Once, before the gods were gods, a few of them played a game of Association together.

"Immoral profit," Preasi said confidently.

"Intelligence," Aphelka said.

"Strength," Wendolina said.

"Memory," Case said.

"I don't like this game," Mindeham said, and walked away to the corner of the room.

"It reminds him of his time away," Elvenheim said in a low voice to the others.

"I do like elephants, though," Mindeham said from the corner. "They remind me of... of elephants."

"Next card," Byque said. It turned out to be an ink blot.

"Two children playing in a field," Mindeham said, glancing over.

"Uh... I kind of see it?" Wendolina said.

"I can't," Byque said.

"Oh, neither can I. But that's what I always say. Two children playing in a field. They like that answer. They leave me alone."

They stopped playing after that.

***

Mindeham woke up stuck to the floor with some kind of sticky substance, and immediately panicked, waking up Lae with his screaming and thrashing about.

"Ow," Lae said, reaching a hand to her head. "What happened back there?"

Mindeham looked at her, then carefully copied her hand gesture. The sticky substance yielded to the slow movement, and Mineham slowly stood up.

"I don't think they have inertial dampeners on their ships," Mindeham said.

"Well, that's the most dangerous thing I have ever heard of," Lae said. She got up as well, and looked around. "Where are we?"

"I've only just woken up," Mindeham pointed out. "But I think we're on a different ship. The air smells different."

"Bluebubble's ship, do you think?"

"Well, he was on that ship for just a little bit less than I was, so I think he would have been presumed dead and his ships given to his descendants by now. If Bluebubble's people have property, or descendants."

Lae tried to get the sticky stuff off herself, but it just stuck to her hands. She tried to wipe it off onto the wall, but it just stuck her hand to the wall.

"Why do you think we were enslimed?" Lae asked Mindeham.

"Maybe Bluebubble's people don't have inertial dampeners either," Mindeham said. "Maybe they were worried that we'd hit our heads again."

"Well, that's promising, isn't it?" Lae said, brightening up. "It shows concern for other lifeforms, and so maybe they'll treat us better here, maybe even figure out how to send us home?

"I hope so," Mineham said. "I don't even know if they have language the same way we do, though, so good luck figuring out how to communicate with them."

"Wait, why am I figuring out how to communicate with them? Haven't you been around Bluebubble for longer? And you're a god, you should take responsibility here!"

"I was considered legally insane before I was tortured to death for a thousand years," Mindeham said, meeting Lae's eyes as if trying to stare her down. "Do you really think I should be the first human to make contact with them?"

"I don't think it matters, here," Lae said. "I mean, they're alien. They have no way of knowing or caring if you're mad or not."

"Um. That's true, I guess," Mindeham said, looking startled.

"Besides, we've let Preasi make first contact before."

"Ouch. How did that go?"

"They're still working off their debt."

"All right," Mindeham said. "I'll... help."

"Excellent," Lae said, giving him a winning smile. "So. What do we do?"

***

It took Mindeham and Lae a while to figure out how to open the door to their room, but it turned out that you just had to hit it relatively hard for the sensors to activate.

"I guess that makes sense, them not having appendages and all," Lae said.

"How did they make this spaceship in the first place, then?" Mindeham wondered, They made their way (very slowly, due to the sticky stuff still on their feet) around the ship. The corridors were large, and occasionally had members of Bluebubble's species floating around it, equally round and equally blue. Some of them were larger than Bluebubble; some of them were a little smaller, and one or two were extremely small, about the size of Lae's fist.

"Are they babies?" Lae asked, looking at them float around near the ceiling.

"Who knows?" Mindeham said. "Don't say that they're cute in case they're venerated ancients."

"Why would I say that they are cute?"

"Because look at them," Mindeham replied.

The question of who made the spaceship was possibly answered when they accidentally found the control room of the spaceship. A number of little robots, rolling spheres with flexible tentacles, did the more complicated tasks. It appeared that one of the blue aliens was at least partially controlling them through a headset, which was a large hemispherical cap that they floated up into.

