All I see is darkness. Can you even see darkness? I mean, it is inherently nothing. A lack of photons from a source. Null electromagnetic radiation. I think you get the point by now, it was dark - very, very dark. I’m sure you might be wondering at this point why I’m making such a big deal out of this, right? Well, it’s not just the lighting that’s gone; it’s my memory too. Don’t get the wrong idea though, I still have memories, but they're more like raw knowledge and skills that I understand. The only problem was that I can’t remember anything about myself. Do I remember my name? Hmm, I think intensely but I get nowhere. I don’t have any personal memories remaining, I was truly a blank slate,
Suddenly the feeling of flesh dawns upon me. I was numb? I didn’t realise to begin with, yet my body was already coming back to me. I must’ve blacked out at some point before all this. I can finally open my eyelids after what could only be summarised as what felt like an incredibly short and long time. At first, confusion, then it was more a sense of awe. Dull white rooms, a metallic sheen from everything else, quick flashes of red in an erratic pattern. Out of the corner of my vision I see a control panel, I don’t understand it though. I feel like a child staring at a TV and trying to comprehend it, only to draw blanks. I know that it does stuff, just not what it actually does or how it does it.
A droning starts in my ears, they were also only just regaining control. The droning fades into more of a blaring sound of annoyance. An alarm? Ahh, that’d be what the red flash is then. Feeling circulation grasp my blood vessels and pump oxygen-filled blood through to my muscles was always an odd feeling. My legs still had a slight tingling feeling but I soldiered forwards - or rather up - to my feet. I pace myself to ensure I don’t overexert my frail and recuperating body.
“Warning. Warning. Oxygen supplies are at 14%. Power levels at 2%, switching to back-up power.”
It was a feminine but harsh voice, definitely robotic. The thought alone being enough to stop me from calling out like an idiot to a ‘person’ that wasn’t real. Eventually my brain gets around to processing what she had said. What is this about oxygen? Back-up power? This wasn’t good. Was I underwater? I head over to a window down at the end of the moderately sized room. I would see speckles of light dash through the scenery, beautifully highlighted what I was seeing. I’m definitely not underwater, I’m in space.
I’m beyond confused, shitting myself. Why am I in space? Where is everyone? These were only some of the questions I wanted answers to. Suddenly the voice struck out at the cold metal room.
“Warrnnin- ng. Warn- ing. Pow-er cells faili-.”
The voice sounded heavily corrupted and was definitely at the end of its life. The vessel I was in, which I can only assume to be a ship had lost its backup power, plummeting my surroundings into a perpetual darkness.
“Well fuck.” At this point it was me that had spoken out loud.
The power was gone and I had some unknown amount of oxygen remaining. What had happened? Had I collided with something, knocked myself out in the collision? I doubted it, a collision in space would obliterate any two things involved. I wasn’t getting anywhere thinking about how I got into the situation, first and foremost I needed to act quickly. I performed a quick body search to see if I had anything of value on myself.
I felt an elongated object in my left pocket. This was odd, was I perhaps left-handed? I honestly didn’t think I was. Pulling the object out of my pocket, I ran my fingers along the outside of it. It was smooth and round, similar to a pen. Inspecting it closer with my hands I notice a slight protrusion on the side. I press it in and stumble back, falling over. A dull fake blue envelopes the room. I see blue-concentrated points of light that are connected by less dominating streaks of blue light.
“A hologram? Wha-, what is this?”
Before I noticed a soft voice had escaped my lips. It was quite a surreal sight, spheres of blue light slowly moving around the room, free from gravity. I know what this is, the words instinctively came to me.
“A Star-chart.”
This was a holographic map of local space. The map dived in a random direction, startling me. What happened? I raise my hand to wipe the beads of sweat off my forehead. The hologram sudden moved again. Sometimes I can be really stupid, what use would a map have if you couldn’t navigate it or zoom in. The projector responded to hand-gestures. I used my hands to initiate what I thought a zooming out gesture would be like. The stars all shrunk drastically moving much closer together. One of them was emitting a bright red glow that wasn’t visible before. That must be my location. I make a pinching gesture over the red star with my fingers. The room suddenly looks like it is expanding. I doubled checked that it was just an optical illusion caused by it zooming in. I could see a few planets in the solar system, a few rocky some that appeared to be gaseous. Oddly enough, nothing in the entire hologram was documented - instead all just opting for visual aids.
