"Many folk would never guess," Gradi Ohsa Vallasoupia-Gallor of the Veroseralien theatre troupe The Ilt-un-por-Ilt Players said in soft, healing tones, "But one of the great travelling theatre troupes was actually from Towerscape.

"Oh, I know, I know what you're thinking: Tophers in the arts? Impossible! But no no no...Uncle Vin-Vin's Vegabond Variety Void was, at one time, considered the best. Terribly violent shows. Terribly. At least one actor died per show. Sometimes the whole cast! Sometimes the odd audience member! Now that's ambition! Now that is passion! So inspiring."

Aye felt somewhat comforted by her dusty old voice. It sounded like a creaky door. The kind of creaky door that gives you candy and handmade pies. He still felt weak, but thanks to his Veroseralien hosts and a very welcome and accommodating intravenous drip, he was on the mend. He was newly hydrated and enjoying the feeling of blinking and swallowing again.

He sat up. He longed to finally find out what a sandwich-through-a-straw tasted like. It had been on his mind a lot.

"I am Gradi Ohsa Vallasoupia-Gallor of the Veroseral. You are aboard my theatre ship The Deck Dallop. We are humble nomads, performing all over the galaxy..." Grady sing-song-said.

"Will you take me back to the Shiv? Or maybe home to Lyme Node?" he interrupted quietly, trying to appear rude without appearing rude.

"Well. Y' see, I don't know where this Shiv ship is. If it was docked at Euphoria, it was probably blown to bits. Euphoria is gone. We had nothing to do with it. I'm sorry if you lost some loved ones. Oh, and we're not so welcome on Lyme Node. We steer clear of it. For now at least," she said. There was something slightly defensive in the way she said "We had nothing to do with it," and something slightly sinister in the way she said "For now at least". Aye was not fazed.

Aye also wasn't fazed by the apparent destruction of the Shiv. Something deep within the bowels of his bowels was telling him that the ship had escaped. He was more concerned about Potto floating aimlessly around in the great infinity, but if something had saved him, something sure as hell must have saved Potto. He was much luckier than Aye. Most of the known universe was luckier than Aye.

He had not seen a Veroseralien before. He found her appearance a little spooky. She looked almost haunted. Her dusty old lilac skin and transparent hair gave her a ghost-like pizzazz. She sat on the foot of his recovery bed and smiled as sweetly as someone who looked like a walking corpse could.

The entire room was covered in old thread-barren tapestries. Some depicted great wars. Some depicted great orgies. Some depicted both at the same time. These tapestries were hung to cover up the rusty dripping pipes and grimy walls of a ship far past its prime.

Music being played in another room could be heard from the hallway. It sounded like the sad minor-key-bass-clef version of what cobwebs might sound like if they were music. It drifted into the room on a waft of incense smoke that smelled like an old casserole.

"I have an idea!" she exclaimed, throwing her spindly arms up into the air dramatically. "We could give you a part! We are rehearsing a new show. It's called "The Rotten Lovers". It's a romance. Of sorts. You'd be perfect as the demon Failcotte the Fragile. Especially with those lovely little devil horns of yours."

"They're not little!" Aye said, taking offense. Calling a Topher's horns small was about the only social faux pas on Towerscape. It was not unlike making fun of a male's genitalia everywhere else in the universe (speaking of fragile).

"I'm very sorry Mr. Topher. I did not mean to offend. They are spectacular horns atop a very handsome head," she said smiling like she had a mouthful of caramels. "Will you be our Failcotte?"

"I don't think so. I'm no actor. And my name is Mr. Aye-Aye, not Mr. Topher. I also have been known to answer to Champ, Boss, Chief, Buddy, Big Guy, and Son of a Bitch."

"You'd get paid of course, and there will be a love scene for you with our beautiful new--"

"I said no. The idea of prancing around on stage in front of people nauseates me."

