The young girl with the long, dark hair and the tall, fur-lined ears smiled at Summerhill from behind the rim of her glass. At least someone in this circle had noticed how awkward it was for him to stand there listening to others argue about what exactly he was supposed to be.

“I tell you,” the ankylosauromorphic cyborg said in its fluid, polished, robotic voice, “he’s got to be some sort of wolf. Just on two legs, is all.”

Summerhill kept his ears perked and his mouth shut. He lifted his own glass of golden, bubbling something-or-other to his lips and took a sip, his eyes meeting the little girl’s for a moment of grateful acknowledgment.

“Oh, please. Have you ever
seen
a wolf?” asked the Crown Prince of the Akashic Realm, lines of disapproval appearing on his otherwise smooth, pale blue face. He and Summerhill had met earlier in the evening; the two shared a taste for fizzy beverages. “He’s far too small, and the colors are all wrong.”

The girl quietly begged pardon and broke away from the group. As she left, she offered Summerhill a tiny wave with her slender fingers, along with one final smile of sympathy and encouragement.

A being that looked like a pinkish cloud of gas with a self-contained thunderstorm rumbling all through itself chimed in. “No, I saw a wolf here aboard the ship just this morning.” Blue tendrils of electricity crackled over its wispy form as it somehow created the sounds of speech. “He didn’t look anything like this.”

“I think he’s very clearly a jackal,” the Crown Prince offered, looking Summerhill over again. “Perhaps a mongrel of some sort, true, but with the overall body shape and the coloring of the fur, I don’t see how—”

“My memory module contains information about jackals, as well,” the cyborg dinosaur interrupted. “I can say with near-absolute certainty that he is not a jackal.”

Summerhill rubbed his snout to conceal a smirk as the Crown Prince rolled his eyes. “Near-absolute? Then you at least acknowledge that your computerized deductive reasoning skills might be flawed,” the blue-faced man said. “That’s a start.”

The gas-creature indicated Summerhill with a gentle burst of static. “All right,” it said, its pink shade turning to a faint purple, the change in all likelihood representing some shift in demeanor that Summerhill couldn’t interpret. “Can you settle this for us?”

With all this attention fixed on him at once, Summerhill looked around at the others, then cleared his throat with a soft cough. “I’m not sure there’s anything to settle,” he said. “As far as I know, I’m just Summerhill.”

“Well, yes,” the cloud of gas replied. “But surely you must know what you are.”

“Other than Summerhill?”

“That is
who
you are, sure,” the Crown Prince said. “We’re asking
what
you are.”

“Oh.” Summerhill looked down at himself, a canine form dressed in a plain shirt and shorts. “I think it’s pretty clear that I’m a dog.” He wagged his long tail and flicked his pointed ears.

The ankylosauromorphic cyborg leaned in closer. “What designation do your people have for themselves?”

Summerhill took another sip from his glass, and didn’t stop until it was empty. “Well, where I come from,” he started, picking his words very carefully, “there’s only us, so there isn’t any need to call ourselves anything. I mean, as a people or a species or whatever.” Technically, that was all true.

“Fascinating,” the cyborg murmured. “There is some logic to that.”

“Where
do
you come from, incidentally?” the Crown Prince asked.

Though there was nothing left in his glass, Summerhill brought it to his lips again, slurping at the melting ice in order to buy himself another second or two. He tried to banish the images that came to mind, memories of countless skyscrapers clawing at an endless sky. His pulse raced for a few seconds, but he managed to calm himself and return to the moment. “That’s kind of a long story,” he said, which wasn’t quite as technically true as his previous half-truth. “Let me just refresh my beverage, here.”

Excusing himself with a nod, Summerhill slipped into the crowd. Before he passed out of earshot, his keen ears picked up the Crown Prince of the Akashic Realm saying, “I still say that he’s some kind of jackal-mutt.” He looked around one more time to see if the girl with the furred ears was anywhere to be seen, but to no avail.

Really, trying to find any given individual here in the great ballroom of the
S.S. Nusquam
was close to futile.

