I Don't Seem So Bright in a Well-Lit Room

Chapter Eighteen

Endorphins are such a lovely thing. In a Topher they are even lovelier. They are super-über-mega lovely.

When these neurotransmitters fired up electrical signals to a Topher's nervous system it was as if a heavy dose of morphine was making sweet love to the type of anti-anxiety medication that only the shadiest of doctors smuggled in from planets with loose regulations (and morals).

They did not just numb physical pain; they were eighty-four per cent more potent than they were in humans. They made the native Towerscapians relax as if they had just had a temporary stroke.

It took a giant's share of pain or a whole whack of panic for those endorphins to kick in. Floating off into space without a spaceship wrap, no foreseeable rescue, and the promise of a slow, tortuous, lonely, claustrophobic death really jars the nerves. 

These lovely endorphins had fired up deep inside of Aye. He was floating now in a state of stunned semi-paralysis, drooling just a tad, and as calm as congealed gravy.

He stared out into the nothing. The nothing stared back with the icy coldness of an ex-lover, if that ex-lover were a bottomless pit in a frozen ocean. He could hear his breath like it was sad, sad music. 

His mind wandered. It wasn't a flash of a life well lived that rapidly played out before his eyes. It was more like a very poorly executed collage of a very poorly done crayon drawing of all the stupid things he had done in his life, very poorly cut out and half-assed glued onto soggy Bristol board. 

He didn't see huge criminal acts to be proudly ashamed of. He didn't see world-changing assassinations. He didn't see anything important at all. Nothing truly bad. What he saw instead was a series of stupid accidents. He saw a series of clumsy minor crimes and drunken run-ins with the law. Shoplifting and flying under the influence of booze. All the booze. So much damn booze. 

He saw the many beatings he took, and the many reasons why he was beaten...most of which were his own fault. Almost all the trouble he had gotten into was because of all that damn booze and his stupid big mouth.

He knew no one would be looking for him, because, as he finally comprehended, no one was really after him. He suspected (wrongly) that his father had even given up the hunt.

He put two and two together and realized none of this little adventure had started before he rescued the Quarol. Even that noble rescue had been a stupid, selfish accident. 

It was the Quarol everyone was after. And not because Potto was some master criminal either; why anyone would hunt Potto was a mystery to Aye because people generally liked Potto. He was truly good natured. The stupid things that came out of his mouth didn't hurt anyone. They were irritating, but they weren't unlikable, insulting or cruel. Not like Aye. Potto was nice.

"Nice" was an insult on Towerscape. It meant the same that "cream puff" or "wuss" did on other planets. Oddly though, on Towerscape "Wuss" was a brand of shaving gel and a "cream puff" was a style of hat.

He sadly listened to the sad-breath music. He knew no one would be looking for him because no one cared. And what was worse, he couldn't think of one reason why they should. 

Aye didn't believe in prophesies from strange maybe-mythological (but unfortunately non-goat-legged) women, and he didn't know yet the part he was meant to play. He wasn't aware that he had a destiny. 

Like almost everyone in the entire universe, he had no idea how important he really was.

He was feeling useless and stupid, and he had that right: no one can tell anyone else what definitively has to go through their head when staring death in its big, empty, black-hole eyes.