The planets were all covered in question marks, making it more or less obvious the map had no information on what they actually housed. I noticed the red glow had now moved from the star to the outer reaches of the solar system, in what looked like a completely empty area. I zoom in further and notice that I was actually in the middle of an asteroid belt. Small chemical formulae appearing above a select few. I believe that it was their chemical composition, only problem being I couldn’t read the symbols at all.
Lastly, I zoom in a final time. This zoom took a much longer amount of time, I guess the asteroids were a lot further apart then I had anticipated. Eventually I was left with what looked like a space shuttle. Judging by the few external windows, it wasn’t overly large, perhaps 30 meters long. That was enough information for now. I was in the far outer regions of a solar system in an asteroid belt. It wasn’t much but it was all I’d really be able to find at this point.
Using the soft blue glow from the hologram - which I hoped wouldn’t go out any time soon - I moved towards the control panel. Despite what I thought earlier, there was some soft life being emitted from some parts of the control panel, I didn’t notice them before because I went from a well-lit room to an almost pitch-black room. One of the lights indicated that I was out of fuel. Well, I’m fucked. What kind of fuel does a spaceship run on? I definitely wouldn’t have any spaceship fuel lying around.
With such low power I was definitely not going to be able to do anything with the control panel so I just started finding my way around the ship. The doors between rooms were all open so I didn’t have to worry about prying them open. I walk into one of the rooms from the hallway, “Foood!” the first thing I notice is that this is a storage room. The room is filled with packaged food and quite a few unknown items. I walk over to the food to indulge in a well-deserved meal, I am feeling quite peckish at this point. I unwrap the food, taking note that the package is labeled ‘Strawberry Cake’ as I go to take the cake and eat it I notice something terribly wrong. The cake is squished into a small shape and is incredibly hard. I look back at the wrapping a notice something odd. There is a sticker before the ‘Strawberry Cake’ label. I pull the sticker off and die a little bit on the inside. Just a little bit.
“It’s dehydrated…”
I fall to my knees and hold onto myself while rocking back and forth slowly. I’m doomed…
******
I had no idea how much time had passed but I had searched the entire ship and found only a few useful items, I had even discovered the room where the engine was located, conveniently labeled ‘hydrogen fuel cell’, whatever the fuck that is.
First of all, some things I had discovered, there is a kitchen. It housed some basic - and not so basic - utensils. It had no food though. The store room that had the food also had a few spare spacesuits, most likely used for repair at some time or another. Secondly, after searching the entire ship I discovered that there is no water anywhere except in my body. Thirdly, all the food is dehydrated, meaning I would be better off eating rocks. Lastly, I didn’t have much time until I had no oxygen left in the supply tanks and I would start using up the oxygen in the rooms of the ship, eventually getting lightheaded and collapsing.
For items I had actually obtained; a few pots, a few bottles, some flammable material, rope, spare iron, my projector, some kind of small battery, some broken electronics, some other odds and ends and a few seal-able containers. Nothing too substantial.
The only few things I didn’t know right now being about the actual ship. I wasn’t sure what it was called, what it could do, who actually owned it, if it has weapons, I knew almost nothing about it. This was incredibly unsettling as I seem to be a cautious and careful person.
Basically, I was stranded in an asteroid field in a ship with no power. The aforementioned ship has food, that requires water to be added. However, I have no water. Additionally, the ship has no fuel to generate power or advance it further. Lastly, I was even more confined because I was running out of oxygen.
If I wanted more oxygen I would need water. Water is made out of 2 Hydrogen atoms and 1 Oxygen atom, if correctly done, it is possible to separate them back into their respective atoms. I was just hoping that the ship only wanted oxygen. The composition of air is almost 80% nitrogen if I remember correctly, I just can’t remember what the nitrogen actually did, just that if you only had oxygen it would be too pure and kill you.
