Chapter 2 - Awaking in a Stange Land

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The rhythmic sounds of water dripping can be heard faintly echoing through the room. Occasionally, there is a spark of electricity that gives off a moment of light. However, this was fleeting and unhelpful to any observer, as the room remains pitch black otherwise. With a groan, Alan slowly comes to and opens his eyes.

"Ugh... Wh... What happened?" he asks out loud, although he has no expectation of receiving an answer. Opening his eyes, he finds them useless in this situation. Sitting up carefully, Alan realizes he's on a slanted surface, and by the feeling of it, it's one of the internal ship walls. Putting his hand up to his right, it quickly collides with what feels to be the pseudo-rubber flooring material that most of the ship has.

"Is the ship... Accelerating?" he asks, before remembering what happened right before he passed out. "Wait... Where am I? How am I not dead? I'm not dead, right?" He starts to quickly move his hands over his body to confirm his living status, which causes a sharp burst of pain from his left arm.

"OH FUCK, OW, That hurt..." he says, stopping his abrupt movements to avoid making it worse. "Well, that hurts enough that I guess I'm not dead?" With some ginger handling, he finds that although his arm isn't broken, there is a fairly large cut on it. Taking his shirt off carefully, Alan manages to tear a portion into scraps and wrap the wound somewhat. Considering he doesn't have experience with this, and he's doing it in the dark, he assumes that it's a barely passing job at best.

Recalling the shape of the room, Alan carefully moves forward along the wall until he comes to the door. Fortunately, the door is still half open and the corridors are only five feet wide, leaving Alan with a relatively easy drop down. In the corridor, he finds the bulkhead to the bridge slightly open, but not enough to even fit a hand in; in the opposite direction there is the faintest reflection of light. Walking towards the light, the corridor wall below his feet, he's careful to avoid the doors in case any might want to give out thanks to structural damage. He moves further and further along until he finally reaches the T junction of the corridor. Looking down, he finds light coming out of one of the partially opened doors.

Peering carefully over the ledge in the dim light at the twenty foot drop below him, Alan is glad to find that the recesses for the doors and alcoves for benches have formed a perfect ladder for him to get down. He quickly scrambles downward, having only minor issues with his injured arm thanks to some pain. Once at the bottom, the door he's aiming for is easy to enter, being the next door past the bulkhead currently serving as a floor. The door is only opened a crack, and yet has plenty of light spilling through. By carefully wedging his boots in the gap and pushing down with all his weight, followed by jumping when there was enough room, Alan eventually manages to get the door completely open. Hopping down from the awkward position, he prepares to enter the room when he sees the inside and experiences a great shock.

Whereas he had expected some electric lighting, what actually greeted him was a sight enough to make him believe he must be hallucinating or dreaming. There essentially wasn't a room here any more. Some force had sheered the ship clean and only half of the shallow room still remains, now directly letting out into a forested area. Through the trees, a deep blue sky filled with stars, many of which are actually connected by lines to form constellations, can be seen. Despite it being light out, and an apparent day thanks to the blinding sun that can barely be seen from this angle, the stars are perfectly visible.

"Well... I'm not so sure I'm still alive any more. Did we encounter a natural wormhole? How did we not get destroyed by Sagittarius A*?" Alan has many questions as he climbs through the now open doorway into the half destroyed room, unfortunately without anyone to answer him.

Approaching the breach, Alan carefully sticks his hand out, still not sure if this is an illusion or not, and touches grass. Rubbing the blades in his hands, he soon finds himself plucking the grass and bringing it close to his face. It looks like grass. It smells like grass. It feels like grass. Alan has never eaten grass, but he's sure from the bitter and unpleasant taste that it probably tastes like grass.

"It... Seems to be real?" he mutters to himself, as he takes a first experimental step outside the ship. The grassy patch gives way to the bare earthen forest floor not too far past the edge of the ship. The forest outside doesn't seem to be any different from any forests he's seen, either on his homeworld himself or through media. It's a mix of various trees, none of which are particularly eye catching, but which hit the major groups of pine, oak, willow, and some other variants. Perhaps the trees are bigger than he's used to, but that's about it. Stepping far enough away from the ship to look back, Alan receives quite the shock.

The ship, which was an egg shaped vessel ten kilometers long and seven kilometers wide, has been reduced down to a few hundred meters cube. The cube shaped cutout of the ship is barely large enough to fit the corridor and room you were in, along with the bridge. The majority of the remaining rooms appear to have been breached while still in space, as almost all of them are devoid of items and people. Most peculiar is the landing site, which bears no sign of cratering. It's as if the cube of ship debris was set down at this location in an impossibly gentle manner; the ship is even still slowly sinking, as the soft earth compacts underneath it.

