You’ve been drifting so long that you’ve lost the ability to objectively judge time or depth or distance. It’s getting hard to think about yourself as an objectively limited being. The boundaries of your skin begins to thin and disappear. What is it that makes an individual an individual? Is it the physical space we occupy? The electric sparks that sizzle through our brain flesh? If your perception expands beyond the meat sack of your body, then are you really an individual anymore? Why shouldn’t we become gods? Why shouldn’t we become one God.

You scrunch up your nerdy face and furrow an eyebrow. It seems you aren’t enjoying this train of thought.

Sorry, dude. That’s what’s on my mind right now. I’m having a phenomenological debate in my third ear that’s way more popping than your little hero’s journey into the belly of a quarter-life crisis.

It turns out you don’t have time to worry about the voice inside your head, because you hear one outside of it. At first you don’t think it’s real. You think it must be an aural mirage. Then it calls you the fuck out.

Your whirl around, upside down. You look up, then down. There she is.

She’s clinging to a random server beacon, looking a little the worse for wear but still grinning. You float on down to greet her.

She narrows her blank eyes. Her mouth twists into a frown. Not quite a concerned one, but close enough. You’ll take it.

There is definitely that, at least. You both stare at each other for a pretty long time, and let it sink in. It’s a hell of a fact, no doubt. But aside from reaching verbal agreement on certain basic points of fact, you both realize you’re pretty much out of material. You were kind of hoping you’d discover a survivor you could have an actual conversation with. Not that you aren’t glad to see Meenah, but you don’t know her, and she’s not who you were really looking for.

That reminds you.

This is without a doubt one of the worst conversations you’ve had in many, many years. And you aren’t just thinking that because I’m telling you you are.

You’ve never been accused of having stellar people-reading skills. But even you can tell the look on her face says it all right now.

Halfway through this exchange, Meenah pulls out a small, clamshell-shaped accessory kit, and begins to file her nails. She almost dislocates her jaw by yawning the moment you mention Jake.

Your entire body deflates. This is going nowhere. Turns out Meefish is fucking useless. You decide to do her, as well as yourself, the favor of completely ruling out the possibility of eliciting any valuable information from this person.

You exhale, and just let some stuff off your chest.

There’s another awkward silence. You spend most of it looking at your feet, until something occurs to you.

Meenah stares at you for an uncomfortably long time. She looks you up and down, like she’s making certain calculations. On the one hand, spending infinity clinging to a fridge-like space computer circling a black hole sounds like a drag. On the other hand, will her coolness and street cred be able to survive any prolonged association with this dumb blue nerd? That’s what she could be thinking, you think. You hope not though, because if true, it would hurt your self-esteem.

She finally appears to make up her mind.

You lean in rather credulously, and bring your ear toward her cupped hand.

You pull back, unamused by the prank. What is this, you think. Fucking amateur hour?

She’s laughing her ass off. Before you can react, she jams the button down on the beacon and opens the server. She jumps into the hatch and the door snaps closed behind her.

Oh, shit. I think I know what just happened. You might want to check your pockets.

You fruitlessly fumble around in your front hoodie pocket.

Sure enough, it’s missing. The Ring of Life you stole back from Aranea has been re-stolen. Bitch just picked your pocket. You got played, man.