Orchestra Balloo waited absolutely naked at the top of her post, high above an audience of dangerous drunks and drug-addled sex addicts waiting for her musical cue. She had trained for almost a decade in the acrobatic arts and had wished very much to perform in front of kings and presidents as her mother had. However, this performance was about to have her mother spinning like a tiny heartbroken whirligig in her grave, as the old idiom goes.

Times were tough across the universe for anyone not wishing to push books or impound illegally parked spaceships for The Node. Or go into a lucrative (but short) career in hair-styling and machine restoration.

The Node was not much of a patron of the arts. He didn't understand them, and the arts didn't understand him back.

She knew enough not to look down. Not for fear of falling, but she didn't want to see the audience she was about to perform for. She tried hard not to look across at the other platform. She didn't want to see her performance partner (and forthcoming sex circus performance lover) either.

Their act was simple in circus terms, but challenging in sexual terms. She would swing on over. No trouble there. He would swing on over. No trouble there. She would flip and land on his lap. No trouble there, either. But aim was paramount, and that's where the trouble started. Luckily he had a very large "target" that none of his past partners had ever missed before.

He would have his way with her as they swung, flipped and twirled around ropes. Dangerous drunks would cheer, drug-addled sex addicts would drool.

She was instructed to play the submissive. She was instructed to take his lead; he was the veteran. He had done this a thousand times before. He had requested this new, younger lubricated partner. He had dropped his last partner to her death. Steppin Tope was a four-armed Jost'lean and he was awful and egotistical and misogynistic and cruel. He was a murderer that always made it look like an accident, and his victim's accident to boot.

She tried hard not to think of this. She tried hard not to cry. She tried not to simply jump off the platform and end it all.

Once they started, the crowd would no doubt scream out requested positions and entry points. The crowd would be awful and cruel as well. As her music cue blasted out of the overly bassy speakers, she closed her eyes and left the platform gripping the trapeze handles as tightly as she could, both fearing and hoping he would drop her. She opened her eyes as she landed on his lap.

Crooked.

An unexpected bit of joy washed over her (like a quick spark of static electricity) upon feeling a quick "snap" under her left thigh. She grabbed the ropes of his trapeze swing just in time. He screamed in agony and slipped out from under her, falling into the audience to his death, taking a dangerously drunk and drug-addled sex addict with him. The audience (apart from that once dangerously drunk, now quite dead drug-addled sex addict) cheered so loudly that no one could hear how loudly a drunken Teeg laughed at this. And it was a very loud laugh.

Orchestra Balloo, out of fear, continued performing non-coitus acrobatics on her own. A feeling of great relief was replaced quickly when she thought of coming down from the high top and facing Rhanque Baptoose.

She kept going, knowing that when she finished she would die. As her original trapeze swung back to her original platform, she noticed it was occupied. Occupied by a beautiful Kancorian female.

She had never seen one of these reptilians quite so bright. Quite so blue-green. She looked like a tropical ocean with huge, gorgeous, unblinking eyes. She, a boring (but typical-for-the-species voluptuous) Flettocean, knew that Kancorian women did not need to train for acrobatics, that they were naturally adept.

Gekko was drunk.

When Gekko got drunk, her ordinarily reclusive nature went bye-bye. She had been mesmerized by the fun up above and wanted so badly to join in. She found four-armed Jost'leans repulsive and had held back, but once she saw him fall, that was her cue to be fabulous.

She also suspected that the poor Flettocean above was a novice and would be executed if she didn't put on a good show. Time to put on a good show.

Orchestra Balloo had no choice. When Gekko leapt as she swung towards her, she grabbed Gekko's hands. Gekko climbed up the rope above her without touching her any further. She lowered herself, upside-down, inches from Orchestra's body. She scuttled and twisted around without any actual contact. She was like a psychedelically animated worm on a fishing hook. Then she leapt off to the second trapeze.

Aye and Teeg watched, entranced, ten percent due to the Earth bourbon, but ninety percent because of the show. The entire audience fell to a hush. Gekko and Orchestra performed like they had been partners forever. Gekko had locked onto her thoughts and knew each move before it was made, and matched it with grace and fluidity.