Walking all around the ship, there doesn't appear to be any other entrance than the one Alan left from, which is already half submerged in the soft soil. All the other rooms have doors that are still sealed. The only fortunate find was two survival packs for crash landing on a terraformed world, far from society. Unfortunately, what held them there was a large piece of sharp metal that completely ruined the supplies in one pack. The other one barely survived unharmed, having only snagged on the first ruined pack. Climbing the ten meters up to where they are hanging is fortunately not too difficult, as the ship debris left plenty of places to grab onto. Once up top, however, it's a struggle to get the undamaged pack out without dropping it ten meters and possibly damaging its contents. Eventually, though, the pack comes free and Alan climbs down with it over his back, still having minor difficulty with his injured arm.

Checking through the pack, he quickly finds ration bars and water purifiers, along with some medical supplies, a handgun with twenty bullets, a collapsible titanium spear, a small tent, and a firelighter. Before going any further, Alan uses this chance to remove the makeshift bandages and clean the wound, before applying real bandages. The wound itself looks like it's at least four inches long, a clear gash down his forearm. With his wound properly sorted, he returns to the bag.

With some effort, he finds a universal commlink in a hidden pocket. Using a very expensive array of satellites across the galaxy and using the peculiarities of quantum entanglement, these devices are supposed to be able to determine your location anywhere in the galaxy and allow contact outside.

Turning on the device, however, Alan finds that it's actually not a commlink. It's instead a cheap knock off that doesn't include the much more expensive data transmission component that communications require. Alan recognizes the brand as being a common 'budget' supplier, but at the very least the position was just as reliable as all the real commlinks.

And that's exactly why Alan is baffled. According to this knockoff locator, he is, in fact, at the position of Sagittarius A*. Not in the area. Not almost there. Exactly where Sagittarius A* is registered as being.

"Huh..." Alan says, scratching his head before once again engaging in his bad habit of talking to himself. "Well, I once heard floated a theory that black holes take in matter and it leaves the other end, like a wormhole... Maybe that's what happened? And that's why the locator says I'm there? But... That doesn't really make sense. We've explored wormholes and that's not how the commlink network works with those... Am I really on Sagittarius A*? Is this what a black hole looks like past the event horizon?" These questions start to gnaw at him. This situation is simply too weird. At least the locator has a time piece on it, so he can tell the passage of time, along with a surprisingly bright flashlight function.

Walking around the area of the ship chunk, Alan finds no evidence of animals, but at the same time, he doesn't know much about tracking and is unsure about his conclusions. Once the ship chunk slows down its sinking and settles into a more stable rate of submerging, Alan climbs up the exterior to get a good view.

As far as he can see in every direction, there is just a sea of trees. It isn't until far off in the distance that he can vaguely see what appears to be an area devoid of trees and some blue; hopefully a river. Based on how distant it seems and the horizon, it's only 10 kilometers away. There's no signs of civilization, and based on the undamaged forest, there might not have even been a crash to attract attention to this chunk of the ship. Waiting with the ship debris would only eventually result in starving to death. Fortunately, the sun has been approaching zenith rather than setting, meaning it's not even noon yet. Perfect time to set out for travel.

Carefully aligning himself with the direction of the water, Alan throws a hunk of metal he twisted off in that direction and climbs down the outside of the ship chunk. Using the thrown hunk of metal, he manages to more accurately line up with a B-line for the river and sets out. As for what may be on the ship? He can't access it with what he has, and he hasn't found anything nearby that might help him, so for now he'll just have to forget about anything, or anyone, unlucky enough to still be inside.

Although he doesn't consider himself an outdoors survivalist type, Alan has taken plenty of hikes through the woods to calm down and think about his work without distractions. As a result, he keeps a good pace in this environment even with his weary caution, looking around for any signs of predators. However, it isn't until nearly dusk twelve hours later, that he comes upon the river. This alone is a bit confusing. Based on his speed, he should have traveled around 40 kilometers in this time. Yet, if he had traveled that far, this place should have only been barely visible, and the forest past it would have fallen below the horizon.

"Just how big is this planet?" he asks himself, starting to suspend his disbelief at what he, just a day ago, would have called unreasonable conclusions. Considering the sun is already starting to set, Alan decides to find a place to make camp. Finding an area where the trees are thinner, one tree in particular is set slightly away from adjacent trees and has a large flat spot at the crown of the trunk. Seeing this, Alan sets up his tent in this spot and secures it, before grabbing some water and putting it in a filter canister to be ready to drink tomorrow. Drinking from the canister that was already filled and eating part of a ration bar, he finds himself slowly zoning out as he thinks about how messed up this situation is.

Here he is, in a primeval forest, unlikely to find any civilization if he's actually where he thinks he is, all caused by that hijacking bastard, Ye Jin; a man Alan never knew existed, and yet is the sole cause of all his suffering to come. If Alan survives this experience, he promises himself to ensure that Ye Jin finds his way onto the most wanted lists. After all, hijacking and crashing a passenger liner, especially a retiree liner, touches the bottom line of the Empire's capital. It isn't hard to be wanted when the people in power feel they or theirs might be threatened. But that would be another mission for another day. Today's mission is to live.

Finishing his meal and putting away the remaining rations and water, Alan takes one final look around the semi-clearing using the locator's flashlight, and goes to sleep inside his tent.