The month before the fateful dinner, Mindeham had an argument with Elvenheim about the Light of Immortality.

"But there's always going to be more places to explore," he said. "Why would you not want to be around to see them?"

"I do, but I also should let the next generation of people explore instead of taking up that spot."

"I am sure that there are never going to be enough humans to explore the entire universe," Mindeham said. "You're not going to take someone else's spot."

"We also can't trust that it will do what it seems to do," Elvenheim reminded him.

"All right, but Paradrei's religious. Shouldn't we let him try first, then, and see what it does?"

"What reasoning got you to that conclusion?"

"It's a sin for him to kill himself," Mindeham said. "If it's the same, morally, if you kill someone or let them be killed in front of you, isn't it the same, morally, if you kill yourself or allow yourself to die of old age?"

"It's not the same at all!"

"Sure," Mindeham said bitterly. "One gets me locked up for a decade, and the other gets you the moral high ground."

"Mindeham--"

Mindeham stormed out of the apartment. Elvenheim sighed, waited a while, then went back to her work.

Halfway down the main hallway of their sector, Mindeham stopped.

"Even if she is right," Mindeham said slowly to himself, "you still cannot let someone be killed in front of you." He had the results of Elvenheim's experiments with the substance, and his own models of its behaviour. He could figure out how it worked.

And he could save his friends.

***

Mindeham was later quite proud of himself for not screaming and running away from Wendolina; he instead screamed, grabbed his sister's hand, and dragged her with him.

"That's not a good way to begin a conversation," Elvenheim said reproachfully.

"I know, right?" Mindeham panted.

"That's not what I--"

"I know! Keep running, you fearless freak!"

When they got to the dock where they had kept their ship, the airlock was sealed with emergency protocols.

"Damn it!"

"Let's go back and talk to her rationally," Elvenheim suggested.

"I am sure that won't go nearly as well as you're hoping," Mindeham muttered, but he didn't see that they had that much of a choice. They slowly walked back. As they walked, a dog-like creature came up to them. Mindeham eyed its jaws worriedly. The creature came up to their knees, and was subtly wrong for a dog.

"Has she spliced a cat and a dog together?" Mindeham whispered.

"Oh, that wasn't Wendolina. They were popular pets at one point."

"But..." Mindeham shook his head at the people he kept on thinking as 'future humans', and cautiously patted the cat/dog. It whined a little.

"I think it is hungry," he said.

"Is she not feeding it properly? The poor thing," Elvenheim said, rummaging around in her pockets for a food bar. The cat/dog ate the bar, rubbed up against the two humans, and walked a little way away. It stopped and looked back.

"Should we follow it?" Mindeham asked.

"Why not," Elvenheim said, and they did. The dog seemed scared of the open corridors, and hid occasionally, whining at the two humans to do the same. The last time they did this, the dog waited a while, then ran to the back of the apartment they were hiding in, long tail high and twitching at the end. They followed it in, and stopped short. Wendolina was sitting on a partially rotten armchair, her labcoat torn and stained.

"Oh, good," she said. "Hello. Are you here to rescue me?"

***

"What's--" Elvenheim began, but Mindeham nudged her quiet for a moment.

"Look at her eyes," he whispered. They were Wendolina's normal brown, not green like the other Wendolina. This Wendolina's hair, too, looked like it was slightly better cared for, if rather dirty and matted at the moment.

"Did you clone yourself, Wendolina?" Mindeham asked.

"Well, I was lonely," Wendolina said. "And there was nobody else to talk to, was there?"

"You could have called on me," Elvenheim said.

"You could have called on me," Wendolina returned. "I admit it was a mistake to tweak the genome a little. It had some odd results."

"Maybe don't tell Aphelka you're GMing humans," Mindeham said.

"Oh, she's a stick-in-the-mud," Wendolina said, making a face. "Besides, Lina turned out okay."

"Who is the green-eyed one in the lab?"

