Chapter 1

  The world around Teo had that fuzzy, non-descript feeling of a dream. He was pretty sure he was standing on a stage, but there was nothing for visuals to confirm it. Next to him was a shadow. Again, fuzzy and non-descript. It was vaguely feminine in shape and had a single, brilliant white eye that seemed to stare back at him while leaning slightly to one side.

  "You want to give it all up for them?" the shadow asked in a sultry and somewhat smoky rasp as it moved one of its slender dark hands out towards a crowd. A crowd which Teo couldn't actually see, but he knew was there.

  He opened his mouth to reply in the affirmative, but what came out was a blurry, non-descript, and vague sound that was very much not his voice. It also felt like it broke the script of the dream. He turned back to the shadow, but the white of her single eye was becoming yellow and spreading. Taking over more of his vision. It changed in form from into that of a big square box.

  The room around him faded, being replaced with harsh lights that blinked and flickered. The voice came again, this time not from his mouth, but a disembodied kind of everywhere. Vaguely female and monotone. While he heard the words, he didn't actually understand them.

  He tried to look around. The flashing lights and scrolling characters in front of him slowly resolved into various text windows. He tried to pry his eyes open enough and focus. Everything felt very floaty, as though he were on some strong painkillers and his brain had given up on the idea of gravity. He also felt cold, the tips of his fingers and toes numb, as though he had been sitting in a refrigerator for who knew how long.

  The voice came once again, this time far more clear, which sent a shiver down Teo's spine. "Unidentified passenger. This is an emergency situation. Let me know when you have woken.”

  Everything seemed to freeze. All the blinking stopped. Any scrolling text halted in its place. Teo was left with nothing but the sound of his own breath and the fans in the cramped compartment of the pod thing he was stuck in. A blue window popped up in his vision, anchored to his head so that it moved with every movement he made.

  Initializing tutorial. Welcome new entity. Each entity in this universe has a character sheet. You may open your own character sheet by willing it to open. Do so now.

  “New Entity?” Teo re-read the text before attempting to will open his character sheet.

  It didn't take much thought. The window blocking his vision disappeared, only to be replaced with a new window filled with text. Name, Teo.

  Race, human*.

  That's as far as he got before another window blocked his view of his character sheet.

  Closing the character sheet is just as simple. Mentally dismiss the character sheet now.

  Teo attempted to mentally dismiss the text blocking his character sheet, but it was stubbornly staying in his way. With a sigh, he dismissed the character sheet, and both windows disappeared, only for another window to pop up a moment later.

  This concludes the end of the New Entity tutorial. Good luck.

  The box disappeared, and everything started flashing and scrolling again. "Well, that was short and sweet," Teo said to himself in the tiny little pod thing, certainly not expecting a reply and jumping slightly when the female voice said, "Unidentified passenger, are you awake?"

  "Yes, I'm awake," Teo said, looking around the tiny pod. A clamp thing was wrapped around his wrist, connected to a bunch of tubes that ran into the machine he was in.

  Xxx

  "I require your assistance. I am dying," said the monotone female voice. It seemed kind of odd, because the damn thing sounded more like it was a computer system than a real person.

  "Do I have another option?" Teo asked, practically half-joking, because literally what else was he going to do—sit inside the pod forever?

  "Yes," came the response. "You may re-enter stasis. And if the pod isn't destroyed within the next five years, you might be picked up by... ...rescue operations."

  This thing had to be a computer if it was actually giving him that option.

  More specifically, the way it was giving him the option, as though it was a serious and honest option, and it had no emotional connection to whether or not he just went back to sleep.

  "Helping you sounds like the better option. What do you need me to do?"

  "First, there is thirteen minutes of pressure due to a pinhole leak somewhere in the compartment. Please remove yourself from the stasis pod. Acquire the repair kit and find the leak."

  Teo looked out past all the flashing yellow caution labels and flashing red warning labels and the little solid green labels that stated that everything was okay to the room beyond. The whole thing was lit by a red emergency light and didn't look to be much bigger than a trailer home bedroom.

