Miles is envious of the pacing, but thankful for the heavy blanket of maple mead that keeps him from getting up to do something stupid. Yeah, something stupid, that's always the cure for this kind of existential misery, isn't it? He can't help another laugh, this one escaping as an all-too-familiar giggle. One-way ticket to hysterics for two, please. Maybe the maple mead isn't helping as much as he thought.

"Where do I start?" He sets the cup down in his lap and starts ticking off on his fingers. "The ship froze over from some power failure, I got trapped in the morgue for three days and damn near froze to death, some horrific monster that'd apparently been holed up in some secret room got loose and terrorized the entire ship, we made berth at a planet whose primary export was matchmaking -- the place was like an unholy union of Jackson's Whole and Cetaganda, I swear -- " At least he can, for now, gloss over the parts about the dates and his hideously embarrassing sexual panic. " -- Some of the new arrivals start murdering each other, I manage to have the stunning and astronomically unlikely misfortune of falling for the same girl as Ivan -- and I haven't even gotten to the complete and utter breakdown of my entire sense of identity."

He gives his older self a terrifying grin, teeth bared at the mere memory. Be proud of your younger self, older Miles, because at least some of this wasn't actually his fault.