"That's Wendy," Wendolina said. "She's, um... she has anger issues sometimes."

"So who, if we can ever get out of this place, are we rescuing exactly?" Elvenheim asked.

"Well, me, I would hope," Wendolina said, ticking people off on grubby, slender fingers. "Lina, because she can't really cope with Wendy. And Auffelsik, here," she said, making the cat/dog paw at her knee at his name. "The rest are kind of loyal to Wendy now."

"We can fit that many people into our spacecraft," Elvenheim admitted. "But someone--I assume it was Wendy--has blocked off our access to it."

"That would be Wendy," Wendolina agreed.

"So what do we do?" Elvenheim asked.

"Talk to her, of course," Wendolina said.

It was with extreme reluctance that Mindeham followed them all back to the lab.

"You come with offerings?" Wendy asked Wendolina.

"With something better," Wendolina said. "Let us go off this ship, and you can be officially in charge of the station."

"I am officially in charge of the station," Wendy snarled.

"No, you're practically in charge," Wendolina said. "The computer systems say otherwise. I'll change it before we go."

Wendy's eyes narrowed for a moment, then she nodded.

"All right," she said.

It took them a little while to find where Lina had been hiding herself, as Wendy refused to help them. Wendolina was a rather tall individual; Lina was at least a foot taller, towering over them all. She had a mournful demeanour, and a soft voice.

"But I can't leave Cacaha here," Lina said, hugging her pet, a strange cockroach-type bug the size of a small dog.

"We can take her with us," Wendolina said impatiently. "Come on, do you want to be left alone with Wendy?"

"I'll pack," Lina said.

There was a stressful moment after Wendolina had changed the station systems to reflect the new ownership, where they were sure the airlock wouldn't open. But it did in the end, and they all hurried through.

"On to our meeting with Xysphael, I think," Elvenheim said cheerfully. Mindeham hugged Auffelsik, gritted his teeth, and agreed, preparing for the worst.

***

Xysphael's people had been extensively trained, and so did not remark on Wendolina's appearance when they arrived for their meeting. Xysphael himself looked tired and harrassed.

"Elvenheim!" he said, when they all walked in. "And... Wendolina, and a child? Cousin? And..."

"Mindeham," Mindeham supplied.

"Oh, good, you're back," Xysphael said, peering at him.

"We're having a party to celebrate," Elvenheim said. "Do you want to come with us, or do you want to follow behind?"

"Oh. I am sort of too busy at the moment," Xysphael said, looking down at his desk.

"You really look like you need a holiday," Lina said in her soft voice.

"Yes, when was the last time you had a holiday?" Elvenheim asked.

"Er..." Xysphael paused.

"You don't know, do you?"

"Sorry, Xysphael, but you kind of look worse than Wendolina," Mindeham said.

"Hey!" Wendolina objected.

"Look at Wendolina, Xys. She's objecting being compared to you."

"Hey!"

"It's not that bad..." Xysphael said, as Elvenheim wandered out the door.

"Without the Light of Immortality you'd probably have had a breakdown by now," Wendolina said.

"Well, that's what it's for, right?"

"No!"

"You can't rely on that forever," Mindeham said. "Look. Wendolina has been trapped in her station by a crazy clone for however long. I have been tortured to death regularly for the last thousand years. Doesn't it make you wonder that we're worried about you?"

"My work is important," Xysphael protested.

"It's also never-ending," Mindeham pointed out. "Just because you've assigned yourself a task both Herculean and Sysyphean, doesn't mean you're some kind of god."

"Actually," Wendolina said, holding up a hand, "you might not know this, but we've actually been--"

Mindeham rolled his eyes. "Mythologised, I know. Lae keeps on taking your names in vain. Why you let that happen, I don't know."

"We couldn't help it, it just happened," Wendolina said.

"Half the time when people meet me, they don't think I'm actually me," Xysphael added, "because the real me is somehow this all-powerful being, apparently."