  "Yeah, great. Can you explain this as though I have no idea what's going on, who I am, or how anything works?”

  ****

  "Certainly," said the monotone female voice, further convincing Teo that he was talking to a machine due to its lack of frustration, due to its lack of exasperation.

  "Unlatch the stasis capsule manacle by pressing the large red button until you hear two beeps. The needles will retract, and the needles retract."

  "Needles?" Teo asked, but looked down at the thing wrapped around his wrist, which could only be the manacle in question. He pressed the large button. It did indeed beep twice, and then several protrusions seemed to pop out. The thing opened up, and it retracted back against the wall via a cord he hadn't known existed.

  "Ow."

  "Okay, what next?" Teo asked.

  "Hey, O.S. You can release yourself from the harness by pulling the red tab located in front of your chest."

  Teo looked down and found a red tab, which he pulled. Turns out the odd floating feeling wasn't drugs—it was microgravity. Trying to keep his feet on the floor caused him to bump his head on the ceiling of the tiny pod.

  "All right, I'm free. What now?"

  "Grab hold of the red dogging lever, and turn it clockwise to open the stasis capsule."

  He was already holding the red lever. It was pretty much the only thing naturally grabbable to hold himself in position. He put some pressure on it, pressed his feet against the floor again, and the thing opened with a hiss of escaping air, causing an unpleasant decompression feeling, and his ears popping.

  "Now that's something."

  "Okay, I'm free of the pod. Now what?"

  "Directly adjacent to the capsule, on your left, is a storage locker. The top shelf contains a small... ...kit labeled... ...small hole... ...repair."

  Teo had some trouble maneuvering himself. He tried to keep his feet wedged to the floor using pressure from a hand holding on to the stasis chamber. Getting the locker open itself wasn't very difficult. And the small kit was about the size of a lunchbox, magnetically attached to the top shelf.

  "Okay, I think I got it."

  "I would recommend attaching it to one of the carabiners on your belt."

  Teo looked down and only then noticed he had carabiners. He appeared to be wearing a grey jumpsuit of sorts, with a belt and about four carabiners on each side.

  "The leak is most likely in one of the seals of one of the two hatches. Please make your way to one... ...hatch, and open the repair kit. Inside you will find... ...a bottle of resin, a UV wand, and several small smokesticks. Striking a smokestick will allow it to produce a large amount of smoke. Run it along the seams of the hatch... ...until you... ...find an area where the smoke is being sucked in."

  Teo looked back and forth between the two doorways. "By hatch, do you mean door?"

  "Yes, the hatch is a sealable door."

  "Great." He thought about how he wanted to move to it before deciding to just push himself off... ...which went a little too fast and ended up with too much spin. He flailed through the... ...small room... ...colliding with the wall... ...and just barely managing to snag... ...the latch on one of the... ...two hatches.

  "It's really dark in here. What if I can't see?"

  "There is a flashlight on the inside door of the locker."

  "I'll check."

  "Well, shit," Teo said to himself while giving a glare at where he thought the room's speaker might be. He aimed himself back up towards the locker and gave himself a more gentle shove. Still tumbling forward, but not so badly, he caught the door of the stasis chamber and swung himself back over to find the flashlight—which he attached to one of the carabiners at his belt—as the small metal object suddenly seemed like the most valuable thing he had.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  ***

  "I'm not finding anything," Teo practically growled, having pulled the flashlight from his mouth, the smokestick in the other hand.

  "Let me try the other hatch," said the monotone female voice.

  Teo rolled his eyes and looked upward. He had a foot wedged under the lever used to open the hatch he was currently sitting on, which made the whole room sideways. It was really fucking with his sense of orientation.