So basically, to solve this oxygen problem I’d need to have water, it’s just that I don’t have any water. So basically, I’m screwed. *---*I needed to somehow get a hold of water if I actually want to get out of this alive. As for the engine, it has something to do with hydrogen. So if I had water I could get food, fuel and air.
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Now that I think about it, I don’t think humans actually absorb the nitrogen so it should remain in the room if you keep breathing the air. So, if I had water I should definitely be able to get air. The only thing I hadn’t thought of until now was that humans actually need water to use as water, another words, we need to drink water to survive. I vaguely remember humans being able to live for 3 weeks without food while they could only last three days without water. If we go even further, I think humans can only go a few hours without oxygen before being unrevivable but can only be conscious without oxygen for 7 or so minutes if they've received training, 3 minutes being the average for a healthy adult.
With this sorted I was able to devise a basic plan. I absolutely need oxygen before food or drinking water because if I overestimate the amount of oxygen I have I could be out in no more than 7 minutes, food and hydration can wait. This meant I had to obtain water and somehow convert it to oxygen and I could use the remaining hydrogen for fuel. So as long as I found water I would be perfectly fine. The only problem was I was currently on a spaceship in the middle of an asteroid belt in space. Where would I be able to find water!?!
It suddenly hit me, the projector! Opening up the projector I suddenly saw a 3D hologram of the outside of the projector again. On the outside of the ship I took notice of what appeared to be two weapons or something at the front of the ship. I zoomed out until I could see the five closest asteroids and looked at the chemical formulae hovering above them. I remember them being called structural formula but I wasn’t quite sure how. All I knew was that hydrogen has an atomic number of 1 while oxygen has an atomic number of 8. This was also how many protons the atom had while also being the number of electrons if the atom was neutrally charged.
Electrons orbit around an atom while protons and neutrons reside in the nucleus. The protons and neutrons had the majority of the weight in an atom too. Basically, an atom is surrounded by shells, shells being the orbital paths where electrons can reside. The first innermost shell of an atom can only hold two electrons while the second shell can hold 8 as well as the third shell also holding 8.
Using this small bit of information I was able to scan over the asteroids until I found one which had 2 hydrogen atoms bonded to an oxygen atom. The resulting molecule basically shared electrons between the atoms forming a special bond and changing properties. The hydrogen atoms had a spare electron-hole in their first shells which was filled with an electron from the oxygen atom. This stabilised and formed water.
I had located water. An asteroid which I judged to be about 400 meters away had an abundance of water-ice stored inside of it. The only problem I had now was actually getting to it and mining it. I mean, after all I still have no fuel. I needed fuel to get to the fuel.
******
After sulking around for several hours I finally was hit with an idea. I did in-fact have water. I mean, I have been on the urge of wetting myself for the last few hours. I wasn’t proud to admit it, but I did have water. The only problem being that it wasn’t purified. I really wasn’t liking the direction this was taking but I had no other choice. I unzipped my pants and let it out in a bottle I had found in the kitchen earlier. A few moments later I was finished. It was clear and not yellow, luckily, meaning that I hadn’t been without water for very long. Perhaps I had just went to space from a planet? That wouldn’t really explain the lack of supplies though.
I now had to purify it into actual water. This was the really revolting part. I poured the urine into a pot and began putting flammable material below it. This was really going to eat up my oxygen quickly, I was betting everything on this. I then grabbed the battery out of my pocket and put a knife from the kitchen through it, I felt a bolt of electricity course through my hand. It stung a bit but wasn’t too bad. Sparks constantly jumped out of the battery further assaulting my hand, I quickly placed the battery on the flammable supplies and watched it catch fire. The fire started getting bigger, I was glad it was a metal floor and not carpeted or something, otherwise this would be a terrible idea. As the urine started to boil I placed a collector I had assembled out of various copper pipes that collected the steam and deposited it into another container. I made sure to catch as much water as possible because every last bit would count.
Eventually after all the urine had been converted to water leaving behind salt and other impurities I quickly stamped out the fire before it wasn’t more precious oxygen. Luckily the carbon dioxide had only remained in the room I had started the fire in, I quickly moved towards the engine room and deposited the litre or so of water into the manual inlet. I then pressed the button above the inlet which was labeled water and I heard a small noise that gradually got louder until all the lights powered on. I quickly ran through the ship turning them all off while the robotic voice played over the speaker.