The two performers were like watching liquid float around in an anti-gravity chamber, if that liquid could be trained to dance. They moved in such a way that even the roughest murderer and slimiest pervert in the audience were moved (Teeg and Aye were moved).

Aye was moved to tears. To be fair, he had a lot on his mind, and this ballet above him had stirred up some emotions and it had offered him a much-needed release. A real release, not just tears in a fairy-induced dream.

Orchestra Balloo had never felt like this. The Kancorian hadn't touched her once, but as she performed in a way which would have made her mother stop grave spinning and feel proud, her new partner did a remarkable second and very sensual routine mere inches from her. Even when she reached out, almost longing for the reptile to touch her, Gekko retracted just enough to be out of reach.

Rhanque Baptoose, who was all geared up to kill this new sex circus acrobat, was also moved to tears as he watched from the two-sided mirror window in his office booth high above the crowd. He watched her, falling deeper and deeper in love. He shook his head at how he could even have considered hurting such an angel.

Gekko was loving this. She had no interest in any dirty shenanigans with the naked young woman (or anyone for that matter), but she loved the feeling of oneness two beings could feel in the state of pure art. She savoured the synergy. It was like an incredible meal. It was delicious and satisfying and sumptuous and rich.

It was very much the relationship she had had with Clory. This was the closest Gekko would ever get to a "rebound". And it was very much a drunken rebound.

Orchestra Balloo was loving this as well for the same reasons that Gekko was, but blindly. She didn't have the telepathic advantage Gekko had, so she wasn't able to lead this dance. She was able to truly follow her gut and improvise. They were riding the music like a wave, and she found herself longing to feel Gekko's skin.

She had never touched a Kancorian before. Were they slimy? Were they dry? Scaly? Cold? Silky? She decided they were probably cold and silky. She would not find out today though.

When the music stopped there was a stunned silence from the audience that only lasted for a few seconds before Aye screamed out "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!" at the top of his lungs. This was followed by an entire crowded audience of drunks and drug-addled sex addicts exploding into applause, cheers, whistles and loud sobbing before they were all standing in a sweet loving ovation.

Vrume T'cha T'cha smiled to himself. He loved a good show, and the regular performance had gotten so stale. This was a nice change. He would congratulate Rhanque Baptoose when he stopped by with his rent money.