  With a sigh, Teo righted himself and attempted to swim—or launch himself off the door to the other door—in the way he would if he was trying to swim. He stayed fairly straight this time, but air was not the same as water, and he launched himself a little too hard. He bounced off the opposite bulkhead and flailed around until he caught his fingers on the light fixture of the ceiling and was able to reorient himself to push back toward the door.

  Once he reached the damn thing, he wedged his foot underneath the locking lever, pulled the smokestick out of his mouth from between his lips, and started tracing along the edges, instantly finding the spots where the smoke was being sucked into the seam.

  "Oh shit, I found one," he said more to himself, but the computer still replied.

  "Press some of the sealant paste into the opening and shine it with a UV light for a full minute."

  Only when he was sealing his second hole in the bulkhead seam did Teo realize that the reason this was important was because there was a vacuum on the other side. And he was likely in space. When the hell had he gotten in space? Had he always been in space?

  "I can't find any more," Teo said, still running the smokestick over the seal and waiting for the response that he expected to come.

  "It does appear that the cabin is maintaining pressure."

  "So we're done then?" Teo asked, reorienting himself so he was feet on the ground, though there was no real up.

  "With this task, yes. If you would please return to the locker and unpack the soft environment suit. There is also food and water of which I recommend using if needed before suiting up."

  "Now why am I getting an environment suit?" Teo asked, judging his path to the locker.

  "I have no connection to the crew quarters. Finding the engineer is a top priority. I can only hope they are alive."

  Making his way through the locker, he started pulling out what for all the world looked like a generic NASA space suit, complete with the large helmet and pack. He was about to comment to the computer when a loud bang reverberated through the room and he was launched into the wall—or more accurately, the wall was launched into him. He bounced around for a moment before the wall hit him again, providing somewhat of a floor, though it was the upper right corner.

  "What the hell just happened?"

  The cool, calm, monotone female voice responded as if there was no issue. "Most likely, we were impacted by a large, slow-moving structure."

  "What kind of structure?" Teo growled at the speaker in the ceiling, though whatever answer the machine intelligence might give was probably useless.

  "I am unable to know as I do not have access to any sensors at the moment."

  Spin gravity was like real gravity, only completely not, and it was very unhelpful trying to get into the oversized spacesuit. Teo would have needed a tutorial on how to lock everything together. Over the course of several minutes, he finally got suited up—and much to his pleasure—was able to activate the electromagnetic locks in the boots, firmly affixing himself to the wall. Because the spin gravity dictated that the upper left corner of the room was now down, which still made everything so frickin' awkward.

  "Hey, what do I call you?" Teo asked as he waited for the cabin he was in to depressurize.

  "I am Avalon's Folly," stated the computer over his helmet's comm. "You can shorten it to Ava."

  "My name's Teo."

  "Understood. I will remember that," said the smooth female voice before leading Teo into a corridor, down the hall slightly, and then to another hatch.

  Teo set his feet against the metal decking with a clump that was unheard and completely felt. His eyes told him that down was the floor, while the spin gravity dictated that it was at the ceiling, making him feel like he was slightly upside down.

  Teo checked the mechanical pressure sensors located on the door, verifying that the other side was in just as much hard vacuum as his. He wrapped his thick glove around the dog lever and pulled.

  Teo's breath caught in his throat. His hand instantly went to the doorframe to support himself. His heart thudded in his chest as though trying to escape through his throat.

  "Ava," he said into his helmet, voice cracking.

  "I've figured out why you don't have access to any of the sensors in the crew module."

  Chap 2

  "I've figured out why you don't have access to any of the sensors in the crew module."

  "Really," said what Teo thought was probably the ship's AI.

  "Why is that?" Teo looked out into the sea of stars, the brilliant band of the Milky Way crossing the sky at a slight angle—which was, of course, moving, not because it was moving, but because the ship he was on was moving—and tried to formulate his response of, "It's gone."

  "What do you mean by gone?"

  Teo looked around the crew module, which resembled somewhat of a veranda that dropped out into the inky black of nothingness. There was about a foot or two on the bottom and top where the twisted metal had been torn apart, as if some great beast had just grabbed hold of it and pulled.

