31

Demi already felt claustrophobic, even as Friss adjusted his position for the fifth time in as many seconds. She watched as Lodka floated away, or they floated away from Lodka, she wasn't certain which way that was going. Over to one side, she saw Lap and Briyun floating away in one direction, to the other, Bognrd. Everyone encapsulated in a weird bubble that had enveloped them as Lodka had shot them out into the emptiness of space. She had not taken well to the new viral technology.

"How does this even work?" She prodded the worryingly thin membrane of the bubble and it bounced back into shape, causing the entire surface to wobble. "How much air does this thing have? Will Lodka come back to us? Why am I even here?"

She shouted that last part and the words seeped out through the membrane of the bubble and became lost to the vacuum. Bognrd scowled toward them, curled in a tiny ball to fit his bubble, the red colour of his skin becoming brighter and brighter, as though he were about to ignite and become a self-sustaining ball of fusion, a mini star powered by pure rage. Lap and Briyun appeared to be playing cards. They seemed happy.

"It's an oxygen producing life-bubble. No food, but I'm pretty certain Lodka's tantrum will come to an end before we need to resort to cannibalism. Fairly certain." He glanced at Demi's thigh in a way that looked less lascivious and more hungry. Demi wondered whether she had the strength to kill him before he killed her. "Look, she felt hurt, betrayed and suffered unimaginable pain. That's enough to make any organic ship cranky. The bright side is that she can now take us to the final part of the Matriculation Doll plan."

He had that doll in his hands, protecting it as though his life depended on it. Ignoring the fact that he didn't even know its proper name, no matter how many times she corrected him, the actual plan had, after a fashion, worked so far. He still hadn't said what they were stealing, or where, or how the new viral technology actually worked.

"About that plan ..." Demi tried to move her thigh out of Friss' sight before he started salivating, but there was nowhere to go. "I think it's about time you brought us all in on what, exactly, the plan is and what we're stealing."

"It is?" Friss considered that then shrugged his shoulders. "Later. Right now, we need to do something important. Something vital and life-affirming. We're going to sing. To keep our spirits up. By the way, would you say you were more muscular, or fatty in your body composition? For future reference."

"You are not eating me!" She slapped the bubble membrane and it all wobbled and shivered. Friss looked more than a little disappointed. "Lodka's going to come back for us. Soon. And no-one will have to eat anybody! And I'm not singing!"

Off to the side, Bognrd had started to chew on the membrane of his bubble, claws ripping and scratching at the one thing that now kept him alive. He thrust his horns upward, the membrane stretching until the entire thing looked like one of those plastic bouncy things kids used to play on, centuries before, on the Earth-That-Was. Demi never understood how anyone could 'hop' in space, but Bognrd certainly made it look possible, if he didn't break the enclosing bubble first and asphyxiate himself.

She glanced the other way. At least Lap and Briyun appeared to be taking it all calmly and relaxed. At least they were. Now they appeared to be engaged in a tight-spaced slap fight, sticking thumbs in the corners of mouths, screaming into each other's faces. Biting each other. It looked brutal, but there was nothing Demi could do about it. If she even wanted to.

Friss had turned away from her, pouting. She wasn't certain if she'd upset him by not agreeing to be his lunch, or by not agreeing to sing with him, or by not agreeing in general. He cradled the Matryoshka doll to his chest and sang to it, in soft, lullaby-like words. She recognised the language, her implant able to translate Earth-That-Was languages. She thought it would be Russian, a long-dead language much like the country itself, what with his alleged ancestry. It wasn't. It was Esperanto.

With nothing else to do, she watched as Lodka drifted further away. Or they drifted further away. Demi still couldn't tell. The huge organic ship had turned away from them, showing the crevice in the surface of the bulbous upper section, the dangling, leg-like appendages appearing to walk away from them. Without expecting any success, she reached out with her implant, trying to connect with the ship.

It felt odd. So far out into space, with nothing around them. She couldn't even sense the feeling that she could only describe as 'white noise' that she heard whenever the implant was near technology that it could sense, but not connect with. Analogue machinery that had no communication methods. No ones and zeroes zipping along strands of twisted metal, or flickering light along optical cables. Not even the background noise of wireless networks or wireless power transfers. There was ... nothing.