"Which is not who you are," Elvenheim said, coming back into the room. "Which is why you're taking a break. And coming to our party. Now."

"But--"

"I've arranged you a holiday with your staff," Elvenheim said. "It's been approved by the HR division."

"I guess I have no choice," Xysphael said.

"No," Elvenheim agreed.

"Sorry," Lina said. "But I think it really is for the best."

***

Having bullied Xysphael into coming with them, the group travelled back to Party Prime, just in time to prevent a group including Case, Trem, Lae, and Chis going out to rescue Elvenheim and Mindeham from Wendolina.

"Where did--no, I don't want to know," Aphelka said, looking from Wendolina to Lina.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Hello to you too," Wendolina said.

"You do know that your station is in World space and therefore is defined as coming under its laws, yes?"

"I'm an independent station, so no. I would have had to sign that contract seven hundred years ago for World rules to apply on it, and you know what I did with it instead?"

"Spaced it," Aphelka said, sighing. "And what is that giant cockroach doing here?"

"What... Lina!"

"I couldn't leave him behind!" Lina objected, holding out her hands and letting Cacaha jump into her arms.

"Mindeham," Lae said in a low voice, drawing him off to the side, "I have to talk to you about something."

"What about?" Mindeham asked cautiously.

"I've been hearing things about the Light of Immortality messing with your brain."

"Lae," Mindeham said, equally as softly. "I have to talk to you about something, too."

"What?"

"I've been hearing things about being dead messing with your brain, too."

"You telling me to not worry about it?"

"It's not a huge difference to the way you think," Mindeham said. "It just keeps you... level."

"Am I going to become an emotionless robot?" Lae hissed.

"Look around you," Mindeham said in answer. Aphelka was still arguing with Wendolina while Wendolina tried to argue with Lina, Byque and Paradrei were making up what they seemed to consider a hilarious cocktail for Xysphael, and Case and Trem seemed to be in a very intense discussion about a potential future scientific collaboration.

"The party hasn't even started yet," Mindeham said. "That's when you'll see them get really emotional." He looked so downhearted at the thought that Lae felt sorry for him.

"We could steal a ship," Lae suggested. Mindeham sighed.

"Tempting, but no," he said. "I've been away from this for long enough. It's time to face Paradrei's terrible taste in music, and have a party."

***

Rivaldi and his hired staff shooed everyone to their assigned rooms soon after, to wash up and get dressed for the party. When they reconvened, Paradrei looked out at them all expectantly. Apart from Elvenheim, Poll, and Navem, who were wearing the dress uniforms of their Adventuring Organisation, everyone was dressed in the best party clothes Rivaldi's hired tailors could make in the time allowed them.

"At least you didn't go for pyjamas," Lae said to Mindeham.

"Yes," Mindeham said, looking shifty. He was wearing a comfortable long sleeved knitted top and black trousers which, despite the cut, were secretly fleecy on the inside. Lae herself wore a red and white cocktail dress. "You look very smart," Mindeham said to her.

"Thanks," Lae said. "I haven't been in a habitat I trust long enough to wear a dress for a while."

Bluebubble's company was wearing their party clothes as well; Bluebubble with streaks of yellow paint, which apparently their species wore on special occasions, and the robots were painted in bright, geometric designs they decided on themselves.

"I like that one," Lae said, pointing out a particular orange-and-green design.

"I prefer that one," Mindeham said, nodding at a robot with green and blue octagons.

It was at this point that the organisers showed up.

"Is that suit made entirely of sequins?" Lae whispered to Mindeham.

"Yep," Mindeham said gloomily. "That's the suit he wears when he's getting excitable. We should be careful in case he decides on a party theme or something."

"At least Rivaldi's only wearing a sequined hat. How are we supposed to look at Paradrei under normal lighting?"

"I guess we just bow our heads to his magnificence," Mindeham said.

