Epilogue

   Hans dreamt of penguins. He was floating with them, kicking around a colorful beach ball. It was pleasantly warm and bubao-free.

   Running water broke into Hans's dream. At first he didn't really think about it, but the longer it went on, the more urgently his lungs reminded him what a necessary commodity air really was. Finally it reached the point where his lungs got so annoyed about being ignored that they told his slowing heart to tell his depleted blood to send a painful message to his brain.

   (Doesn't this seem just like Hans?)

   After a series of annoying processes that most people called "Dying", Hans finally got bored with the penguins and decided to find somewhere where he could do more interesting things, like perhaps inhale. Opening his eyes, he realized that his heart wasn't doing it's job very well, but decided he would worry about that later, as he had more pressing matters at hand. The edges of his vision were going black, and he was pretty sure that he hadn't had lunch.

   Lunch first.

   He reached around for his pack before realizing it was missing.

   Curses! I must have left it with the penguins.

   Without any food, now he was really starting to panic. Luckily (to his lungs' great disapproval) his heart decided that adrenaline was a decent replacement for oxygen and gave a small skip of joy. This made his arms and legs twitch just enough to propel him forward a tiny bit. He fell headfirst out of the water, which seemed to be held back by an invisible force.

   After his lungs enjoyed a short holiday, Hans had recovered enough to look around. It seemed he was in a really small cave.