Chapter 1: Crash Landed
Stars floated and sparkled through his vision in response to the impact. His ankle burned from the unfortunate landing and air had been forcibly exhaled from his lungs. He struggled to clear his sight through the haze, slowly gaining the vast ocean of orange sky with blue clouds accenting it. An afternoon or morning sun breathed cool light that glinted off the silver bark of the tree he had been ejected from, its gold coniferous-like leaves danced as it recovered from the impulse.
He drew breath, forcing himself first to a sitting position, then to his feet as he worked out how much pressure he could apply before it became unbearably painful. With little else he could reasonably accomplish, he set out to return to his pod in hopes of gathering something to set the ankle. Every step jolting pain through him as he mulled over his grievances for the cruise company that had inadvertently landed him on this deserted rock.
Joseph was starting to regret the year-long ‘Voyage Across the Stars’ cruise that his brother had gifted to him. Not because the trip itself was unsatisfactory, per se, but there were more than a few issues he would like to see addressed. The experience started off strong; luxurious rooms the size of apartments, specialty food from various cultures within the Union, and more races than he had previously known to exist. Even the exhibits were interesting, though translated through some cheap monotone robotic voice contained in cheap headphones that he swiftly trashed when it was done. It was all quite novel for him.
The issues started with having his ship become a part of a colossal explosion due to a separate ship dropping out of warp without warning while he was making his way to his room, an activity not mentioned on the itinerary, and subsequent evacuation. He had front row seats to the complete lack of emergency procedures that had started and ended with blaring alarms for exactly five seconds before the doors to every passenger domicile was forcibly shut, passenger present in the doorway or not. The room being ejected from the ship was an unexpected twist of fate. He had been scrambling to contact his brother through the communications array to inform him of what was happening when the entire relay system was ripped out due to a more permanent installation for a temporary position.
It didn’t take long for him to notice the failure of several other systems. Life support was damaged, but still functional. Technically. The oxygen produced was exactly enough to keep him conscious through a bleary and fluid sense of self. The manual navigation system had completely failed, displaying unknown coordinates that fluctuated rapidly until it burst into smoke and refused his course corrections. As fun as it was, watching the ship he had spent six months on turn into an inferno while he himself plummeted onto an unnamed developing planet through gasps of atmosphere that would only safely support a small animal is going to deduct some points on his review.
Luckily, though he resented the lack of in-flight peanuts and landing gear, the atmosphere on the planet was much more accommodating to his continued existence. A fact he was delighted to discover after spending far too long bashing the bio-lock off the door. The lock had been forced into an administrative lock-down and refused to recognize him as a member of staff with access to lift the protocol. It seemed like a desperate man with a hunk of heavy metal was sufficient credential to access the mechanical locks the system used as a backup. It felt good to be given a sudden promotion, though he could have mistook the feeling of having sufficient oxygen for one of an increment in authority.
Outside of the systems that seemed determined to end him with their failures, the offerings from the other more mundane systems and such were satisfactory, if a bit boring. The water recycler held several gallons of water within its storage, the bathroom functioned as expected, and the supplied medical kit was stocked with everything an aspiring planet explorer could ever need... If you weren’t human or a similarly rare species that was too isolationist or new to be catered towards. It was an inclusion to the ships repertoire that he began sifting though as soon as he had managed to limp inside the pod.
The first thing he was greeted with was a list of everything that was included. It was printed in the three standardized languages in which humans lacked the required anatomy to speak, followed by a hand-written replication in terribly translated English that failed to assign meaning to any of the items within. As luck would have it, the machine translations on the labels were far more helpful. Being so broadly focused meant that there were many inclusions that didn’t have an English designation or were simply listed by the chemical compounds that they were comprised of. Lacking any knowledge in chemistry or medicine outside of popping some acetaminophen for a headache, he started sorting the materials into piles of ‘lethal’ and ‘hopefully not lethal’ based on his limited knowledge and the occasionally well labelled bag.
Several stand-out inclusions were some very lethal poisons, a variety of toxic gasses contained within things that looked like particularly aggressive asthma inhalers, and oddly enough, a vial of liquid sugar. All the items were in a bag that had a helpfully vague ‘Essentials’ scribbled onto it in red marker. A brief consideration of what kind of creature would require a caramel-coloured liquid sugar injection left him picturing either a cuddly teddy-bear or an eldritch horror. He was not in a hurry to find out which.