A shadow in the doorway appeared catching Aye's glance like a butterfly in a bloodshot net. It was the trapeze artist from Euphoria...the one that had danced with Gekko. He couldn't look away. She was beautiful and marvellous and he could tell just by looking at her that she smelled wonderful. Like cake frosting and fresh house paint.

"This is Orchestra Balloo. She would be playing the part of Glass Tina, your love interest," Gradi slyly smirked.

"I'll do it," Aye said, not entirely sure where the words had just popped out from, but confident it wasn't his horns.

~~~

Frustration didn't live well within Vrume T'cha T'cha. It made him feel his age and it made him look run-down. He had bags under his eyes! Bags! After so many millennia trying to do the right thing, trying to play the hero, he was tired.

He was happy that he chose to leave the Quarol and the Topher behind in the airlock. If he hadn't, he'd likely have been slowed down by Euphorian guards or Potto and Aye themselves and all three of them would have gone the way of Euphoria.

He was happy that, for whatever ridiculously stupid reason, the pair had climbed outside the airlock and lived. But he was also very, very frustrated. When Euphoria was destroyed it sent him spinning one way and the prophesized duo the other. Finding them would be like trying to find a tardigrade's sewing needle in a haystack the size of infinity, which it turns out was a pretty popular idiom outside of Earth.

Spending the time finding and rescuing them would most definitely interfere with his Node spa days, and this would never wash (literally and figuratively) with The Node. He took solace that the Quarol and the Topher, at least, were wearing brand-spanking-new TDX-30 space suits, equipped with air recyclers and new "fresh water" and "sandwich" straws. They would be fine until he got to them. Hopefully. Unless they were morons.

~~~

"Heeeeeeeeeeyyyyy!!!" Potto beamed. "It's you! Is it my birthday already? I was just trying to remember the last time I had one, and I couldn't!"

"Potto, dear boy, you wouldn't remember your own hand if it were scratching your own ass...which you also wouldn't remember possessing. I am flattered that you remember my face, however, and all the birthdays we shared together," said Lempshop, rolling r's in places there were no r's.

"I can't help but notice," Potto remarked, "that there seems to be very little of you."

Budgher Lemphop was perched atop a ledge on the asteroid. He was a head, a neck, one shoulder, one arm and one third of a grizzled chest sitting on top of a disgusting pile of chewed up sludge that was once the rest of him. A purple blood-soaked collared shirt was draped around his neck. It was torn to shreds apart from the one good arm and a filthy pointed chest pocket.

"I bet you are wondering how I am still alive?" he bravadoed.

"Nope!" Potto sang out.

"Of course not. But I'll tell you anyway, shall I?"

"Oh, yes! Please do!!"

Just because Potto wasn't wondering something didn't mean that he couldn't get excited about it.

"Well, when our wretchedly beloved Tractos was destroyed, I went hurtling into space! Yes! Hurtling!" Lempshop exclaimed. Everything he said sounded like he was desperately trying to keep the attention of a waning audience.

"In my mind a great opera was playing, like angels singing out 'sweeeeet relieeeef!' in blessed harmony! I was filled with such joy! Finally, an end. An end!! Finally, the hell that was our existence there would be over!" he added.

"That would be a nice song," Potto added to show that he was still paying attention, or at least trying his best to.

"But then I was hit by this big chunk of that villainous, horrible moon. And...are you ready for it? The big reveal?" He didn't wait for an answer, which is good because he wouldn't have gotten one. "That chunk of Tractos just happened to have a big enough chunk of the Life Core stuck in it that I...still...can't...fucking...die!"

"Wow!"

"Please excuse my language. I hate to be so crass, but I feel it really accentuated the heightened emotion of my explanation. Did it, or do you think less of me, dear Potto?"

"Yes!"

"Good. Good. I've gotten as far as I can with the whole dining on myself thing. If I eat this last arm, I won't be able to get at anything else. Or scratch my many itches. It hasn't been easy even getting to this state! Those cursed nanobots have been on me every step of the way. I've had to eat most parts three or four times to get to this point," he said far too loudly, but then hushed like he was telling a secret. "If you were to climb over to the other side of this mighty rock, you might just see part of the Life Core sticking out!"

