Endorphins are such a lovely thing. In a Topher they are even lovelier. They are super-über-mega lovely.

When these neurotransmitters fired up electrical signals to a Topher's nervous system it was as if a heavy dose of morphine was making sweet love to the type of anti-anxiety medication that only the shadiest of doctors smuggled in from planets with loose regulations (and morals).

They did not just numb physical pain; they were eighty-four per cent more potent than they were in humans. They made the native Towerscapians relax as if they had just had a temporary stroke.

It took a giant's share of pain or a whole whack of panic for those endorphins to kick in. Floating off into space without a spaceship wrap, no foreseeable rescue, and the promise of a slow, tortuous, lonely, claustrophobic death really jars the nerves.

These lovely endorphins had fired up deep inside of Aye. He was floating now in a state of stunned semi-paralysis, drooling just a tad, and as calm as congealed gravy.

He stared out into the nothing. The nothing stared back with the icy coldness of an ex-lover, if that ex-lover were a bottomless pit in a frozen ocean. He could hear his breath like it was sad, sad music.

His mind wandered. It wasn't a flash of a life well lived that rapidly played out before his eyes. It was more like a very poorly executed collage of a very poorly done crayon drawing of all the stupid things he had done in his life, very poorly cut out and half-assed glued onto soggy Bristol board.

He didn't see huge criminal acts to be proudly ashamed of. He didn't see world-changing assassinations. He didn't see anything important at all. Nothing truly bad. What he saw instead was a series of stupid accidents. He saw a series of clumsy minor crimes and drunken run-ins with the law. Shoplifting and flying under the influence of booze. All the booze. So much damn booze.

He saw the many beatings he took, and the many reasons why he was beaten...most of which were his own fault. Almost all the trouble he had gotten into was because of all that damn booze and his stupid big mouth.

He knew no one would be looking for him, because, as he finally comprehended, no one was really after him. He suspected (wrongly) that his father had even given up the hunt.

He put two and two together and realized none of this little adventure had started before he rescued the Quarol. Even that noble rescue had been a stupid, selfish accident.

It was the Quarol everyone was after. And not because Potto was some master criminal either; why anyone would hunt Potto was a mystery to Aye because people generally liked Potto. He was truly good natured. The stupid things that came out of his mouth didn't hurt anyone. They were irritating, but they weren't unlikable, insulting or cruel. Not like Aye. Potto was nice.

"Nice" was an insult on Towerscape. It meant the same that "cream puff" or "wuss" did on other planets. Oddly though, on Towerscape "Wuss" was a brand of shaving gel and a "cream puff" was a style of hat.

He sadly listened to the sad-breath music. He knew no one would be looking for him because no one cared. And what was worse, he couldn't think of one reason why they should.

Aye didn't believe in prophesies from strange maybe-mythological (but unfortunately non-goat-legged) women, and he didn't know yet the part he was meant to play. He wasn't aware that he had a destiny.

Like almost everyone in the entire universe, he had no idea how important he really was.

He was feeling useless and stupid, and he had that right: no one can tell anyone else what definitively has to go through their head when staring death in its big, empty, black-hole eyes.

Feeling useless and stupid was Aye's right. Whether he felt he deserved any rights or not.

After all: a pondering Aye was an Aye that hated himself.

Amongst the sad thoughts, amongst the wee little bursts of anger, he felt a longing. Not the usual longing to kill his father (the source of these wee little bursts of anger), not the brand new longing to see his mother again (the source of wanting to kill his father), and not even a longing for one last sexual encounter with an indescribable (the more indescribable the better) alien.

It was a longing that surprised him. He wanted his Baby Boy. He longed to see his friend again. His first real friend ever. His Potto.

He longed to hear the pale Quarol say something moronic. He longed to see his smile. Potto had actually smiled at him. Not some paid-for, put-on smile or some sarcastic smile, and definitely not some kind of mocking smile. Potto hadn't once laughed at him for anything. Potto was truly good, and that meant someone truly good liked him!

When he pictured Potto, it made him smile the open-mouth drooly half-smile of a Topher with super-über-mega endorphins filling up his body like a rubber glove filled with drugged putty.

A new feeling and a new mindset passed over Aye as well. He had looked at space out of the front window of many a spaceship. He had woken up (still drunk) in gutters, looking up at the night sky...but as he floated about weightlessly, and slowly turned to face a far-off nebula, he had never noticed how beautiful it all was.

This new feeling was appreciation. This new mindset was observation. The two danced inside him and it was all so overwhelming.

The swirls and poofs of smoky purples mingled with rusty oranges and bright flowery reds. The reds fading into plumes of soft light blues and murky liquid greens. Dust and gas were a far more breath-taking thing to observe and appreciate in space than the very different dust and gas he was accustomed to in his flat back on Lyme Node. Both of which he produced himself in abundance.

He hoped he would float into it as he passed away, not realizing how incredibly far away it actually was. The thought of being surrounded by so much beauty as he died was comforting. Not as comforting as super-über-mega endorphins, but comforting nonetheless.

He stared in complete awe. He felt like he was looking into the eyes of gods. Gods benevolent enough to create such a beautiful thing to keep him company while he perished, but also cruel enough to have allowed him to be born in the first place.

Aye looked out into that gorgeous nebula, he made a promise to himself: If, by some impossible miracle, he did survive this, he would change. Perhaps he would not become a saint, perhaps he would still be a horny little asshole, perhaps shoplifting and booze were not out of the question...but he would change.

He would strive to do more important things. Or he would strive to do at least one important thing. He would strive to have, maybe, two friends as well. One felt pretty good, two might feel ecstatic! Maybe three! Four! He could be a little more empathetic. He could be a little more kind. He could be...nice.

