besides, if Diz and Viz were both awake, there was a chance Quiz might be too and, with the ratio of crazy to sane in the room coming in at a solid 2:1, Phil felt sorely in need of decent company. Which wasn't an option, so Quiz would have to do.)

A person is at their least stealthy when sneaking somewhere, but this was fortunately no impediment for Phil, who had lost Viz's attention entirely the second Diz started speaking. Still, the staring of their laser point eyes caught about his legs like tripwires, like something physical.

"You kept your arms. Congratulations." Sarcasm dripped liberally from Viz's words, other emotions insignificant under the mockery. "You couldn't really afford to lose any more."

Diz's vacant gaze sharpened considerably beneath the bandages, his eyes focusing keenly on a spot slightly to the left of Viz. When he responded, a great deal of the mistiness had seeped from his voice leaving it cold and clean-cut like something newly made. There was no personality to it. There wasn't even anger.

"I could survive losing... another arm. Lose one more eye... and you're finished." A smile split the calm facade then, a crazed and awful thing of bloodied teeth, and peeling gums, and hate. "I'm winning."

"Treachery," Viz snarled, the semblance of humanity dropping out of his voice; there was something strange and subvocal clicking in the base of his throat. "Mutiny. Insubordination. Slimy, murderous wretch—you really think yourself a leader? You think you can take my works from me?"

Picking his way around the absurdly long alien legs sprawling over the floor, Phil was struck with a sudden sympathy for mice, crawling along the skirting board, oblivious of and yet subject to the inscrutable whims of foreign monsters who would smite them if they saw them. Each inch in his journey to Quiz felt like it might invite the attention of the aliens, about whom the air was suddenly peppery and volatile.

Diz calmed, as though sanity were an item in exchange between them.

"You were not... aboard ship. I was the... highest c-commanding... officer. I was leader... of Vizion."

"Commanding Officer in a crew... consisting of a useless nobody, a simpleton, and a beast. Don't be stupid—I've enough of that with Quiz... playing 'Abandon Ship'." Had circumstances not been what they were, Viz would have been shaking his lieutenant. As it was, his eye was once more slipping closed. "You've not got the temperament for leadership... and you know it. You'd destroy everything for petty satisfaction... and then wonder why everyone was on fire. You've never made a long term plan in your life."

(Phil was close enough to nudge Quiz's skinny ankle, and he did so with as much subtlety as such an action can command. Less subtle was Quiz himself, who sat bolt upright with a yelp like a stepped-on dog toy, which Phil found funny until the alien curled up with a groan. Both his coworkers ignored him, entirely fixated on each other like animals with their teeth buried in flesh.)

"You would be nowhere without me," Diz whispered, and suddenly—dreadfully—he sounded like himself again. Snarling, Viz kicked his lieutenant with his unbroken leg.

"I'm stuck in this fool's kitchen on a worthless mudball with you. You've yet to offer me anything of value. I thought I at least had your loyalty, even if it meant dealing with everything else. You disappoint me."

His voice had no emphasis, nor was it louder than that which should be warranted in casual conversation, nor was that the harshest thing he had said that afternoon. But those words struck with the weight of lead, branding-iron orange and heavy. Quite suddenly, Diz looked distressed, as though he had somehow missed a step on an emotional level and was struggling to regain equilibrium. Then a claw shot out of its lair behind his eyes, seized the stray feeling, and dragged it back in to the void, leaving the face beneath the bandages serene as a doll's once more.

A silence fell between them, one that started with some expectation of being filled, as though Viz had anticipated a vitriolic refutation, but stretched out and went cold. Still they watched each other, unmoored and drifting, uncomprehending and inscrutable.

Fascinated, Phil settled against the wall and let Quiz lean his head against his legs. Staring at Viz and Diz was no longer something provocative—it was almost compulsive. An almost indecent fascination with the grimy inner-workings of whatever friendship this was, the immediate lack of empathy the spectacle engendered. Memories of sitting alone in a friend's living room while their parents ignored him and screamed about divorce were making an unwanted yet searing resurgence.

Perhaps in an attempt to dispel this tension (or perhaps a natural consequence of so recently having had rebar removed from his throat) Quiz coughed, genteel and unobtrusive (as genteel and unobtrusive as one can feasibly be after having metal shove itself rudely through one's neck.) Almost immediately, tiny crystals began to form in the air, the atmosphere shifting its weight, a ponderous disapproval turning its leaden gaze upon the little corner Phil had unwisely sequestered himself in.