Re-purposing some ‘Exoskeleton Replacement Plates’ and ‘Light Tissue Analogues’, He was able to fashion something of a cast in which to bind his foot into something resembling a correct angle, though he couldn’t locate anything that would be safe to use as an anti-inflammatory. Using sections of his collapsible pull-up bar, he rigged himself a splint and used it to further protect the injured joint. A swift placement of a cyanide-based coagulant into the ‘lethal’ pile later and he was nearing the end of his fleeting occupation as an under-qualified pharmacist, tossing the ‘Highly Toxic’ ibuprofen into its own pile of ‘I guess humans are weird’.
He moved the two piles to the extreme ends of the pod, the safer pile being laid on the counter-top in the kitchen area with the lethal pile being moved into the bathroom where he was pretty sure he wouldn’t confuse them for toilet paper. He would have liked to burn the whole collection, but there was a solid chance that something in there would prove useful at some point and he didn’t want to be caught with his medical pants down. With a freshly booted foot that did nothing to improve his outfit and the remains of the pull-up bar as a crutch, he resigned himself to scouting the area instead of trying to climb trees that would sling-shot away after he had made it about half way up.
He examined everything that he could see, even the items that looked fairly close to their Terran counterparts. That is a bush, but a deep yellow. That is a tree, but silver and gold. That is a fern, but somewhat blue. That is a rock, but it squeaks like a misguided dog toy when you apply enough pressure.
He played with the noisy rock for a few moments in amusement before scrawling his name onto it in an action of retrospection. He remembered defacing random items and abandoned buildings as a teen. The act of graffiti, somewhere he won’t be forced to paint the siding by hand mere weeks before its demolition in punishment, brought him a small amount of catharsis. The rock may have been rather odd in its characteristics, but presented as one would expect of a rock. Grey, textured, and set into the environment. Yep, its a rock. A squeaky rock, but a rock.
Lack of geological expertise to further identify the stone’s oddities aside, the topography of the area was much tamer than he had expected. There was no canyons that exposed miles of river. No massive cave systems that scourged the land with ominous outcroppings acting as entrances for the surface. No, the most interesting superficial detail was the hill he had found himself wandering up while he walked. A short time after noticing, he passed the top of the lower-set trees around him and came to the realization that his pod had landed in something of a valley.
Valleys were fairly promising should he want to find water or hopefully smaller game animals that this ecosystem may have to offer, as well as some mild protection from the elements if the wind was inclined to travel across the elevations instead of through the trough. Regardless, he had been walking for quite a while and had spent two days on the brink of consciousness in the pod with nothing to eat besides residue off of food wrappers. Foraging was about to be top priority for this excursion. As tempting as ordering a pizza was, he doubted they had them here. Maybe he could find a burger under a loud rock or something.
His attention was drawn from plant to plant, unsure of which items may prove poisonous if he ingested them without testing various things first. He cursed his lack of survival knowledge when he tasted a berry that seemed pretty in line for what he would expect a safe food to look like and it polluted his mouth with the taste of incinerated tires. He tried wiping his tongue free of the taste and only accomplished adding the earthy tones of dirt that had made its way onto his hands. He bit back the disgust and continued to lift various vines and bushes with his crutch, settling on a bio-luminescent plant that bore a striking resemblance to a yellowed marijuana plant that was far larger than its inspiration.
A crack of thunder signalled the start of a moderate rain as he collected some of it, the dirt promptly turning to mud under his knees while he dug out the roots. How hard would it be to make a primitive washing machine? He had a feeling that if he was going to become some sort of cyberpunk weed farmer, he was going to need a way to clean his clothes. His rumination was stinted by a cascading waterfall that soaked him completely before subsiding, courtesy of the clouds. Not to be discouraged by mildly inconvenient weather patterns, he pocketed the plant and continued his trek.
Confident that his patch of forest contained almost nothing he could identify as food, he decided to keep heading to higher elevation in hopes that something suitable would present itself there. A venture that would greatly appreciate a machete-wielding Rambo to cut the brush as it was growing progressively denser and beginning to snag on his clothing. A fact that caused him to fall and stress his injured foot more than once. He was forced to heave thick vines out of the way when patches became too thick for him to progress otherwise, the exertion of which strained his injury to an unpleasant degree. Alas, starvation is a stronger motivator than a manageable pain, so he pressed forth.
The rain slowly and continuously picking up in intensity started to worry him. Should he go back? Wait out the storm and try again later? Would he luck upon some other creature’s kill in relatively good shape so he could scavenge a meal? Does this pine-cone thing taste good?