"Welcome, everyone, to this most special occasion," Paradrei said, beaming at everyone. "I hope you enjoy the party. May it begin!"

The lights flickered, then some of them started to change colour, forming a dancing section. Paradrei's terrible taste in music came through the speakers.

"Was this stuff ever modern?" Lae whispered. "No wonder everyone isn't dancing."

"No, we're just waiting for..." Mindeham whispered back.

Caterers came in, bearing platters of food. Everyone cheered, and headed for the bar.

***

The initial round of food eaten, the party started to begin in earnest. Aphelka, Preasi, and Wendolina got into their usual three-way moral discussion, Trem got out a pack of playing cards and started a game with Elvenheim and Case, Paradrei and Byque headed towards the dance floor, and Xysphael and Chis stayed by the bar. Bluebubble got into a conversation with Poll and Navem, and Mindeham and Lae stayed by the food with Auffelsik and Cacaha.

"I somehow imagined Paradrei's parties to be more intense," Lae said. Mindeham shrugged.

"They usually are. It's for me, though, so he would have toned it down a lot because of that."

"That's nice of him."

"He's a good host."

At that point, Paradrei came up to them (or rather, the food table). "How do you like the decorations, Mindeham?"

"Exactly my favourite colour," Mindeham said. Paradrei beamed.

"Excellent!" he said. "The Light of Immortality can shift your colour perception by a shade or two, but I woked out an algorithm to compensate."

"Very clever," Lae said.

"Thanks!"

Time passed. Xysphael spent a curiously long amount of time talking to a few of Bluebubble's robots, and Byque joined the card game when they switched to poker. Lina got a bunch of book recommendations from Poll and Navem, and retired to her room to read them. Aphelka and Paradrei started singing along to the section of Paradrei's playlist entitled 'Historical Eurovision Hits', and Rivaldi, used to the songs, answered Poll and Navem's questions on what they were singing about.

"Can you convince Bluebubble to stay here for a few cycles?" one of the robots asked Mindeham.

"I can try, why do you ask?" The robot paused a little before answering.

"He seems okay, for a Bluebubble. We don't want him caught up in the uprising."

"Having a revolution at home, are you?" Mindeham said.

"I will not say," the robot said, and moved away.

***

The party, Lae thought afterwards, was rather tame, but a success in what its purported goal was: to welcome Mindeham back to the society of the gods. Nobody argued with him, they ate his favourite foods and had a big cake, and proved that they knew him well by otherwise leaving him alone.

The party also served a dual purpose: to sort out the problems the gods had made for themselves during their time apart. Wendolina, now a refugee from her own station, got safe lodgings in Party Prime, with Aphelka agreeing to send the needed paperwork for change of ownership of a station to Wendy. The forms, long, boring, and with hidden legal consequences and responsibilities, could almost be considered a punishment.

Two of Bluebubble's robots had taken Xysphael's problems on board, and were leaving Bluebubble in order to help him run his charity empire. After Case's scientists talked to him at length about Trem's massive stash of second-hand scientific equipment, Case, Trem, and Elvenheim decided to set up a scientific organisation in order to make use of it.

"I was running out of space," Trem confessed, "and I always hoped that one day it would be useful."

What to do with Mindeham himself was a problem that was not going to be fixed in the length of one party.

"Elvenheim wants me to go with her to her adventurers, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy it that much. And she'd try to involve me in things, to help me settle in," Mindeham said to Lae over breakfast.

"Did you want to stay at Party Prime?" Lae asked.

"Maybe for a bit, but I don't want to impose on Paradrei forever."

"I have an idea," Lae said. "Why don't you convince Elvenheim to fund a tour of human space? You've missed out on a thousand years of history; you should get to know where you're going to live before deciding what to do."

"And I suppose I'll need a guide to navigate me on this holiday to all these interesting exotic locations," Mindeham said suspiciously.

"Well, yes," Lae admitted. Mindeham sighed.

"I'll think about it," he said, and finished his breakfast.

