“Yeah, that’s about right.” I put my terminal back on the bedside table.

Typically, it’d be a bit sad to wake up without any messages, but it’d just mean my friends forgot to spam me with memes overnight. Today, it was a reminder that I was stranded in the middle of nowhere, unimaginably far out of range from the closest Starnet satellite.

The bathroom cabinet in this room was deserted. However, I hadn’t minded women’s shampoo yesterday; and I wouldn’t mind using a pink toothbrush today. For breakfast — you guessed it! — I had a few more SpaceCakes.

The dining room was out of commission, so I went to the storage room and lined up some crates in the vague shape of a table. Then, I set my terminal horizontally and picked something fun from the few hundred gigabytes of shows and movies I’d downloaded before the trip.

Remembering that took my mind back. “Maybe I did this to myself,” I thought. Back when I booked this flight, I was nervous about my final Practical Physics exam and went with the cheapest ride that’d make it there on time. Now, I was definitely going to be late, and that was if I ever made it out of here.

Had I picked a pricier option — like a direct, private flight, or a fancy transport ship that’d breeze through Empire territory with its advanced FTL drive — I’d be safe and sound in the Echelon system by now. My wallet would feel lighter, but there was hardly a price I wouldn’t pay to not see myself in the situation I was in right now.

“... Well, maybe I’d do it for like a hundred thousand credits.” I said this and smiled. I wouldn’t directly put a price on my life, but by now I felt like I had a pretty good chance to survive.

I stood up and disposed of the wrapper, making sure to clean up any crumbs. Yeah, my ridiculous supply of SpaceCakes wasn’t infinite — they’d last a couple months, at best — but there was a considerable amount of sand in my hourglass.

Feeling hopeful and motivated to make progress, I decided to inventory this storage room. Hopefully I’d find something to eat other than SpaceCakes, or at least a decently long security rope I could use to traverse this junkyard without any more bungee jumps.

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So, I ran through the shelves, looking for boxes that might contain useful things. They were hard to find, like black sheep hiding in a flock of SpaceCakes.

“Oh god, really? Even here?” I closed the box of F**ko Pops as quickly as I opened it, but I really considered tossing it out the airlock.

“This looks fun.” An inflatable exercise ball. I’d never used one of these, but it’d be good to have options of things to mess around with other than my terminal’s games.

“I... What?” Curious by what’d be in the inside of an ominous silver-black case, I found a layer of scarlet felt holding a set of cat ears and a plug with a long, white tail coming from it...

“At least the plug does not look used,” I muttered before closing it again.

Moving on, I found a sturdy white cardboard box with a plastic window, through which a cat-like doodle of a face on a blue surface could be seen.

“That’s kind of cute.” I took it off the shelf and placed it on the crate I’d been using as a table. “... Unreleased prototype, not for sale.” That was the only thing written on the crate. It made my eyebrows rise, but I still opened it and took out its content.

“Some sort of toy?” It was a round blob of blue gel with triangular cat ears. It had a silly face that seemed to float on the gel’s surface, as if it was digital ink rendered on some sort of liquid display. The most fascinating part was that, despite its slimy consistency, it wouldn’t stick to my hands, and instead squished under my touch with a fluffy sensation.

There wasn’t a manual, but following some sort of gut feeling, I placed my hand on it and gave it a couple of pats and rubs. It soon began to glow and whirr, and its face progressively updated as if it was waking up...

Then it shut down again.

“It’s out of battery, isn’t it?” I carried it off to one of the ships’ chargers and recovered the laser gun and welding torch’s energy packs while I was at it. The silly cat thing seemed to be perfectly compatible with the wireless charging pad, as it made a happy little noise and updated its face when I placed it there.

“I wonder what it’ll do.” I whispered and went back to check the rest of the storeroom. There were a few other interesting trinkets, but nothing as high-tech as that slime cat thing. However, I did end up noticing something that had been all up in my face for a while; yet had escaped my sight as it’d been covered with a somber grey sheet.

“Oh hell no.”

It was a cryosleep pod. And yes, there was a person inside it.