A peace that she hadn't experienced since she had the implant surgically inserted into her brain. Not that she had peace before, but, before, that lack of peace was something more tangible. Sounds that she could drown out with music. The hustle and bustle of countless trillions of people all living their own lives and loving the sound of their own voices. But, sometimes, she could find somewhere. Somewhere quiet, away from people, away from life, and she would hear nothing.

This wasn't that kind of peace. It was different and she didn't like it. So quiet, she could hear her own blood rushing through her veins. It made her feel hungry. That thigh of hers had started to look appetising even to her and they had only been stranded for a few minutes. Desperate, she reached out further than she had ever tried, grasping for something, anything, that she could connect to, begging Lodka to come back and stave off the possibility of Demi and Friss fighting it out to see who would get to devour whose flesh first.

"It's hopeless!" She pushed her glasses back up her nose and marvelled at the fact she hadn't lost them several times by now. "Absolutely hopeless."

"Oh, Demi. There's always Hope." He patted her thigh, sympathetically, at first, before squeezing it to test how tender she was. She slapped his hand so hard it stung her own fingers. "I owe her a lot of money, a lot, and she always manages to find me to pay her back. It's always 'Oh, no! Hope! I thought I had lost you on Flbererhd Beta, but you found me again!' ... It'd be a lot funnier if you knew her."

He sighed, coughed, pointed out beyond the bubble membrane at nothing and then lapsed into silence, knowing full well that if you had to explain the joke, it wasn't funny. Juxtaposing the word 'hope', meaning 'a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen', as opposed to the name, 'Hope', which would make it so easy to misconstrue and allow hilarity to follow. Demi didn't find it funny, even before the belated, pitiful attempt at explaining it.

She decided to take in the limited scenery once again. Lodka had drifted so far away, or they had drifted (in space, with no discernible objects to use as markers, such a thing was impossible to deduce. Someone, or thing, was drifting, though, and Demi felt more comfortable thinking it was Lodka. She didn't know why), that Demi could only see the slightest outline of the ship, far, far in the distance. She tried, futilely, to reach out with her implant again.

When that didn't work, as she fully expected, she looked away to see how Bognrd had fared. Somehow, during his exertions in trying, stupidly, to escape his life-bubble, he had managed to turn himself upside-down, his bare backside pointing toward Demi and Friss. One of his ridiculously muscular arms appeared caught between his equally ridiculously muscular legs, the other trapped between the horns upon his head. He looked miserable but, somehow, still looked more angry than someone who had just deposited lottery winnings in to their bank account, typed in the wrong PIN number and blocked their entire account, while the bank manager decided that now was the time to implement a full security upgrade with cavity searches for those who attempted card fraud. Or angrier. Probably angrier.

Lap and Briyun had appeared to have stopped trying to kill each other and now looked as though they were playing that party game where they placed appendages on different coloured circles while attempting to ensure they remained upright and didn't inadvertently cause offence by accidentally touching a toe upon someone's backside. She hoped it was that, or she had just witnessed inter-species sex between a genderless, two-dimensional being and a stoat. Or whatever species Briyun was that Demi repeatedly forgot to politely inquire about.

Demi desperately hoped it was the game. Briyun gave her a silent thumbs-up and grinned. That did not help.

"You know, this is probably a good end. Drifting endlessly through the night. Dying of starvation after I've killed and eaten you. Centuries passing until I become caught in the gravity well of a comet, or a free-roaming planet. Maybe a rogue, dead star, passing through the black, but unseen. Because it's also black." She tucked her hand beneath her chin and tried to see the dim stars that didn't quite shine as bright as they did within an atmosphere that could diffuse the light that had travelled so far to be seen. "I'll be remembered, I suppose. Admittedly, as a mass-murdering, maniacal tyrant intent on subjugating the galaxy after a revulsion, but it's the thought that counts, I suppose."

"You won't have to worry about that, Demi." Friss squeezed her shoulder, but, this time, he wasn't testing to see whether he would need to chew harder. It seemed genuine. Compassionate. Caring. Non-cannibalistic. "This time next week, without more new news about you, you'll be forgotten, just like everyone else. Besides, no-one will be drifting anywhere."

He pointed a finger under her nose, literally, just under her nose, and Demi turned to look that way without it looking like she wiped her nostrils on his finger. Lodka had come back, powered silently until the enormous, sexually-implied ship loomed over them. Several arm-like appendages reached out for the three life-bubbles and Demi had never been more pleased to see a ship in her entire life.

To be fair, she'd never been pleased to see a ship. That would be weird.