"But who made the robots?" Mindeham asked.

"Shh, they're working," Lae said, but some of the robots went up to them, and waved their appendages at them.

"Is that a warning?" Lae asked.

"I think it is just to get our attention," Mindeham said slowly. "I think... I think these robots are based on the aliens who kidnapped us before. Some of them waved their tendrils like that when I stopped paying attention to them."

The robots stopped waving their tentacles, and rolled out down the corridor.

"I think they want us to follow," Mindeham said.

"What do you reckon?" Lae asked.

"I don't know, you're the one with logical thought patterns," Mindeham replied. Lae thought for a moment, then shrugged and followed the robots out of the room.

***

The robots ended up taking them on quite a journey around the ship. At one point, they stopped at what seemed to be a workshop, in which the robots brought up a screen showing them their clothes. After some miming, it appeared that they wanted to make them some new ones.

"Probably we really smell by now," Mindeham said.

Mindeham attempted to get them to make him some even fluffier pyjamas, but Lae overruled him and got them to make some more dignified clothes.

"They wouldn't know," Mindeham said, trying on his new clothes with a grimace. "And these are uncomfortable."

"They're practical, and fashionable," Lae said. "How are we supposed to carry on a proper conversation with these people if you're in pyjamas?"

"In my day," Mindeham said with dignity, "it was a fashion faux pas to wear leggings as pants."

"In your day they probably had to take their pants off in an emergency, to fit into their space suits--and how dignified was that?"

Having the robots under her control and with fashion in mind, Lae set about convincing them to cut Mindeham's nest of hair down to something that would fit under a helmet, Mindeham complained bitterly about this treatment, and about having to wear shoes after Lae got the robots to give him some.

"It's put off my balance," he said.

"You're a representative of the human race," Lae said, "so you will wear shoes."

All in all, Lae thought, looking at Mindeham after all that bullying, Mindeham looked pretty much normal if you made the effort. His hair was naturally curly, so the longer-than-normal length the robots had managed to cut it to looked reasonable on him. The modern clothes did highlight the fact he had practically no muscle mass, being kept in a single room for a thousand years not being conducive to getting a good exercise regime going.

"I'm cold," Mindeham complained, glaring at her, so she relented and got them to make them coats as well.

"Pockets," Mindeham said, brightening up when he saw what she was doing.

"Yes, yes," she said.

There was some kind of psychological comfort in knowing you could carry things around with you, Lae surmised, because the pockets on his coat reconciled Mindeham with everything else.

***

After their clothes making expedition, the robots led them around the ship on what seemed to be an unnecessarily winding path, until they stopped at a little room with one alien inside.

"Is that Bluebubble?" Lae asked. The blue sphere squeaked.

"I think so?" Mindeham said, and they walked into the room. Perhaps-Bluebubble floated a little as they came into the room, then bounced on the floor as they settled in.

"I think he's a little bigger than Bluebubble," Lae said doubtfully.

"Bluebubble did eat a lot before they got here," Mindeham reminded her. The Perhaps-Bluebubble squeaked at them again, or perhaps they were squeaking at the robots, because the robots then hurried to a control panel in the corner of the room. A picture was projected on the floor, of a solar system. Mindeham nudged Lae.

"What?" she asked.

"You're up," he said.

"I what?"

"I'm pretty sure they're trying to run a language translation program for us. As the sane one with the modern vocabulary, this one's up to you."

"You're the one who figured it is a language translation program," Lae objected. "I don't know if I'd be any good at it."

"All you have to do is say what you think the pictures are portraying," Mindeham said. "It's easy, until you get into abstracts. Have you ever played the game Association?"

"No, I can't say I have."

"Well, it's exactly like that. And no use saying that I should do it, I was really bad at Association."

"Fine," Lae said, and turned back to the board. "Solar system?"

