Only in one's imagination can a fish survive in soda pop. This is one of those universal truths. No scientist really needs to study this; they know this based on all these truths. They know that living creatures generally need to breathe oxygen, not carbonated sugar. Science doesn't need to waste its time on such stupidity. Scientists know that flamingos can't ride bicycles through active volcanoes (and live), elephants can't skydive (and live), and cobras can't do taxes (without an audit). No experiment needed. In fact, no experiment encouraged.

Yet in one's imagination, things are very different. The imagination is a world of wonders, of scientific impossibilities, and cobra accountants.

Deep within the lost worlds of Clover's imagination, fish could survive in soda pop. They could also talk. 

"Aw, things are going to be alright," said a colourful cream soda koi.

"I don't see how. I'm trying to stay optimistic. But it's difficult when the two that are prophesized to save the universe act like children." 

"Ah, but children have a special way of looking at things, don't they? Look at how bad things got out there with adults in charge! Is it really that surprising that children end up saving it all? Children have always been the best bet to save the universe methinks.

"Hate is learned. Intolerance is learned. For a child, war is a game with harmless toys and low stakes. But guidance is needed, isn't it? They aren't bogged down with cause and effect, and that can get them hurt. They need to be protected. You need to protect them," said the fizzy fish.

"You are a wise fish," she smiled.

"Well, I'm in your head...so I guess that makes you the wise fish."

"Ha! I guess you're right. I am such a wise fish."

She then let out a loud, ground-shaking cream soda burp because she wanted the soft drink experience to be authentic, so she imaged it giving her a bit of gas. The distant trees shook. 

"To protect them, I'll have to find them first. I didn't do such a good job before," she burped out.

"This is important. Do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes," the fish burped back. 

"I will imagine this stream goes on forever. Then you can help me look for the fairy. I'm not sure that Potto is in here anymore. I think he's awake. But the fairy doesn't seem to follow any of the usual imaginary friend rules."

"Yes, I will help you look. You go that way; I'll go this way."

She got up and started following the stream one way.

"No!" the fish called out. "You go THAT way!"

"Oh, I thought you meant THIS way," she replied with a laugh. 

"Sorry. I don't have hands. I couldn't point," the fish pointed out without hands.

"Fair enough," she burped.

"You have a very strange imagination," the koi burped back.

"Damn straight," Clover smiled.

~~~

"For the love of--" Bundle barked at Potto as they stood in a clearing of his new section of imaginary woods. "Do you think you could stay unconscious for me? Think you can handle that?"

"Errrr--"

"Don't you give me that! I'm pissed at you right now! Do you want to get rescued? You'd rather die?? Because if you don't find that nice Clover lady, you are as good as dead, Buster!"

"Maybe that would be for the best. I don't want to cause anyone anymore trouble. I don't remember much, but I am pretty sure I have caused a lot of it." One of the few things Potto had just remembered was that he had forgotten to destroy the Life Core for Lempshop. It acted as a trigger. He felt terrible.

A bottomless pit the diameter of an Olympic swimming pool opened up in the ground below his feet. He fell. Bundle fell with him.

It wasn't a quick fall, not like in conscious life and in real gravity. It was more of a slightly accelerated sinking. This wasn't mere sadness. This was actual proper and genuine depression. The kind that went beyond sadness and caused the entire body to feel ugly and hollow.

"You have caused a lot of it. But you can't die. I won't let you die. I need you to live. I want you to live. And not because I will disappear, too. I don't care about that," her scold seemed to simmer off. "But because I... Because I... Because," she struggled. "Because I love you Potto. I need you to remember because I need you to remember who you were. Because who you were was pretty incredible."

Potto was speechless. Though it happened quite often, it didn't happen for this reason. It didn't cause a literal downward spiral of despair.

"I like you, sweet fairy. I like it here with you. If I had my way I would never wake up ever again. My imagination gets the best of me," he said as they continued to fall. "My reality gets the worst... 

"I'm not incredible, I am stupid. Ask anyone. Ask everyone. I am stupid and useless. I am a sick joke. I am barely a person," he said, welling up.

"Long, long ago I once said that very thing to you," Bundle replied. "That I am stupid and useless. You know what you told me? You said 'No you are not! You are not stupid and useless. You are too good for a universe that is too bad. You are both too simple for a universe so complicated, and too complicated for a universe so simple. And you are just having a hard time navigating the ridiculous circumstances around you.  But you will. You will catch up and you will leave them in your dust. And no pressure if you can't. If you don't leave them in the dust, you will avoid that silly, pointless dust altogether...you will surround yourself with love, and love doesn't care if you are smart or stupid, and love doesn't find anyone useless.'"

The fall started to slow down even more. It became a float. 

"You will know all of this when you finally remember. Whatever it is that is blocking you, we will fix it," she added.

Potto tried to wrap his head around all of this. It was a struggle, but Bundle's words were changing his mood and they were rising back up to the surface. 

Very abruptly, like a deer responding to a twig snapping, Bundle perked up like she had heard something in the distance. She zoomed off as quickly as she could, up and out of the pit, her little fairy wings fluttering like an overly caffeinated hummingbird's.  

She stopped at the closest stream. It hadn't been there before and smelled sickeningly sweet. Far off she could see the sun shimmering off the scales of a fish as it raised its head from the stream. She flew towards it but it always seemed the same distance away. Too far to speak to. 

She knew this was Clover.

