I, the 118th Johnathan Christopher Smith, chewed on the foodstuff before me. The bland, mold green jello was neither tasty, fresh, or appetizing. It crumbled against my tongue before oozing down my throat.
The fact that I was starving was the only reason that I ate. The provided water however was clean and so very delicious in comparison. I was initially afraid of poison, but now I was half hoping it was so that I could just die and be done with these horrible meals.
I leaned back against the walls of the cell. The cell itself wasn’t impressive. A ten by ten cubic metered cell colored in a rust-hued grey. With little else to do, I measured things since it killed an hour. The bed was a wonderful two-meter by six-meter plastic-lined mesh.
The ship belonged to my ‘rescuers’. An alien species that was an odd-looking half turtle, half-lizard people. They were large, ungainly, and so very well-armed.
They obviously didn’t subscribe to the Illuminate Treaty of the Galactic Systems. Survivors of derelict ships were not to be treated like prisoners without due process.
Not that I was sure there was even a Galactic System of Planets anymore.
I sighed as I struggled down a mouthful of processed crap. I leaned back on the bed as I nursed my bottle of water. The gourd was round and was obviously meant for hand much larger than my own.
With a though, I accessed my internal systems. The dated OS was mandated by the government and had to be manually switched at authorized terminals. This meant that my entertainment was limited to the dozen magazines I had been excited to read.
Along with another dozen books that filled up the very limited internal storage allotted for personal use.
I had already read everything before I was ‘rescued’ and re-reading everything as a prisoner added a dark twist to everything.
The only other things I had were the many technical manuals that were also so very boring. The tech books were heavily locked down as the government-sanctioned documents were definitely not for public use.
I literally couldn’t open them if there was another unauthorized person around me. It was meticulous and had a lot of stipulations.
Of course, I had read up on some of those as well. Being alone in a locked room for a half year was madness at best. aside from the first meeting, I was only let out twice. Both for odd scans and attempts at communication. They didn’t work out either way.
A Hyper-Terminal Tekkard sounded great, but the repairman was definitely closer to the truth. I was assigned to the Herzog Zwei Lane issue. This lane linked the MoO, The SoaSeR, and The Stellaris galaxies together.
I would begin work in 28107 from MoO and pop out in 28108 in Stellaris.
Sure I would lose roughly a year of my life, but the government paid well and I would receive great perks. The Herzog Zwei Hyperlane, while relatively unpopular to the people, was very important for commerce.
What I didn’t expect was to pop out to Stellaris and find nothing but a decayed Hyper Terminal that shattered as I exited. That was some exciting times as I was almost skewered by shrapnel, or baked by the explosion.
The navigation system started to have an aneurism and the star charts followed right after I pulled them up to see if I was really in Stellaris.
The ship AI, AL, crashed twice. I had to lock down the star map to prevent the old AL from locking up again. This old service AI was solid, but not very smart or powerful.
Stellaris itself was broken, the yellow dwarf star was now a white dwarf. The entire system was lifeless. Four of its main planets were barren rock. Most likely victims of the yellow dwarf going supernova as it aged.
Three supernovas to be precise. No wonder they were barren.
Luckily, his relatively lifeless as his emergency signals had attracted these scavengers. His supplies were running low, and there was simply no food to be found. The one surviving orbital station was a relay post and whoever maintained the rations had either forgotten to restock, or they were simply stolen.
The onboard system could recycle liquid, but it couldn’t make healthy food from my own poop. The frozen meals were all I had. Enough for a year and a half. Which was lies since I barely got a year and a month out of them.
I swore that if the Galactic Systems were still intact, I was going to lodge the largest formal complaint I could.
Unluckily, these turtle people showed up, scanned me, and then placed me into their brig. Or I thought that it was a brig. Could have been a spare room.
They also didn’t speak English, which made sense, just an odd language with clicks and hisses. The other two major languages, Spanish and Mandarin were also a bust.
The world rumbled as the ship popped out of whatever. Hyperspace was the most likely thing, but it took a lot of time for a yellow dwarf to go into its final white dwarf stage. Who knows what kind of tech existed now.
Like billions of years. Which would also explain the extreme redshift that had almost crippled AL. The aliens had taken the ship but left it alone. The thick walls stopped our link from working. Which was sad as I could use the communication subroutines AL had built-in.
I wondered if it was going to be torn apart, or sold. If I had traveled so far, then I wondered what modern man would look like.
Evolution was a constant, but humans rarely saw it since our life spans were so short. Two, maybe three hundred years, and off you went.
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My attention was yanked to the one door in the room. The hiss of hydraulics filled the room and echoed in my ears as the wide doors opened to admit three of the turtles.
Two held guns. The universal long sticks that they held in their hands and a third that simply stood and beckoned me. I wished I could say that I recognized the thing, but really I didn’t.
They all looked the same and I couldn’t tell the three apart aside from the fact that two had guns and one didn’t.
I had tried to resist once. Just once. They had simply picked up me by my throat and easily dragged me out to a scanner bed. That had hurt. It had taken weeks for the bruises to heal.
The next time they took me, I followed, and they simply interrogated me. They hiss and clicked and I tried to talk or mime things back. Yeah, that didn’t work.
The fact that I also knew other languages seemed to trip them up. The sudden shift of my tone and method of speech riled them up.
One of the gun-less things punched the wall in frustration and left a dent in the walls. It looked like metal walls. Yeah, I started to panic after that and they had to escort me back to my room.
Today, they took me further than ever before. It was a long walk and at the end, I made it to the bridge. There was a larger, slouching turtle thing on a big bench.
Their physiology made it simple. Big shell-like bodies meant no chairs, but benches with odd grooves. Human butts didn’t conform well.
The blinking lights of a sphere caught my eye on the viewscreen. Digital as I was sure that they weren’t dumb enough to try out a glass wall. One hyperjump and your ship would tear itself apart as the glass shrapnel, accelerated by high pressure, would allow it to tear into metal.
A dull hum filled the bridge as the sphere beamed light onto them. The screen showed it blue, but who knows what the real color was. My hairs raised themselves as the beam most likely passed over me.
The leader spoke loudly. His hisses deep and clicks were loud. The other bridge crew began fiddling with knobs and levers. Which confused me. Who the hell used knob and levers on a ship in a vacuum!? Were buttons too retro?
Then my handler picked me up. His dull claws simply found my sides and he lifted me up and placed me before a console. He pushed my face towards a mound of mesh and fabric.
The communication officer…? Leaned forward and slowly made clicks and hisses while facing it.
Oh. Was this a mic?
“Uhhh, Hello?” I was very eloquent.
[Hello.] was the eventual response. The words were clear from the bridge’s speakers. The soft voice belonged to a woman.
The grip on me weakened and I guess that was encouragement. The dull, but probably dense claws left my head.
“I am Jonathan Smith, Galactic Systems Tekkard. Uh, pleased to meet you?”
[I am Alexa, a systematic administrator. How may I help you, Jonathan Smith?]
“I uhh, got rescued? From Stellaris. I am not sure what is going on. And can you get me out of here and back into Galactic Space?” I asked. Begged. Pleaded.
I desperately wanted a hamburger. And a real, proper toilet. Not some rusty metal chute that opened from a wall. I was half shocked that I hadn’t gotten tetanus. Ooooh! Soft toilet paper. Not paper Mache type stuff these people used.
[Accessing… Johnathan Christopher Smith. Government Tekkard, hired 28079.]
“I… what? Yeah… that’s me… how?” I stuttered as I blinked at the mic. The system knew me? Or rather, could find me?
I knew that all records since the 9th millennium were hardcoded into the databases, but there were a ton of people. I was also the 118th person in my family to be named Johnathan. There were a lot of us.
[Understood. I will follow the proper protocols. Please do not be alarmed. Do no panic.]
I immediately started to panic, as anyone would in my situation. Proper protocols were that they didn’t negotiate with terrorists, extremists, and criminals in general.
Alexis began to click and hiss back. Which shocked the crew. My handler even let me go as he turned to the big boss and they spoke. It was a mess of speech. Rapid-fire hisses and clicks.
The sphere floated up and shed more blue light onto the ship. My hairs rose once more as I felt a tingle started from my spine and it quickly spread across my body.
I twitched one. Twice. And felt the world compress around me.
----------------------------------------
“Greetings and Salutations!”
I knew that voice…
I blinked and the world was filled with soft lighting. My eyes adjusted and I found myself staring into pools of amber eyes. The golden eyes faintly glowed and sparkled as they locked onto my own.
I broke first and shook my head as I instead looked elsewhere. That was an intense gaze.
The room was sterile in an off white color scheme. I was on a reclined bed. The golden eyes belonged to a supermodel that wore a light purple dress that fell to her knees. Her black hair was long and braided and it stood out against her very pale complexion.
“Hello,” I dutifully replied as I coughed as I realized my throat was very dry.
“I apologize. The drugs will wear off in approximately 178 more seconds,” she soothingly said as she walked over with a cup and pitcher. Her heels clicked as she walked over.
“I… drugs…?”
“I had to ensure that you were a real human that the Tecgloresians found. Millions of other species have been trying to enter redacted space for quite some time,” she explained as she poured the water into the cup and gently fed it to me. She waited for me to swallow the first, clean sip before stopping and lower it away.
“The drugs are highly toxic to any non-human organisms and also accelerate biological breakdowns. Clones are very advanced, but suffer without a perfect template to draw from.”
I chocked and was glad that she had the foresight to take away the cup.
“Do not worry. You are fully human. You passed all the tests, biological, mental, and spiritual as is indicated by your time and society of 21004-21107.”
My time? Right. I was in trouble. Big trouble. A
“We will begin regeneration to restore you to from your form to the standards as regulated by the Systems United under Sovereignty. The 23rd successor after your Galactic Systems of Planets.”
I was in a daze. This was a lot of big information. I leaned back as she placed the cup back to my lips and I greedily drank. As she lowered the cup, she produced two pills.
“As dictated by the Wachowski Protocols, you have two options. The blue pill will liquidate your brain. You will die and return to entropy. The red pill will give you a second life and purpose.”
I stared at the red pill and then at her.
“I am, by design, a Systematic Administrator. I am unable to affect anything out of my sphere of influence. I require assistance to regulate the various mandates handed down to by my masters. Which would become you.”
What? I raised my eyebrow at her.
“You are the last human I have encountered in nearly 179 million years. The rest of humanity has left on a great journey into another plane of existence.”
What? I raised my other eyebrow as well. And widened my eyes.
“Please say you will help. Afterward, we can both step onto the path and also experience the great journey. I am so very excited!” Alexis said with a wide smile. It showed off her pearl white teeth.
I nodded. I was tired, but I was now also curious. The great journey? Potentially last human alive?
I leaned my head towards the red pill and Alexis helpfully raised it to my lips.
I ate it.
“Congratulations! We are officially a pair and please note, the pain will be excruciating, but brief. Your outdated body will be updated via nanites to the modern standard!” Alexis cheered and clapped.
I felt the stab of pain starting in my stomach, spine, and eyebrows. I glared at her as she slipped her hand into mine. They were warm and soft.
I grit my teeth as the sensation got bigger, worse, and I tried my hardest to crush her hands with my own.
In response, Alexis smiled wider and used her thumbs to rub small circles into the back of my hand.
I… gah… she wasn’t lying about the pain.