Chapter 2

~

I woke up half buried. It was actually rather pleasant.

Have you ever jumped on a pile of freshly dried blankets that are lying on your parents master bed, bathed in the late day sun drafting through an open window, while the smells of dinner cooking slowly begins to waft into your nostrils as the comfy atmosphere begins to suck all energy out of your body in the most delightful way possible?

Imagine that if you can. Then you’ll understand why I was thoroughly enjoying my half-buried state. Honestly though, I figured I was dead. This was my reward, and I was perfectly fine with it.

Until a booming female voice broke my pleasant haze and brought me back to reality. It was just too bad I couldn’t understand a word spoken.

After sitting up and brushing myself off, I came to the conclusion that this was not in fact a dream.

Point in fact, my surroundings. I couldn't help but be slightly stunned. A sand bank? Seriously?

So... if this was the afterlife, I honestly wasn't expecting a desert. Bit of a surprise. Quite warm really. Though the sand did make an excellent cushion for falling debris from the sky. Especially if that debris happened to be a single engine aircraft piloted by yours truly.

Somehow, I was alive. There’s quite a change of pace from your average plane crash through a space portal. Though how am I to know, maybe those kind of things happen all the time, and people routinely survive them.

Which means I was either the luckiest bloke in existence, or I was already dead and just hadn’t realized it yet.

So what now?

That question appeared to be answered by a high-toned grinding announcement sounding off in my head. That same female voice. Insistent even.

Whatever she wanted, I couldn’t answer.

Once I had climbed from the wreckage, I stood and looked around, trying to gain my bearings. The Cessna was still buried nose deep in a sand bank, and I didn’t foresee being able to pull it out with brute strength. I continued around the tail of the plane, and received my first glimpse of the future. My mouth gaped a bit, head tilted back as I watched the world rise up before me and touch the sky. No, it went further, it went beyond space, and dwelt in stars above.

The scattered ruins of lost civilizations and ancient dunes of sand covered the land around me. In disbelief, I spun in a circle, ending up seeing a sandy desert stretching beyond the horizon to my left and a towering mountain of unimaginable size and scope reaching for the heavens to my right.

How was that physically possible? What was this place? How was I alive? And perhaps the most important question, how had I flown a plane from one planet to another? Because as my uncle would say, “This sure as shootin ain’t any country I’d ever seen before!”

After some time spent staring at the world around me, I finally collected my scattered thoughts and then began shoving them into some semblance of order. My first action must be survival.

How I ended up on a different world was certainly a question that needed to be answered, but I doubted I’d be finding those answers in a desert. Well, usually you couldn’t, but Indiana Jones might argue that fact.

I dug the “go-bag” out of the rear seat of the Cessna, mourning over the crumpled front of the plane as it settled further into the sand. There would be no fixing and flying my way out of here, at least not in this bucket of bolts.

While in the process of hauling the bags to a slightly more even patch of ground, my muscles suddenly froze. My brain felt locked and my body paralyzed, as once again that female voice pounded its way through my skull. Whoever this lady was, she did not sound happy. I did get the impression that the same question was asked several times, but unfortunately I could understand none of it and was honestly beginning to get a bit pissed off. If this was a game, or a prank of some kind, they should know I only spoke English. Whatever kind of joke it might be was getting lost in translation.

Stolen story; please report.

As quickly as it had begun, whatever held me was released. Immediately after, my vision was obstructed, a variety of translucent screens appearing before my eyes. Each screen was beautifully ornate, with gilded edges and a colored hue. It appeared as if each color stood for a purpose, but what that purpose might be was lost to me.

“Huh.”

To be fair, my stunted language was more of a result of so much happening so quickly. I mean, how often do you get introduced to a functioning form of Integrated Reality? That had to be what was happening here, right? Secretly I began to wonder if I hadn’t accidentally entered the Matrix.

The symbols did have a pattern, so I figured out that in all likelihood it was a language. But why couldn’t I understand them?

“Excuse me.” I spoke aloud to the air. I wasn’t completely sure if the female voice could hear me, but then... I still wasn’t sure who or what she might be anyway. It was worth trying at least.

“Look, I’m not really getting what you’re selling here. How about you interpret these screens into something I can understand?”

After a minute passed with no response, I decided it would be a useless endeavor to waste more time asking and resolved to solve the issue myself. Taking a closer look, I could make out a number of lists that appeared on each screen, with a one or two digit number at the end.

“Ok... interesting.” I spoke aloud, my voice a stark comparison to the soft wind crossing over the desert sands. “Why would the language be different, but the numbering system be the same as my own?”

It looked similar to a character attribute screen most videogames used nowadays, but there were differences that kept me from making any definite guesses.

After a few minutes of messing around with the screens, I shook my head. I would just have to find the answers later. Add them to the growing pile, sort to speak. Sighing, I tried to brush the colorful screens away, and was relieved to see them shrink to a small glowing emblem in the bottom left of my vision. Regardless how I turned my head, the emblem retained its location. Score one to this being a computer simulation.

I took an assessment of my situation. A jug of water under the copilot's seat. Three Cliff bars I had stuffed in my go bag, along with a basic Med kit for emergencies. The half-buried plane could provide shelter for the first night if I decided to remain at the crash site. Which I wasn't sold on doing at the moment. Too many variables. First off, I clearly wasn't on Earth anymore. Or even a simulation of Earth.

I'd always had a fairly good grasp of geography, and no country I knew of had a mountain that large on Earth. Everest would just be dwarfed in comparison. I was also pretty sure the atmosphere and gravity were slightly off. Everything felt lighter than normal, and my feet didn’t sink into the sand like my weight should have caused.

Of course, what really sealed the deal that we weren’t in Kansas any longer (or Missouri in my case) was that I was surrounded on all sides by weapons. Thousands. Millions even. If any desert on Earth had had as many ancient relics and weapons as this one did, it would have been long ago exhumed for every ounce of material archaeologists and historians could gather. Many were blades, swords of some kind of another. Most looked brand new.

Ok then. Not odd at all. I resolved to inspect them closer in a minute.

Nope, this was definitely someplace new for at least one particular homosapien. Which meant rescue was not an option. I was on my own.

All this culminated in the decision to find my way out of the desert immediately. There was no way of determining how cold the night might become and I had no desire to be so exposed to the elements. In the distance, I could see green on the bottom of the mountain slopes. That indicated plant life, foliage of some kind. It could offer both protection and food. If snowfall existed, then the runoff would cause rivers at the base and wherever freshwater existed, cities or civilizations would rise soon after.

The abundance of weapons around me gave me some relief from the worry of animal attacks. Not only was no wildlife currently present that I could see, but surely I could find some means of defense amongst the thousands of deadly implements. If nothing else, I’d use a spear as a walking stick. I had noticed a few long shafts sticking out of the ground nearby.

Gathering my few odds and ends together, I clambered back out of the half-buried cockpit. Honestly, the fact I survived the crash was incredible. By all known physics, on Earth at least, I should have been thrown fully forward through the cockpit window. Yet, there I stood, no apparent injury on me. I was still worried about a possible concussion, but so far hadn’t felt any dizzy spells. My paltry few items stored in the go bag, I flung it over my shoulder.

Taking one last look at Papa 10, I gave a silent whisper of thanks, then turned and faced the mountain. Well, first steps and all that. Forward ho, I suppose.