14y 32w 16d BV
Woah.
WOAH.
When my eyes opened, it was probably because of the wind that was thrashing within the room. This was odd, because last I remember, I went to bed in my own room with the window closed. Sadly, I couldn’t remember anything before that. Speaking of, I don’t ever recall having a ceiling made of metal.
I was petrified with the primal fear of danger. Lifting myself using my arms (and weak abs) I discovered that I felt weak. Very weak. As if I had taken the greatest nap in human history, and woken up with severe atrophy.
I looked around. To my left were tall, blue vats filled with some slimy fluid. The one closest to me was broken open, and I was laying on the ground covered in this cold, weird goo. To my right, there was some kind of monitor playing a video. Wait, no, that’s LIVE, it says so in the corner of the screen. Not only that, it was overlooking a jungle from about a mile up, and that distance was narrowing.
Wait, what?
Scrambling to my feet, I noticed that there were three people on the other side of the room. They were short, REALLY short, and grey, standing next to the door. That was what got me.
I’m in some kind of crashing SPACESHIP with three midgets cosplaying the alien from the Roswell incident. Oh, and they were panicking. What about, I still wasn’t sure of. I took a step toward them, and nearly fell, putting my arm up to support myself on the wall. My head drooped.
When I pointed it back up, the three little cosplayers were staring at me, eyes wide. One of them lifted a hand and pointed, and I stepped back in fear.
“What the hell is going on?! Am I on a spaceship?!” I felt myself screaming at them uncontrollably. They didn’t listen, they just opened their mouths and began screaming. Compared to anyone else, it was pretty quiet, but I could still hear it.
I looked at the monitor again, and that jungle was looking to be a lot closer. At that moment, I heard one of the cosplayers stop screaming and yell. “Brace for impact!”
I glanced back at them and froze. Did somebody sneak me into the back room of a UFO convention? What was going on? I turned back toward the cosplayers. One of them was gone, and the door was open, but in fashion as though it had slid up into the ceiling.
This wasn’t real, was it? It couldn’t be. I waltzed over to them, gracelessly, and managed to slur out another sentence.
“Where am I?” I said, still leaning against the wall. “That doesn’t matter! Good news is that your translator works. Bad news is, we’re crashing!” replied the one on the left in an obnoxiously high voice.
I wasn’t fully convinced, but just to be safe, I asked another question. “Is this a spaceship?” Duh, me, it’s supposed to be a spaceship, obviously.
And then a loud bang filled my ears. Everything went black.
[13 Earth Hours Later]
When my eyes opened….
Everything hurt.
Every inch of my body ached with pain, and I had an unforgiving headache. I lifted myself up just as before, finally able to stand. I wasn’t anywhere that I recognized. No, I was trapped right in the middle of the jungle.
I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, while chillin’ out right in the middle of a pool of mud. So, turns out that spaceship WAS real. How crazy is that? Crazy enough to motivate me to investigate.
The surrounding area was covered in bits of metal and other complex machinery, some of them on fire. The sky was blanketed in an unsurmountable black smoke.
Upon inspection, my body wasn’t at all harmed. That was probably the luckiest thing to have ever happened in my life–not getting obliterated from planetary re-entry.
I turned to my left. Big mistake, my gut wrentched at the sight of the cosplayers from before, mangled and strewn around like poorly made sausage link.
When I looked to my right, I found that a HUGE part of the ship looked somewhat intact. I stumbled over, and found myself in a long, winding corridor. Wires hung from the ceiling, some wall panels were off of their frames….
Pushing through the pain, I walked down the corridor, and discovered doorway to the left. I peeked inside. What I saw was amazing, and yet terrifying.
There was a colossal room, about half the size of a warehouse, with smaller planes scattered in it. I decided this was some kind of cargo bay. My eyes grew wide with excitement, realizing this was not a dream. Code red, it wasn’t a dream!
I walked out of the bay, and proceeded down the wall. This place was SMOLDERING hot, at least 100 degrees. Was I somewhere in Africa, then?
After a while, I found another doorway. Stepping inside, I discovered one of those little cosplayers from before. This one was clearly alive, but taking in heaving breaths.
Walking over to him, some features I realized were more obvious on his costume. He had a lot more wrinkles on his forehead. What attention to detail.
Wait, no, if the spaceship was real, these weren’t cosplayers.
Oh shit.
When I got closer, he made a squeaking noise, presumably in fear, and whipped out, which, to me, a sci-fi nerd, appeared to be some kind of laser pistol.
“Stay back, you brute!” it said, clearly shaking. Not wanting to get vaporized, I stopped in my tracks. I supposed this was a good time to ask questions.
“Where… wh… where am I? Why are you aiming a laser pistol at me?” I asked, putting my hands up. His eyes focused on me, and he put both hands on the laser pistol.
“This isn’t a laser pistol you moron, this is a kinetic pulse pistol. We’re in uncharted space, I don’t know where we are; I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.” Well, that answered at least one thing. I was on an alien planet.
“…what are you?” I blurted, and immediately regretted it. The alien didn’t seem to mind, though. “I am Li’Vhen, a member of a splinter faction of the Corti Directorate. We abducted you some time ago. You have a translator in your head.”
An alien translator? Awesome. That was one that I didn’t see coming. I felt the side of my head, and discovered there was indeed some kind of device there, but it was covered by my hair.
“So, this planet, are we trapped?” Li’Vhen just stared for a moment, then spoke up, clearly angered.
“Yes, we’re trapped. This is a planet nobody has discovered before, and the scanners said it could be as bad as Class 14. We were shot down by pirates anyway, don’t rely on them if they come down here to salvage the wreckage.”
“Well that clears SOMETHING up.” There was a short pause, before Li’Vhen began to speak up. “Since we’re going to be stuck here for a while, maybe for the rest of our lives, what’s your name?”
I stopped, and tried to remember what it was. I couldn’t for a few seconds, but it finally clicked. A bingo moment, complete success on this end, yes’siree.
“Right, my name is… It’s Jack. Call me Jack.” Ah, that felt satisfying, proudly declaring my name to an alien as if I was some legendary warrior. Okay, maybe not quite, but it was a start.
Speaking of names, since Li’Vhen’s name was… Well, Li’Vhen, I decided to give him a nickname, one that was easier to remember.
I nicknamed the Roswell alien ‘Squiggles’.