It has been a week since the idols left Splaarsh with another two or three weeks still to go before the next tour stop, and everyone has been growing restless. In an effort to quell their boredom with starship life, they have been resorting to late-night dance parties. They’d drink and dance all night, binge on ramen at three or four in the morning, and then sleep wherever they ended up collapsing.

Last night, they drank more than usual and forgot to set their atomic clocks to wake them in time for their scheduled workout with Master Hwang.

Master Hwang waited in the gym on the fifth floor for nearly an hour before angrily riding the elevator pod down a floor, hoping to figure out why no one had shown up. The fourth floor, however, was quiet and empty. None of the girls were in their rooms. He then traveled down yet another floor, knocking first on Taeyang and Daesung’s door, then T.O.P.’s door, and finally G-Dragon and Seungri’s. At this last door, he heard movement inside and pressed the intercom button. “I know you’re in there,” he said. “You have two seconds to open this door.”

Bom had been dreaming about space corn. In her dream, she was growing bigger and bigger, her belly expanding with each spoonful of kernels that she into and yet, she didn’t care. She couldn’t stop eating… not until Master Hwang’s voice cut through her dream, the reality of waking life barging into her space corn delirium. She slowly opened her eyes and, feeling her face resting on something hard, looked down to see that she had been sleeping on T.O.P.’s bare chest. Right where had been pressed against his chest was a shiny slick spot of saliva, and she realized then that she had drooled on him. Embarrassed, she quickly tried to wipe it before he could wake, but he opened his eyes at that moment.

“Bommie?” he mumbled, his vision blurry as he looked down at his chest. “What are you doing?”

“You had a spot,” she said.

“A spot?” He craned his neck and tried to blink away the sleepiness to see. “A spot of what? Where?”

Bom was saved from her embarrassment by the sound of Master Hwang’s voice once again resounding through the intercom. “Your two seconds are up! Open this door now!”

G-Dragon was already up and was trampling over the bodies on the floor to reach the door. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” He opened the door to see a very angry Master Hwang standing before him. But then Master Hwang peeked his head inside and his expression immediately changed.

“Oh my god,” he said, as he scanned the room, covering his nose from the smell. At first, all he could see was bodies everywhere – Seungri and CL sprawled on one bed covered with popcorn and empty Soju bottles, Dara just waking up on G-Dragon’s bed, her face smeared with lipstick, and the rest of the idols on the floor, laying atop one another. A fallen hamper was in the middle of the floor with dirty laundry spilling out. Taeyang must have seen that hamper as a cozy place to sleep last night because his body was halfway inside it, the rest of him sprawled out on the floor, mixed in with the laundry. A dirty sock lay across his cheek. Master Hwang looked up from the floor then and saw that the mess extended up to the walls. Ramen noodles had been plastered to one of the walls in an attempt to spell out some message, indecipherable to Master Hwang’s sober eyes. Also staining the walls was what seemed to be dripping splashes of Soju, the sickly sweet smell of that stale alcohol making Master Hwang’s stomach turn. “I just… I can’t,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “Did all of this… this whole mess… did this all just happen in the last twenty-four hours?” He knew that the cleanbots came every day and couldn’t fathom how such a mess could’ve been created overnight.

“Cleanbots?” Daesung asked, rubbing his bloated eyes. He gently pushed Minzy’s leg off him in an effort to sit up. “I can’t remember the last time they were here.”

“The last time one was here, Seungri threw up on it,” G-Dragon said. “They haven’t been back since.”

“Huh?” Seungri heard his name and opened his eyes now, seeing CL sleeping beside him, her hair covered in popcorn. He smiled and then looked down at his bare chest, seeing one piece of popcorn sticking out of his bellybutton. “How’d that get there?” he asked, as he picked the popcorn out of his bellybutton and ate it.

“Ew,” Dara said, watching from G-Dragon’s bed. “Don’t eat your bellybutton popcorn! That’s gross.”

Seungri continued munching. “Tastes fine to me.”

Master Hwang, still shocked by the condition of the room, stood in that doorway, not knowing what to say. This was certainly not in his job requirement. “I’m going to go find the cleanbots,” he said. “In the meantime, all of you better start thinking about this little rebellion of yours and what it really means to be an idol.”

They watched Master Hwang stomp away and, once he was gone, all turned to look at each other. Instantly, they fell into laughter.

“Yah, whose idea was it to write on the walls with ramen?” G-Dragon asked, laughing as he pointed to the food graffiti.

Minzy looked down. “That was my love message,” she quietly said. “Remember?”

“Love message?” Dara asked.

“Oh yeah!” Bom said. “Remember we convinced Minzy that we knew a love spell? That whatever she wrote on that wall would come true?”