Gekko climbed back down to Teeg and Aye. Orchestra Balloo watched as she left with the Topher and fellow Flettocean. She didn't even know Gekko's name. She decided that, when she told the story of her very first (and hopefully last) performance at Euphoria, she would call the Kancorian "Phesphoria", a word that meant (in her native Flettocean) both "beautiful" and "hero".

~~~

On the Shiv, Potto started floating about in one of the sleeping chambers. Turning off the artificial gravity in the room seemed a good idea for Clover to really get him into the zone.

All the self-doubt she had in her ability to remember how to hypnotize was quickly put to rest. Getting Potto into that zone took no effort at all. All it really took was turning off the artificial gravity. Her whole speech about sticking his consciousness into a mental elevator and letting it go down into the dark recesses of his subconscious (with each floor being a different level of relaxation) was not needed.

It was as if he had been halfway there in his normal, waking state of mind. His mental elevator was out-of-order and always hanging from just one last cable, ready to snap at any moment. Perhaps this was why his brain didn't seem to work as well as it once had. Floating weightless triggered it to snap completely.

"Can you hear me?" she asked softly.

"No," he replied equally as soft.

She paused and considered this for a moment. "Then how did you know to reply if you cannot hear me?"

"I meant yes, but I got the word wrong."

"Okay, okay, okay...we are going to stop that, alright? Stop using the wrong words. Stop accepting that you make mistakes, and that you can't remember. You are a genius. You know so much and you are so intelligent. You remember everything, do you understand?"

With his eyes closed tightly, Potto seemed to be considering this. When he spoke again he sounded differently. His voice was less animated and sing-songy. He sounded older, wiser, more decisive and more confident. He sounded way less Potto. She recognized this voice from his moment of clarity back in K'ween's prison.

"I understand. I am Potto of Quarolode."

"And do you remember everything?"

"Not everything. There is something in here with me. Blocking my vision."

"Make it transparent. It is just in your mind. It is just a figment of your imagination."

"It isn't. It won't go away. No matter how much I imagine it away."

"What does it look like?"

"It is a wall covered in circuits and wires."

"Can you tell me anything else about it? What colour is it? What does it smell like? Can you touch it?"

"It is lacking of any colour worth mentioning. It smells like iron and porridge. I can touch it. It feels electric. It feels angry. It feels like it doesn't want me to touch it. It feels like I found its hiding spot in a game of hide-and-seek and now it is sulking and telling me it wants another turn at hiding."

Clover thought this over. If there were some actual physical foreign object inside him, seeing it in his mind was unlikely, but not impossible if some part of him was aware that it existed. Getting around this block was going to prove difficult without a brain scan and possible surgery.

"What do you remember?"

"I can remember my home. I can remember the Sentaphylls. Plants that usually took all the walls away. That took all the sadness away. Plants that moved and absorbed all the dark and expelled it into the Anguishing Grounds. I remember one in particular. It wanted all my dark and it wanted to hold onto it. It wanted to keep it. And there was plenty of dark."

"Do you remember what caused all that dark in you?"

"No, but I remember this. I remember doing what you are doing. I remember hypnotizing."

"You are aware that you are hypnotized right now?"

"I remember getting on that elevator. It went down..."

"Yes, that's right."

"Get on it with me, Oian. Please? I want to show you something."

"Okay."

"Do you feel it going down? First floor down, you are more relaxed. Each floor we go down further you are even more relaxed. Down. Down. Down it goes. Deep into relaxation. You feel your head and neck relax into your shoulders, your shoulders into your back, your back into your hips. You are concentrating on your breathing. In and out, in and out. Your breath ebbs and flows like the waves of a vast ocean..."

Something very odd happened. A hypnotized being somehow hypnotized his hypnotizer. Soon both were hypnotized.

The conversation dropped off at this point and Potto could see Clover in his mind, and vice-versa. Both were sharing the same waking dream. They were in a woodland clearing. A fairy fluttered about them and the glowing loom fruit hanging from the trees. She was examining Clover and seemed a little miffed.

"Ok. I'm supposed to be your apparition. So far I've been heavily influenced and, quite frankly, intoxicated by a tree person, somehow lent out to a Towerscapian devil man with mommy issues against all logic of how an imaginary friend works, and now shared with an immortal thinker! I'm supposed to be yours! Yours! You've got me working overtime. It's a good thing I love you or you'd be on your own," said Bundle.

"You love me?" Potto asked.

"What? Forget it. Anyway...you're talking a bit clearer. Are you remembering again? Please say yes," Bundle said in an odd mealy-mouthed bark.

Clover was in awe. She was very much aware that she had been hypnotized by the one she had hypnotized and was quite impressed. She decided not to fight it. She was curious, and perhaps she could help break down that wall from within.

Bundle buzzed around her. "So...what are your intentions with my little Potto?" she sneered.

"Intentions?" Clover asked, a bit thrown.

"You do know you can't be with him, right? He's poisonous. One kiss and you'll be foaming at the mouth like a rabid northern neglie."

"Oh! No, no, no. Romance was never my intention."

"You're too old for him anyway..."

"Yes. I agree. I'm too old for almost everything."

"And he's married, so back off."

"He is? I didn't know that."

"Well, he was. And he's still not over it. He doesn't know he's not over it, but he's not. So put it back in your pants, lady."

"Put what back in my pants?"

"Ugh. You are the worst." said Bundle seconds before noticing: "Uh...where is Potto?"

Neither had noticed that while Bundle had been raking Clover over the coals for reasons unknown, Potto had wandered off.

"He's still hypnotized! How did he just wander off?" Clover stated in a panic.

"Well, go look for him!" Bundle exclaimed.

"How? I'm still hypnotized!"

"Well if he could wander off, why can't you?"

"I don't know how he did it! Try to wake me up! Then I will wake him up."

Bundle tried trumpets, alarms, bombs, wild animals, slapping and even giant spiders, but she could not wake Clover's body up from inside Clover's own brain.

"How are you even here? You are in his head, no? Why didn't you go with him? How am I even seeing you at all without him?" Clover asked, bewildered by trumpets.

"I'm not sure. It happened earlier with that Topher, Aye. Whatever it is blocking my Potto's memories seems to be trying to get rid of me by projecting me into other nearby heads."

"But who are you?"

"I'm not that easy to get rid of is who I am."

On that an imaginary Clover wandered off into the imaginary forest to find imaginary Potto with imaginary Potto's imaginary fairy.