'Thanks Quiz. Really wanted them to remember me. Is this what you do? You interrupt them before they kill each other? What part do you play in this mess?'

Silence reigned in iron. Nobody seemed to even be breathing. There was recognition in that silence, a mutual awareness of each other and all the emotions that came alongside—relief at seeing each other alive, dull surprise, old anger, resentment, reassurance, dismay, affection. Phil could feel the tension growing like thick, flowering vines, a blossoming abundance of what could only be described as hostile awkwardness.

Finally, Viz spoke up; what had once been cold command had a bite to it now, a bitter petulance like over-boiled pride.

"We will need s-some form of transmitter to... to contact the mothership."

"C-couldn't we... j-just use a remote?" Quiz helpfully volunteered between coughs. "Isn't... isn't th-this exactly t-the sort of thing you... b-built them for?"

"Mine's broken, clod."

"And mine is aboard the main ship. Any more bright ideas, Quiz?" Quiz frowned and touched something in one of his pockets before hurriedly sweeping the expression away. Anyone looking his way would have seen through the paper-thin poker face, but nobody except Phil was paying any attention to Quiz at all. "Diz, seeing as you're so endlessly capable, I'm leaving this to you. Contact the ship. Do it quickly."

"I—"

"Questioning my orders, soldier?"

Whatever Diz had been about to say died on his tongue, and he wrestled in its absence for a long second, looking quite as though he would choke on the corpse. With spitting bad-humour, he thrust out a shaking hand, the arm trembling uncertainly in the air between him and Viz, long fingers twitching spasmodically.

"... I was going to ask for your glasses. I need something to work with." When Viz seemed tempted to refuse, that slight, sinister smile started to ease its way back in to the blankness of Diz's face. "I'll give them back good as new... promise."

With visible reluctance, the shades were handed over and Diz snatched them up with a vengeful, vulturous delight. He began to reel the fine, golden wires out from their housing in the frame, looping them about his bandaged fingers in a manner that was as childishly spiteful as it was brokenly clumsy. Somehow the pettiness was as unsurprising as the violence.

Several seconds passed before Phil realised Quiz wasn't choking any more—the muffled wheezes and bony creaks were the result of the alien laughing.

"What's the joke?" Phil asked out the side of his mouth.

Quieting his snickering best he was able, Quiz eased part of his jacket from the bandaging bound about his middle. He reached awkwardly into his pocket and, after a few attempts, extracted something. Something rectangular, regularly indented, and obviously metallic. Something Phil had once seen in the possession of Diz...

A remote. A damaged remote certainly, but Phil could see a red light blinking from within the depths of Quiz's jacket, so the thing had to be in some working order.

There was a puckish mischievousness to Quiz's little smile, a very brief flash of childish, spiteful glee and, amid it, something searching, as though he were looking for Phil to approve or enjoy the little joke. And Phil did appreciate it—mildly inconveniencing an already deeply inconvenienced Viz was very funny. The unwise sort of funny, like dressing up as a hotdog and giving a lion a striptease. It was the sort of joke Phil wanted to watch blow up from a distance... relocation to the living room might be wise.

With the same stealth he had used to reach Quiz, Phil backed carefully out of the kitchen; Diz's alterations to the glasses were becoming increasingly violent, and the air in there had taken in the dry-weather crackle of a storm front.

In the living room sat Mrs Sundae, who he had rather forgotten about but who had, unfortunately, not returned the favour. She sat by the window, and the book open on her lap did nothing to dispel the impression that she was standing sentinel. Something about the erectness of her head, the straight line of her spine, and the marble stillness of it all reminded Phil of a statue that had come alive to wait for him.

"You didn't tell me they were trying to end the world."

"No—forgive me, That Was Wrong." Feeling both a need to reassure and a little like he'd been called to the principle's office, Phil sat in the opposing armchair and did his best to look reasonable. "However, they are now all considerably less dangerous than they were seven years ago, at which point they were beaten by an eleven year old who went on to fail calculus... so how scared are we really?"

'Kinda scared actually. But also... not at all. Like distant thunder, a faraway storm; I am very scared, but it's happening somewhere else, to someone else.'