Taeyang crawled out of the hamper, laughing. “Ramen love spell,” he sputtered, shaking his head. “Man, we must’ve been really drunk.”

“What did you write?” Daesung asked, looking first at Minzy and then at the wall, trying to decipher the noodle message.

Minzy folded her legs against her chest, embarrassed. “Nothing,” she said. “I don’t remember.”

Seungri noticed then that CL was still sleeping beside him. “Wake up, my little lovebird,” he whispered, as he brushed back her hair from her face.

“What did you just call her?” Dara asked. She knew that Seungri had a thing for CL, but in no way did she ever think that CL would reciprocate those feelings. “Am I living in an alternate universe or something?” she asked.

CL moaned in her sleep and rolled closer to Seungri on the bed, her arm naturally wrapping around Seungri’s body.

“What the…?” Dara stood up now from G-Dragon’s bed. “What’s going on with you two?”

“Yeah, when did this happen, maknae?” G-Dragon asked, walking over.

CL suddenly opened her eyes and, upon seeing her arm around Seungri’s waist, immediately screamed.

Seungri jumped up in fright. “What? Yah, what’s wrong?”

CL quickly sat up and scooted away from Seungri as far as she could on that narrow bed. “Did you molest me or something?” she asked.

“What?” Seungri looked genuinely hurt. “Molest you?”

“How’d I end up in bed with you? And where’s your shirt?” She looked down at herself, checking to make sure that she was fully clothed. “Oh my god, seriously, I need to cool it with the soju.”

“You don’t remember cuddling up to me last night?” Seungri asked, pouting. “You started talking about lovebirds and how you always see them in a cage sitting in pairs because… because they find their soulmate and stay with them forever.” He looked down at his lap, his voice now a mumble. “I thought… I thought…”

“Seungri-yah, in no way did I ever mean to suggest that we were… like lovebirds,” CL said, shaking her head. She didn’t remember much about last night, but she knew that if she had indeed said what she said, it was not in reference to how she felt about Seungri. It couldn’t have been.

“Yah, stupid maknae,” G-Dragon said. “Maybe she felt like she’s trapped in a cage with you! And she can’t get out!”

At that moment, the intercom beeped twice. “Announcement. All star passengers report to the Crewbot Sleep Station. Repeat: All star passengers report to the Crewbot Sleep Station.” The intercom then beeped twice again, concluding the announcement.

“The Crewbot Sleep Station?” Daesung asked.

The Crewbot Sleep Station was located on the eighth floor. None of the idols had ever been up to that floor before. They exited the elevator pod, all hastily dressed and hungover, and began wandering down the corridor, checking out the doors along the way.

“This one’s a laundry room,” G-Dragon said.

“How do you know that?” Seungri asked, jogging to catch up with him.

“Because it says Laundry Room on the door, dummy,” he said.

“Oh.”

The other rooms they passed seemed to be supply closets, though they couldn’t be sure, as all the doors were locked and the idols didn’t have any of the access codes. One door, however, was ajar. Daesung approached it and slowly reached for the knob. “Hyung, you think this is just another closet?” he asked. As he pulled it open, his eyes suddenly widened, his fear so strong that it silenced his scream, which rolled up his throat and out his mouth like a hoarse gasp for air.

“What’s wrong, Daesungie?” Minzy asked.

Daesung slowly backed away, his finger pointing into the room.

The others gathered around and looked inside, seeing that it was apparently a closet full of broken robot parts. Those white helmet-like heads with dimmed red eyes were lined up in a row on the back shelf, with arms and legs and circuit boards and socket joints and various other parts strewn about.

“It’s just… spare robot parts,” Minzy said, rubbing Daesung’s back.

He nodded and swallowed hard, still staring at the robot heads, which appeared to stare back at him.

“Come on, let’s go,” G-Dragon said, tugging on Daesung’s shirt.

They finally located the Crewbot Sleep Station at the end of the corridor. Inside should have been empty except for the docking pods where the crewbots occasionally plugged into when in need of charging, but instead, the station was packed to the brim with nearly every crewbot assigned to the ship in what was apparently some kind of meeting.

The idols saw Master Hwang at the front of the room, making his way through the crowd toward them. “The robots are on strike!” Master Hwang said.

“Strike?” Taeyang asked. “What are you talking about?”

“They’ve been on strike for days now!” Master Hwang said. “You didn’t realize your rooms weren’t getting cleaned?”

“But… why did they go on strike?” Minzy asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Master Hwang said. “I told them I’d let them voice their complaints directly to all of you.”

One of the crewbots approached the idols then. “Park.Bom,” it said. “Too.Much.Corn.”

“What?” Bom looked at Master Hwang, feigning innocence.

“Empty.Corn.Cans.Always.Under.Bed.”