The panicked inquiry was quickly followed by rubbing his tongue against his shirt in a desperate attempt to remove the tang of battery acid that assaulted his taste buds. The only saving grace of the experience being that it didn’t actually burn him in any capacity and the acidic quality was quickly overwritten by the stale earthy flavors the mud left behind. He tentatively attempted the process on other possible edibles, though the other samplings didn’t fare much better. The sole exception being a slight nibble of the glowing herb that proved to taste like mouldy cardboard, sadly taking first place as far as things he had eaten.
One heavy sigh later, Joseph continued his way up the incline, scooting his way past trees and over roots. He resorted to using branches for support when his crutch couldn’t find an acceptably sturdy placement, leading to him needing to bend over to pick it up several times. The forest around him varied a fair bit in density in the areas he could see from his vantage point. Some areas were closer to meadows while others almost seemed to be a natural attempt at forming quarantine, as many as twenty trees interlocking or growing into each other formed a surprising wide wall, though spaced far enough to allow for only mildly impeded traversal up the hill.
Bushes, both displaying their leaves and not, littered the woodland floor. Long running indentations told of potentially eon old water channels as they carved their way were littered through the landscape. Joseph was never much for nature, but this detour might be worth the time as he spent a while poking and prodding a lot of the more cosmetically interesting flora. No matter how many he found, more were always exhibiting curious evolutionary quirks. He lacked the education to fully understand the benefits of these peculiar behaviors but found himself losing track of time as he pondered some of them regardless.
Looking back, he noticed he was much further away than he realized. The star that acted as a sun for this planet started setting, illuminating the sky in an odd green. The once dark blue clouds shifting to a more steeled gray he had grown used to. He vaguely recalled that various chemicals in the atmosphere affected the color of both, but he couldn’t remember if it warranted any sort of worry. Considering it’s been a few hours outside of his room-provided atmosphere and he hasn’t dropped dead yet, he figured it either wasn’t of consequence or those injections he was given as part of the ship ‘medical inoculation on-boarding’ had bolstered his lungs to the point where it didn’t matter. At least one of the safety procedures didn’t lead to bodily or mental harm, he supposed.
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A crash of thunder punctuated the darkening sky and caused him to jump, reminding him of why it was better to just hold out for now. He decided to seek shelter further up, as making his way downhill in the rain sounded like a great way to finish the job on his ankle. He would have to add ‘hiking boots’ to his ever-growing list of things that he needed at the moment, it would go right next to food and company that doesn’t have twelve limbs or talk using sounds only beaten by nails on a chalkboard. The revision sparked a curiosity regarding the lack of any life around him.
No touches of civilization, though that could just be related to his unguided landing ending him up in a nature preserve or something. No small animals like alien squirrels or birds, though it was starting to get late so it was possible that they were preparing their homes in light of the weather instead of trying to bother him. No insects, but he was happy he wouldn’t have to worry about being eaten alive by some monstrous car-sized mosquito. The small version being absent was also appreciated. The less whining and buzzing he was subjected to, the better.
He hobbled from cover to cover, maintaining his upwards heading while musing the solitude he was being subjected to. The leaves of trees swayed in the wailing wind; the pedals of assorted flowers buckled under the rains. He sheltered under a thick silver trunk of a tree that had fallen some time ago. Once he noticed a small decrease in the severity of the storm, he trudged onward.
Cresting the top of the hill, he briefly considered that the large crash might have attracted local predators to him in the day or so it took for him to fumble and bash his way out of the pod. The lack of any animals whatsoever in the area calmed the potential threat factor of this thought, though not being any sort of survival expert outside of one-off holo-videos kept it on the list of things to hopefully not run into. It would probably be in his best interest to fashion a knife out of some spare steel if he could figure out a way to procure it. A slingshot would work too, he had the flexible tubing for it next to the wrappers. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to rig up a simple ‘Y’ shaped design using one of the trees that didn’t act like it belonged at a used-car sales lot.
If shit hits the fan, he could fall back on his MMA experience. Said experience being exactly 5 months of casually playing ‘The Ring – Boxing World Championship’ on the holodeck for exercise. He would have set a record in the endurance category too, if the ‘Matt’ AI hadn’t been so damn over powered. That bald bast-
His inner musings were cut abruptly by stumbling over possibly the softest boulder he had ever had the pleasure of tripping over, sending him face first down an unexpected cliff-side and sailing past some protruding roots that he reflexively lashed his arms out at. Tossing his crutch to the wind in his attempts, the grips of safety brushed past his fingertips as they shot out of his grasp. He found himself rapidly mentally joining and renouncing every religion the galaxy had to offer.
He offered a quick prayer to every god he could think of, and several in fiction, that the multi-story descent not end in him becoming abstract street art. This was followed by wishing he had taken that dump on his boss's desk when he was fired, maybe actually told that one bitch at the gym that he wasn’t staring at her, but just had full-depth contact lenses on and was just reading the news. Might have avoided the slap if he had responded faster...
