The room was white; if it was even a room. Pure, pale white. He wasn't breathing. He didn't feel hungry, thirsty, or sleepy. It could have been death; but it felt all too familiar. Many of the fully immersive games he'd played had something like this in their opening. A void from which to design the very body you'd be playing the role of. Who you'd live and die as in some strange fantasy world. The only visible object other than himself was his Icon; a tiny, glowing, white orb, against an endless sea of white.

He doesn't have hands; but the same impulses that would have moved them cause his Icon to blink. Normally, he'd see a radial menu; a circle of options. To exit the game, shutting off the headset. Waking up. This time, he'd see nothing of the sort; just a single choice. Coldly labeled.

[Introduction]

He touched it. He had nothing else to do.

A figure appeared before him; an older man, perhaps in his late fifties, behind a gleaming white desk. A few books are stacked on a corner. A screen; of the antique, LED sort popular two decades ago; sitting at its center. The scarred, burned face, hairless, calm. Familiar. He'd know those ocular implants and their steady blue glow anywhere. Harkness. The Survivor.

"This recording will only play if the earth has been destroyed. If all hope has ended, and I've killed the earth to save a remnant of her children. I suppose this is a depressing thing to record. Shows a certain pessimism on my part. You probably don't know the whole truth, about the 'Enemy'. Frankly, I hope you never will. A few minutes ago, a series of devices took hold of the heart of our sun, and launched it into the alternate universe we call 'Hyperspace'. In both universes, this caused a small-scale supernova. Here, it wiped out all life in the solar system. In Hyperspace, it did two things."

An enormous starmap appears. Derek's ghostly form floating among the stars as if he were one of them; he could see the labels for stars he knew; Sol. Sirius. Proxima Centauri. A tiny red dot appears at Sol; becoming a reddish sphere, expanding outward, rapidly.

"It created a sort of bow wave; a narrow band on which a vessel can travel much more swiftly than normal... followed by a superheated mass of energy that will make hyperspace impossible to travel for decades or even centuries to come. The effect in the real world will be limited; Proxima Centauri is the only other system that will have any serious impact. In essence, a ship that launches at just the right moment, in just the right way, could ride that wave for thousands of light years. Emerge far beyond the reach of our Enemy; and either emerge in our own universe somewhere along the way, inside a region where no FTL travel will occur for quite some time... or ride it all the way to its edge. The vessel you are currently on is exactly this."

The starmap vanishes. Replaced by... what appears to be an asteroid. A solid chunk of space-rock, with engines on one side. A diagram appears; showing a thin wedge of construction embedded in it.

"Obviously, this killed you. Your organic body died when the wave hit wherever you were. If you were wearing one of my headsets, you didn't even notice; it was a smooth transition from your news program or game to this simulation. Anyone on earth who wore one of those headsets long enough had their entire mind copied; and updated when they put it on; to the databases on the Outreach fleet. When this message ends, you will either wake up as part of the crew, or on a newly established colony, somewhere far beyond earth."

He smiled. "I won't be on one of these vessels. This is the last you'll see of me. Enjoy your second chance."

At this point, the recording stopped. Harkness vanished; alongside his desk. The Icon. Everything. For a moment, Derek would panic; was he going to be trapped in this void forever? Why would he even feel anything?

But then... Cold. Icy, terrible cold.

*****

He could feel a table beneath him; colder than ice. He still wasn't breathing. But he could see. He could feel. He... was a machine. It responded as if it were flesh and blood; he could move each finger on the dark grey metal hands as if they had always belonged to him.

He was inside a room.. cold steel walls, glowing strips on the ceiling for light, a grid of tables like the ones he lay on, each holding an identical skeletal humanoid machine. With a single person standing just a few feet from his table. Not a person. A machine, just like his own. He was a robot now, clearly. Not sure how to feel about it.

"Derek Thompson? You should turn on your Icon overlay. It'll help."

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For a moment, he was confused. His Icon was fake. Just a little artificial intelligence that he used like an interface in his headset. Then he saw it; the tiny, glowing white orb. His... sensors told him it wasn't real. But when he touched the illusory orb, a familiar radial menu appeared.

[Holographic Overlay] [Off] [Standby Mode][Off][Equipment][Configuration]

He tapped the Overlay button, flicking it to [On]. Suddenly... everything changed. He felt as if he were breathing again. Alive. Warm. The cold machine in front of him now looked like... a man. Wearing a solid black uniform, with closely shaved hair, the darkest skin Derek had seen outside of a fantasy game, and a vibrant smile, as if he were in on some joke Derek hadn't yet heard. He also had an Icon floating around his head; a tiny golden fox, playfully moving through the air in leaps and bounds.

