Kahli stared at Lloyd as he cackled maniacally. He squeezed his gross, purple hand of power like it was almost a limb with a mind of its own.

"Why does it make those awful noises?" asked Omar in disgust.

"Um, I think that might be Froufrou," said Kahli sheepishly, with a face full of not only hardening plaster but indeed also with shame. "She's been a little gassy lately and I'm not sure why. I wonder what she's been eating."

"She's been eating? That thing eats?" asked Omar.

"I had some chips in my bag earlier and they disappeared. All I saw in their place was chip dust and salt all over Froufrou's tentacles. Do the math, Omar."

"Don't talk to me about doing math right now, Kahli," said Omar, his mind suddenly reeling at the realization of why he'd originally come over here! He thought of the outbreak of Curr swarming the restarurant, and was filled with rage and anger at the fact that he couldn't go to the bathroom or take vodka shots because of Kahli's foolishness! And this, this stupid alien was floating around here and gloating. Gloating about what, exactly? What was it that this stupid fucking alien had to gloat about other than being a weird little freak that looked like he wanted to set the world on fire, and in a bad way.

"Kahli, who is this fiery guy and why is he looking at me like I barfed on his breakfast?" asked Lloyd in an accusatory fashion.

"It's really not even about you, though you are obnoxious," said Omar. "But really, it's not just you. It's also about what she's done." Omar pointed a flaming arm towards Kahli. "Do you know what she's done?"

"No, but I know your arm looks fucking cool."

"Thank you, I quite fucking agree," said Omar with a smirk. "But that doesn't mean that I'm not focused right now on what Kahli has unleashed upon our world. I know you say that you're here to destroy us or whatever, but honestly, I think Kahli's going to end up doing it herself."

Kahli whispered quite, positive affirmations to Froufrou about her ability to destroy the world.

"By her stupidity," continued Omar. "Lloyd - I can see that's your name from your system and also because you kept proclaiming it at the top of your lungs during your cackling fits - Lloyd, do you happen to know what Curr is?"

"Curr?" Lloyd looked a little befuddled. "Um, I'm not certain. Can you describe it? Clearly this world might not use all of the many vocabularies that I've encountered in my space travels and also on my home world."

"Okay. So, picture this. It's just this weird... black nothingness, like some strange dense absence in space, an empty point from which nothing ever returns. What do you think of that?"

"Sounds... a little fascinating." Lloyd flexed his huge claw. "Do you want to know what my claw can do?"

"I'm sure you'll demonstrate on us later. Only, can we talk a little bit more about Curr?"

Lloyd agreed, sensing Omar's anxiety.

"Curr is... well, it's about the strangest fucking thing ever. One touch of a living being and it starts eating away at you. Only, it's not eating you, it's doing something far stranger. It's... turning you into information."

"What?" Lloyd blinked a few times.

"Let me put this in different words," said Omar, waving his flaming arm a bit in order to help gesture. "So, imagine that every time you sneezed, you sneezed into a vacuum-sealed point that immediately transferred all your germs away to somewhere so incomprehensibly and infinitely far away, that it might as well have been destroyed. This all happens in but an instant, mind you, but at an atomic perspective it's basically just taking everything and moving it somewhere else, and then it moves it back. But, in moving it back, the stuff that gets moved and then in turn gets moved back gets lost somehow. Or, well, maybe lost isn't the right word. But it changes."

Lloyd wasn't sure immediately of what Omar was saying, but he was very interested.

"So with that, well, it's like this: the distance to travel in such a short time is insane, relatively speaking. And the state of matter in that distance is, well, it's different. It's what a lot of people might call condensed. It folds into itself, like a napkin folded eighteen times, and then it collapses into itslef into this dense mass, much like Curr itself seems to be... only Curr is more than that. Because when the stuff gets back to where it came from, what's happened is that it's become math."

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"It's become math?"

Omar went on to give an example, a recent one being the math that returned from Brahd's severed feet. When Brahd's severed feet were being consumed by Curr and Omar had leaned over to inspect it, he'd immediately started speaking in simple math equations and consequently forgetting the present moment and a minor chunk of his conscious memory seemed to be removed in their place.

"Wow."

Lloyd had to think, and indeed he also had to cackle for a moment, but then he suddenly stopped. And it seemed that he, too, could think of something similar.