~~~

The cream soda koi could see the fairy, but as fast as it swam, Bundle always seemed the same distance away. Too far to speak to. It knew this had to be Potto's fairy, but it couldn't reach her.

The fish tried waving fins and somersaulting in the air. They both seemed to see one another, and the stream seemed to be reaching Bundle, but it couldn't. Clover couldn't entirely get there. Images, but no words.

And then Bundle disappeared entirely. Potto must have woken up.

The fish swam back as fast as it could to Clover to report to her what she already knew.

"I have seen the fairy! But it was too far off. No matter how hard I tried. No matter how fast I swam. We could not connect. I am sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Clover replied sadly. "At least we know he's still out there. He's just out of range. Barely, maybe." 

Her heart sank a bit. Being optimistic was hard work sometimes.

~~~

Potto opened his eyes on the empty universe again. Something was wrong.

It was as if his blood was flowing through his body at super speed. His heart was racing to keep up. His skin beneath the space suit was itchy. It was burning with itchy. 

It was as if he had taken a bath in stinging nettles and was having a severe allergic reaction to peanut butter on top of it. His breathing got erratic. He couldn't swallow. He tried slurping at his fresh water straw but got his sandwich straw by accident and started choking on liquid ham with Dijon.

All of this was happening so quickly that, not only was he snapped from his dream (something Bundle would no doubt yell at him for later), but he didn't realize his body was moving through space at a much-faster-than-drifting speed. He was being drawn into something. Pulled.

He started blacking out. Flashes of stringy plant fibre and coarse vine flipped like a turbo slide show before his eyes each time he closed them. In his mind the itching went from rash-like to the odd feeling of insects crawling all over him, burrowing under his flesh. 

His flesh felt hard and rough and thick. The hair upon his head felt leafy and thorny. For a brief moment he felt like he was covered in birds, with a woodpecker knocking on his skull.

He moved even faster through space. His arms and legs trying to stay attached to his torso. He threw-up his sandwich slurry all over the inside of his helmet. He tried to take a deep breath but it was so laboured that it sounded like water loudly being sucked down a clogged drain. 

Not once did he think he was dying, though. He thought he was morphing. Into a tree.

His body slammed into something hard. He could not see it through the sick just yet. It needed to drip down first. He felt many long, thin, hard arms wrap around him. His expert wriggling did not help.

His heart rate slowed. The itching stopped. He filled his mouth with fresh water and spat it at the inside of his helmet, clearing some of the grossness that was once liquid sandwich, but was now liquid sandwich once-removed.

There was a seemingly lifeless wooden face staring back at him. It was Clory. 

~~~

Clover decided to remain unconscious just in case. As long as Teeg didn't start slapping her again, she'd be fine.

She sat silently by the cream soda stream thinking about options, hoping for a miracle and preparing herself for bad news. The fish swam silently beside her. It was giving her some space because she imagined it was. 

She looked past the banks of the stream at the trees in the distance. Their loom fruit seemed dim in the sunlight. This reminded her of Potto. Perhaps he only seemed dim in comparison to the brightness of the universe. Perhaps he just didn't seem so bright in this well-lit room of creation. Perhaps she underestimated him. Perhaps everyone did. In the darkness, even the dimmest light could illuminate the path and help one find their way home.

"You see, the whole purpose of this hypnosis was to find out what was blocking him," she explained to the fish.

"You don't have to tell me!" the fish reminded her.

"Oh, I know. But talking these things out is a help," she smiled.

"Ok, go ahead," it smiled back (as best as a fish could). 

"It was electronic I think. The wall inside his thoughts. It couldn't be budged. It couldn't be smashed. It couldn't be climbed. It must be really embedded. Rooted deep. But methinks it is a foreign object. Like an implant maybe."

"Maybe. Hey, what's that?" asked the koi, looking past her, over her shoulder.

