BUUUWAAAAAH!

BUUWAAAAAAH!

'I suppose it is my fault'

I leaped out of bed quickly, dashing out of my own quarters and sped through the narrow passage between rooms, cold air brushing against my naked body as I came to a screeching halt, staring at the several flashing red lights on my vessel's navigation system.

The cold metal between my feet sent shivers up my spine, no doubt aided by the terrifying reality sitting before me.

'There's no way I could screw it up that badly right?'

In hindsight, yes, tinkering with my vessel's navigation system, in order to make it fly faster wasn't my brightest idea ever. 

But in the 31st century, a spaceship was similar to a smartphone a millennia back, basically everyone had one and knew how to use one but only a few people actually made them in knew what it took to take them apart and put back together.

I furrowed my brows.

To keep going with the millennia to millennia comparisons, my spaceship was Zenotech, the modern day equivalent of an Apple Iphone, probably one of the better ships on the markert, within my price range, and was absurdly hard to crack, Zenotech themselves outright stating they'd rather customers buy new product than fix old ones.

'But that's besides the point'

I struggled to believe that I had done something wrong.

My eyes tuned out the blaring sound overhead as I calmly walked towards the spasming control system, my heart rate surprisingly slow as I analyzed the  different meter readings.

I exhaled softly, sitting down into the pilot's seat.

'The engine is fine, the fuel system is fine, the internal support condition is fine, what could be-, ah'

So the problem with my spaceship was that I was actually going too fast. The system's autopilot and internal clock where only designed to handle speeds within a certain region. You would think that since I'd paid an arm and a leg for this thing, there would be a line of code that accounted for consistent high speeds, in fact, I could envision the aforementioned line right now but apparently, no such function was engineered into the fast moving metal cage around me.

'Well this is kind of disheartening'

According to the flight map on the navigation system, I would collide directly into the sun in about 20 minutes, the manual navigation system not capable of steering or lateral movement at the speed I was going at.

'Bummer'

I yawned slightly as I walked back to bed, the loud alarm overhead now thoroughly tuned out, the sudden news that my premature life would end only making my heart jump a little anyway.

'This world sucks anyway, get me out'

In the 31st century, life for a tremendously wide number of people was not worth living, my own in particularly working out rather oddly. I was the son of a Quadrillionaire, my father owning roughly 47 planets across the Universe, my mother being his 47th wife and for some odd reason, he subjected all of his children to harsh life in the trenches of middle-class planets, only providing enough support to feed us once a day.

Fortunately or unfortunately, my dad was assassinated, all of his money was frozen and half of his lineage was wiped out, the small army of bastard children he had stocked up being the only representation his bloodline had left.

'And that's one of the better stories'

Slavery, exploitation, war and crime all reached absurd new levels in the space-age, the ever-present fact that the police couldn't spread themselves so wide meant that the creativity of bad people was rewarded with unparalleled success.

'I'd much rather live in the Ancient Era, even if there aren't any hot showers'

Say what you want about a time period where strange aliens crawled about and similar species bashed each other to pieces with clubs, it was still more desirable than the organized and sophisticated problems of the Space-Era.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

I yawned again, cracking my neck before I hopped into bed.

 My eyes quickly fell shut, sleep coming naturally to my body given the heavy strain I put it under.

'Life as a Martian would be cool, those guys fuck'

======================================================================

'This isn't what I meant'

I don't think there was a word in any language to accurately describe how I currently felt.

I was trapped.

My limbs were weighed down by a strange force of immeasurable magnitude, my arms and legs feeling stumpy and weak no matter how I tried to position myself.

My senses had significantly deteriorated, my eyesight was blurry and my vision would frequently cut out as extreme bursts of exhaustion washed over me. Even simple bodily functions like keeping control of my bladder and bowels became a herculean task, feeling impossible as I slipped-in and out of the sweet embrace of slumber.

Breathing was also a struggle of sorts, my chest incomparably tight, feeling as though my lungs were too large for my body, a strange breathing pattern required in order for me to be freed from the sensation.

Initially, I had no clue what kind of ungodly bodily affliction I suffered from but as time marched on and my senses gradually came back to me, I understood something.

I had become a baby.

'How is this even possible?'

