Suisei lost several days to a dreary, half-unconscious state of misery in which not only everything hurt but also the queerest potpourri of scents kept stinging at his nostrils. When he finally awoke, he found himself a stranger in an even stranger land.

He lay on a perfectly flat oval-shaped platform of marble. The only thing he could say about it was that he was pretty sure it hadn't been there before.

Then again, neither were the walls.

A dull buzz tickled insistently at the back of Suisei's head. It took him a minute to recognize what was, and then immediately regretted it.

His mind's eye was overwhelmed by a fulgurant pataphysical weave of in the shape of a sphere some fifteen feet in diameter.

The platform was in a grand, ellipsoidal chamber. Dense, calligraphic markings glowed on nearly every inch of the glazed walls, forming a kind of geometric splendor too artful for mere language. Quasicrystal tiles covered the floor with iridescent colors. The colors varied like holograms, shifting and quivering every time he moved. Broad, tall tunnels led out from opposite sides of the room, though to where, he couldn't tell.

Was he in one of the buildings he'd seen?

Suisei rose slowly. Getting up seemed like too much of a reach, so he settled for sitting up on the platform.

He took a measured breath. His lungs ached, and his mouth and throat were terribly dry.

To Suisei's surprise, he did not die. The air was… breathable. It wasn't especially good or fresh, but it was very, very breathable.

He smacked his lips. There was a mild, pungent stink to the air, like the sky after a thunderstorm, and with an accent of petrichor.

Suisei made the Bond-sign, and then muttered a quiet prayer in thanksgiving, both to the God he believed in, and any others that might have intervened to save the day.

Blinking his eyes, Suisei bent his neck and flexed his shoulders, shaking off his drowsiness, and then froze perfectly still the instant he realized he wasn't alone.

He'd never been one for audiences, and this audience was unlike any he'd ever encountered before.

There were three of them, each nearly six feet in diameter, and between two to three times that in height. The aliens looked more like abstract art than living beings. Their body was built around a quartet of thick, lozenge-shaped limbs that stood like megaliths around the nodular, amorphous mantle-mass of black tissue in between the four legs. Silvery gray highlights mottled the black, which was covered in a kind of lace, as if someone had turned a clod of foam into solid metal. Carapace covered their limbs, and the only joints Suisei could see were not on the limbs themselves, but at the axle-like points where they attached to the central mantle. A dozen long, cable-like tendril sprouted from the mantle, each tipped with five claws in a pattern of three above two, though without anything remotely comparable to a palm. When not in use, they let their many arms rest by wrapping them around the upper portions of their legs. Short, flexible funnels studded their mantles' uneven upper and lower surfaces, like smokestacks, but without any smoke. Gaps in the metal foam-lace gave glimpses of a glistening spherical core, filled with a lambent, orange-gold yolk, struck through by the multi-colored swirls of whatever materials were suspended within.

Just in the past few seconds, the beings' body language had changed. Suisei took that to mean they were aware he was awake. The color-swirls visible through the mantle windows now actively churned, where before they'd lazily drifted. Reds, violets, and blues bloomed in the yolk like fireworks in an arrestingly complex display.

Past the energy sphere's buzzing, a deep thrum vibrated through the earth. Suisei could feel it in his bones.

The sounds seemed to be coming from the funnels on the upper sides of the creatures' mantles.

Slowly, with his heart his throat, Suisei slid to the edge of the marble platform. He took care to keep his arms spread to his sides as he braced himself to stand, wondering whether his legs were still cut out for it. As soon as he began to move, one of the creatures raised a tendril-arm and waved the five-fingered hand at its tip.

Suisei sensed the pataphysical fields flow from the creature's hand and into the floor around the platform, which had begun to shine with a red-hot glow. Suddenly, the floor at the platform's rim rose up to form concentric daises around it.

They were stairs. Slowly, with fear on his face, Suisei made his descent, coming to a stop at the foot of the stairs. For a moment, he teetered back and forth. His body was still weakened from its exposure to the hostile chemistry of this world's atmosphere.

The aliens must have somehow deduced the temperature, pressure, atmospheric composition, and other environmental conditions Suisei needed to stay alive. The invisible orb of energy around was almost certainly hard at work maintaining those conditions for him.

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Hmm…

He was probably smelling ozone. That would explain the acrid scent, and the faint tingling on his mucous membranes. So, the aliens hadn't gotten the conditions perfectly right—not that that, nor the slightly chilly temperature inside the bubble—bothered Suisei in the least.

It was simply mind-boggling that they'd managed to do all this. From what he could see, there was no sign of any form of technology, advanced or not. Despite this, they'd managed to intervene in a matter of seconds and save him from death.

He desperately wanted to believe that they hadn't simply figured it out that quickly, because that would have been terrifying, though the thought of them putting him into stasis while they determined the right conditions for his physiology was still quite scary on its own.

Had they really done all of this only using pataphysics? If so, their powers were god-tier, if not higher.