The translation program was very boring for a while, but became harder as the meanings became more esoteric. Being large spheres, Bluebubble's people didn't really have a lot of movement words that humans did, and the ones they did were mostly in three dimensions rather than two, given the species floated as well as bounced. Some of the words they just couldn't figure out, and some of them made Mindeham anxious.

"Why do they have an entire word for 'to extrude tendrils'?" Mindeham asked.

"They obviously know people who do that," Lae said.

"Why do they have an entire word for 'swallow spiked object'?"

"I think that one might just be general discomfort?"

"Why do they have--"

"Oh, shush, Mindeham, and let me do this!"

Eventually, after what seemed like much of a day, the lessons came to an end. Lae, exhausted, leaned on Mindeham a little as they followed the robots to a new room, which appeared to have been built hastily to suit their needs. Without speaking to Mindeham, Lae went and used the facilities, then collapsed face down in the nest of soft jelly-like substance the bluebubbles had provided for a bed.

"I wonder what the jelly is made of?" Mindeham asked, poking it with his foot. The wobbling made Lae groan, roll on her side, and begin snoring.

"Well," Mindeham said. He began poking around the room. In a corner he found a pile of the extra fluffy pyjamas he had asked for before Lae had objected. There was even coats with pockets made of the same material.

"Thank you," Mindeham said aloud, sure that the robots at the very least were listening. He got ready for bed, eyed the snoring Lae with misgiving for a moment, and then slept on the floor.

***

The next day, as soon as Lae woke up the robots bustled in, bringing them--

"Food," one of them said, holding up the tray. It was extremely bland and had a weird texture, but they both survived it.

"The other aliens used to feed me this sometimes," Mindeham said.

"They must be looking through the ship's archives with the help of the robots," Lae said. Mindeham nodded, but still looked sick as he chewed through the food.

"You have visit," one of the robots said, and a bluebubble floated in their doorway. Their doorway was actually too small for most of them to get through--Lae said that it showed that they were thinking of them, and helping them feel safe.

"Lulling," had been Mindeham's dark surmise.

Since the bluebubble couldn't come in to meet them, they walked out into the hallway.

"I have good room," the bluebubble said through the robot, and floated down the corridor, the two humans in tow.

The 'good room' turned out to be a large meeting area, with sloping chair things the bluebubbles or their robots had designed after watching the humans sit. They were surprisingly comfortable. Once everyone was seated (or stopped floating, landing with a little bounce on the floor), a robot rolled between them, and began translating the conversation.

"I am Sphere One of your knowing," the robot said for the bluebubble.

"You mean Bluebu--I mean, the one who was on the ship with us?" Lae asked.

"Yes."

"What is your name?"

There was a pause.

"You do not hear it."

"Oh. Can we call you Bluebubble?"

"What is bubble?"

After ten minutes explaining that what bubbles were and Mindeham getting paranoid and making sure that he knew it wasn't an insult, the conversation continued.

"We are happy that you saved us from the ones on the ship," Lae said. Apparently this took a bit of time to translate, but eventually an answer came back.

"I am happy that you saved us from the ones on the ship," Bluebubble replied.

"Why did the ones on the ship take us?" Lae asked. Bluebubble squeaked.

"They took the smaller one--"

"Call me Mindeham," Mindeham said.

"They took Mindeham because one was there and they did not know one. They took..."

"Lae," Lae supplied.

"Lae because one was there and they did not know one. They took Bluebubble because they do not happy Bluebubble."

"They don't like Bluebubble? Why not?"

There was another pause at this.

"They were once ours," Bluebubble said.

***

According to Bluebubble's explanation, their species and the other aliens (that Bluebubble called 'The Making Ones') grew up as species on the same planet. Bluebubble's species were the smarter, and The Making Ones were their prey, hiding in burrows and under thick growths so the hovering bluebubbles didn't eat them. Very early in their history, possibly from near the beginning of their predator-prey relationship, the bluebubbles had captured a few of the Making Ones and made them work for them, building traps for their fellows, trinkets for the bluebubbles, and houses for the bluebubble's things.