“Unknown power outage for 4 hours, 34 minutes, 13 seconds. Oxygen levels are at 8% Power is at 7%”
A litre of water had managed to give me enough power to turn all the lights on and probably travel for a few hours, maybe only an hour. I wasn’t too sure. The only thing that mattered was that I could get to the asteroid and collect the water-ice and power my ship and survive.
I moved over towards the control room and hopped into the seat. I strapped myself in even though there wasn’t really a need for it, I mean there was gravity and I wouldn’t really have any contact with objects that would cause an accident. It suddenly occurred to me that there was gravity even when I had no power…
“How does that work?” I mused to myself without thinking it through.
“Unknown. What was the question about?”
Suddenly being startled wasn’t an ideal scenario. It was definitely the cold, robotic, feminine voice from earlier. To think it was an A.I, I guess that means she can answer my questions?
“Ummm, the gravity. It still worked when I had no power. I don’t understand how.” I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to comprehend what I said. I hadn’t had any prior experience with A.I since waking up and I couldn’t remember anything from before that.
“The ship is constantly spinning in such a way that it is forcing you towards the floor.”
Oh, I see. I didn’t really think of that. It was honestly quite surprising to find out I had been constantly spinning this entire time. It kind of hurt my head thinking about it.
“Wouldn’t that cause problems when I want to fly?”
“Yes.”
At this point I realised that she wasn’t actually cold. She just didn’t have any programmed emotions. I felt slightly bad for having a slightly negative outlook on her.
“What would I do then?”
“You can stop spinning and enable the gravity generators.”
“Ahhh,” I say out-loud, “how would I do that?”
“I can do it for you.”
“Please.”
I felt myself going weightless until I heard a slight chime and felt the seat vibrate slightly. I felt the gravity generators kick in after the ship had stopped spinning.
“The only concern I have is that I will run out of power. How long do I have?”
“Estimations for flying is an hour and 30 minutes. Idle is 5 hours. Without gravity generators would be 2 hours flying and 6 hours 45 minutes on idle.”
“Thank-you.” I begin reaching out towards the controls to navigate myself towards the asteroid. I stopped moving my hands when they got within a few centimeters of the controls. Fuuuuuuck.
“I don’t know how to fly..”
“Do not worry. I am capable of flying. However, large portions of my data are missing and I do not have an idea of the local subspace. Do you have a location in mind?”
This A.I was everything a guy could ever want, helpful attitude, piloting experience, useful information, it was really too convenient.
I open up the projector and have it take up the room,
“You can see this, right?”
“Affirmative.”
“Right, I’d like to go here”
As I say that I point towards the asteroid with a high water composition.
“Understood. Are you attempting to harvest water?”
“You’re quick to catch on, aren’t you?”
“Occasionally.”
With that she had started the main engines which I had assumed to be the ones at the back not the small RCS units all on the ship's external plating.
“ETA 1 minutes, 30 seconds.”
I guess it would take so long to travel 400 meters because you couldn’t go too fast without overshooting your target and you also had to include room to slow down.
“Warning. Engine has substantial damage. 45% chance of critical failure.”
“Ohhh fuckkkk,“ was the first thing that escaped my mouth, “Shut it down!”
“Complete.”
“How are we going to stop the ship when we get there now?”
“I can attempt to use RCS, I would have to begin the burns now however.”
“Do it!”
“Affirmative. What is your name? It will make communication easier.”
The A.I had suddenly asked for my name which had taken me off guard. I honestly couldn’t remember it. I’ll just have to make something up for now, “Call me Sam.” Short and simple, I like it.
“Understood, you may refer to me as Wire. Someone has listed my name as such.”
Interesting name, I thought about it for a bit, that means someone had to have been on this ship at some point. Or perhaps, did I set her name before I lost my memories? I wasn’t too sure if I would have.
Abruptly I felt the ship slow down as I got near the asteroid. We stopped just short of it and I could finally take in just how huge this thing is. It’s at least 100 meters in diameter. I’m going to have plenty of water when I’m done with this.