And So I Find Myself Adrift

A blaring screech jerked me from sleep, and sent my heart racing in terror. Breath caught in my throat, and I descended into a fit of coughing, choking on inhaled saliva. Pain blossomed in my skull, pulsating in time with the red lights that strobed in the space around me. My cheek was pressed against a clear keyboard, and my arms hung like ropes at my side.

“Where the hell am I?” I wondered aloud, holding my head in one shaky hand. With a groan of effort, I stood on trembling legs, and the cushioned seat I had been sitting in retracted as if on rails, giving me room to step away from the board of computer screens it faced. I studied the room, trying to find an off-switch for the droning alarm.

I found myself in a tiny, sterile box maybe ten feet across and fifteen feet deep. A low ceiling pressed down from above, threatening to brush the top of my head when I went to my full height. The floor was checker-plate alloy like you might find in an industrial workshop, and the walls were matte steel. Panels of computers lined what I presumed to be the front of the room, with one oversized monitor stretching from wall to wall, its screen black.

A control display of some ilk sprang to life on the right arm of the chair, the holographic buttons bright white in contrast to the monotonous red light. At the same moment four more chairs behind the one I was in front of lit up as well, two facing either wall.

I staggered, trying to get my bearings. The last thing I remembered was logging into a new game I had purchased. It was a science fiction sequel set in the same universe as Fantasyland, a swords and sorcery fantasy game I dumped thousands of hours into. The gimmick was you could play as the great descendant of your character from the medieval style RPG.

I was given a copy of the alpha—codenamed Project Phoenix Prime—by entering a raffle in the previous iteration. One winner was chosen, and I was permitted ultra-early access after signing an ironclad NDA, under the auspices of alpha testing the new systems. I logged in, designed my spaceship, and— right, my sister came over, but I cannot remember anything after that.

The alarms continued to scream, and suddenly the room quaked beneath my feet. A corona of blinding yellow light flooded my vision, and I gasped in pain, covering my eyes. Stars swam across the inside of my eyelids, but when I peeked again, the light was gone. Then, I noticed it.

The thing I had presumed was an oversized monitor, wasn’t. It was a window, and the ocean of stars that twinkled outside made my stomach twist in on itself. “What is happening?” I asked aloud.

“Glad you could join me, Captain Gerhardt. As you can see, we are under attack,” a voice said from somewhere in the room. I spun around, muscles tense and ready for a fight, but the room remained empty.

“Who are you? And how do you know my name?” I asked tentatively into open space.

“You are Captain Anthony Gerhardt, and I am your onboard AI system. That aside, if you wish to survive the next few minutes, I suggest you take the captain’s chair once more.” The AI’s voice was monotonous and calm, but inside I was panicking.

I lowered myself back into the chair, and it moved forward on its own, putting me within reach of the computers—and the control column that sprang forth from a hidden compartment between my legs.

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“That information is unavailable,” the AI said.

“Okay fine, who is attacking me? And why?”

A slight pause between responses gave the impression the AI was considering my question. “It appears their ships do not possess RFID tags. Presumably, they are pirates.”

“Pirates,” I repeated the word, and then laughed. It was all I could do. “Great, pirates. What am I supposed to do?”

“Is your primal instinct for survival malfunctioning?” The AI asked, and I thought I detected an undertone of sarcasm to the words. “If you wish to continue your existence, take the controls and fight back.”

I looked down at the control column, and gripped it in trembling hands. It was a simple piece of equipment, not unlike a steering wheel, save for the pair of buttons adorning the places where my thumbs naturally came to rest. It was almost intuitive—they must be triggers. I searched the ground for pedals, and was almost surprised to find a pair, presumably for acceleration and braking.

“I am dreaming,” I said as I tapped the accelerator. The ship lurched forward, and my stomach dropped at the sudden speed. “Yep, I am definitely dreaming.” But the air was cold on my exposed skin, the seat was firm and uncomfortable, and my shaking hands were unwieldy. I was definitely here in the flesh. But how?

It doesn’t matter, I thought. If I don’t fight back, I will die before I get any answers. I looked down at the display in front of me, and had a sudden revelation. This was my ship. The invitation to join the alpha had come with a Creation Kit—an item that allowed me to create my own ship using any parts the game had to offer. The developers gave it to me as part of the testing gear. It was a way for an outside user to tinker with the shipbuilding aspect of the game—it would not be in the full release, but it was a necessary quality control component during the alpha phase. The point was, I knew this display layout because I had designed it.

“Okay, I can do this,” I said.

“You better, or you will be roadkill,” The AI responded.

“Oh shut up,” I said. “You’re getting on my nerves.” I was trying to remember everything on the display. I hit the button to raise my shields, and the monitor lit up with a faint blue aura around the area that showed shield capacity.

“Shields have been raised,” the AI said.

I scanned the console, then pressed another button.

“Inertia Dampener activated,” the AI said.

Finally, I pressed a third button.

“Flechette cannon deployed, fire control activated. Systems hot.”

I pulled on the steering wheel in front of me, and my ship pulled up hard, the bottom thrusters rocketing us forward. I slammed on the gas pedal, and we took off at blinding speed so fast I could feel it in my chest. I had designed the cockpit to have force dampeners—basically gravity control that kept the occupants from feeling the intense G-forces of space combat—but I could not remember how to turn it on, so I was at the mercy of high-G maneuvers.