"You know, I had just about thought that what you were describing was completely unique and incredibly bizarre - and don't you get me wrong, it is definitely incredibly bizarre - but I am genuinely convinced that this has happened to other worlds, to other planets before."

"So, it's a planetwide thing?"

"Yes," said Lloyd gravely. "It's something that, in my world and in my section of space, we call Gloaming."

"Gloaming?"

"Yes, Gloaming. But we've never seen a Gloaming in progress. Yes, we've only ever observed the aftermath."

"The aftermath?" asked everyone in unison.

"Yes, the aftermath, Bwa hah hah." Lloyd looked a little uncomfortable.

"So what is the aftermath? What does it look like?" asked Omar, pointing his flaming arm at the alien.

"It doesn't look... pretty I'll say that. But it also doesn't look like a dead planet. It just becomes... well... it becomes... it's so hard for me to describe, it's almost like this strange twisting point that I can't define. And it's like, if I try to put it into words, I just get... confused and fuzzy all of a sudden. But I think, if I really try to - bwa HAH hah - if I try to rightly quantify and qualify what I'm saying to you, well then, I need to be certain about it. And it's hard. But I am certain that I can picture something, a knotted thing, kind of like a dark, knotted nothingness folding in on itself."

"Are you saying that the whole planet is going to become Math?"

"No, no, I can't rightly say that," said Lloyd. "Instead, well, instead what I can say that it becomes a planet with a mathematical atmosphere."

"An atmosphere out of equations?!" Omar gasped and waved his flaming arm.

Unit 5a23 did not react, and was instead looking robo-inwardly in order to engage and analyze his robo-self.

Kahli was getting a little confused, but generally she felt she was following what they were saying. They were saying, what, that math essentially takes air's place in a planet during Gloaming? Did that mean that there were things that lived there on math planets with algebraic atmospheres?

"Yes, there are planets where mathematics is the primary force and element of matter that surrounds the planet, much like floxygen here on Nomachiato, except of course in the fact that while floxygen is to some other life forms a deadly and terrible toxin, mathematics as a state and element is terrible for the cognitive processes of most all conscious living. So, in planets that have experienced and been terraformed by a Gloaming, which feeds only off of things that are living much as this Curr you have described does, there is a very real, material risk of life beings developing. And those beings are, essentially, devoid of thought. It's like an entire planet of automatons."

Unit 5a23 suddenly rushed out of his meditation, shot up to a standing position, and loomed up and over Lloyd. "You take that back right now," he said mechanically.

"Or what? What are you going to do, make me?" Lloyd squeezed Unit 5a23 with his big, purple hand tightly, until Kahli could hear some gears pop.

And then, the mood changed.

"You attack me like that?? Like a COWARD?" Unit 5a23's voice was now several octaves deeper, and he seemed to be glowing with a powerful blue energy. His eyes shone down like tiny spotlight onto Lloy'd face. "I'm not scared of you, Lloyd. Now let me go, before you make me fight back."

Before Lloyd could do or say anything more, Unit 5a23 suddenly hunched with a shock and a boom began charging up his [Robo-Blast]. Apparently, this [skill] allowed for a large, powerful force field to generate around him, pushing away enemies like Lloyd and his gross claw-hand.

"What's that robot doing?" asked Omar.

"He's charging up an attack." Kahli smiled uncomfortably. "I think it's because Lloyd attacked him."

"Ah, okay, just like a robot to have policies like that." Omar smiled, whistled, and started swinging his flaming arm around. "One thing I have to ask you, Kahli, is why."

"Why? Why what?"

"Don't you why, me, Kahli. I know that you brought that fucking Curr out from the archives of Old Snow Mountain. Even if you didn't mean to, hell, even if you did mean to, I just want you to know that I think so little of you now that you might as well be a crumb. You are not longer my apprentice! You ought to be ashamed of bringing upon us this terrible curse that will, apparently, destroy our whole planet and turn everyone on it into a blithering idiot."

Kahli sighed. She couldn't help but think that Omar was being a little negative here. And how was he so sure that she had brought the Curr? Couldn't the evil alien hellbent on destroying the world have brought the Curr somehow?

Before Kahli could ask Omar this in a retort, everyone froze as the air buffeted with turbulent wind as a far off boom echoed and a beam of white light shot up from a far distant mountainside.

"Holy shit, what is that?" Omar turned to look at Lloyd. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything," said Lloyd. "And I've got no idea what that is."