„Tha i marbh!“
Horrible cries of mourning filled the air.
“Air? Yes, I need air.”
Images of a meteoroid appearing in front of their space shuttle flashed through his mind. There had only been enough time to press the emergency button, which sent a signal back to earth before indescribable pain had enveloped him.
Suddenly, a force pushed him upwards, and he screamed in fright. Instead of the voice of a 31-year-old astronaut, the blaring scream of a child left his lips.
“What the f**k?”
At least that was what he wanted to say, but what he heard sounded more like “Babafa.” As if on queue, the previously crying voices started babbling in a guttural language. A dull poke at his ribs made him tear open his eyes. He was lying in some sort of crib and surrounded by nearly twenty women. Instead of jeans and shirts, they were wearing a mix of a toga and a dress. This all seemed too much.
“Did I lose my memories, am I in a simulation that… Stop. The simple answer is nearly always the right answer. It’s just a dream. Now that I know I am in a dream, I should wake up” He held his breath in anticipation of waking up, but nothing happened. ” Any minute now. This is a dream, Ash. Just wake up already.”
The women poked him again, but he didn’t react as not to encourage the behavior.
“I seem to recall that remembering one’s identity helps one wake up from a nightmare as well. It’s not like I have something better to try. I am Ash Musk. Or rather X Æ A-13 Musk. Grew up a normal boy, just with a billionaire father running the biggest space company. Degree in Physics, Engineering, and Economics at MIT. Dad pulled some strings so I could be one of the first humans to step foot on Mars. The shuttle crashed, and my body is most likely lying unconscious in the medical room of our ship.”
Something warm suddenly pressed against his face and he could barely breathe. When he focused back on what was happening around him, he found his face buried in the Bussum of a woman. His babbling protest was ignored, and the women continued trying to suffocate him in their breasts. Only when he caught sight of two tiny hands attached to his body, did he realize the obvious.
“I am an infant.“
The woman used the moment of utter confusion to shove her upper chest down his throat. After what felt like an eternity later, they finally lowered him down into a crib. Tears were running down his eyes. “Relax Ash, children have a suckle reflex.”, he kept telling himself, but the horrible taste wouldn’t leave his mouth. He didn’t have enough time to think about his predicament as a loud bang accompanied by heavy footsteps resounded in the room. A cry of anguish similar to what he had heard from the women before echoed through the room. Only this time it was male. The love and pain in that cry made Ash nearly started balling his eyes out himself, even though he had no clue what was going on. Ash tried to sit up to see more than the plain wooden wall above, but his body didn’t want to obey.
“Tha leanabh agad fhathast.”, one woman whispered. The man released a roar of fury that shook the entire building. Ash didn’t need to speak the language to realize that it probably wasn’t a good omen that the man was stomping over to him. The embodiment of what a furious barbarian god might look like appeared in Ash’s vision. Pelts, Daggers, and a small ax adorned his upper body. The man virtually begged Ash to crack a joke about morning wood and small axes, but it probably wouldn’t land. One of the barbarian’s enormous hands lifted him out of his crib. Ash soiled himself when he caught sight of the entire room. Finally, all the puzzle pieces fell into place. At the far end of what looked like an ornate wooden hut lay a beautiful woman with a piece of cloth covering her eyes. Judging by the paleness of her skin, she was dead. The barbarian seemed to retrace Ash’s gaze, and mourning filled the barbarian’s eyes once again.
When he turned to Ash, though, that mourning translated to hatred. The barbarian ignored the piss dripping down his arm and gave Ash a smile that could kill. He gently wrapped both his enormous hands around Ash’s throat and started pressing. Fear of death overcame his panic, and he screamed out his lungs. At least, what they had left in them. After that, airflow was practically non-existent. His vision blackened around the edges and the sound of his tiny beating heart became unbearably loud. A cry from the woman who had fed him, made the barbarian loosen his grip a little and Ash quickly pulled in a breath. For a tense moment, the barbarian considered the woman’s words. Finally, he just let go of Ash with a snort. Incredulity was replaced with fear as gravity took effect on his body. A sharp pain followed by darkness cut his terrified scream off.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself in a crib once again. A flickering source of light revealed that he was in a different hut. From his view lying on his back, he could only look at the wall and ceiling of what seemed like a more austere hut. His heart skipped a beat when he remembered how the barbarian’s hands had wrapped around his neck.
“That barbarian must have loved the woman. The birth of this new body of mine must have killed her. At least I survived. I don’t even feel any pain, which is kind of odd considering that he dropped this newly born body of mine from two meters.” Ash tried to make his fingers or hands move, but his mental commands didn’t trigger the slightest movement. “That’s odd. I fought back when the woman breastfed me.”
He must have grunted at the effort, as the face of the woman that had begged for his life soon appeared in his vision. The woman picked Ash up and started slowly rocking him in her arms. With an intense gaze fixed on As, she took his tiny left hand in hers. For a while, he just stared back until he realized that the woman’s knuckles had turned white from the pressure she was applying to his tiny hand. Still, he felt nothing. Both of them realized it at the same time. While the woman burst out into tears as she realized he was going to be a cripple for life, Ash just felt an abyss opening up in his heart. The woman put him back into his crib and tried to suppress the cries of mourning by biting her lip.
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Ash’s eyes had widened to an unhealthy extent: “This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream”, he repeated over and over. Still, everything felt so real and vivid. “No, this is a dream.”