Bom now shrugged in Master Hwang’s direction. “It was just a few cans,” she said.

“And.Big.Space.Corn.Mess,” the cleanbot added. “Total..Level.Destroyed.Cleaning.Machine.”

Another crewbot suddenly interrupted. It looked squarely at Seungri and uttered only one word. “Toothpaste.”

Seungri’s face grew red.

“What’s it talking about?” Master Hwang asked.

Seungri shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Toothpaste,” the cleanbot said again.

“Fine, fine,” Seungri said, rolling his eyes. “So, when I brush my teeth, I like to, erm, well, instead of spitting in the sink, I spit on the mirror.”

“What!?” CL’s mouth dropped open. “Why in the world would you do that?”

“Because… it’s fun! I spit until the mirror gets coated real good in that foamy toothpaste scum… and then I draw in it!”

Everyone stared at Seungri.

“It’s like finger painting!” he said. “I’m an artist!”

“No more toothpaste art, Seungri,” Master Hwang said. “Agreed?”

Seungri shrugged. “Fine,” he muttered.

“And how many times do I have to talk to you about corn?” Master Hwang asked, looking at Bom.

“I can’t help it!” Bom yelled. “I love corn!”

A third cleanbot stepped forward then. “Docking.Bay.Covered.In.Feces,” it said.

The robots surrounding them began chatting at once and nodding their helmet-like heads, all tired of scrubbing that docking bay every day. Suddenly uniting over their common grievance, they began pumping their robotic fists in the air and chanting. “No.More.Feces.No.More.Feces.”

“Yah! We gave the poop puppy to the Splaartians as a parting gift!” G-Dragon yelled, looking around at all of them. “If you hadn’t gone on strike and actually ventured into that docking bay these last few days, you would’ve seen that the dog’s gone!”

The mention of Splaarsh urged another cleanbot to step forward. “Dong.Youngbae.Tracked..Slime.Everywhere,” it said. “.Slime.In.Docking.Bay..Slime.In.Elevator.Pod..Slime.In–”

“Okay, okay,” Taeyang said. “But don’t worry. That’s the last time I’ll ever do it with a Splaartian, I swear! No more slime. I promise!”

“That was really gross,” Dara said, cringing.

“Yeah,” Taeyang said, blushing and laughing. “It kinda was. But it was still good.”

At that moment, the captainbot suddenly walked into the room.

“Ah, good,” Master Hwang said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ll have you know that the idols are sorry for their behavior and promise to act more like… idols rather than slobs.” He flashed a sneer at the idols and then looked back at the captainbot. “So, hopefully you can put an end to this rebellion,” he said.

“I.Am.Here.To.Voice.Grievances.Too,” the captainbot said.

“Oh, ,” G-Dragon said. “Look, I’m sorry about the whole Captain Kwon thing, okay!”

“That.Is.Not.All,” the captainbot said. He looked at Dara. “You.Put.Wig.On.Me.”

Dara covered her face in her hands, embarrassed.

“And.You.Painted.My.Mouth.And.You.Called.Me.Babybot.”

“I’m sorry,” Dara said. It seemed crazy to her now to think how desperate she was for someone to rant to about her problems with G-Dragon, but CL and the other girls had long grown tired of hearing her complain and she didn’t have anyone else. She looked over at G-Dragon now, wondering if he was even worth it. He didn’t show her half the affection she showed him. Did he even really like her?

As she was thinking this, the captainbot turned its attention to Daesung.

Daesung, still haunted by the image of spare robot heads staring at him, cowered behind T.O.P.

“Kang.Daesung.Short-Circuited.Right.Eye.Socket.”

Daesung peeked out from behind T.O.P. “I’m really sorry,” he quietly said, as he avoided looking at the eye patch the captainbot was forced to wear.

All the idols were quiet now, realizing how badly they had treated the robots.

Seungri remembered what G-Dragon had said earlier, about how the cleanbots had stopped coming after Seungri had thrown up on one of them. Feeling like it was his fault, that he had unintentionally caused the strike, he stepped forward and approached the captainbot, wanting to apologize. His head was pounding from all the soju he drank last night, worsened now by the fluorescent lighting beaming down on him, which caused him to stagger a bit as he approached the captainbot. “We’re all sorry,” he said. “I think I speak for all of us when I say…” The soju suddenly churned in his stomach. Seungri tried to swallow hard but it kept pushing up, burning his throat, and then, without warning, the vomit forced itself out in a massive projectile spray so strong that when it hit the captainbot’s head, it short-circuited the one good eye it had left.

Sparks flew out of the eye socket. The girls screamed and recoiled in horror, all covering their noses from the smell of puke and smoke.

“Damnit, maknae!” G-Dragon said. “You need to learn how to hold your liquor!”