On such a winter's morning, Artur walked forward down the street. He knocked a broom askew, and placed it back how it was, not asking its permission whatsoever. He kept going, frightfully unaware of the sky's color changing. This is the way he found himself picked up by a whirlwind of light, flying towards the sky. A great, hellish creature in the clouds sucked him up and flew away, almost vanishing with its speed.

None of this mattered to Zimbuui. At least, not until he was picked up by a whirlwind as well.

It's a frightening experience, to suddenly find your feet don't work for their general purpose of moving you around, and instead your arms are doing all the work. Even more frightening is when your arms don't work either. Zimbuui experienced this all at once for the first time as he flew into the sky to the open maw of the silvery beast.

Zimbuui shut his eyes for his final moments, accepting his fate, when suddenly his legs did what he told them to again. Albeit, at a 90 degree angle to what he was used to.

He flipped himself around and stood up. At that instant, a great metal beam with a massive pad pushed him aside, and he fell into a large glass container. At least, he assumed it was glass until he touched it, and found it to be soft, and surprisingly unbreakable.

"Help!" He cried out into the white blanket of space around him. He floated in a sea of paste, unable to breathe. The walls which didn't exist were closing in around him, he was being imprisoned, crushed, and his glass container was the only way out.

He looked up again, and floating with him in the sea of brightness was the figure he drew in the dirt on many a long summer night. A man of sticks, people called it. Zimbuui called it the man of his dreams.

Was he dreaming again?

This feels real.

"Hello, little creature."

Zimbuui reluctantly replied, "Hello."

"Simpering Bluuwidonk, it really does understand. What a curious creature."

A being out of reach chimed in, "I don't think it's realized it can suddenly speak, so its awareness can't be that high."

"Shush, Bullwaarch, this one's something special. It may not be aware, but it has awareness. We've never seen that in one of these before."

Zimbuui watched in silence, afraid he would make the creatures angry should he speak out of turn. The dreams sometimes ended like that.

The one he could see walked away, speaking, "I'm gonna need some noods, this is making me too excited. Oh, you've already got some! You know me so well. Open up the report on its internals."

As the dream went on, the creatures continued to talk among themselves, eating slimy slurpy things out of wet bowls as they looked at lights on big boxes. After a short while, the talky one came back to his little world and asked, "When you're down on the ground, do you understand what the manlings speak?"

"They call them humans on this planet," the other voice slithered in, along with the body it belonged to.

"Ah, right. The humans, do you understand them like you understand us, or do they just make funny noises and you recognize some as-"

"Please, Suminach, it's a miracle it can understand at all, it doesn't need a recitation of the Five Laws of the Planarchs."

"Right, of course, keep it simple. So... Do you understand words down on earth, or just up here?"

"Um... The clean apes make noises, I can tell some noises mean they want something?" Zimbuui's brain felt like fire with all of the new thoughts he was creating. He had never considered things like this before.

"... Close enough, I'm gonna count it. So that makes four sentient species, this creature, and counting!"

"You know there's no reward for higher numbers. We do this for the sake of accuracy. And no, we haven't found a rival to race against between the last planet and this one, same as before. It's just us out here."

"Oh, you killjoy. Fine, I guess it's only sentient with our enhancements, as usual," the main creature rolled its eyes and displayed a grotesque expression which would indicate pain on a human. The other creature put on the same face and shook its head in the way humans do when exasperated. "Bun, I could do with a hot glass of that coffee drink from the one planet. Haha, I still love how they were expecting us, but then we show up at one of their gatherings and they act like we are both real and not at the same time. Such a strange race of man people. Anyways, cream and hotnoks as usual?"

"Yeah, sure," the other replied. It paused while looking at a nearby screen. "Hey, Su-." It was cut off by the sound of red lights and a view of sirens blaring. Both creatures shared a glance, then sprinted out of the room. Zimbuui was left alone with the flashing and blaring and a whole lot of new thoughts.

Words... Words are weird. They take so many emotions, so many thoughts, so many movements, and shrink them into such small and edible bites of mind food. They never made sense before, but in this magical milky room? Zimbuui had a chance. A chance to learn, to do things never considered by his kind.

But just as Zimbuui was considering what exactly learning was, or consideration for that matter, another new happened. A big boom, and lots of shaking. It reminded him of those earth shakes which happened sometimes in the dirt and made the man-houses fall over.

Oh no, his thoughts were becoming the old thoughts. This, mixed with the fact that, once again, his arms and feet weren't doing their job of making him move, indicated something was very wrong. The falling lasted a full minute before one big red flash eclipsed all the smaller red flashes. His mind was becoming more and more slow, slower than its old primitive self. The world was becoming more and more red, the red of fire and blood. Zimbuui closed his eyes and clung to the last tethers of full consciousness, as the red flashes once again became white.

But while the white from before screamed of danger, this white was a warm hug. One he embraced gladly as it cried about how it had, once again, taken a life.