Ash clung to the mantra until his eyelids drooped and he fell asleep.
Dull pain in his stomach pulled Ash out of his dreamless sleep. As soon as he saw the dark outlines of a wooden roof, he shut them again. A tear of frustration ran down his cheek. Then another one. Soon he was bawling his eyes out. After some time, the stream of tears subsided and Ash looked back at what he had accomplished in life. Many had said he was a talented engineer, a genius, or an exceptional manager. Now that he thought about it: HE had done nothing. His father had paid only the very best tutors and professors to teach him. His father had given him countless opportunities to gain experience at various companies. Although his father didn’t want to admit it, it was an open secret that Ash got the last spot in the Mars Mission because his father had arranged it.
“Even if this is a dream or a simulation, is that reason enough for me to be mediocre?”
The drive to create and succeed ran in the Musk bloodline, and he wouldn’t stop carrying on that tradition. A loud growl from his stomach interrupted his line of thought. The image of Luke Skywalker drinking the green milk of Thala-Sirens flashed in his mind and the growling stopped. Yet, hunger eventually won out over reluctance and he released a hesitant: “Baba?” Nothing seemed to move in the pitch-black room, so he repeated it with a louder cry. He stopped increasing his volume when he had reached the level of a civil defense siren. With nothing else to do, Ash started practicing talking in this new body. If he couldn’t move, he would need to rely on his voice for communicating.
The wooden doors only creaked open after Ash had perfected every letter that didn’t require teeth, had slept two times, and felt like he was going to die from hunger soon. The concerned face of the woman caring for him appeared in his vision.
“Ah, any baby would have cried by now. Guess I should play my part.”
When he started crying, the woman’s features softened. With the same calm face, Skywalker had, Ash did the unspeakable deed.
“I am in a Bear Grylls situation right now. I am stranded in the wild and need to survive. Milk isn’t that bad compared to eating snakes, bugs, and mushrooms.” Ash released a happy “ba” when the woman simply put him on the cabin’s oak table. “Finally, I can see more than the ceiling.“
His new vantage point revealed that an old lady was standing behind his caretaker. Old might have been an unjust way to describe her. The grandmother looked older than most countries on earth. The elderly woman slowly walked over to him and started prodding at him. Finally, the elderly woman nodded sagely and said something to his caretaker that Ash didn’t understand. Without hesitation, the woman gave the elderly woman a determined nod. His caretaker walked to the back of the room, pried up some wooden planks, and pulled out a jingling pouch. She thrust it towards the ancient lady, who quickly made the pouch vanish. Until now, Ash hadn’t understood a thing about what was going on. When the elderly woman produced an enormous toadstool from one of her pockets, his heart fell.
A friend of his had a degree in Historical Medicine. The stories he had told of doctors shoving vases up people’s asses, of doctors prescribing cutting open your veins, inspired little confidence in the capabilities of the old woman. His caretaker seemed to recognize the toadstool as well, but the woman convinced her after a brief argument. A look at the enormous fungus made Ash cry as if his life depended on it. He wasn’t much of a mushroom expert, but a toadstool was definitely not baby food. Before he could blink, the old woman had already shoved a part of the toadstool in his mouth. He tried to spit it out and open his mouth, but the elderly woman had clamped his mouth shut with her bony hands. The effects hit instantly. His body started burning and his vision swam. His tiny lung started working overtime as his heart started beating faster and faster.
Yet, something enormous kept him from slipping. For once he had created a path instead of following one. This was his chance to best the mountain of fate instead of going with the flow. With a will of steel, he held on to life. No matter what shitty cards fate dealt him, he would win in the end. It was that moment of struggling with life that made him realize that an enormous lump of goo had formed in his stomach. With the willpower of a desperate man clinging to life, Ash started punching his stomach. There was no room in his mind to think of the how and why, only the enemy right in front of him. The black around his vision flickered when Ash landed a powerful blow. Encouraged by the small reprieve, Ash started going ham on the blob. Until now, he had only watched his father fight for a better future while watching from the sidelines. Now, it was his time to fight.
The goo tried to fight back by clinging to his arms, but Ash just switched to biting at it. At some point, the fiery anger was replaced by brutal efficiency which only quickened the blob’s demise. Accompanied by a cry filled with his will to live, Ash tore the last remains of the blob to pieces. The incorporeal world of his mind faded as his vision once again returned to the actual world. As soon as he regained his full vision, he threw up. Luckily, his caretaker was quick and pulled him into her arms before he could gag on his own vomit. All the while, Ash’s eyes were focused on the old woman. Fear filled her eyes and her hands were jittering faster than those of a coffee addict.
“She was most likely sent by the barbarian that tried to kill me last time. Finish what you started, huh? I won’t die easily.”
Just to prove his point, Ash released the most menacing “Ba” which he had practiced while his caretaker was away. All color fled the ancient lady’s face. Without looking back, the old woman ran out of the hut screaming in terror. His caretaker tried to run after the old woman, but the now agile old woman was long gone. Apart from the satisfaction of scaring someone who had tried to kill him, he got the first look at the world outside the hut. They were in a fishing village with at least a hundred similar wooden huts. Before his caretaker reentered the hut, he caught sight of two longships anchored near the village. His caretaker closed the door with a confused grunt and set down ash on a clean part of the table. With a proud smile, she got a water basin from the back of the room and started cleaning him. It must have been her constant chatter in her baby voice that triggered the wave of fatigue that washed through Ash. Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep.