Episode 3

We open on an all-kinds-of hospitality establishment on an exolane gate station in Exeter (Levan Bel).

STUBL, a drone-gendered Ynezelian insect, drunkenly: Have ye heard of Hyuntarax, the Black Sun, Jhuly?

JHULY, a Helsanite fungus, drinking only water today: No.

The table falls silent for a moment. Most of them have heard of Hyuntarax. Who hadn't?

ALASTEL: I guess I'm a little fuzzy on it as well, Stubl.

STUBL: And ye have much reason to be, dreaded one!

Stubl, sat next to Alastel, playfully elbows her. She doesn't take kindly to it, but remembers it's best to take everything kindly in her mutually enjoyed condition of drunkenness.

JHULY: Well?

STUBL: Well, what? Sun. It's black. What is there to well, well? Or ha? Huh?

Stubl is more forceful than they'd intended on the last beat; they begin engaging in the insect equivalent, or the closest identifiable analogue, rather, of coughing. It strained their throat.

CHRISTYL, a Jinrekian, dismissively: We were talking about the price of jenel these days.

LINSTAER, Halonite - species related to the Jinrekians, somewhat, but we can spare those details for now - anthropoid, as if roused from slumber by an impending car accident: It's ridiculous! That goddamn council--

STUBL: IT'S BLACK!

Everyone in the group stops. Most in neighboring groups stop. The bar is big, though, and most continue on with their selves and others after it appears the altercation is not physical. The group of mutually-found strangers humoring the insectoid sociologist Stubl, however, is still silent.

STUBL: But not a void, no... light escapes from it just fine, just not anything we can see. Well, Linstaer--

LINSTAER: -- they'll have to lick the trel from my --

She'd continued on her own train of thought the entire time, and only voiced it when her subconscious felt called upon; when Stubl started talking again, she was back at it herself, silently.

STUBL: Linstaer can see it, whatever the hell their seventh color is (hiccups) it's that. But it's pitch to us, and you --

Stubl was shakily pointing at Christyl, Jhuly, and Alastel, all at once.

STUBL: -- and you, and you, and you --

Complete strangers now; but the adjudication of their capabilities, ultimately, correct.

STUBL: And the rest of sixty five percent, and a half, a third, -- what? -- of the, the universe! Salnamor!

ALASTEL, in a manner only properly described as 'procedurally,' says in reply: Sure.

CHRISTYL: Stifled laughter.

STUBL, quickly: Same hubris that killed Queen Dreb, really.

CHRISTYL puts both of her hands on the table shared by all of them. A slight scuffle, the kind only the intoxicated who love each other, but have done so previously in a decidedly more cohesive manner, ensued - it was short, Alastel's drunk-shod arm shot up and seated her quickly while CHRISTYL managed a fair amount of rhetorical "why I oughta", and everyone was seated laughing at themselves before a drink-tend was forced to work up the gut to notice a need for manufacturing the audacity required to fake courage.

CHRISTYL, moving on: Queen Dreb would have benefitted from anything resembling the confidence required to recognize that one of the most perceivably bizarre solar systems in Salnamor might already be known.

STUBL: Yet she was killed by her machine all the same!

ALASTEL: Big deal. Everybody is killed by a machine these days.

ALL, plus some from neighboring booths: Everybody?

ALASTEL, after a moment of relative embarrassment: I mean, somehow, probably.

STUBL, crying out as if answering trivia: She was afraid of even reading the warning lights in a craft she insisted on flying every day! Why I -- never in a world either humid or dry!

ALASTEL: A planet is cloaked in an atmosphere that rejects water entirely. Is it dry or full of hate?

STUBL, CHRISTYL, and JHULY, all together: Hate--

STUBL, continuing: Obviously, and it was always a silly question, and you're lucky I do not hate you.

