Reanimation begins with a scream.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed. My heart was racing, and I felt disoriented. Because I was disoriented.

"How did I die?" I asked, looking around me frantically, trying to make sense of where I was. This didn't look like the reanimation chamber. Was I dreaming? I didn't remember dying, and that scared me. We always remember dying, unless it was so sudden that we didn't have our memories backed up at the time of death.

A computer responded, and I recognized the voice right away. "You did not die. You fell asleep."

I thought about that for a moment. Yes, that was the computer on my i35 spacecraft. I was on the floor, on my floor, I realized, resting on my favorite fluffy white rug. The rug had a large yellow butterfly deign woven into the middle, which gave me comfort whenever I saw it, so I turned to rest my cheek against the rug and stared at the yellow butterfly for reassurance.

I could see my coffee station in the corner of the room. I was within arm's reach of my desk. This was my tiny little captain's quarters in my tiny little ship, the most basic, lowest level ship in the starmada fleet, and where I spent most of my time in space.

I sighed and slowed my heartbeat. Okay, so I didn't die, I thought to myself. That's good. But I ran a diagnostic and checked my memory banks anyway. No new memory gaps. Everything seemed fine.

"What was I doing?" I asked myself, finally lifting myself off the floor.

"You were taking your union approved, three-hour nap," the computer replied. "Your assignment today is to patrol the moons of Jupiter."

"My assignment is always to patrol the moons of Jupiter," I groaned. I wandered over to my desk to pull up the local starcharts, and then ...

Bonk.

"Son of a bitch!" I yelled, my voice rebounding off the metal walls of my quarters. Suddenly I found myself on hard cold floor, next to my fluffy white rug. Not on it. No, that would be too convenient. I stared up at the ceiling. I didn't remember lying down. I remembered standing up.

"Motherfucker!" I pronounced to the world.

You see, dear @investor, I like to talk to myself. It helps me think. But now, lying on the floor, it occurred to me that most of what I say out loud must be a curse.

I processed that thought. It was a lie.

A 30-day analysis computes to 0.47% of my verbalizations being curse words. But it feels like more. Probably because I constantly bonk my stupid head against the corner of the ceiling where my desk is located. It's one of the many flaws of my little i35 battleship.

I rolled my body a few times until the soft fabric of the rug was beneath me again, holding my hand to my head. This would be bump number five. I still remember getting bump number one when I accidentally dove into the corner of a piano while fleeing from my sisters. I remember tumbling to the other side, grabbing my head as I just did now in my captain's quarters, laying on a soft orange shag carpet.

I stopped myself. That wasn't me. That was my origin @henryhound. That was his human memory. Never mind.

I could have stood up again, but I was starting to sink comfortably into the "me" shaped divot on my oh-so-fluffy rug, formed by my countless union-approved afternoon naps.

I should continue my nap, I thought. I yawned. Naps are important. They recharge the brain and higher mental capacity.

Stolen story; please report.

I yawned again.

And wouldn't you know it? Just when I was nodding off, deep in the "me" shaped embrace of the softest rug in the universe, the sirens started snoring loudly, blaring out through the ship, over and over and over again.

The year was uc290 of the #unity_calendar, established after the singularity in oy2052, by some people who optimistically believed we would all come together and hug as one big happy civilization. As you can tell by the war sirens, that did not happen.

I covered my ears. I fucking hate sirens, especially the sirens in the i35 ships. They are way too high-pitched, and I believe this is intentionally annoying to make us angry before heading into battle. The sirens in the Europa colonies were much more soothing. In my mind, the pilots there would go into battle all cool, calm, and collected. "Hey there, would you like to have a battle? Yes? Okay. Cool, I guess. Bang bang."

These sirens pierced through one's brain, impossible to ignore, so I guess they did their job. They would only turn off once I sat down in the main cockpit and hit the big red button. Want to take a shower first? Put on some good earplugs.

I've nearly figured out how to disable the sirens without the configuration being detected. I did destroy them once when I was on a rampage (it was a blast), but the Extrovert Starmada was none too pleased with me. I had to drink coffee with vinegar and cinnamon for a year as punishment. Don't tell them, but after several months you get used to it.

Punishment in the starmada is really not as bad as people think. If you've heard the rumors about the Extroverts and their fondness for #deletion (the act of completely deleting and effectively killing an entity), I assure you they are false. I didn't earn myself a #deletion. They don't do that unless it's an extremely heinous crime, and I mean extremely heinous. It's too important to have one more aiways to serve in the starmada.

The Extroverts also don't really do Bodily Execution And Reanimation (BEAR) very often either. It's too expensive. But I did know an aiways, @pennygo, who suffered through BEAR. The punishment is that your next animated life is spent in some kind of body or container that you hate, for a minimum of one year or until you perish by some external (not self-inflicted) cause. That'll teach you to stay in line, so they say, and that might explain why my coffee machine back on the starbase sasses back at me.

The sirens now were making me sad. I felt bad because I hadn't really spoken with @pennygo since their punishment. I decided then and there that I would kill them myself, discretely, the next time I saw them. Do them a favor.

I finally gave in to the annoying ringing in my head from the siren squeals, compounded by the pain from the bonk on my head, and got the motivation to unplug my ears and peel myself off the rug.

"I'll be back soon," I said to the rug, waving at the yellow butterfly, and headed off to the cockpit.

If you haven't picked up on it yet, I fly with the Extrovert Starmada.

It really bothers me actually because I'm more of an introvert and need my alone time to stare into space. I think that's why I'm so drawn to space in the first place, and the Extroverts spread out into the farther reaches. They really aren't "extroverts" at all - just people living on the other side of the asteroid belt in the solar system.

First some idiot decided the people in the inner solar system between the sun and the asteroid belt were "Innies," so for a while, it was Innies and Outies. It was so cute. Then animosity started spreading and it became a disdainful reproach of "introverted" ways of thinking or "extroverted" ways of thinking. Which is completely inaccurate by the way. But that ship has sailed.

I checked my logs. #completely_inaccurate is indeed a registered ship name, but apparently, no ship by that name has actually existed or sailed. Some idiot like me probably bought the rights to the name and then never got a ship to use it on. Ships are expensive after all. I hold the rights to several ship names myself.

The i35 is a looong ship. It doesn't look like a pen or pencil though. It looks more like a looong spaceship. I didn't design it, of course, which is why I have issues with it. For one thing, it's a single-person craft. They do this to isolate us. I believe the advert read something like this.

> Hey you! Do you have no money? Are you worried about the end of your existence? Join the Extrovert Starmada today for a chance to be completely alone and penniless, trapped in an endless cycle of death and reanimation! Not convinced yet? WE WON'T LET YOU DIE! Could be worse right? #liveforever #letsgospacesomething #hahaha #betterlucknexttime

Those fucking bastards.

I ran to the cockpit down the hall in the middle of the ship, now fully irritated. I'm in a claustrophobic ship, with a sore head, sirens, and the knowledge that I was probably about to launch into a battle where I would die and be reanimated again, and all I wanted was a nap.

I should probably order another fluffy butterfly rug for when they reanimate me, I reminded myself. You learn not to value too many possessions in my line of work.

I sat down in the cockpit, rage-clicked the #bigredbutton to silence the sirens, and injected myself with a caffeine stim.

A yellow icon appeared on my screen.

"So that's where I'll die," I told myself, and I hit the accelerator.