“You’re starting to crack up.”

  “No, I’m not. Titans have survived things like this before. Probably much worse.”

  “Not like this. You’re trillions of miles away from the nearest space station even, let alone home. There’s no hope at this point. Have any of those Titans ever survived on an alien planet, trapped inside of a metal box?”

  “I’ve heard incredible tales of survival. Titans have cut off their own limbs and crawled for hundreds of miles through the Wildlands just to get back to civilization. In fact, all the wastrel gangs that live and somehow thrive in the Wildlands are a testament to the Titan survival spirit. I can find a way.”

  “Yeah, but were those Titans hearing voices in their heads and responding to them? Face it, you’re cracking up.”

  The Titan tried to scream in anger and when only a weak, strangled squeal came from his impotent voice he began to sob.

  “I’m not cracking up.”

  “Fine, it’s not cracking up; everyone has an internal monologue. Yours is just more vivid due to your useless voice and worthless ears. Keep telling yourself that you worthless furball.”

  “Shut up you’re stupid and I hate you.”

  “But you’re talking to yourself.”

  As he laid against the side of the container, the Titan fought an inner war. One side of him was ready to give up on the obviously hopeless situation and accept the fate that was slowly ticking closer with every minute that passed. If there had been so much as a knife or a jagged edge inside the box with him, that side might have won out, for ending the suffering was an enticing prospect, one that he began to long for as the hours flew by. A quick death would surely beat out a long protracted one from hunger and thirst. But there wasn’t anything useful in here with him, not even his pummeled body at this point.

  How long the Titan sat there he did not know. How long he had been alone in the box he had lost track. He only knew that several day and night cycles have come and gone, and there was no telling at this point if the planet he was currently on had a longer or shorter cycle, so time had become an impossible and meaningless prospect. Towards dusk on one evening some other insect-like creature ventured close to the opening and he was quick enough to grasp it. It was not altogether unlike a scorpion spider with exceptionally long antennae. Maybe with a little shrimp or crustacean mixed in with it. It was much more palatable than whatever the last thing he ate was. That was a memory best forgotten. This thing was crunchy with largely little taste to it, which was fine with him.

  Sometime during the night, the gentle whirl of the motors that powered the atmosphere recycler stopped. The two small fans within the vent ports on either side of the rectangular box stopped working. That also meant they would stop recycling the air. The batteries must have finally run out of juice, he thought. With the breach in the hull he knew this would ultimately not mean much, as he was no longer in danger of running out of air as he would have been without the breach, though the very real possibility still lingered for too much carbon dioxide to build up. Something about it triggered a response from his strained psyche. With a new restlessness, he grew angry at his situation.

  This anger was different than anything he had ever felt before. He knew that he was doomed to die alone in a box in the middle of nowhere on an unknown planet at what he assumed could only be the other end of the galaxy. No one would ever know where he was, or that he had died at all. This anger gnawed at him until he couldn’t stand it any longer, bordering on some form of mania. He resumed his kicking but this time with a passion bordering on madness. As his entire body shook with rage, he finally surged forward and grasped the metal peeling and heedless to his injuries, gripped with a form of dementia, ripped away at it, leaning all his bodyweight into the effort.

  And something wonderful happened. The metal gave way with a grating shriek. The hull of the container tore open nearly a foot before his protesting wrists sent shockwaves through his body, forcing him to stop. He realized that he had tweaked his broken leg wrong and that also sent the sharpest stabbing pain coursing through him, worse than anything he had ever felt before in his life. In a quick attempt to restraighten the leg and find relief, he knocked his head against the ceiling. This sent the proverbial stars floating across his vision.

  The Titan sat for a long time, waiting for the waves of pain to stop. Only they didn’t, they only intensified. Like the waves of an ocean, they crashed against the shore of his body again and again until he began to grow dizzy. Sometime during the night, the sweet release of unconsciousness took over his body once again, relieving him of the tremendous pain his abused and tattered body was under.

  When he awoke, the Titan once again felt the echoes of strange noises outside the box. For a moment, he allowed himself the hope of rescue. Perhaps it was other surviving members of the downed spaceship who had found him at last. He sat for a moment trying to catch the scent of anything familiar. After several minutes he began thumping at the wall with his elbow, since he could not make much noise with his voice. There was a terrible clatter outside, and sadly, whatever indigenous wildlife that had inevitably decided to investigate this new mystery box to its environment fled from the sudden commotion.