Still, the fact that they hadn't gotten his environmental preferences quite right was a valuable piece of information. However capable these beings were, they could still make mistakes.

Eventually, Suisei dared to speak, though a coughing fit shoved his words out of the way almost immediately. He clutched at his neck as he cleared his parched throat. Then, in a slow, deliberately exaggerated motion, he pressed his hand against his chest and said his name.

"Suisei." He patted his hand on his chest. "Su-i-sei."

The creatures didn't move. The only signs of a response was the cryptic churning of the yolk within their mantles' cores, assuming that was even a response.

Suisei tried to talk to them. He thanked them for their help, and explained that he was lost. Most importantly, he pleaded for water. The creatures gave no sign of understanding, which was not the least bit reassuring.

It made no sense. If they could use pataphysics as brilliantly as he'd seen, they'd have to—

Wait, he thought.

Maybe some pataphysics would get their attention.

He tried the simplest trick he knew: a little closed weave to conjure an orb of comforting light—emphasis on "tried", because when he loosed the energy to make the light, something went wrong. Instead of light, a shrill tone ripped through the air. The edge of the bubble of breathable atmosphere jiggled as the sound ran through it.

Worried that something might have been wrong with him, Suisei tried again, only for the same thing to happen.

"What the hell…?" he muttered.

For whatever reason, what should have made light now created sound. That made no sense. The laws of physics didn't change on a dime!

"Why isn't it working?" I asked, in a whisper. I could only contain my curiosity for so long.

"Just watch."

If Suisei's words hadn't gotten a response from them, his botched pataphysics certainly did.

Red-green swirls thickened in the yolk of the middlemost of the three creatures. Raising a tendril arm, the behemoth pointed at the floor, gesturing downward with a bob of its claws.

"I don't understand," Suisei said.

The creature to its right pointed up.

Through his mind's eye, Suisei watched pataphysical weaves dance across the ceiling. In moments, the ceiling turned almost perfectly transparent. The runes studding the curved surface—if they were runes—were little more than a blur on the view, visible, but only just.

The creature's claw pointed at the red orb in the sky; the red star.

"May I have water?" Suisei asked.

The creature on the left pointed one set of claws at Suisei, and another at the marble platform behind him, while the creature in the middle pointed at the creature at its left.

Soreness twinged in Suisei's legs. He groaned softly, and then sat down on the marble steps.

The creatures continued to point at different objects, and Suisei didn't know if it meant anything at all. The strange pointing show went on for hours. At times, Suisei wondered if he might have somehow found his way into Hell's waiting room. After the second hour, the creatures inexplicably started walking away, hobbling along the ground using their four lozenge-limbs like a geometer's compass.

Alarmed, Suisei called out to them.

The aliens stepped back toward him, only to walk away the instant he stopped talking.

Hazarding a guess, he tried talking to them again. The creatures re-entered the room.

"So they can hear you!" I said. "Though, that still doesn't explain what the heck is going on."

Suisei kept on talking. He talked about whatever came to mind: his faith, his job, his worries, his favorite old arcade games, his list of the best flavors of popcorn, and his deep resentment of sushi. He talked until his lips were chapped and his head dizzy. Eventually, he had to stop. He coughed terribly, saliva-gunk cracking on his tongue.

"Have you heard enough yet?" He was too winded to be angry. "Please, if you can understand me, if you know my biochemistry, please, let me have some water. If not, just put me out of my misery."

One of the creatures raised an arm and waved it at Suisei. Like before, part of the floor glowed red hot, though this time, it was in a circular spot not far from the platform's edge. In moments, a slender stone column rose up, with a wide, bell-like tip. The column stopped growing at about three feet in height, at which point the upward-pointing bell on its tip began to broaden. Scents of metal and sulfur wafted up from stone as its top sparked and then crumbled and then dissolved away, forming a convex recess.

A basin, Suisei realized—one slicked with moisture.

In seconds, a pool of liquid had formed.

Slowly and shakily, Suisei rose to his feet and approached the basin. As he did so a feeling unlike any he'd ever known blossomed in his head. Only, wait—no—he had felt something like that before. He'd felt it while he'd been talking. It had made him dizzy.

He could have sworn he saw sparks leap between his bangs. Then, an invisible touch passed thimble-like across his forehead and a thought that wasn't his popped into being at the front of his mind: safe.

It was more a feeling than a word; a sense of security and comfort, like a cherished memory relived.

One of the creatures pointed a tendril at the fluid-filled basin.

Safe.

The feeling flooded Suisei's thoughts.

Lunging at the basin, he stooped over it, pressing his chest and armpits against its brim as he cupped his hands and greedily scooped the fluid into his mouth, only to grimace and shudder as soon as it was down his throat. He paused for a moment—and only a moment—before soaking it up like a parched panther, sucking and licking and slurping and hissing.

Pure, distilled water might have been the fluid of life, but it sure did taste nasty.

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