"Now that I'd like to see!" Potto added. He didn't really want to see it. He also didn't not want to see it.

"Now. How did you come to be here? How did you survive?" Lempshop asked.

"Exact same way as you!" Potto said without thinking.

"Really???"

"Oh, probably not," Potto also said without thinking.

"Right. Oh Potto, I have been bad. So very, very bad in my long life. I have killed so many. So very, very many. Even you!"

"Even me? Thank you!"

"No, no...that is a bad thing I did to you. I am sorry."

"Forgiven!" Potto had lost track of this conversation long ago.

"I am so very sorry for all of it. I am being punished. This is my punishment. I thought I was in hell on Tractos...but no. This is hell. And I deserve nothing less."

"You're too hard on yourself, guy."

"That said, you have come to me like an angel of mercy. Could you be a dear and climb to the back of the asteroid for me and destroy the damn Life Core? Would you do that for me?"

"I'd do that for you!"

"You are a pal. I adore you. Oh, and sweet Potto, reach into the pocket on my shirt, won't you?"

Potto reached into the chest pocket on what was left of his disgusting shirt. In it he found the broken compass.

"Happy birthday, m' boy!"

Potto got so excited that by the time he reached the Life Core sticking out of the back of the asteroid, he'd forgotten why he was back there and flew off into space while admiring the trinket and slurping on a B.L.T.

Lempshop was left alone again, where he would spend a very, very, very, very long time fantasizing about repeatedly killing Potto over and over and over again until the end of time.

~~~

Clover was usually very good at meditating. She had been doing so for millions of years.

She'd been doing it longer than the word "meditation" had been used to describe what she had been doing. She'd been doing it since it was called "breathing-deliberately-and-visualizing-really-hard-while-relaxing", and for a short bit when it was simply called "that thing Steve was doing yesterday".

The harder she tried to find Potto or his tiny fairy, the more frustrated she became. Frustration is not something one wishes to draw from themselves when meditating. Quite the opposite in fact. There was once a species far out in the galaxy that regularly meditated to get angrier and more frustrated, but they went extinct shortly after they all started doing it.

Clover then tried sleeping. Sleeping was a thing she'd been doing even longer than meditating (as one would expect). She thought that dreaming might be a way of reaching them, but she tossed and turned and, even drugged, couldn't go deep enough.

She tried hypnotising herself because no one else on board knew how to do it. That didn't work either.

Finally, and much to her dismay (but to Teeg's pleasure), she allowed herself to be knocked out. This did nothing but prove to her once and for all that Potto was no longer hypnotized. He was floating out in the darkness, alone and probably frightened.

She was able to get back to their forest, or at least what she could remember of it. She found she had to create a lot of it herself to fill in the gaps. She couldn't get the colour of the loom fruit just right, and she imagined way more random woodland animal hugs than there were before (there had been zero) but everything else was as close as she could recall.

But no Potto. No Bundle.

She sat by a stream feeling lost and worried. She filled the stream with cream soda and everything felt just a little bit better.

~~~

Potto was floating out in the darkness, alone and totally preoccupied by the compass that he had accidentally let go of. It was floating a few feet from him, just out of reach. He tried to push himself forward, but it wasn't working. It was as if a wall of clear jelly were separating them, or as if he were trying to climb air.

He tried to do the twirling he had done earlier, thinking it would project him forward, but he had forgotten how to do it. He really should never have been able to this in the first place. Perhaps if he sang. Perhaps if he made up a song about his birthday again.

He started singing and he started twirling. The excitement he felt as he twirled into the compass and grabbed it once again was overwhelming, and along with a belly full of liquid sandwich, he immediately fell asleep.

"Holy hell, you are a pain in the ass!" Bundle screamed at him from deep inside his dream.