Maybe.

That constant sad musical ebb and flow of his breath started making him sleepy. He fell asleep almost certain he wouldn't wake up. This would be sweet relief from his cruel plummeting self-esteem and the intense boredom that was setting in. He drifted off, at peace with his fate. Goodbye cruel universe.

However, this was a brand-spanking-new TDX-30 space suit, and it had a brand-spanking-new oxygen tank; one that used new technology to recycle the air breathed out into new breathable air. It wouldn't work indefinitely, but it could last him weeks. Enough time to painfully die of dehydration first. Someone in engineering hadn't been thinking.

Aye woke up. Waking up was very disappointing.

He was completely discombobulated. Once he quickly remembered where he was, he became further confused as to why he wasn't yet dead, and then for three whole minutes all he could think was "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatttt????" followed by an angry "Someone in engineering wasn't thinking".

The nebula was still there, but seemed a little more drab now. As beautiful as it was, it had become like watching the same movie over and over and over and over. A movie with no plot, no characters, a very repetitive breathy soundtrack and only one setting without even a couch.

He wondered if Potto, wherever he had floated off to, was frightened. Probably not. He was probably singing at the top of his lungs and had found some way to make himself twirl. He was probably thinking the whole thing was a real hootenanny. A wonderfully happy brouhaha. (Or at the very least a silly overly-animated solo coffee klatch.)

Hours upon hours passed by. He started hyperventilating. Not because he was panicking again (although the endorphins had worn off), but to force himself to pass-out. It worked, but he woke up less than a minute later with a terrible headache.

At least a headache was something.

He decided it was the most entertaining headache of all time. A hootenanny-brouhaha-coffee-klatch of a headache. It boomed around inside his brain like a marching band. It was as if he now had a loud brass section and big belly-propped bass drum to accompany the soft brushed snare drum of his breathing.

He started putting lyrics to it. Singing like a Tandonian hip-hopera star.

"Imma dingbat, asshat, crass pussycat of doormats, a bureaucrat of bat scat, a..." then it dissolved (if it had ever evolved in the first place) into seeing how long he could keep rhyming insults at himself. "...a bushwhack of wisecrack hacks, a racetrack tarmac of blind kleptomaniacs, a gas sack of zwieback, a wombat that house-sat a plague rat's gnat shack, a fat splat of bric-a-brac, a sad lack of back-crack-pats, a flapjack of yak scat...oh wait, shit, I used scat already...a cravat in need of a laundromat, a zodiac...of...um...piggyback...tooth plaque...thermostats...whacked by...um...unhealthy snacks..."

Much to his disappointment, he sang away his headache. It was just the snare drum now, and it was a merciless and callous reminder that he was still alive. Still alive and getting very thirsty. Even for water. Even for goddamned water!

He had never considered himself to be one with much heart, but he definitely felt it now for it was sinking further than it ever had before, down into the bowels of everything.

He screamed at the nebula "TURN OFF THE FUCKING LIGHTS ALREADY!!" while trying to turn himself to face another direction, a darker direction, but that just made him feel like a mouse bobbing for watermelons in an ocean.

Aye had never wanted to die before. Not in his entire life. That is, in part, what kept him alive. "That's what keeps, in part, anyone alive," he thought. But this was yet another first. He wanted so badly to just die and be done with it. To turn this terrible television show off. To bring down the final curtain on this horrible play.

He even tried to induce a panic attack again so that he could enjoy some more of those delicious endorphins, but he was just too bored and too tired to convince himself he was fretting. He was long past fretting.

He tried to think of the positives. The only one he could think of was regarding the tightness of the helmet seal around his neck. It kept him from smelling the mess he'd made down in the rest of the suit. He didn't exactly have a proper toilet he could run off to.

This positive seemed a moot point when the rashes he started getting because of this gross mess began to itch...a burning itch he couldn't even scratch through space suit.

Another positive: he was now, at least, long through evacuating in his suit. He was empty. No food to digest, no excess liquid to drain. He would have been extremely hungry if he wasn't so thirsty.

He felt pain in his kidneys. Organs were starting to shut down and it hurt like the dickens. They were starting to clog with muscle proteins.

He passed out from the pain. He came to. He passed out from the pain again. He tried to cry but nothing came out. The inside of his mouth felt like cardboard covered in sand. His tongue felt like it had been baking in an oven. Even his horns ached, which he didn't know was possible. He wished for a wall to smack his domed helmet on, cracking it, ending him.

His blood pressure dropped, and the lights of the nebula were fading in his dizzy eyes when suddenly they disappeared entirely. Not because he had passed out again, or sweet mercy had placed its hands around his throat and stopped his breathing for good, but because something was blocking the nebula. Something big.

He slowly blinked. It hurt. His dry eyelids were like heavily used sandpaper.

He had no idea how much time had passed since Euphoria. Perhaps only a few days. Perhaps more. It felt like an eternity. He blinked his dry eyes slowly again as a large circular door opened on the side of the spaceship that was blocking his view of the nebula.

Seconds before he got sucked in to an air lock, he noticed the tips of two tiny tubes under his chin on the inside of the helmet. One was labelled "FRESH WATER", the other simply said "SANDWICH". Someone in engineering had been thinking.

He passed out again from the pain, laughing at the tube tips and believing this ship was a mirage and that he had actually died days ago and was in hell. Space hell.

~~~

When Aye opened his eyes he was in a dusty old bed, clean and covered in a dusty old quilt, hooked up to dusty old medical equipment and with a dusty old woman looking down at him. Her transparent hair and lilac-coloured skin made her look like an angel. A dusty old angel.