"With a friend your sorrows are halved, your joys doubled." One of the Greek philosophers had said that. [i]Greek[/i]—togas, laurels, something called a gyro. But for the life of him Symon could not remember the man's name. He could not even remember which letter it started with, nor the way of speaking that letter. Did he even know the full alphabet? Or had some of the symbols fallen through the grating? Let's see: Ay Bee See; A Be Ve Ge...

Well, it didn't matter what his name was, or even if the quote was misattributed to him. Somehow Symon remembered it; because it was a platitude perhaps, repeated time and again until the shapes of the sentence's aesthetics were stamped into the grey of his brain. And more importantly, it was true, as already he felt relieved of a great slice of his burdens. He didn't particularly care whether she was another patient or victim (then their captor's wrath would not be inflicted on him every day of the week), nor even if she, herself, was that captor (then he knew at least what she looked like, where her eyes were located, so that he could plead into them). Although the latter seemed less likely; she looked as helpless as he felt, wriggling about in zero-[i]g[/i] with her hair, wild and overgrown, tangling over her face.

He opened his mouth to speak. A single syllable emerged, something like "bug" or "gum" or "shuck," but his insides churned, and he realized he was to vomit. The fumes reached his tongue before any liquids did, and he tasted their sourness such that his lips puckered together, his tongue pressing itself to the roof of his palate, desperate to do away with the foul sensation. It surged up, but his seal was tight, and it went back down. Another surge. Another. His body insisted that it needed to do away with something toxic in his gut. Symon believed his body, and trusted it, but he didn't want to swim in his own innards. It would not be so convenient as a puddle of the stuff pooling at his feet, smattering his calves. It would fill the air and surround them; the smell, the smell would not desist. While struggling to breathe between heaves, he took in his whereabouts, and reached for the hatch of the crypod, away from which he drifted like plankton near the sea floor. He steadied himself against the pod, thinking that if he stopped tilting and twisting across the room, he might be less dizzy.

Why him? He could not remember the last time he ate anything. He felt totally empty except for the vile fluids trying to escape him; too much so, in fact, as his organs screamed for food and water all the while. Eventually, when he felt weak in the abdomen, when he was reduced to a panting dog in the rhythm of his lungs, he had stopped retching, and looked not too much worse off for it. Beads of sweat clung to his face, the water tension sticking them there, such that none escaped his gravity.