If Stubl and Alastel had been in possession of similar or equivalent amounts of time spent living, it would have been a grave and devastating declaration of war - but Stubl was 503, and Alastel still 192, which made it quite funny, and suggested the feasibility of two engaging in casual recreational sporting behavior more than it suggested anything other than that. Like with anyone else, it was a gamble, but taking it - 'it', the gamble, being interacting with others at all - with Stubl yielded more interesting outcomes than the typical fare, to be sure, especially when considering talent in anchoring a group of desperate-for-conversation strangers for lord knows how long.

JHULY, shyly: Mr. Stubl; the sun?

STUBL was playful just before, but happier now: It really is important, you know. You said you're studying macrostructures, right?

JHULY: Up in Xelarna, outside Xenthelna - still inside Xenthelnia though; oh, whatever you know that, sorry - anyways, I, uh, yes. I think I did.

STUBL, unfazed: You couldn't build one here. There. Here's probably fine. Anyways, nobody could.

The group remained silent after this for quite some time; about five seconds.

CHRISTYL: Ahhh... yeah.

STUBL: It's got something else with it, going on with it, yeh? That stellar atmosphere, billowing off so thick... like a damn wind...

After saying 'wind', Stubl looked off about fifty degrees to their left, angling their head about twenty five degrees down. In the realm of the physical, they were looking at some stranger's shoes.

CHRISTYL, to Jhuly: Nobody's ever seen one blow up, either. It's kind of scary, if you think about it.

Christyl Melenene Jerefel, better known as Xl. C.M. Jerefel, was one of the most pre-eminent minds in stellar astronomy known to the galactic center. Nobody at the table had any idea who she was; Alastel was the closest, having seen her name in science-journalism that'd reached her in aligned bored-reading times before, but that was as 'C.M. Jerefel' exactly, and she'd only introduced herself to Alastel as Christyl at the bar (Christyl had seen her reading an opinion article in Calibrated Salnamorian on her handheld, and made sure to mention it not at all during the conversation). All in all, Ms. Jerefel was having a great time, even if her time-stiffened demeanor made a worse window than it did a door (and even then, what locks enfixed! oh, but is that unique? no... maybe!). She also wished that Stubl had kept talking - strangely - but, sensing the situation, respected its outcome.

As Christyl mulled all of this over in her own mind, Alastel stirred her drink absentmindedly, and Jhuly pondered why a lack of an explosion could be scary at all for a little while. Then, she remembered her father's Press-Lock. See, as the very materials out of which clothes were fashioned changed wildly, so did, too, the techniques required to imprint designs upon them. As the environments in which the clothes were forged, generally, rose in energy - in the most dastardly of all senses, thermodynamic, mind you - so did, too, the energy required of the processes manipulating clothing after its most basal rending into a shaped, wearable form. The Press-Lock is nothing more than a contemporaneous instantiation of this need under such contemporaneous constraints, which is exactly why hearing that components of it had been recalled would have sent any organism familiar with the machinery into a fear-driven, biologically coordinated response for a meaningful period of time. Fortunately, her father never missed his thumb; you can just grow those over here, it's not very hard! Just part with a different-but-related appendage for a few days and hope the persons handling it and calibrating incubatory vats are truly council-certified, and I do mean hope, because a world in which risk without death can feel good is one in which the ability to defy both death and mortifying injury themselves only induces further demand for the processes warding off said consequences. Oh, and Jhuly's father retained all twenty-two of his most distal appendages quite healthily in the end! There was a day the staff forgot to feed the new thumb, but you'll have that, nothing to lose a license over, nothing at all, Mr. Fuhvur... nothing at all.

ALASTEL, after a solid minute of stirring: Jhuly... Fuhvur, was it?

JHULY, quicker than she'd ever replied to such a question, and more panicked, too: Yes! Oh. Sorry.

ALASTEL, who'd had her own thoughts about the Refinolux; much tamer, though: It's fine, it's fine. Fuhvur! Where have I heard that from?

JHULY: Well, I mean, do you read the print-design journals-

ALASTEL, suddenly, sticking her fingers out in the air as if divining: DX-15!

