I stumbled back over the rough terrain, making sure to keep my balance. The trees were sparse enough that sunshine could come down through the branches and there was enough space to step back and take a look.

The dirt had been displaced and the bits of tree that had been strewn everywhere made things a bit uneven too but there was plenty of light to see by and I took in the view of my spaceship.

Like the inside, Starship Rex was mostly sleek black metal with dark blue accents running along seams in the metal plates that covered it. It had a main central body which was vaguely wedge shaped and in which I assumed the majority of the ship’s interior was located. The front tapered off into a long nose and either side of the main body there were broad wings that stuck out horizontally. A fin stuck out at the back over the rear engines. It came across as fairly minimalist, but every angle seemed to stand out more because of it.

I could just about see the cockpit somewhere at the front and top. It was at an angle given the position Starship Rex had come to rest in. After walking around to the back, which took a minute or two, I found there were a series of what I guessed were the exhausts or engine parts that let the ship fly, in space.

It was so cool! My inner child had realised we weren’t in danger and had come out to see the spaceship with awe in his eyes.

I don’t know how long I spent just walking around and inspecting Starship Rex’s design but I didn’t really care. It was only when Rel’s foot snapping a twig or something distracted me that I remembered our current situation. She looked amused.

“I don’t see any damage,” she said.

Yeah,” I nodded. “Will we be able to take off again once it’s finished recharging?”

Exactly how did it recharge? I wondered. Unless it was generating energy ex-nihilo then it had to come from somewhere. Solar radiation perhaps?

“Most spacecraft can manage atmospheric reentry,” Rel told me. “Not like this, obviously, but I’d be really surprised if a Firstech ship couldn’t fly in an atmosphere or take off from this position.”

“Good,” I said, relieved. Rel was my only authority on this stuff right now. If she said Starship Rex was going to be okay then I believed her.

For the first time I took a proper look at my surroundings.

There were trees, normal trees with green leaves and brown bark. They could’ve passed for something on Earth easily. In fact this entire forest could.

If I hadn’t already seen evidence that this had to be another reality, or universe, or whatever it was, then I could’ve convinced myself that I was just in a forest somewhere back home.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“What do we do now, then?” I asked Rel, returning to stand in front of her. She shrugged.

“Might as well wait for Starship Rex to wake up. We can figure out what to do next after that.”

It was a lot harder than getting out but we managed to clamber back aboard to wait. I sat in the pilot’s chair while Rel leaned back against the wall.

With nothing better to do we traded our backgrounds. I gave Rel a basic rundown of Earth. The world I knew, the world I’d left, had been trundling along from one problem to the next and it was only our steadily advancing techbase that offered any hope for the future. There wasn’t much worth talking about, I realised. At least there wasn’t much worth mentioning that would be interesting to a girl from a space age civilisation like hers.

“God knows what I’m gonna do now, I told her.”

“With a Firstech ship there’ll be opportunities,” Rel told me. “Courier, messenger. I don’t know how fast Starship Rex’s FTL is but mother told me it’s FTL was very fast. That’d be straightforward enough if you want to earn money.”

That sounded… pretty dull, in my opinion. I didn’t voice that though, just humming to indicate I had heard what she’d said.

With a universe at my fingertips getting a job, any kind of job, just… seemed like a waste.

Maybe practicality would assert itself at some point, the more rational part of me said. I’d have to wait and find out.

“What about you?” I asked, far more interested in the alien girl’s background than my own less than exciting one. “What’s your world like?”

“Cold,” Rel said. She chuckled.

“Our world is mostly frozen but it’s not that bad. Mother’s a Minister on the Global Council but that’s mostly because she was involved in beating the Star Empire when they began their attack on some other systems. She was just in the wrong place at the right time. That’s what she said anyway.”

“This Star Empire, it’s been destroyed?” I asked, interested.

“Yes, they weren’t too special but their leader was charismatic. Promised people everything they wanted as long as they joined him. It wasn’t even a real Empire or anything, more of a syndicate really.” Rel sighed. “Full of selfish people who weren’t interested in looking past their own noses, all sorts joined up from lots of systems, thinking that anything about their situations would change if they banded together and started conquering systems. Their Emperor died on their megaship when you blew it up and they collapsed into infighting after that.”

“Blimey, that’s a lot to live up to,” I muttered, wondering what kind of guy my past self must have been to have gone through with everything I was being told he had done.

We sat in silence for a while, occasionally commenting on this or that. I didn’t know what Rel was thinking about, but I had plenty to think about so that worked out pretty well for me too.

After an hour or two the buttons and screens around the cockpit lit up one by one in rapid succession. Starship Rex announced itself.

“Power restored. Re-activating systems. Error, insufficient power to reactivate all systems. Calculating. Sufficient power will be restored to be able to take off in four standard days,” the spaceship told us.

“Well, that’s not the end of the world, I guess,” I said. I looked towards Rel.

“We’ll need to find food in the meantime, but yeah,” she agreed.

“Great,” I said. We could do that. But my first thought wasn’t about food.

“Starship Rex,” I said. “Do you have any more of those education download things?” I asked.

“There are prepared education downloads for many skills and information, would you like a list?” Starship Rex asked me.

“No,” I replied. I just needed one.

“I want to be able to fly this thing,” I said.