A tiny Mr Swarm crept across the wall and was trying to reach Mr 
Swarm's doorknob, stealthily making running leaps, scattering up 
the door, and sliding down again. Hex and I tried to keep from 
snickering, but finally he gained enough purchase to pull the 
handle and swiftly slid into the room.

I'd been trying to convince Super Hex to let us use her tarot to 
play poker without making any progress, something about "the 
spirits not being a game" and "respecting traditions." So I began 
an inventory of the contents of my pockets.

* the dusty remnants of some sort of cracker
* two rubber bands, one broken
* five smoke bombs
* one of Commodore Bob's miniature communicators (even connected to 
  the ship it received nothing but static, with the distorted 
  refrains of "Big Hunk o' Love" from Elvis "live via satellite")
* a button that doesn't match anything I'm wearing
* one silver dollar, of unknown origin

Mr Swarm came out, acknowledged us and knocked on Cranium's door.
It opened a crack, he had his towel around his waist, they mumbled 
to each other a bit, then Swarm joined us. A few lingering 
miniature Mr Swarms joined him as he explained what his spy found.
Largely, nothing. The place was abandoned, but there were a few 
locked doors he couldn't circumvent.

Commander Cranium walked out of his room waggling his pinkie in his 
ear. "Cleanliness brings purity of mind, What have we discovered?"

Hex spoke her piece and told us about her readings. Mr Swarm, 
having split and experienced all seven histories at once, had no 
useful elaborations on her story except for his spies reports.  He 
regaled us with the discoveries and advances in medicine and other 
science, and lamented the lack of concise instructions. He touched 
on a few major philosophers and their debates on the nature of 
being and becoming, then becoming something else entirely. Stories 
of monsters and gods. Religions worshiped the first invasion as 
the return of the ur-creator or vindication for years of recounting 
dozens of prophecies, others dreamed of the new knowledge they would 
acquire would appease their ancestors curiosity through their eyes. 
But they were soon subjugated, they had never considered their 
gods would be so demanding, many said they were monsters - until 
the resistance ships came, first with defenses, then with the cure, 
a biological weapon of some sort. New gods had offered new 
creations to fight the old gods.

While Swarm was delving into new mysteries, Cranium had learned 
that the stone floor got too slippery to properly bathe in the sink 
and there weren't enough towels. I found that none of them seemed 
worried enough about mysterious beings dragging us out of space to 
their dead planet.

"There isn't anything else to discuss, is there?" Cranium asked.
No sooner than I opened my mouth, he pushed the button.