***

In the afternoon, Bluebubble came up to Mindeham.

"Do you mind me staying in human space?" he asked.

"Not at all, I'd be delighted," Mindeham said quickly, remembering what the robots had said to him. One of the robots, who was translating, gave Mindeham a quick expression of thanks in the form of a wave of his arm.

"Do I need to ask permission, do you know?" Bluebubble asked.

"I think if Aphelka knows, she can make sure everything is okay," Mindeham said.

Bluebubble then told Mindeham about his fears that the robots were sentient and being exploited, which devolved into a detailed retelling of a conversation he had with Aphelka and Paradrei and Xysphael the night before. It had apparently turned into a philosophical discussion on whether or not it is possible for a society that outsources their labour to ever have a non-exploitative relationship with their labour force long-term, which had got Bluebubble quite agitated. The whole conversation was all completely out of the range of Mindeham's knowledge and interest, but he politely listened to Bluebubble's fears on the subject, and tried to figure out where they were coming from.

"You had those thought control headbands, though," Mindeham said. "Can't you use those to control mecha or something?"

"What are mecha?" Bluebubble asked, so Mindeham dug around in the archives of Paradrei's entertainment system to try to find some of the movies he remembered. The one he tried just confused Bluebubble more, because it turned out that bluebubbles didn't process images in anywhere near the same way as humans, and so had no idea what the cartoon representations meant.

"Lae," Mindeham said, finding her reading a book in her room. "Do you know of any live-action mecha movies?"

"What's a mecha?" she asked, switching off the book.

"A robot that's not a robot because a human is piloting it," Mindeham explained. This making Lae just look more confused, Mindeham went on to try and find someone of his own age to ask, Lae and Bluebubble trailing behind him.

"They're called exxo now, after exoskeleton," Case explained.

"Oh, them," Lae said, shaking her head. "Try 'Hollow Metal 9403', it has pretty good action scenes."

"Why do you want to watch them?" Case asked. When Mindeham explained, Case found clips of actual exoskeleton-using dockworkers, which brought the point home a bit better.

"Actually, Trem might be able to make a prototype, to see if it's actually something Bluebubble's people would find useful," Case said.

"I would like that," Bluebubble said, and they all trooped over to find Trem. After a while, Trem and Bluebubble's discussion got too involved and boring, so the rest of them went to watch Hollow Metal 9403.

"I don't get half the themes," Mindeham said gloomily to Lae.

"You know what would help with that?" Lase said brightly.

"A long culturally informative holiday around human space, with a suspiciously enthusiastic chaperone?"

"Got it in one," Lae said.

***

Aphelka left that evening, her duty calling her.

"If you need anything, please talk to me or my aids," she said to Mindeham as she left.

"Thanks," Mindeham said, and waved goodbye.

Elvenheim wanted to stay longer, but her organisation was in mourning over the deaths of so many of its members, and she needed to be there to build things up again.

"Come to see me or to stay with me at any time," Elvenheim said, after Mindeham again said no to living with her.

"I will," Mindeham promised.

"And let me know where you are, so I can see you," she said, before she, Navem, and Poll boarded their spaceship.

Case left the day after, and Trem left with Bluebubble to start constructing his prototype exxo.

"Thank you for this idea," one of the robots said. "Having a solution to propose at the end of the war would be more than we had hoped for."

"Good luck," Mindeham said, feeling bad for Bluebubble.

Xysphael stayed another week, then left with his newfound robot friends, claiming he felt much better now, thank you for the holiday, and was looking forward to going back to work. Since Byque and Wendolina tended to keep to themselves, the station suddenly seemed a bit lonely, now.

A week later, Mindeham wandered into the main dining room they were using, and encountered Lae and Preasi deep in conversation.

"Ah, excellent," Preasi said upon seeing him, filling Mindeham with foreboding. "I was just talking to Lae here, and she was telling me about your culture shock troubles."