Derek glanced down at himself; he looked as he had just moments before. Before he died, at least. Wearing the same skintight black outfit.He could tell he was the machine. The room was cold and dark; that this man... who his Icon identified as Captain Peterson.. was also a machine. But so long as the overlay was in place... the walls were bright and vibrant. He was alive and warm.

The Captain just kept up that grin for a moment as he watched Derek adjust to the overlay; and then clapped him on the shoulder. "So, son. If you want to, you can lay back down on that table, go to sleep, and stay there until we're building our own new earth, and can give you a more permanent body. I can wake someone else up... though the ship is being built as it goes, slowly converting that giant rock the engine is embedded in into a real ship, so I might not need that body for a while yet. But if you'd like, I can offer you a job instead."

He studied the captain. Despite their almost identical mechanical bodies, the overlay gave the impression of a tall, fit, military man. Perhaps what Derek might have hoped to be; but definitely not what he was. "I always wanted to go to space... just couldn't handle the artificial gravity for some reason. I'd be glad to work on a real spaceship, if there was something I could actually help with. You'd need to teach me how to maintain this thing, and, well. You could teach anybody that."

Peterson offered a low chuckle in response, before turning. "Follow me, Mister Thompson." Derek stepped after him quickly enough; he'd always dreamed to ride a starship, and apparently his holographic overlay was doing an impressive job of simulating his quickened heartbeat and excitement. "Right now, we're still in hyperspace. The plan is to be there for months. Years, even. We ride the wave till it starts to break up, and come out somewhere that, even if the Enemy knew where we were, and was still around, would take them centuries to reach. When we get there... we'll need to build a new home."

The ship seemed to have a long, central corridor; with spacing every ten meters for what was once an airlock. Derek's mechanical feet could feel the vibration... at the end of the corridor, through two airlocks, someone was drilling. As the captain led him into an open room where others were standing, talking, going over diagrams of components and structures of the ship they were on, Derek's gaze flickered over the crew. Mostly looking like military; rank insignia on the shoulders, perfect shape, short haircuts, tiny animated creatures or objects floating around them. Finding his gaze drawn to one particularly curvy redheaded girl, he was surprised for a moment to realize his heart was beating faster, he was feeling attracted to her; he had even become distracted from what Captain Peterson was saying as he simply followed in the man's wake.

Only to discover that his body had perfect recollection, as his Icon replayed what the captain had said.

"S-tech built a series of 'games' that weren't really games so much as tech demos, tests, and training tools to gather and build some of the skills we would need to establish new colonies in project. Hyper-realistic pilot training programs, simulations for all of the various crew positions. You inadvertently acquired the skills needed to fill a role as a navigation officer in Galactic Wars, and the systems in those ships almost exactly mirror the real thing. More importantly, we're going to need to sort through hundreds of star systems, probably without a single habitable world, and pick the best choices to build a new home, using the tools we have to hand."

He turned to Derek, as Derek looked at a starpmap; this one showing the space in the real world flowing by, as the ship moved through hyperspace at a ridiculous pace. Even as he watches, a star flickered by as if it were just a roadsign on the highway.

"Earthforge."

"Exactly. The Earthforge program included projections of numerous real and fake star systems.. but was mostly just training to adapt candidates to the idea of working on terraforming projects with the sort of decades or centuries-long timetables we'd be working with, and the sort of equipment we'd be able to use.To be as good as you became would need an in-depth understanding of orbital mechanics and terraforming. To be blunt... your job will be helping decide just which star system we settle down in. Or, well. Which systems. As well as, of course, taking alternating shifts at the navigation console so that Shiraki can actually take breaks without leaving the system unmanned. Technically it doesn't need to be watched constantly in hyperspace, but..."

The captain nodded towards a young japanese man, whose overlay was... confusing. It took a moment for Derek to parse it out; there were no chairs in the room, not real ones, but for some psychological reason his own overlay included him sitting at the console. One which did, in fact, look almost identical to what Derek had used in the past.

"This... entire place is confusing as all hell. I suspect if I were still alive, I'd be in shock. Or having a nervous breakdown. I'd like some time to look the place over and get used to it before I get started... but I'm definitely in. I don't think I could stand to sleep through this."

The captain shrugged. "Thats what most of them said. Take a few, get used to the idea. And welcome to the crew of Outreach 13."