A green bolt of energy struck the shield a dozen feet in front of the window, and glanced off. The display showed 99% shields, and I laughed. “Those developers are ridiculous!” I screamed, and banked my ship toward where the bolt had come from.

Two spaceships roared toward me, firing green energy weapons at a steady clip. Most of the bolts missed, but the occasional one glanced harmlessly off my shields. “Eat this,” I said as I zipped past them, unloading flechettes into their hulls.

The flechette cannon was a special high tier weapon meant for close to medium ranged combat. It was basically six shotgun barrels that rotated at a rapid clip like a Gatling Gun, firing four thousand rounds per minute. Each shot was packed with a half dozen 8.5 inch, quarter pound titanium darts, which meant that a one second trigger pull threw 400 titanium darts at my target. The projectiles saturated the enemy shields, and a second trigger pull sent another 400 darts into their cockpit window. It wasn’t enough to destroy the ship, but it damn sure eviscerated everyone inside.

I pulled hard left for another pass, intending to take out the second ship, but the FTL drive on its rear was glowing white, ready for a jump. “Oh no you don’t,” I said, gritting my teeth. “You can’t just hit and run, bro.”

I flipped a switch, changing my fire control system from flechettes to heat seeking missiles, and pulled the trigger again. Two missiles shot from below my ship, one second visible to the naked eye, and the next just a blur of near-relative speed. The enemy ship intercepted the first—a feat only possible because their interdiction system had near-lightspeed reaction time—but the second winged its engines. A chain reaction occurred as their reactor melted down, and the ship exploded in a round cloud of superheated radioactive dust.

I slumped in my chair. I never even had the chance to play this stupid game, and I was already almost dying because of it. I was just lucky that this ship was insanely powerful.

“All enemies defeated. Move to recover enemy ship?” The AI asked.

I frowned. “What good will that do?”

“You can sell it at a nearby station, or if the attacker had a bounty on them, you can collect the reward,” the AI said. “Finally, you could keep it docked in port as a back-up, should you desire.”

I slapped my cheek. It stung. Yup, this is real. And if it’s real, that means I need money to survive.

“Fine, let’s grab it,” I said.

“Permission to perform independent maneuvers,” the AI asked.

“Wait why didn’t you do that earlier?” I barked. “I could have died!”

“AI are not permitted to engage in combat of any kind,” it responded. “Article 7, clause 2.1 of the galactic—“

“Okay okay, I get it. Proceed with the collection,” I said.

“Understood.”

*****

The AI—I had lovingly dubbed the little bastard ‘Junk’—had secured the enemy ship to our hull, and we were cruising at sublight speed toward a resource extraction station above a gas giant planet. I asked Junk several things along the way.

“Can you tell me about this ship?”

“Certainly. This is a custom ship designed by an unknown architect. It possesses bleeding edge technology in every facet, including a compact fusion generator, three types of shielding—a magnosphere, inertia dampener, and a classic force field—two missile bays, one long range Energy Saturation Rifle, one medium-long range Plasma Cannon, and one Flechette Gun. It possesses both energy dampening armor and ablative armor, as well as a moderately sized cargo hold. Finally, the cockpit sits adjacent to the crew quarters, which possess four equal sized bedrooms on the bottom floor, a master bedroom on the top floor, a full functioning kitchen and mess hall, and a bathroom.” Junk continued to ramble about more specific details, but I tuned him out. This was definitely the ship I designed.

“Am I the registered owner?”

“Indeed, though your captain’s log and flight log are both blank,” Junk said. “I possess no data about our activities from before you awakened. I posit we must have been caught in some sort of accident.”

“An accident, eh?” I asked aloud, and then groaned and leaned back in the pilot’s seat. “How long until we get to the station?”

“Roughly seven minutes. We are traveling at 89% the speed of light currently, but we will taper off over the final three minutes to reduce hull load from deceleration."

“Understood,” I said, and stood up. I didn’t really need to explore the ship, but I felt compelled to. The grand tour took only a few minutes, but I stared in awe at everything.

The bedrooms were all nicer than mine back on Earth, their furnishings much more like a traditional home than the steel box that was the cockpit. They had hardwood floors, textured metal walls painted in different colors, and plush beds. I had opted for proper beds instead of bunks, which limited my crew size but made for a comfier experience, though in the game I was not sure that actually mattered.

The kitchen was more science fiction-like, made all of steel and plastic. There was an induction stove, a convection oven, and a microwave, but there was also a device that I did not recognize.

“Junk, what’s this thing?”

“Are you referring to me?” Junk asked, an edge to his monotone voice. “Shall I start calling you Asshole?”

“Just answer me,” I said, exasperated.

“It is an auto-chef. It turns protein and carb packs into palatable meals.”

“Huh,” I said, staring at the smooth metal box. “Alrighty then.”

The bathroom was spartan, but clean. A toilet, a shower, and a sink with a mirror were all that could fit in the tiny space. I turned to leave after only a cursory glance, when my reflection in said mirror brought me up short.

“What the actual hell,” I said, and touched my face. I had a square jaw, dark five o’clock shadow, and short-cropped brown hair. None of that might sound odd, except for the part where it was distinctly not my face. It was the face of my character from Fantasyland. “Okay, this is getting too weird.”

“We are being hailed by Terminus IV,” Junk said. “Shall I request permission to dock?”

“By all means,” I said, still distracted by my new body. “Oh and let them know about our cargo.”

“Done and done,” Junk said. “Docking procedures initiated. Approximate landfall, 2 minutes and counting.”