The vast chamber echoed with the sounds of thousands of beings speaking almost as many different languages. Despite the lack of any shared tongue, they had no difficulty whatsoever understanding one another. Conversation flowed, vibrant and uninterrupted.

Massive chandeliers of crystal and gold hung from the ceilings, and the walls were decorated with expanses of colored drapery hanging between massive ornate frescoes. The room was illuminated by glowing tubes and orbs strewn amidst the chandeliers, and also from tall torchieres that crackled with what looked like real flame yet which cast far more light than any natural fire. One wall, in stark contrast to the old-fashioned décor, was comprised entirely of smooth panels that, with a simple touch in the right spot, turned transparent to offer a splendid view of the unbroken inky blackness outside.

Fully stocked bars were spaced evenly throughout the ballroom to ensure that long lines never formed. For those guests too busy dancing or making conversation, staff floated seamlessly through the crowd to provide refreshments. On the main stage, a live orchestra performed, its members playing a wide variety of instruments so eclectic that no one in attendance could hope to name them all. During some songs, a vocalist provided lyrics that were nothing more than pure and beautiful gibberish.

Far stranger than the music were the guests themselves. Some were flesh and blood, some circuits and steel. Others existed as beings of energy or gas, some bound into a discernible shape and others not. There were representatives from technological empires that spanned entire galaxies and individuals plucked from backwater villages and beings that had roamed solitary through the vastness of space since time immemorial.

The one thing they all had in common was that they had all been hand-picked to be guests aboard the great marvel that was the
S.S. Nusquam
, the one and only cruise ship that sailed in the gulf between realities in the very literal middle of nowhere. Whether they were chosen because they were influential or wealthy or special or interesting or because they were just plain lucky, they had all been chosen.

All of them, that is, except Summerhill.

Not that anyone could tell by looking that Summerhill wasn’t supposed to be there. He didn’t look any more or less out of place than anyone else, since everyone on board already came from a mind-boggling set of different worlds and realities. This allowed him to mingle without anyone being any the wiser.

It had taken some work, though, steering conversations to figure out just what the
Nusquam
was without sounding like a complete idiot. Luckily, one thing that sentient beings had in common, he’d noticed, was a propensity to want to talk about themselves when given even the slightest incentive to do so. He found it simple—and maybe a little fun—to just prompt, listen, and fill in the many missing pieces about where he was.

Summerhill had seen the ship from the outside, and it really did look for all the world like an enormous luxury liner, one that sailed through a gulf of pure nothingness instead of an ocean. One thing he still wasn’t sure of was why a trip through the middle of nowhere was considered such an exciting thing. He decided to run with it, though, since everybody else seemed so eager to be along for the ride, and it behooved him to fit in for the time being.

Summerhill himself was a colorful fellow, at least by the standards he’d known before coming aboard. He looked much like a dog, a wolf-like dog that was on the small side or perhaps a coyote-like dog that was on the large side, or maybe something in between. His fur had hues of yellow and red, though in most places those colors blended to form a more appropriately canine brown, or cream, or cinnamon or deep reddish-black. The gray of his eyes matched the gray of the sky of the world from which he’d come, which he’d lately taken to thinking may not have been a coincidence.

He walked on two legs, like many of the other
Nusquam
guests (though he wouldn’t have been out of place on four or six or even zero). Compared to those other guests, he felt quite underdressed wearing only a greenish-gray shirt and a pair of brownish-gray shorts instead of the formal wear everyone else had on—well, everyone who was capable of wearing clothes. Thus far, however, nobody had been gauche enough to call him out.

Escaping the awkward conversation with the Crown Prince and his companions had taken some of the edge and pressure off of Summerhill, but he was still feeling overwhelmed. Another drink like the one he’d had earlier was in order, he decided; earlier, the cyborg dinosaur had mentioned something called “alcohol” that seemed to have a very relaxing effect on Summerhill. Luckily, the ballroom’s many bars made finding a refill simple enough.

The bartender looked like a seven-foot-tall wooden insect, some type of mantis or phasmid. Summerhill couldn’t tell whether there was camouflage at work, or if the bartender actually was made of wood. Neither possibility seemed more probable than the other at a glance.

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