“You’re a fucking kidnapper!”

“Categories, Ben,” Aptat said, ticking a finger.

“What are you going to do to us?” I asked.

“Much of that will be up to you. But for now,” they said with a gesture, “you go into holding until I can transfer you to the Scythin.” Another grin and blink of vacant eyes.

“Holding?” Patton squeaked as two cylinder-shaped glass enclosures emerged from the metal flooring.

“Prisoners go into prison cells, Flyguy,” said Aptat, gesturing politely for Patton to enter his cylinder, which he readily did.

“No, wait,” I said, panicking, trying to get more information. “Where–”

“I’m really very busy now, Flyguy,” said Aptat, backing me into the chamber. “And a word of advice: behave yourselves. I don’t normally excavate the merchandise, but I will if you give me or any of the others any trouble.”

“Others?”

“And you can keep those. In case you get hungry.”

I looked down to realize that I was very tightly hugging Patton’s jar of pickles like it was my baby.

The glass on the cylinders closed around us and we began our descent. It was cold, but the pickles, as Patton had earlier noted, were warm.

The world had altered so drastically that I was unable to process it. Twenty minutes before, I had been driving the Subaru, anticipating the chance to finally get answers. Now, I was cuddling a jar of pickles on a bounty hunter’s spaceship, and all I could think about was the temperature of my best friend’s balls.

30 Actual human ball temperature – Why do we know that? – Let’s ask the trucker.

31 LARP. Live Action Role Playing. Best known for the foam swords and shields variant, in which elaborately costumed grown-ups battle for dominion over city parks.

32 Giant squid arms, of which there are eight, not to be confused with squid tentacles, of which there are two, or the squid penis, of which there is one, but the longest of all squid appendages when erect.

33 Family Buprestidae.

34 Unlikely. However, the channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, can remember a human voice for longer than five years! Wow!

35 Internet colloquialism for “laugh out loud” – Try this one: STFU.

36 You know the ones. Little light up lure on a stick coming out of its forehead. Attracts tiny fish with shiny bauble, eats tiny fish with nasty teeth. I say female angler fish only because you wouldn’t recognize the male. Males of the species are tiny and not long lived, unless they attach to a female. They release an enzyme that dissolves its mouth and the female’s skin, fusing them together. Then, anytime the female wants to spawn, she nudges the attached sperm bag.

37 Gyandromorphism. Seen in zebra finches, snakes, lizards, locusts, lobsters, and ants, among many others.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was dark, of course. And why wouldn’t it be? Was Aptat, the flesh-bound living robot, going to leave us here like cave creatures until our eyes grew bulbous and Golem-round and I – oh, there’s the lights.