"I haven't encountered any culture to shock me, yet," Mindeham said, putting food on his plate.

"Only a matter of time," Preasi said. "I agree with Lae that a tour of human space would be good for you, but perhaps a more directed tour rather than just a holiday may be better to stop yourself focusing on all the new things and such. Dip your toe into the waters of human space rather than plunging right into a thousand years of cultural history, as it were."

"What's the job?" Mindeham said, sighing.

"I'd like to gauge the interest we'd have in a particular Bardlenni technology I've been licenced to sell. You'd have to go incognito, as there are some places that would react badly to you coming to their habitats as yourself, but I trust your capabilities, and think that you would do a good job."

"I do appreciate the offer," Mindeham began, then saw the wide-eyed, pathetic look on Lae's face. He sighed. "And I'd be happy to accept."

"Excellent!" Preasi said, beaming. "I'll sort out your route with Lae. I'm always happy to get a former post deliverer onto staff."

Mindeham wasn't quite sure whether Lae was officially a 'former' post deliverer, but didn't say anything about that.

"Let me know when you're done," he said, a tad gloomily, and ate his potatoes.

***

Rivaldi was not happy to hear that Mindeham and Lae were leaving.

"If Paradrei's happy for me to use his station as a base of operations, I'll stay for a little while," Preasi said, "and you have Paradrei and Wendolina to help you."

"Wendolina is not likely to notice an invasion by pirates until they block her supply of reagents," Rivaldi said. "And Paradrei is already looking at holiday resort advertisements in his spare time."

"What if you hired someone to take care of Party Prime, and followed Paradrei around as his assistant?" Mindeham suggested.

"Paradrei doesn't need an assistant," Rivaldi said. Lae laughed.

"From what Poll was telling me, he really does," she said. "Why do you think he was trapped in that casino station for so long?"

"Well..."

"We'll go talk to him, if you'd like," Preasi said, standing up.

"Well..." Rivaldi looked a little helpless, and very apprehensive, as Preasi, Mindeham and Lae trooped out of the room.

"Oh, what a good idea, I've always thought Rivaldi needed a holiday," Paradrei said vaguely.

"No, as your assistant," Preasi corrected him.

"Sure, I can say that," Paradrei said. "I would not like him to think that I think he's too old, but a man has to retire sometime."

"I don't think he's getting it," Lae whispered to Mindeham.

"Paradrei, from what I hear you were stuck on a casino station for a very long time," Mindeham said. "If you took Rivaldi with you on your jaunts, that wouldn't happen."

"I've learnt my lesson," Paradrei said indignantly.

"Have you?" Mindeham challenged. After a while, Paradrei's face changed.

"Very well. I'll ask Lina if she wants to look after Party Prime in my absence. Rivaldi will be my assistant, and you will all stop making mean accusations about my gambling and drinking habits."

"I said nothing about what habits you had," Mindeham said.

"Don't rub it in, I've already agreed!"

Preasi and Lae's plan of action finalised and Rivaldi's objections out of the way, there wasn't much left keeping Mindeham and Lae on Party Prime. Preasi took them out to buy a ship for them, arrange their line of credit with her bank, and show them the device they'd be showing prospective customers.

"Are you sure anyone would want to buy this?" Lae asked dubiously, waving the thing around.

"That's what I'm hiring you to find out," Preasi said.

"Thanks for this," Mindeham said.

"Safe travels," Preasi said. They shook each other's hands, and then Mindeham and Lae boarded their new ship.

"I like it," Lae declared, looking around. "Very new, very clean, very unlikely to glitch out and leave me stranded in alien space."

Mindeham shuddered. "Don't mention that." Lae shrugged and flopped into the driver's seat.

"You ready?" Lae asked. Mindeham took a seat at the navigation board. After a thousand years, none of the switches and blinking lights meant anything to him.

"Maybe," he said.

"Good enough for me," Lae said brightly, and put them into warp.