As their society evolved, more and more Making Ones were brought up to serve the bluebubbles, and less and less were left alone in the wild. The loss of their independent tribes, with their traditions and language (the bluebubble's language was "not well" for the Making Ones, whatever that meant) was a concern for a number of bluebubbles as well as the enslaved Making Ones, but the bluebubble society pushed those tribes further and further out of their territories as it expanded, and eventually they disappeared. The plight of the Making Ones was often lamented in their more modern societies, books written about them dictated to Making Ones, plays performed on sets made by Making Ones... When Mindeham asked, Bluebubble did mention one piece of art that took 'half a life' to make, that wasn't made by the help of the Making Ones at all, a statement on rock in ochre.

And one day, an engineer and his Making Ones assistants (and by this point in their history they really were assistants, whose labour was paid for and who volunteered for the jobs) created the little Making Robots.

Some people wanted to immediately separate the two species. Some bluebubbles thought that the robots were 'unnatural'. Some Making Ones didn't want to leave the societies that they had literally built from the ground up.

After a time of "not well" that Bluebubble wouldn't elaborate on, the multiple parties came to an uneasy truce. Once their societies reached the stars, most of the worst disagreements were solved--each faction went in a separate direction, and left one another alone.

***

Lae was so horrified at this, Mindeham had to talk her down from refusing to speak to the bluebubbles at all.

"But--" Mindeham said. "Oh, history classes must have changed in the last thousand or so year, hey?"

"What do you mean by that?" Lae asked, sounding shrill.

"We did the same thing," Mindeham said, and hurried on when Lae looked like she was going to speak. "And I don't mean dogs and cats and horses and stuff. I mean to ourselves. That's far worse, you know, because it's not like a bunch of us had the excuse of having no hands."

Lae just looked confused at this.

"Trust me," Mindeham said, "What you should be focusing on is the answer to this--" he turned to Bluebubble again, "what faction are you from?"

"We live with Making Ones if they want," Bluebubble replied. "Most don't want. We meet, they give us new making things, we give them new computer ways to think."

"Computer ways to think?" Lae asked.

"They think," Bluebubble said, "but not for very long. They turn into two, think not the same. So we give them computer ways to think for a long time."

"Managment programs," Mindeham hesitantly translated. "Otherwise they'd never get anything done."

"What is your history?" Bluebubble asked.

Lae told him what Mindeham thought was a very inaccurate legend about how humans came to colonise space, how they were made of hundreds of thousands of different factions, but that there was a government in World, where they came from, that sorted out their relations with aliens. Bluebubble asked about the aliens, and Lae described them all, one species, the Wyrei, who looked a little like mottled brown centipedes with one giant eye, Bluebubble asked more information about.

"I think we know the same ones," Bluebubble said. Lae turned to Mindeham in delight.

"Mindeham! If we go to the Wyrei, we might be able to go back home!"

***

Lae was unreasonably excited by this revelation, but Mindeham seemed rather glum, even when Bluebubble agreed to the plan.

"What's human space even like, these days?" Mindeham asked Lae after they had departed the meeting space for a rest in their rooms. The robots had put some chairs in it while they were away.

"Oh, it's great, you'll love it," Lae said, much too blythely for Mindeham's liking.

"All right then, tell me about your life. What do you do all day?"

"I am a post delivery person," Lae said. "I deliver packages for an express shipping company."

"I thought you'd all live in a post-jobs world by now," Mindeham said.

"Nah, why would you think that?"

"Okay, then, where are all the robots?"

"Robots help us to do things, sure," Lae said, "but they can't do all the complicated things a human can in their job."

Mindeham looked at one of the bluebubble robots, which had come in to offer him a drink. He took it. "Sure," he said, "but what about the fact that we're introducing knowledge of where we live to the bluebubbles?"

"I don't see the problem with that," Lae said. "We've met at least ten species; one more won't hurt."

"Two more," Mindeham correctly. "They trade with the Making Ones, remember? How would you like them knowing about human space?"