It was the name of an exo-lane gate, under-construction, never finished, meant to connect the Levan Bel to officially unclaimed space (the status owed in no small part to constant disputes between the Levan Bel and Premantel, as well as the distal Forax presence antagonizing and hindering Avaranan efforts to explore the region), both unofficially and obviously meant to promote economic activity out in the zone. It exploded, viciously, three standard years prior to the conversation Alastel and Jhuly were now having.

JHULY: You remember that?

Jhuly was, relative to the rest of the people working the investigation of the aftermath, basically just a student; but this was before she'd really hit the books and had plenty of social skills. She worked public communications during (and it was long, too... obviously, something that big can never just 'explode,' you know, and there were a solid two weeks between the first incidental destructions and what is euphemistically called 'total structure loss') and after the event.

ALASTEL: I love it when stuff blows up.

ALL other than CHRISTYL, who laughs, look at her strangely.

ALASTEL: Sorry. Been in a few.

JHULY smiles, then goes back to her drink.

LINSTAER, breaking out of her trance: Alastel, what was it that you were here in Exeter for, anyways?

All look toward Alastel in that unnerving fashion a crowd of known individuals are known to uphold.

ALASTEL sighs, slightly, and says: I'm heading over to Jemel via the gate soon. I received an eyewitness report a few months back from this planet over there. Not much in the way of anything there other than atmosphere, I think the guy was snooping around for junk metals or artifacts or whatever the hell anybody gambles on their time with there. I've never been.

Everyone is still looking at her, even more strangely now.

ALASTEL: Oh, right. Yes. I study life in clouds and other aerosols. The guy saw a strange cloud. I've never really heard of that before. Not expecting much. Usually it's something like "Welxian steps off spacecraft with no helmet on unknown planet; immediately colonized by unknown fuzz," so... I don't know, really.

CHRISTYL: I heard about that. Fytina's Growth. Did you work that?

ALASTEL, slightly embarrassed: Oh, no, I remember reading about that one, too. It's just that I was over in the Zin when that happened myself. That was what made me want to get into this, actually.

The admission hit the table with much more force than the fact that she was literally chasing clouds. The Levan Zin fought, and Pyrrhically won, a civil war to free themselves from the tyranny of the Levan Bel's decision to directly abolish various forms of financially backed institutionalized racism (largely due to the hindrances they posed toward pushing profits up under pan-galacticism - rich Helsanites were, like any other of their rich-ilk, incredibly racist) about fifty standard years ago, and were circling the galactic stage-drain now, practically begging an upstart union further out for admission. Everyone stared at their drink for a while, about a minute.

STUBL, finally blurting, as if it was the first thing that came to his mind well before Alastel had ever finished her own statement: Did ye git any of 'em? Zinnies?

He was using a relatively all-inclusive, but still derogatory, name for (functionally) anybody within the bounds of the Levan Zin at any given moment.

ALASTEL, still looking at her drink: Yes.

STUBL, clueless: How many?

ALASTEL: Plenty.

STUBL simply patted her once, strongly, square on the back and declared: GOOD.

Linstaer and Jhuly, being the youngest and therefore those with the most tendency toward the performing actions of the group, raised their glasses of drink and said something equivalent to Earth's "here, here" - it can vary by context, and half of the uses are in places where the Interlocution Standard Intermediate Language mid-word has the only truly fitting meaning anyways, and that can expand to anywhere between 1 to 5 words post-translation - while Christyl quietly said "Thank you." None of it was patriotic, all of it practical. It seemed to all involved, whether or not they kept a scholarly habit with respect to the matter, that past a certain point, civil war was just as much of a terminal psychological outcome as it was a political one, and everyone was more or less just glad to have an outcome in both arenas finally break their way for once, even if it took some thirty years of learned lessons across a border that had never previously existed to truly cement it - perhaps because one of the individuals getting their lick back on their behalf was sitting right there in front of them, and also because the economy in particular had never come all the way back on either side of the novel nation-divider aforementioned.