It was an incredibly odd circumstance.

Moreover it was painfully ironic that ought of every wish I ever made in my life, out of the countless wishes for comfort, stability and ease, the wish to have a new life, to start from scratch was the one that actually came to fruition.

I wasn't sure what Cosmic Entity had decided to pull a prank on me and reset my progress but I was not amused.

'I say all that but the reality of the situation is that for the time being, I'm stuck'

"Little Luka is so adorable, he really is my spitting image"

'By the Elder Entities'

With all my mental faculties, I could barely decode the abomination of the flesh that stared at me with strange fondness and attention.

What I can only deduce to be the father of this body, was a total visual wonder.

He had four-eyes, each glowing with an ethereal dark purple light, aligned in two sets closely stacked on top of each other, each of identical size and spacing. His skin was black as night, an intense thick blackness which caused deep which was captivating to lookout, a huge bush of bright white hair on top of him, his eyebrows, thick and sharp.

His jawline was incomparably square, a shape that didn't appear as though it belonged on a human as was his chiseled and highly placed cheekbones, two sharp sets of pearly white teeth lining the inside of his mouth, each tooth uniform in it's sharp, triangular structure.

I couldn't see his body properly but I felt his grip, two hands used to hold me. This made the visual of his two larger arms even more confusing, this man for some reason possessing four arms of differing size, a huge larger pair stacked on top of a smaller but still massive pair.

The longer I stared at this creature the sharper my mind and memory became.

For some reason, I was now the child of a Black Martian.

"Put him down, my love, can you not see he's distressed?"

A softer calming voice entered my mind, discernably feminine speech soothing my spirit.

'There's just no way'

Every member of the Martian species possessed low psionic abilities, most of them blissfully unaware that this was an ability they had and it manifested in a myriad of ways, a particular form being the connection between family members and friends.

This was the only explanation I could produce for the extremely calming and relaxing sensation I experienced from hearing my mother speak.

'Thankfully, the psionic connection should get weaker as I grow older'

The Martian species had been extinct for a good 5000 years by the time I was born, leading me to believe by some manner of strange event, I had been sent back in time, into a period an 5000 and 20,000 years ago, a circumstance that would put all of my history knowledge to good use.

My thoughts were interrupted as my father spoke but it suddenly became obvious to me that his speech was discernably cryptic, using syllables and words I had never heard before yet for some reason I could grasp the meaning of his speech by the intonation and pace he used.

'Maybe starting from scratch was a bit extreme, I wouldn't have been too upset if I was in the body of an adult or at the very least, a teenager'

I continued to ponder, my parents continuing to talk, completely unaware of my mental activity.

"Distressed? What reason would my son, the fortunate descendant Luga, have to be distressed!?" he retorted.

'Luga? Is that his name?'

It was rather simple for a creature as complex-looking as him.

"Because you're holding him too close, you visage can only be bared from long-distance"

A genuine look of outrage flashed over his face.

"Deceitful woman! Why do you lie? Was it not this glorious visage that had unparalleled success in courting you despite a disheartening volume of competition? How untruthful! For 12 long years you've enjoyed a man as handsome as me yet you have the capacity to spite me? Unbelievable"

I creased.

Even before Luga had finished his tirade a fit of deep laughter echoed from another room within the house, the sound only intensifying as he drew closer to his conclusion, the sound of stumbling accompanying a second pair of hands which firmly gripped my figure.

"It was only a joke"

My point of view then changed, spinning over a relatively decorated sitting room, no small number of furs and skins sprawled over the floor and chairs, primitive artwork also painted all over the walls.

My vision then finally settled on another monstrosity.

Similar to the first monster, the source of the feminine voice earlier, the second monster, was another dark as night skinned creature with four purple eyes, her lips visibly a lighter shade while her hair was much longer, extending past her shoulders and brushing down her back. Her features were similar but a little softer, the sharp edge of her high cheekbones not as staggering.

She smiled at me sweetly, genuine happiness reflecting off her face but the close view of her jagged teeth my by bladder weak, the second row provoking a deep fear within me, the primitive nature of my biological faculties amplifying the minor unease I felt.

'To be honest, having no parents is preferrable to having parents that look like this'