~~~

Rhanque Babtoose had never been in love before and he didn't know how to handle it. So he decided to handle it how he handled everything. By force, and with a Fitzer Laser Cannon.

The Fitzer Laser Cannon was a huge bazooka-style gun that took two regular human men to carry, aim and fire it. Rhanque was no regular human man though, and the gun was like a pistol in his big meaty hands.

He was human, but he had been engineered to be the bigger half of a janitorial duo. He had bigger aspirations though. He had killed his beach ball-bodied partner, blown up his utility ship and had gone off into the universe to make his fortune.

Now, many years later, he owned (won in a game of Delirium Cards) Euphoria and ran it with an iron fist. Or at least a Fitzer Laser Cannon. Now many years after that he had seen the most beautiful display of sensual circus artistry he had ever witnessed. When Orchestra Balloo had come down from her trapeze and put her clothing back on, Rhanque had his men waiting for her.

Orchestra thought she had mere moments of life left when they escorted her into Rhanque's office, but he had no intention of harming her. Not if she loved him back anyway.

"Ms...?" Rhanque said in a booming tuba voice.

"Balloo," Orchestra answered quietly. She had never seen a human man so closely resemble an elephant before, and she didn't even know what an elephant was.

"That was quite a beautiful performance, Ms. Balloo," he said.

Her shoulders didn't drop.

"Thank you, sir. I am so sorry about Steppin. It was an accident."

"Ah, forget about him. The four-armed freak was almost past his peak age anyhow. He was getting a little belly. Two stomachs. You know what happens when his species gets a belly with two stomachs? So much energy goes towards breaking down stored food and maintaining that belly that he can't get an erection. And a Jost'lean without an erection is just an asshole."

His guards dutifully laughed at this. "You really did me a favour," he added.

Now her shoulders dropped. He wasn't angry. "Tell your friend, that lizard girl, I want you two as my main attraction. I'll double your pay," he added.

Her shoulders went back up. The "lizard girl" had disappeared, and the thought of ever performing with anyone else on Euphoria was something she had no interest in, money be damned.

"She...she's gone sir. She's not a friend, I had never seen her before."

"Oh, really? Well that shouldn't be a problem."

He turned to his guards and simply nodded. They rushed out. Now she was alone with Rhanque and that was like falling into a bear cage at the zoo.

"They'll find her. Then all good, yeah? Oh, and you're my girlfriend now, okay?"

At that moment Orchestra realized that she would never be able to say no to her boss, and that was more like a bear falling into her cage at the zoo. She was a prisoner now. He didn't ask questions to get an answer. He made demands that merely sounded like questions. She could smell the toxic masculinity on his breath, and it smelled like he had gargled with cologne and narcissism.

~~~

Teeg was feeling good. Aye was feeling good. Gekko was feeling ecstatic. They had all decided to stop thinking about all the things that weighed them down until they got back to the Shiv and sobered up.

Teeg had the ability to sober up quite quickly. It only took a few seconds back on the Shiv to clear her head after Knutt informed her that Potto had wandered off the ship in a daze.

"In a daze? How could you tell?" she asked the ship.

"Because he actually seemed less dense than normal. Isn't that a daze for him?"

"Buuuuuuuurn!" Aye hollered. It took him much longer to sober up.

"Shit. Where is the hippy?" Teeg asked, ignoring Aye.