“Wait a minute I HAD THESE a second ago, well possibly more than that but........” Mike’s nervous chatter was for once totally lost on Aara as she sat, staring at the screen saver on the main console. Twisting slowly in delightfully calming patterns that reminded her of how simple life must have been before...... Working for next to nothing at the museum, making passive attempts at communication with her friends, getting plastered at the Blur occasionally, maybe more. The simple apartment, pleasant HUMAN faces that didn’t aim a gun at you, messed up bankers, credit card bills, having power cut in her flat because she didn’t pay the bill for 6 months running and the lady downstairs got pissed off. Struck by a before unnoticed concept she sat back hard and gasped....then got up and started dancing around the bridge, singing at the top of her lungs and giggled happily as Mike, who was emptying out every container in sight that could possibly be concealing the maps, jumped 2 feet in the air and fell on his butt. She loved this, loved it loved it loved it. Still dancing she leapt over to Mike and gave him a big hug before tripping all the way to the door and taking a major slide on all the maps piled in the corner. They fell over each other trying to get up and laughing as hard as she had ever done on Earth she pulled him up off the floor and without a conscious effort on anyone’s part, they began to dance.

The next day, they cut a straight course towards Reimolo Qwerty, the unintentional inspiration for primitive typing systems galaxy-wide. It was the closest planet to the place where the Vegans had dumped them after speeding them out of the system with much anger and malice. Mike had a plan for when they got there. It seemed to be a Mike sort of plan. They would find a party, stay at it ‘till it broke up and then find another one. According to Mike they would do that until he had gone to all the parties he had missed in the 5 year exile on Earth then to one more. That one being for the present. There was nothing, after all, like getting all the catch-up done right away. He’d learnt that at school. So when Qwerty, a star similar to Earth, got larger and larger on the screen, Mike ran a scan over all the populated landmass and looked for a) a secure parking space for this glorious craft and b) the loudest, craziest, most slap-happy party he could find. When he located these both in the same hemisphere on the planet locally known as Werf. That’s where they headed. Mike was slowly learning how to drive and, with Aara’s patient tutoring, he could turn, break and start up. Aara had purposefully not taught him how to accelerate but all must be discovered in due time.

At precisely the same time that Mike and Aara’s ship was smoothly hurtling across deep space toward the planet Werf, a small floating spaceship refueling station broke free of it’s anchoring and began to drift. The owners of this unexciting and slightly grungy franchise did not notice. Lloyd and Floyd were sleeping. Each having told each other to keep an eye on the store while each was having a nap and each having ignored the other as was usual and happened almost every night. But tonight was different because, the little gas station was steadily picking up speed towards a beautiful, sleek fast moving object which was coming from behind and at an angle. The sleek, fast moving object happened to belong to our two protagonists who were spending the evening eating pizza and drinking glasses of rum and coke. In front of the wallscreen that was playing City of Angels. Aara was bawling her head off onto the side of Mike’s shirt that still had a sleeve. They didn’t feel more than a jolt when the gas station imbedded itself into one of the unbreakable windows, stretching it almost across the hallway where Mike found it the next morning. It seemed ridiculous to him that he had to wake Lloyd and Floyd up. They were still in bed, immovably and completely asleep.