"I'd like it far better for them to know our territory and choose to invade it rather than go in accidentally," Lae told him. "If we can communicate with them via the bluebubbles, we can let them know the terms and consequences of what they do in human space. Then we won't have a diplomatic incident when they say they didn't know it was wrong."

"I don't know why you like Elvenheim rather than Preasi," Mindeham said, looking at Lae side on.

"Hang on, what is that supposed to mean?

***

When Bluebubble got permission to provide a ship to the humans to help them find their way home, he also got permission to accompany them on this excursion.

"Why?" Lae asked. "You've just got back!"

"I know Mindeham more than I know my faction," Bluebubble replied.

"Politics has probably changed," Mindeham whispered to Lae. "I mean, who would fit in to a society after a thousand years or so of being away?"

"What do you think you are going to do, then?" Lae asked him.

Mindeham shrugged. "I didn't fit in to begin with, so I guess I'll go on as I did before."

"What did you do before? Apart from trick people and ruin their plans."

Mindeham stared at her. "You don't think that is a full time job?"

"A lot of the gods are actually really important now, so maybe don't be as bad?"

"All of them were really important back then. What are they doing these days?" Mindeham listened as Lae told him the legends of the gods, and what by all accounts they were doing these days. Mindeham nodded.

"I guess that all makes sense. Paradrei always did like to party too much. And Wendolina does tend to go a little overboard sometimes. I'll visit her first, I think."

The robots got them to point out their favourite parts of their room, to replicate on the ship they were going to refurbish for them.

"The chairs," they both said, almost in unison.

The ship that they got for them felt too large for the two humans, but they guessed any comfortable ship for giant floating spheres needed to be larger than they were used to. It had two rooms for the humans (apparently Bluebubble didn't consider privacy a thing he needed himself), with beds and chairs. Actually, considering the whole space, perhaps the robots had overdone it a little with the chairs. But at least it gave them something to hold onto in that large-ceilinged space.

"We can go now," Bluebubble said, as they looked around at the ship.

"You don't want to say goodbye to anyone before we go?" Lae asked.

"No," Bluebubble said. Lae and Mindeham looked at each other, and shrugged.

"Let's go then," Lae said.

***

Bluebubble floated up into the neural interface, and all the robots suddenly stood to attention. They began scurrying around, pressing buttons, plugging themselves into the computer systems, herding the two humans into chairs.

"Eugh," Lae said, as some of the sticky stuff they had first woken up in oozed out from the chair.

"I was worrying about the lack of straps," Mindeham commented.

"As long as the stop isn't too bad," Lae said. "If you're body is kept rigid at a sudden stop, your heart can be torn from your arteries."

"Why did you tell me that?" Mindeham wailed. "Why did you tell me that now?!"

"I'm sure it will be--"

Despite feeling like they had docked at a station under the direction of an extremely drunk pilot, the two humans got out of warp intact.

"Oh, good, there's some give on the sticky stuff," Lae said. "Never mind about what I said, Mindeham."

"Uuugh," was Mindeham's reply. Bluebubble was talking, or at least that's what they understood was happening from the occasional squeaks he made and the faint vibration coming from his direction. A robot touched a few buttons.

"Bluebubble speaks with the Wyrei," one of the robots said to them. "Bluebubble asks for a trade for maps."

They waited a few minutes. Bluebubble spoke again.

"There is a ship out there," the robot said. "Bluebubble is saying hello."

There were a few more minutes of silence. Mindeham started getting restless.

"Is this normal for them? These long silences?"

"How would I know?" Lae asked. "I'm not a trade representative, I'm a postman."

"I don't like it," Mindeham declared.

"Well, maybe they don't like talking very fast," Lae said.

A booming hooting sound came from the speakers.

"That's the Wyrei," Lae told Mindeham. "Hello, something something."

"You can understand them?"

"I did three years in primary school. No, not really."

There was an exchange between Bluebubble and the Wyrei, then another silence.

"Bluebubble says," one of the robots began, and then they were fired upon.