"Hm." Mrs Sundae's searching black eyes scraped at the meat of his head in a fashion he hoped Smiley would never inherit. "Did you used to escape school often?"

"Oh, every Wednesday." 'And more often in my dreams.' "Not going to hold it against me?"

"I trust you've matured." Apparently satisfied, the old woman turned her head back to her book, sunlight glistening on the web of fine lines about her eyes. "Smiley never missed a single day. One hundred percent attendance. Thirteen years and counting."

"See, I had that too, after I hacked admin."

Mrs Sundae laughed, a rough, singular sound like a cough. Phil smiled back and elected to ignore the loony-tunes level of crashes and bangs happening in the room he'd just left.

The joke had reached its punchline.


While he was deliriously pleased to have gotten a rise out of Viz, Diz was considerably less pleased when the incensed captain threw himself at him and knocked him to the tiles with all the delicacy of a collapsing building. Diz choked on the mirth lodged like a shard of glass in his chest, and the burst of breath tasted like bruises. Viz's panting was loud in his ear, sandpaper and smoke, second only to the wet pounding of his own heart. Diz grappled blindly with his attacker; his mangled fists were numb, his eyes leaking down his cheeks, and he wasn't sure he was breathing at all anymore. None of this mattered—he scrabbled at Viz as though he could kill him with his lifeless hands.

His thoughts were swimming at the bottom of a black hole, dividing and multiplying in the blackness like the endless echoes of water droplets inside a cave. Whisper, whisper, whisper, went the back of his head, nonsense languages and singsong snatches—fragments of memory and feelings. He couldn't understand any of it. He wished it would just be quiet. He wondered if he could divorce his own mind.

"Give... them... back," Viz demanded in a strained hiss.

Ignoring the lancing pains that shot through his chest, the grating in his elbows, Diz waved his fingers tauntingly in front of Viz's functioning eye. They continued to clench and coil long after he'd stopped the conscious effort to move them.

"Have... haven't... got them!" And he hadn't—he had no idea where they'd been flung to. He barely knew where he was.

Even those few words winded him, but it was worth the world to see Viz knocked off the gilded pedestal he'd created for himself. A savage sort of satisfaction that nothing else could provide, seeing someone with the arrogance of a god beaten to the floor.

'Not so above it all now, are you? Just like me, just like me...'

The brutal joy of it was almost enough to make him forget that he was lying in the mud with his leader. Almost enough to make him forget that, when all was said and done, they would help each other to their feet, carry on as normal...

Almost, but not quite.

He hated that he could remember a time when he had admired his captain. He hated that he could never escape the echoes of that old respect, the antique urge to listen and obey. More than anything, Diz hated the warm sense of camaraderie he felt even now, as Viz raised his hand to strike his recalcitrant friend—

"Viz! They're here. I've got them, come on... get off him..."

A smoky shape swum in to the white glow of the ceiling behind Viz's head like a cloud or strange, ineffective god. It's upper set of arms were flapping placatingly at Viz, the lower pair skittering, feather-light and fretful, over Diz's chest and shoulders.

Quiz to the rescue. How quaint. It had been the other way around when they were children. It had been the other way around most of their adult lives too.

Still draped inelegantly about the floor, Viz snatched the proffered shades. With some difficulty, he dragged himself upright, jamming his glasses into their usual position where they connected with a serviceable click. Eyes hidden, he managed to look a little more intimidating, eternal scowl bolstered by the exaggerated glare lent by the machinery. Not wanting to be beaten by Viz's pitiful effort, Diz dragged himself into something that might have glanced at a sitting position sometime, several years ago. Quiz, secure in his mediocrity, remained curled up on the ground, the most comfortable of the three.

"Establish a connection with... with what you've got. The humans must have... some viable substitutes lying around—work with that."

Diz smiled in response and resisted the urge to point out that Viz's glasses had been replaced lopsidedly.

"Whatever grievances you two have, whatever complaints you gave to air—forget it. We won't get anywhere if you insist on acting like children." The fractured lenses glared in to them both. "This is more important than your whining."

Diz tried to speak and felt something tear wetly in his throat. 'Complaints—where do we keep the list? Do you want them chronologically or alphabetically? In order of importance or how much I despise you for it?' Viz was staring guardedly at him and only continued when it became clear that the irritable movements of Diz's mouth wouldn't yield any actual speech.

"Contact the ship."

Then to Quiz:

"Stay out of the way."

