A/N: Just finished this chapter like 5 minutes ago! I appologize if there are errors, I'll work on editing it later, I just got so sucked into River's head that I couldn't be bothered checking the correctness. I promise more Inara next chappy!!! Feedback gets me to write chapters faster than Palestinian Sommersaults get Jayne to help whores. _________________________________________________

It was moments like this that Wash truely loved being out in the black. Just him, the controls, a brontosaurus and a stegosaurus. Most everyone was asleep, but often Wash liked to stay up, and just watch the universe go by. Of course assisting the dinosaurs in their planned domination of the Earth that was also was fun. "Honey, what are you doing? Come to bed." Zoe said from the door way as she walked towards him.

"Just plotting the innevitable downfall of the meat eaters, you know those herbivores never got nearly enough credit. I mean they didn't have to hunt so they must have sat around all day munching away with their pals just plotting and scheming."

"I doubt dinosaurs were big on thought." Zoe said as she slipped into his lap.

"Well now I might have to do some scheming of my own. Perhaps a nefarious plan should be hatched." Wash smiled at his wife.

"Husband, I think you should stop with the scheming and put those plans in action."

"One of the plans involves us getting sweaty. The other involves midgets in dresses, Jayne and a dumb bell."

"I think sweaty is good." Zoe smiled at him. Warrior Zoe had turned in early tonight, and Wash was left with wife Zoe, who didn't wear knives or guns, the Zoe who laughed at all his bad jokes and who put up with his toys and gadgets.

"That's my wifey, away! Away to the love den!" Wash said as Zoe got off his lap, he gave her ass a little slap, "That may have been part of my plan." He winked at her. Then he turned the controls over to auto-pilot and followed his wife back to their bunk.

________________________________________________

River rarely dreamed. It wasn't because she couldn't. No, when she was asleep her brain knew that was the time to do the filing, mentally putting away all of the information she had gathered and putting it into nice little folders to use for later refrence. Occasionally her brain would drudge up the past, run it through her head like a film strip, moving it from one corner to the other, always reminding her that the filing is never completely done. The dreams were sometimes scary, and would cause her to fill her head with screaching sounds, only for her to be awoken by Simon. Other times the dreams were nice, soft, erotic, and fulfilling. Sometimes the files got screwed up, put away in the wrong place, sometimes she was filing away other peoples memories, other peoples information. Dreams were her time to sort through and see what was really there, but she couldn't do that now. The drugs had stopped her from being aware of the dreams, they stopped their existence, their known existence. She knew they were there for it was impossible not to dream, it was remembering them which didn't work. The synapses fired and the chemicals were released but it was never the right ones, the chemicals were twisted, some of them had no home to go to and so they wandered thorugh grey matter seeking new homes. She knew that occasionally she had excesses of dopamine, but not nearly enough serotonin, and sometimes even when it didn't need to her adrenal glands would flood her body, turning it on high, filling her with stress. The chemicals raced through her, ones with names Simon's science hadn't figured out yet, ones that Book's symbol could never imagine. The filing system was corrupted, interrupted, working all wrong, just like the chemicals.

Simon didn't understand her filing system. He didn't understand that the drugs caused her to not be aware of the filing system, how it was restructuring itself, how it was organizing itself, and how she couldn't understand it if she wasn't aware of it. It came down to an existential debacle, exist and break down the system, or don't and let the file cabinets become disarrayed until you don't know where anything is. The disarray was causing her to have an information overload, and sometimes it all became too much, so many images, so much pain, too many voices, and so she would try to release it by activating her hyoid bone, and forcing it to work within her layrnx and cause the chords to vibrate, to release the noise that was speech. To let the others know, even with the mixed up messages and confusing truths , that there was something she could sense, feel, know. Only truth flowed thorugh her, but it was scattered, and bits and pieces were filed away in different places and then Simon would pierce the skin, inject some new poison, and it wouldn't stop, it would slow down. Making things too slow to truely be comprehended, making them move through her head as mud through her toes once moved in her mothers garden. Slow as the honey that was so scarce it was like liquid gold.

River knew things. She knew everything and nothing all at the same time.

Simon thought she was asleep. He thought that the Landium he gave her was enough to do that. He didn't know that her body was made to destroy such things, break them down into their chemical make ups, absorb what was useful and shed the rest like a snake skin. No, instead she was awake. Being cradled by her new mother, Serenity. It was a rebirth of sorts, coming out of the frozen box. A cold womb for a broken child. But this home was so much warmer than any she had previously had. It had so much more to say. Tonight though she was consulting Serenity, trying to ascertain what the shift was. River stood in the center of the cargo bay, feeling Serenity beat up through the corrugated metal, into her bare feet, and then surging through her every nerve until she was a part of Serenity, another electrical conduit, carrying back and forth the information neccessary to keep her moving. She knew their secrets, that ship did, and it's filing system wasn't broken, so River could look through the folders. She could use them to sort her own information, and to use her rapid deduction skills to figure out the most likely senario based on probability. Probability was a flawed idea, she new that proability could never account for the strange turns of play that a human being was capable of. The system ignored that there were an impossible number of outcomes based on what people could and would do. Serenity told her that people inside her walls of metal alloys and atoms clinging together bouncing off of each other, were burning up. They weren't on fire, they were burning on the inside. Secrets did that. They cooked you from the inside out until all that's left is meat on a spit. River knew these secrets, at least pieces of them, and sorting them out was harder than she thought. Stupid parts of silly thoughts, they were so concerned with the words of things. Words were only objects that could be manipulated, twisted and which in everyone's head could semantically be different. Words weren't tangible, they were air and sound and once said were gone, spectres in an empty house. It was the words that got them into trouble. Trying to find the right ones, never understanding that there were no right words, only words that most closely could express the feelings that were trapped inside their brains. Words often failed those who sought them for such security.

Inara's secrets were the darkest and hardest to dig out. Hers were deeper and more troubling, tied to so many balloons that in the wrong wind they could get all twisted and knotted, stuck together, only savable by cutting them loose, setting them free. The wind was picking up. She needed to set them free before they had a chance to get stuck. River closed her eyes and let Serenity sort her files, let it move through her, every fact increasing the chance that her probability statistics would work out, every piece in the puzzle finding it's home, first the corners, then the border, and slowly the center taking shape. It started moving too quickly though, the words and emotions flooding her circuitry, there was just too much information, and River didn't have a relief valve. She broke the conduit, she lifted her foot, and walked towards the door.

She then turned and looked at Serenity's gut, "I know there is more, you don't have to yell at me!" She shouted into the empty area, her voice echoing off the steel. "I can't take it all, and who are you to talk? Storing so much information, but you never try to work through the equation. You don't do the math! I do. That's the difference between you and me, my files may be scrambled, but I am fluid. I can act on this world, I am not a storage facility. I do not only hold the stuff of life, I am life." With that she turned back aorund and headed towards her room. Simon was still asleep, and she crawled into bed, with a mind to dream.