  The hope within him of being saved from this situation that had at first begun to hide deep underneath layers of pragmatism and later desperation, burying itself deeper and deeper, finally began to die. It was now just a faintly glowing ember that snuffed away into a wisp of smoke and disappeared. Hope was a luxury for the blessed and the fortunate, not for the desperate and downtrodden.

  The Titan crawled back to the opening and found something new to occupy his beleaguered mind. The opening was now much larger, wide enough to fit an arm through. He moved closer and did just that, pushing his arm through the opening to the shoulder. He waved it around in every direction, hoping to find something to grab onto, or just for something new to touch. There was nothing but empty air. As he pulled his arm back inside, he did notice that he could now see more of his surroundings. He sat studying them for some time.

  It turned out that it was some sort of jungle or swamp that he was now in, or at least, that’s the closest thing his mind could compare it with to what was familiar on Titan. The colors were brilliant hues and shades of green, everywhere he looked, almost cartoonish in their intensity. There was massive vegetation coming from the ground in spectacular varieties, some looked very much like trees from back home only much larger, but many of them looked similar to sea anemones, with multiple tentacle appendages reaching out in place of branches.  

  There was also something vaguely bioluminescent beyond this crop of “trees” directly ahead, something that looked turtle shell-like in appearance, massive eggs perhaps? Or possibly some other type of strange vegetation. There were vine streamers covering the air above him like a massive spider-web crisscrossing the forest canopy. To his utter disappointment however, he could not see the sky from his position through all the overreaching shade.

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  Then something buzzed by his vision. At first, he didn’t know quite what to think of what his eyes befell, but he understood it to be a flying insect of some type. It was something like a giant dragonfly in appearance, but more mothlike, with four wriggling masses coming from its rear end that resembled hairy worms. The strange creature flapped awkwardly by his line of sight and disappeared into the environment. He watched his new makeshift tele-caster screen for a great while, trying to catch glimpses of some new thing, as he realized that he might very well be the first Titan to ever lay eyes on these strange and wonderous new creatures. In fact, he could very well be the first Titan to see this environment at all.

  Sometime during the humid day, his thirst brought him out of his curiosity induced trance. It had been some time now since it had last rained and he was able to capture any moisture, though by this time the days and nights all blended away together so he had no real sense of how long it had actually been. Long enough to grow concerned he finally concluded, as he set himself to panting once more.

  This time it did not appear as though a fortunate storm would appear for his benefit, though rain did not seem particularly scarce. The air was moist and damp, filled with humidity as his keen nose caught drafts from outside of the opening. There was an overarching scent like decaying vegetation, mixed with other scents that though he had never smelled before, seemed vaguely familiar to his senses. The air itself was invigorating somehow and made his senses leap to new life. There was also something else about the environment, something that he could not quite put his finger on that made it different than Titan, but his nose could not quite detect it.

  After several months of imprisonment since his capture, the Titan decided that it was now time to finally break loose of his confinement or die in the process of trying. Now that he was able to stretch an arm through the opening, he was able to finally get some leverage. Though his grip was pretty much useless with his sprained wrists, with his arm out of the hole, he managed to yank downwards using his shoulder and latissimus muscles, along with the rest of his arm muscles, and he leaned into it using his body weight. He worked on this for about an hour making painfully slow but steady progress.

  After about two hours he had managed to tear the opening noticeably more and could almost fit both arms out of the tear. With little else to occupy his mind, he continued at this in a focused state, blocking out the pain and his physical needs. His focus continued to narrow until his whole existence was just a singular purpose. When his arms and shoulders grew fatigued, he shifted himself inside of the container until he was able to stick his leg out and he continued applying sudden jerks of pressure. This motion quickly proved too much of a strain on his injured ribs and he quickly moved back to kicking away at the hole for some time, finally coming back to wrenching away with his arms.

  The entire process was slow going, but the metal was shifting little by little, and the tear was growing more and more. Within another two hours he managed to get it open enough that he could fit his head through the rift. The ember that had gone out earlier now roared back to life and burst into flames of passion beating inside of his heart. There was hope, there was always hope, he decided, and lamented the fact that he had ever given it up in the first place. As long as his heart was still beating blood through his veins, by the suns there was hope!

  By nightfall he was nearly able to get his head and both arms through the opening, and he knew it was a matter of time before that was simply reality. Once he was able to do this, he was certain he would be able to wiggle free from his contemptible imprisonment. To be so close he could taste it, and yet not quite there surged a flood of emotions within him.

  After the sun went away, the darkness of the land set in and made his work difficult. His animal-like Titan eyes could normally see excellently in the dark, but perhaps because of the thick canopy above, or maybe something to do with the atmosphere, there was simply not enough ambient light source for him to see much of anything. It was an utter darkness that enveloped the land unlike anything that he had previously encountered.

   Before he gave up for the night a light drizzle began to fall again. He realized that this was not a downpour, but a mist that had formed in the air itself. It was so humid that a thick fog had settled over the land but was so thick it covered everything in moisture like a morning dew. He was able to collect enough humidity on the metal by bending and forcing it into as much of a bowl shape as possible until it collected a small pool. He was once again able to wet his thirst, not enough to completely quench it, but enough to ease his swollen tongue inside of his mouth keeping him alive for a little bit longer. It was strange, but for some reason the hunger and thirst did not seem as pressing now, ever since the batteries to his cage had stopped.

  The prisoner managed a fitful sleep, though he did not awake rested. He awoke with a single purpose, a focused goal. He immediately set upon his work as soon as his faculties regained themselves. It would not be long now he told himself.

  He ripped and hefted at the tear, and it continued to budge, inch by painfully slow inch until finally it looked like it was large enough. With trembling hands and a rapid heartbeat, he stuck his head through the opening first. It fit through with room to spare. The next part would be tricky as he began to wriggle his shoulders through. One at a time they popped out the other side, though they emerged raw from scraping against the torn metal and the tight fit. Some of his fur had been left behind, but also protected him from a more gruesome injury in this case. He continued to shimmy and shake until his chest had squeezed through the other side, with his ribs protesting mightily. He had to be very ginger about the next part because he could not move his leg much and had no splint or safeguard against reinjuring himself.

  The Titan began cursing to himself as he almost became stuck somewhere between his chest and belly. He sucked everything in and held his breath and began jerking wildly. There was a hell inside of him at this point that was suddenly unleashed, and he let it out with a silent mighty roar until he popped free to his waist. The next part would perhaps be the hardest of all to perform with a broken leg. He managed to grasp the top of the container now that his entire upper body was free, though there really was nothing to grab onto to get a good steadying grip. He gingerly tried to pull one leg through at a time and quickly saw that this would not work since he was not able to bend his broken leg. His only option now was pulling them both through at once.

  He sat in this uncomfortable position for some time, quietly debating how he wanted to handle the next part of his task. He could either pull them both out at once and try to hold himself up without much of a grip, or he could push off and let himself land on his back and just try to brace his leg for the impact. Both prospects seemed equally as painful and unappealing. After much debate he decided that trying to hold himself up for just long enough to be able to get his good leg on the ground to support himself seemed like the best option. He took a steadying breath and then chickened out, and took another breath and then…

  And then he went for it. With one quick motion, he used all his strength to pull his legs through and tried to hold himself up. Only nothing went according to plan. He was able to get his good leg to the ground but a shock of pain from his jostled leg caused him to falter. This coupled with the fact that his legs had not actually stood and held his own bodyweight for two months meant that he had severely overestimated his ability in that moment. Instead of the smooth motion that he had practiced in his mind, he more or less collapsed to the ground, wrenching his broken bone once again.

  The Titan would have screamed in pain had anything more than heavy breathing, an awkward grunt and a few strained shrieks been capable of escaping his vocal cords. After the explosion of pain though came an ecstasy of release. Through the pain and the relief and a mixture of both at once the Titan began sobbing again as he laid on the wet ground. He extended his arms and legs out to their fullest capacity and experienced a rapturous stretch for the first time in months. After being cramped in such tight quarters for so long with no opportunity to stretch out fully, his brain temporarily forgot about all the other injuries for a moment in time. His body was alive once again, and every nerve ending seemed to be on fire with the desire to feel.

  After a short while the Titan cautiously pulled himself back to his feet. He was free. He was no longer consigned to fate or a slow death rotting away in a prison. It was time to go to work.