Spaceships came in all shapes and sizes, somewhat like the creatures of the galaxy. Tall, short, fat, thin, colorful, drab - all adjectives that could apply to both spacecraft and the people who piloted them.

This particular spaceship - and the man within it - had seen better days.

When the telephone began ringing, Niev was jolted from his peaceful slumber on the floor amidst a pile of energy cans, their gentle glow illuminating the otherwise pitch black space. He looked around groggily, then clutched his head as a dual wave of nausea and headache swept over him. Groaning, he fell back to the floor, upsetting several of the glowing cans and somehow managing to knock over a short coffee table in the process.

In doing so, the coffee table fell, cracking sharply across Niev's shin. The resulting roar of pain nearly drowned out the telephone, which was still steadily ringing, oblivious to the chaos it had caused.

Desperate by now to stop the noise, Niev hopped into an upright position, favoring his uninjured leg, and limped over to the telephone. Pressing the thin green pad beside a small speaker, he grunted, "Yeah?"

"Niev. Always great to hear your voice."

The soft sound of Niev's head hitting the metallic side of the spaceship echoed through the pigsty of a room.

"Niev?"

"I'm up, I'm up."

"I seem to have called at a bad time. Should I call back?"

Niev forced himself upright once again, determined not to waste this phone call that had cost him so much. "No, no. I'm fine."

"You're extremely hungover, from the sounds of it. I would recommend turning on your recording device."

Groaning in exasperation, Niev raised his finger, performing the monumental feat of pressing another button, starting a recording machine that would catch whatever he missed.

Knowing now that he didn't have to fully pay attention, Niev decided not to pay attention at all. As the voice of an all-too-familiar client blathered on in the background, he moved around his bedroom, kicking at cans, hopefully unloaded weapons, and holo-zines that no decent person would leave out in the open.

Making his way over to the microwave in the corner of the room, Niev barked, "Pastry!" and waited a moment for his food to be assembled and delivered. When a small beep pierced through the cloud of fuzz around his skull, he opened the small door and removed the hot pastry, wincing both from the temperature and his mounting headache.

Niev became vaguely aware of someone attempting to get his attention. It was around this time that he remembered he was still on the phone call with that dearly beloved client.

"Yeah, I'm here."

"So will you do it?"

"How much again?"

"Niev, it's for the good of the galaxy."

"The good of the galaxy doesn't pay my Dyson bill."

There was a long silence, interrupted periodically by a sigh of disappointment from the other end of the telephone. Finally, the person muttered, "50 blieling."

Niev choked on the pastry he was eating and pounded ferociously on his own chest, dislodging the piece of his breakfast - or lunch or dinner, he hadn't yet checked the time - and sending it sailing across the spaceship, where it hit the wall with a wet splat and slid down to live out the rest of its foreseeable days as the newest piece of filth coating the room.

"Niev? Are you okay?" the client asked as Niev coughed ferociously.

"Yeah. Fine," he sputtered, gasping for air. "50...blieling?"

"Yeah." The client sounded about as happy as a mother watching her child go to war. If the obscenely rich mineral driller had, in fact, ever been a mother, and if his piles upon piles of money had ever been children.

Niev had to admit, he liked the man better as an obscenely wealthy rich mineral driller with piles and piles of money than a mother with children.

Children don't pay the Dyson bill, after all.

"Thank you so much. Pleasure doing business with you," Niev told the man, feeling happier than he had since well before he drank his issues to the bottom of one too many bottles. "Means the world."

"Yes, I'm sure." The man's voice held a heavy note of distaste, as though he could see through the telephone and into Niev's frankly horrifying room.

He couldn't. Niev's telephone wasn't nice enough to have that feature.