His mind raced in panic but had no physical outlet, leading him to processing several other regrets of varying importance that were quickly brought up until he could no longer think of things to regret. Great, panic out of the way in a record five seconds! With that task finished, all that was left was to stop the scream that had escaped his mouth without permission. An objective helpfully completed by a surprisingly trampoline-like assortment of rocks that caught him in the most comfortable and yet startling defiance to all Joseph considered stone, before tossing him into a near-by body of water of indeterminate size. With one more Wilhelm scream for good measure, he broke the surface in a fashion that would not win him any points at the Orion Olympics.
Quick assessment:
Is he dead? No? Good. Next question.
Should he trust geologists after this? No, but then again, anyone who separates several of the same object on a categorization level based on color shouldn’t be trusted. Less useless question:
Where was he? He tentatively opened one eye, scanning what he could around him. Lots of murk colored, but fairly clear otherwise, water or water-like enough liquid. No saying how deep down he was though, he could only see a few feet in any given direction. It felt like he was being pushed through a colossal fire hose as he kept tumbling, but it was manageable. Good enough, he could work with that. Next.
Is anything broken? A quick test of all four appendages revealed that his right leg was doing quite a bit worse than before, though likely not broken. Or maybe it is. At this point he couldn’t be sure unless it started bending in places it shouldn’t be bending. Not so good, but nothing can be done about it if he drowned here. Speaking of:
Could he swim? A quick test proved that although he was never really much for swimming past quickly escaping the pool, he could indeed manage a butchered doggie-paddle. That'll do pig, that’ll do.
With the essential information sorted out, it was time to discern which way was up. This proved to be challenging as the entire body of water around him seemed to roll and glow in every direction whenever lightning struck. Useful for seeing the lack of apparent aquatic life, but not so much for navigation. No obvious floor within visual range. No bubbles from his landing remained on his clothes or around him. If he didn’t have a visual marker, he would make one.
Struggling slightly to not let any of the brown-greenish water enter his mouth, he timed his push with the lightning so that just enough air to form a bubble he could keep track of came out. Sure enough, it started floating past his face and towards his right ear. Mild panic overcame him as he lost track of it momentarily between bursts of light, but he luckily caught a glimpse of it before it went out of range. With a direction established he started up his most efficient method of swimming, slightly more urgently than the previous test as the quick breath he took as he hit the surface wasn’t going to last much longer.
He fought his automatic instincts and forced his way towards the surface, ignoring the burning in his legs. He was much further down than he expected and his burning lungs demanded to know why he had let air go before they had fully processed it. A fleeting consideration pondered if the injections that made his lack of care about the local atmosphere extended to breathing in water. Not wanting to check if the changes to everything he knew about everything had somehow given him gills or equivalent, he pushed through his dimming vision.
Every push with each limb causing them to scream at the lack of oxygen and his chest threatened to invert itself at the prospect of air. Time passed in increments he was unable to comprehend until he could finally make out the thin barrier between the breathable atmosphere and the depths in which he tried to escape. He was so close. Just a bit more. Ignore your lungs, ignore your leg, ignore the blackness. Just. Keep. Pushing.
The water got murkier as he ascended, his less than rhythmic flailing disturbing whatever had settled in it. The few feet of distance he could see diminished to only inches. His eyes burned through the strain and foreign liquid washing over them. He would have second guessed his direction if not for the flashes of light becoming brighter as he approached the surface.
It was too far.
Maybe fifteen seconds more and he would have broken the surface and could finally gasp at the air. His lungs jumped at the thought of refilling prematurely, pumping themselves full of liquid. With no oxygen to be processed, the pain burned even hotter before being numbed by his fading consciousness. His leg finally gave out after the hours of hiking, bungee-less bungee jumping, and now un-synchronized swimming. The swelling prevented him from using the bulk of his foot as a paddle, leaving him with only three functionally helpful limbs, each of which were cramping in light of the abuse.
Flailing and lunging, he inched closer and closer as his sight was robbed by the fire in his chest. A desperate silent scream echoing only within himself. His arm successfully launched out of the water just past his wrist, praying for something to grab.
The last thing he remembered was a sharp, blue, and slightly curved object pushing towards him, a chip removed from its edge some distance up. Once more, he grasped at the object, hoping that even this place had life guards. His skin broke on the honed edge, quickly followed by a large but numb sting of pain on his palm. He gripped it as hard as his limp hand could manage as he finally allowed the darkness to take him.