Clover noticed a long shadow cast over the two of them. She looked behind her for the source, up towards the sun. She saw the silhouette of the largest tree she had ever seen. As her eyes adjusted she could make out a slight twinkling coming from one of the branches. 

"Found you!" Bundle called out.

Clover laughed out loud. This was not particularly funny, but sometimes laughs just popped out of people.

Bundle flew down from the giant branch she had been sitting on. "I got a ride. This tree thing seems to have boosted our mental signal! Potto is on a ship!"

"He got picked up by a ship?" Clover danced.

"Not exactly. He's literally on the ship. Like on top of it, not in it. The distress beacon has been activated. Set your ship's scanner to the frequency 222-134-98763. Come and get him!" Bundle laughed, too. Again, not because anything was particularly funny, but because this relief was so uplifting.

Clover scratched the frequency number into her arm with her fingernail just in case and waited to be slapped.

~~~

Vibloblblah Ooze's ship looked so much like space garbage that no one noticed when it disappeared, and then reappeared.

No one thought twice about it dropping a tranquillizing green gas down upon them. It would not automatically be assumed that the presence of the space garbage and the appearance of the green gas were connected in any way. It was much more likely that the green gas was coming from something near or hiding behind the space garbage, and that the space garbage was too useless to be responsible.

Knutt would even stop noticing the coming and going of it on her hull, and Clover would continue to have her guardian angel.

A guardian angel that longed to talk to her. A guardian angel that longed to feel her touch again. But those days were long gone. Kissing him would be like kissing a horrible, rotting goulash.

Just because he couldn't be with her, though, didn't mean he couldn't protect her, and take up her cause. And what a cause! It was a cause that would redeem him in his own head. If he took part, he might just forgive himself for his role in creation of The Node and a Node-run universe.

There was only one setback. Through all of his surveillance, he discovered that one other monk had survived. This meant any one of the five could have. This monk was now calling himself Vrume T'cha T'cha. 

It couldn't have been one he actually got along with.

~~~

With new co-ordinates set, the Shiv flew at top speed to retrieve Potto. They were not sure what to expect, but they had their medical supplies ready. He might be fine and well fed on space suit sandwiches, he might be half dead, or he might be completely space mad and ferocious.

Teeg was not sure how to act around Clover after this. She hated relying on others, and she hated being proven wrong. Both of those things were staring right at her now whenever Clover smiled at her, and Clover liked smiling at people.

On the other hand, she was quite impressed. Thanks to the hippy they would find Potto and be one step closer to getting back on track. Whatever that track was.

When things continually go wrong, even the slightest nicety, even the tiniest bit of good news, even the thinnest sliver of an upward swing feels like the greatest gift on the greatest holiday. As they got closer to Potto's coordinates, following that beacon signal, that upward swing was about to become a catapult into a giant cake of happy for both Teeg and Gekko. 

"What...what is that?" Teeg asked Knutt as something odd came into focus through the front window.

"THAT is The Gooseberry." Knutt answered matter-of-factly.

"What is on top of it?"

Her heart started to swell like a hot air balloon as she realized it was a tree. A Clory-sized tree. 

It held tightly to Potto like he was caught in a huge wooden bear trap. Her rooted feet were completely wrapped around, and hanging onto, the top of the small ship. Roots and branches had pierced the thick glass of the cockpit, letting outer space into Toobli Dentatan's ship where outer space was meant to be sealed out. 

The skeletal remains of a small anthropomorphized anteater sat strapped into the pilot's seat. Clory had won the battle after all.

"Is she...?"

"I'm getting three life signs. The Sentaphyll's are faint, but they're there," Knutt answered with what almost sounded like a touch of joy in her voice. She may have been miserable and filled with distain, but this kind of turn-of-events was rare and the sudden joy and laughter on her deck was infectious. 

"Get them on board! Quick!" Teeg laugh-screamed.

Gekko smiled that smile again that looked like she was saying "Yeeeeeeeee".

As they set their tractor beam on The Gooseberry, Teeg's smile disappeared. Not gone completely, just put on hold as something Knutt had said had suddenly occurred to her.

"Wait. Three life signs?" she asked the ship. "Toobli is dead..."

"Yes. Three. The Sentaphyll, the Quarol and and the fetus."

"Fetus?"

"Uh...yes. An egg, actually."

Teddy Bears didn't procreate. On Chagrin, when a Teddy Bear died, it simply left behind an egg. That egg contained a perfect clone-baby of the adult that laid it. Scientists around the universe once wished to figure out this strange phenomenon, but could never get close enough to a Teddy Bear without getting disembowelled. So they just chalked it up to some kind of "self-insemination-meets immaculate-conception" type of thing.

"You're about to become the proud parents of an anteater," Knutt informed them with even more (sinister) joy in her voice.