“I know he made Platinum records, Ben. I figured it might make you feel more at home while you ate.”

“Hell no! Wait – did you say ‘ate’?”

“Yes. Good news. It’s food time.”

An object fell from above, hitting Pickles on the lid with a clunk. Inside neighboring chambers, the others collected their rations. It seemed mildly familiar, a thick breakfast-bar style puck of something, almost pemmican-like.⁴⁶ I gave a sniff. Nutty, bland, unobjectionable. The scent was enough to wake something in my stomach, which, being newly emptied, roared to life. I dove in, biting off a fat chunk. Oh, that’s dense. Like trying to chew a mouthful of Tootsie Rolls.

The food, tasteless though it was, settled me, fortifying my constitution. I stood up, feeling it was time to shout about my rights. “Hey!” I yelled over the blaring chorus to the song. “Tell me where we’re going! Who are you selling me to?” I screamed a whole host of other questions, interspersed with increasingly strong language and a few insults. I got into a good flow, too, delivering a real oratorical barrage of righteousness, when Aptat interrupted:

“About thirty gilleys from Earth,” they answered as the song mercifully ended. “That’s where we’re going.”

“Gilley?”

“Galactic Light Year. G-L-Y. Gilley,” said Aptat. “It’s a unit derived as the average time it takes the innermost stars to orbit the black hole your scientists refer to as Sagittarius-A, but is more widely known as–”

“Thirty light years!” I screamed.

“It’s more like, twenty-six point something Earth Light Years, but yes.”

I groaned and slumped against the glass. “Hey?” I asked.

“Yes, Ben?”

“Why do we understand each other? Does everyone in outer space speak English?”

“Only when we want to insult someone’s intelligence,” said Aptat, chortling at their own joke. “The shortish, longish answer to your question is that bulkspace-traveling species have evolved to the point where languages can be largely deduced from a few key elements like alphabet size, subject-verb arrangement, and basic phonemes. Picking up English for me would be like you figuring out which one of your toes is itchy. It takes a little bit of investigation, but once you’ve found it, you know you’ve got it.”

“So, your answer is that you’re really smart?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“How do I understand you, then?” I asked.

“I’m speaking English.”

“Ah.”

“But even if I wasn’t, I put a course of eavesdropping nanites into the food.”

“You put nanites in the food? Like – like little robots?”

“Yes, Ben, like little robots. It beats a fish in the ear.”

“Hey, Aptat?”

“Yes, Ben?”

“Fuck you.”

“You’ll thank me later when you can understand what your eventual owners are saying. You’ve had a long day, Flyguy. Go to sleep.”

“Sleep? I don’t even know what’s happening! You can’t do this to people!” I pressed my back to the cell and began kicking the opposite wall, pounding it with the soles of my shoes over and over. Thud, thud, thud. I screamed, even past when my voice broke. Thud, thud, thud. My breath went ragged as my assault waned. I turned around and pressed my face to the wall, lightly bounced my forehead. Then again, a little harder.