Chapter 1 – Into the Unknown (Part 2)
433 6 13
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

"DO NOT BE AFRAID."

"Why shouldn't I be afraid? You're a giant fucking robot with a weird tentacle eye! And I'm in a goddamn child's body!"

Seeing as I was in an unknown place, I decided to calm down and not run away from the robot.

"WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW WHAT HAD HAPPENED?"

"Of course I would!"

*WHOOSH*

In a sudden, a robot tentacle attached with a screen came out. It showed footage of what had happened.

"..."

"HAVE YOU REMEMBERED?"

"No, I still don't remember."

'From what was shown in the video, there seems to be an accident regarding our entry to this world. But... Why would I be with a giant robot in a spaceship going through a portal to another world?'

"Agh! My head hurts!"

'Shit, I'm gradually remembering bits and pieces of what had occured, but it's hurting my head!'

'I see myself entering the spaceship, there were lots of other people as well.'

"Guh! It hurts..."

'S-something happened while we were onboard.'

'Then, I entered an escape pod. Th-then the wormhole, the only entrance and exit to this world suddenly closed for no reason.'

"Ugh!"

'Then, th-the ship I was on crashed into the ocean.'

"Why does it hurt so much! Ughhh!!"

'Then, the escape pod headed into an island. I think that was all of it.'

While I was breathing heavily and sweating buckets, the robot thing spoke to me again.

"SEEMS LIKE YOU'VE REMEMBERED NOW, NO. 499."

'Oh yeah, "No. 499" was my ID within the facility.'

"Yeah, I've remembered. But how come I am in a child's body??"

Without telling me anything, the robot extended it's screen-attached appendage again.

It showed me a footage of a crashed escape pod with me still breathing inside of it. The problem was, I had almost all of my body ruined.

Bits and pieces of flesh torn apart, limbs twisted, bones jutting out, intestines sprawling. It was a miracle that I was even breathing. Even with medical care, I wouldn't survive that for long.

"Huh? An... Elf? The fuck?"

"KEEP WATCHING."

In the footage, an elf child showed up. The elf looked malnourished and dirty, unlike the elves portrayed in the movies. The elf was laying unconsciously.

"What?!!"

In the footage, the robot extracted my brain and had put it into some sort of special acryllic tank filled with some weird greenish clear liquid.

It then proceeded to attach electronics to it, and those electronics were connected to the robot.

'Huh, I think I probably know what happened to me, but let's just keep watching.'

The robot then made the same thing happen to the child elf, only this time, it had put the entire body of the elf into the mysterious tank filled with the liquid.

The liquid seems to have healing properties, as the malnourished and dirty elf began to look invigorated as if he was healthy. Yes, it was a boy, the clothes were removed before he got into the tank.

Then, the robot began doing surgery to the boy's head. It was horrifying to see it, but not as horrifying as seeing my mangled self.

Not long after, it attached some implants into the boys brain. Then, it released the boy.

"So, I'm that boy now?"

"YES. I HAD TRANSFERRED YOUR MIND INTO THE CHILD."

"But why?"

"YOU WERE THE SOLE SURVIVOR OF THE CRASH. EVERY OTHER CREWMATE IS DEAD."

"Was the headache earlier a side effect from you transplanting my mind into another person?"

"ABSOLUTELY. THERE IS ALSO ANOTHER POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECT."

"What is it?"

"YOUR OTHER MIND COULD AWAKEN INSIDE OF YOU SOME TIME LATER."

"Whaaaat?!!"

"IT IS SAID THAT IT WOULD CAUSE A SPLIT PERSONALITY OR YOUR PERSONALITY WOULD MERGE TOGETHER INTO A NEW ONE."

"...."

After a few moments of silence, I spoke to it again.

"So how did you find me?"

"YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE WHO USED AN ESCAPE POD. I ONLY HAD TO TRACK YOUR SIGNAL."

'I remember learning in school that the Someranian Empire had set a rule to the hierarchy of the crewmates of a ship in case of a death. It goes like this: If the captain dies, the position would be given to the second highest ranking crewmate. So if all of the people inside the ship other than me had died, that would mean....'

"Huh, so does that mean you're serving me now?"

"YES. SINCE THE CAPTAIN AND EVERY CREWMATE OTHER THAN YOU HAD DIED, THE POSITION OF CAPTAIN WOULD BE GIVEN TO YOU."

"Huh, so why aren't you calling me captain then?"

"THE POSITION IS TEMPORARY UNTIL THE RETURN HOME, THEN THE POSITION HOLDER WOULD BE JUDGED TO SEE IF THEY SHOULD KEEP THE POSITION OR NOT."

"Oh yeah, I remember something like that."

'Hold on, I remember that it was also special only to the army. Normal spaceships owned by a company wouldn't abide to this rule normally.'

"Wait are you saying that our spaceship was in the Empire's army?"

"YES."

'No wonder the project was so weird for a simple tech company to do.'

"Wait, so what was my position inside the ship?"

"YOU WERE THE JANITOR."

"What?!! Why didn't they tell me that?"

"THE POSITION WAS STATED IN THE CONTRACT."

'Shit, was it really? If someone else knows of this, they'd be laughing at me now. How embarassing.'

"Hmmm, what if we can't return?"

"YOU WOULD THEN BE A TEMPORARY CAPTAIN, FOREVER."

"Seeing as the wormhole closed, that means we're stuck here aren't we?"

"INDEED WE ARE."

"Meaning, I'm permanently a captain and you'd serve me permanently?"

"EXACTLY."

On my original world, people use wormholes as a quick far-distance space travel instead of hyperspace.

Although quicker, a single usage of hyperspace would cost too much fuel.

Because of that, hyperspace travel is only used for emergencies.

Back to the topic of wormholes, they aren't supposed to close suddenly. They would usually reduce in size gradually.

Only a huge energy blast could close them suddenly, like explosions and etc.

So something must've happened to the wormhole that brought us here to close suddenly.

13