Wanted: Intact or Vapourised

Chapter 8

She'd made him shower, but he had no complaints though it had rather made him feel like a filthy vagrant, watching the layers of dirt run off him in a sort of slurry so that he wondered whether the majority of his body weight had been grime.

Of course wiggle-ships had built in showers, and this one looked like it had been used thrice a day for years and years, and yet a single visit from him had done more damage by far.

Joon took the opportunity to look at his naked body in the long mirror. His ribs were visible. He'd actually been a naturally chubby man, but it was impossible to maintain these days. He touched the centre of his chest where the web-shaped scar splayed out across his collar bone and contained a wince.

He remembered the day he had given himself that scar, he had looked like he was wearing a red shirt even as he was wearing nothing at all.

While his clothes were being cleaned in some god forsaken contraption somewhere in the belly of the wiggle-ship, he had been given what was effectively a large fluffy jumpsuit that presumably Synthia Merriwether occasionally wore for Pyjamas. White fur, like he was a baby Ramma. It was bizarre, and a honeycomb pattern was shaved into it.

That was even more bizarre.

When he emerged she had covered her face undoubtedly biting back laughter, but he had readied himself for it anyway.

The interior of Mithridates proved that the name was rather grand. For much of the space was a mess. It was made of a central hub, the upper floor containing miscellaneous rooms, the engine room at the back, and beneath, the bubble-box shaped cargo bay. Then there was a long hallway that led into the cockpit which he had yet to have been showed.

On his ramblings he had noticed that the walls were often decorated with honeycomb patterns or occasionally small creatures that she had told him were bees. The wall decorations had an eerie habit of changing, fading away or morphing since they were projections, but it was not hard to navigate. The place was filled to the brim with a special sort of disorder. Many posters were strewn across the walls, more than a few were dedicated to a certain band that Joon needed not name. Others were for festivals, or Neuro-Operas or Theatre or other such tedious functions.

All over the ground were many blankets, each it's own special degree of fluffy and each haphazardly tossed so that travel was a process of stepping over or around them. There seemed to be no corners anywhere in the ship, everything was rounded off as though if he were much smaller he could slide from the ceiling to the ground to across the room like a marble down a tube.

The room she had placed him in now was by far the cleanest and least chaotic.

It was spherical with ledge-like seats arranged in a circle around and a sort of podium in the middle.

The ring-sofa was extensively adjustable as though it would have suited him if he was ten feet tall.

The place smelled the least like the gas. It smelled like nothing at all.

He sat down, nervously, with his back leaning against a cushioned wall and his legs splayed (for the arrangement hardly allowed for much else).

Synthia ensured he was sitting comfortably before she stepped over the podium and sat opposite him in the spherical room. Her dark hair was meticulously arranged so that it spilled down her bare shoulder in a way that was supposed to seem organic. The tips of her black locks went to a pastel lavender colour. Her blue eyes were hypnotic.

"Welcome to the presentation room." She said, and with a flick of the wrist the whole place went dark.

White specks, the same ones that made her armour, shot up from microscopic perforations in the podium and span in a milky maelstrom, illuminated by lights from above and beneath.