This would have been a dramatic and appropriate juncture for Viz to storm out of the room, but that was a little more than he could manage; he settled for claiming the corner space, unassailable in the juncture between the two walls.

Little as he wanted to admit it, Diz had to concede that Viz made a very good point. This solar system was closing in about them like like a noose and, though he couldn't quite remember how long they had spent among these stars, he did have the sense that they had turned in to eyes. There were matters more pressing than decades old resentment, an endless pursuit which would tear the three of them from space if they abandoned it.

So yes. He would play along. He would get them all out of here. And then he would rend his captain apart at the seams.

'Everything will be fine, Viz,' those smiling, shadowed eyes seemed to promise.

What a shame it is, that Diz doesn't keep his promises, and that Viz doesn't learn.


"Sir, we've found something."

Stood stiffly at attention, as he always was, the Guard-Agent approached the figure silhouetted grimly in the chair at the window, who spoke to him without looking.

"Is the something useful?"

"We don't know sir."

"... Can you make it useful?"

"We don't know that either, sir."

"Well what am I supposed to do?"

"You... you should come take a look sir..."

There was a theatrically heavy sigh.

"Alright then."

With an irritable huff, Nitwit rose from the window seat he'd been enjoying and flopped carefully after the Guard-Agent, bemoaning the inconvenience of this mysterious 'something'. Their progress was slow; a single foot and one, half-blind eye did not make for exciting top speeds, but the featureless metal walls of the complex were simple enough to navigate and, after seven years of residence, the alien was beginning to get used to where things were.

Much had changed in those years. Deciding to succeed where his parents had failed—with the same amount of success enjoyed by Hitler succeeding Napoleon—Nitwit had decided to give himself a title which made him seem intelligent.

He was now know as Dr. Nitwit. Not 'doctor'—that was far too many letters and syllables.

He had also assumed complete control of Zone 5.1. With the aid of one of Viz's chameleonic devices and some synaptic dampening tools, he was able to sneak in to the facility and pose as an eccentric funder who wanted to be more involved in the process. But this was an achievement that paled in comparison to the grandiose addition to his name and he could never quite recall why he'd gone to the trouble. A sense of nostalgia, perhaps, a loyalty to a memory of three weirdos who broke him and a hundred others out of a convict ship headed to the Gallows Belt. Or maybe he was bored.

Ah well—the why didn't matter. All 'whys' eventually disappear; his simply did so faster than average.

They reached the Screens with minimal complaining. It took him a few seconds of squinting, head tilting, and near overbalancing before Nitwit worked out what was presented to him, but that was less a commentary on him and more a result of the state of the thing itself. Really, it was impressive he realised what it was at all.

The main screen displayed a grimy mass, a split-open ball of metal all dark with char and earth, strapped to the bed of a hauler truck. A time stamp near the bottom indicated, with its constant scrolling of figures, that this was live footage from somewhere with a name Nitwit couldn't pronounce. The pixilation of the image, the distortion of digital miles, left an indescribable amount up to the imagination, but it was obvious that this new 'thing' was unrecognisable. Still, it was quite interesting to look at, and so he spent a good deal of time changing the angle of the footage, sending it to different screens, the Guard Agent stood patiently besides him.

Something stirred, after a while, in Nitwit's empty head. Murky memories spun through the dreary greyness of his mind: a grating voice and endless plans; cool blue skin and heedless ambition; black eyes, rough hands, and rage. Nights spent handing tools along a chain of arms in companionable quiet. Nights spent watching stars fall out of the sky every time the red one yelled 'FIRE'. Nights spent helping make the thing before him, now so terribly ruined...

"That's the bosses' ship."

He knew then that he had to have it, even if he didn't know why, or how to get it, or why, or what to do with it, or why, or why, or why...

To miss people you don't remember is a very strange thing. The image of that ship, made of wavering pixels, was stuck to the back of Nitwit's eye like so many contact lenses before it, and it wouldn't come back out. He would have the ship, and maybe then it could explain to him why he wanted it.

All good things happen with time (and money.) Zone 5.1 had amassed quite the fortune during its years of inactivity, and Nitwit put it all towards purchasing the ship over dark channels which were flogging the craft to the highest bidder; by the closing of the week, the Vizion ship was carefully tucked away at the facility, and Nitwit was left wondering how to get back to his window seat.