The troupe, it turned out, had turned Sharon and Keith's lab into something like a lounge. There were bottles of beer and bottles of wine (as well as stranger spirits), a cake (with a few slices remaining), a few bags of chips and somehow, someone had scrounged up what looked like guacamole but probably wasn't.

"Eat! Drink! Be merry!" Gavin turned just in time to catch a bottle. Keith grinned sloppily. "To the future!"

Everyone present raised a glass or a bottle. Gavin did the same.

"A human Spectre," Keith began.

"A seat on the Council," offered Gavin.

"A sheat," Mark agreed unsteadily.

"A new age of Humanity," Robert solemnly intoned.

"And mud in the eye of every alien out there," Keith finished. They all drank.

The party continued.

A great man once said "you can tell more from an hour of leisure than a day of work."

Gavin didn't know the quote but he understood the idea, even more so now than he had in the past. The researchers that had acted so staid and so focused (well, except for Keith) just days before let their real selves out for just a bit.

Robert had managed to find or bring in an old videogame console: he had it hooked up at the moment to a display screen on one of the lab's walls. At the moment, the scientists were playing a racing game Gavin was familiar with: Robert as a little plumber fellow, Keith as a fatter, yellow-and-purple fellow, Sharon as a pink princess, and a very drunk Mark playing a tall plumber in green. Mark seemed to be completely unused to the controls: that, plus his intoxication, meant that he was more likely to fall off an edge than make a turn correctly. After yet another collision (and shell, and banana peel) he tossed up his hands and grumbled unsteadily to himself. "Gavin, take over fer… for me," he slurred. "Ever played thish game?"

Gavin shrugged. "Once or twice, back in college." He picked up the controller and flipped it around a couple times, trying to find the right way to hold it. The other researchers grinned at his inexperience and got ready to race.

Just as planned.

He followed along in the race, stuck somewhere in the middle. He saved the item he got at first and simply drove along: the rest of the players happily jockeyed for first place, ignoring him.

They paid attention when he drove off the side of the road: Keith laughed, Sharon snorted, Mark groaned and Robert started trying to reassure him. But they sure shut up when his trajectory landed him not in the lurch, but quite securely in first place. He'd simply taken advantage of a spot where the track was above a later part and fixed his angle so he landed halfway around the tack his opponents were happily charging around.

"How did you do that?" Keith burst out. Gavin just smiled. The race continued—with a couple close calls—and our hero finished first. Sharon huffed and Robert was chuckling. Keith rounded on him: "I thought you said you only played this once or twice!"

"Luigi is always number one," he said obscurely. They just sighed and took another drink, each of them. Mark groaned. He tried to pick himself up from his chair, but almost toppled instead: Robert barely caught him. "Oof." He grimaced, doing his best to hold the taller man up. "I think someone should take our good friend to his room." Mark groaned but didn't offer any argument.

"You're up, Gavin!" Keith snorted. "Since you're so great at racing, you shouldn't… shouldn't…"

"Shouldn't have any problems getting him home?" Sharon supplied.

"Yeah. Yeah, that."

Gavin sighed internally, worrying slightly about whether it had been a good idea to show off like he had. Not for the first time he reminded himself of just how tenuous his position here was: the second he lost favor with the scientists was the second the stool got kicked out from under his jerking feet.

Or maybe that was a little melodramatic. Gavin decided he lost some perspective after a drink or two.