  "I mean, it's gone. There's nothing here. The hatch opens up into empty space."

  "Oh," said the computer, in possibly the most human response it had given since Teo had woken up. For a while, there was nothing but silence.

  "I suggest closing the hatch and making your way to the engineering section just down the corridor," became the calculated response of the computer.

  Teo wholeheartedly agreed. While the view was literally breathtaking, it was also terrifying in its own right.

  Teo slowly clomped down the corridor toward the rear end of the ship, the spin gravity shifting as he went from the upper right to the lower left, which at least gave his brain and eyes the same sense of down—as vague as that down was. The dim red light cast eerie shadows, and he found himself searching all the corners and vent portals for anything that might stick its appendages out.

  "Hey, there's no aliens on this ship, right? Particularly not, you know, the chestburster kind?"

  "You are the only lifeform on record," replied the computer.

  "Oh, good. I was a little worried this was going to be the horror movie sort of thing."

  "That said, you were not on record prior to the accident."

  Teo paused at the hatch, clearly labeled Engineering, and checked the gauges, which clearly stated that the other side was in hard vacuum, just as his side was.

  "Oh... what does that mean?"

  "According to my files, there was nobody in the stasis chamber prior to the accident."

  "You mean I wasn't here?" Teo asked, throwing the dog lever and opening the hatch, wondering if he was going to find empty blackness again.

  "That is correct."

  "Well, the system said I was a new entity. Is this some sort of immersive game?"

  The chamber Teo found himself in was far more cramped than he'd expected. Though why he had expected a large open room with a couple machines in them, he was unsure. The walls seemed to be machinery, as well as all walkways simply being corridors between more machines. It wasn't a very big space, but certainly was cluttered, making it seem extremely cramped.

  He wandered his way into the room, thankful that there were no large gaping holes into the vast void of space.

  Again came Ava's response, though it sounded more of a question. "Are you asking if this is a simulation?"

  "Sure," Teo responded, looking around the room and wondering what the hell he was supposed to be looking for.

  There was a long pause before Ava responded. "There is a non-zero chance that this reality is a simulation.”

  Tao chuckled to himself. "There's a non-zero chance I got hit by Truck-kun and Isekai'd." He waited a beat for the computer to reply while looking around the room, wondering which machine he was supposed to go to.

  "I'm sorry, I do not understand the reference."

  Tao shook his head. "Don't worry about it. What the hell am I looking for in here?"

  "To your left, along the wall, the larger General Fission Power Core. Should stand out as the largest machine on that side."

  "Fission?" Tao asked more to himself than to the computer, and the computer apparently understood. He made his way down the corridor of machines, trying extra hard not to let the bulky suit or the patch-kit flashlight attached to the carabiners on his shoulder hit any of the switches, levers, or various accoutrements attached to any of the sensitive-looking machinery.

  The power core was indeed the largest object protruding from the wall. And while it had a whole lot of buttons and knobs, it didn't look that complicated.

  "All right, what do I do here?" Tao asked, and waited for Ava's response.

  "Just follow the startup sequence. On the front plaque," Ava replied.

  Tao found it in the dim red light but had to fumble around for the flashlight in order to actually read the words.

  The startup sequence wasn't that difficult. Open a panel, flip all switches to the off position, pull the charging handle, then flip the first switch to the on position. Once the little red light turned green, he moved on to the next, and followed the process until it was complete. The little screen stated that the power core was initializing, and he spent most of his time restarting the power core just watching the little screen until it was on, telling him he had a number of PCU—which was not a conversion of power he was familiar with, but could wait until all the survival needs were fulfilled before he worried about acronyms.

  "Okay, what now?"

  "To the right, there should be a breaker box."

  Tao took a step to his right and opened the panel on the wall. Before him was what looked like a breaker box. It would have been right in place in any normal home, except the breakers were larger and thicker, with little screens next to each one. Whether the size was due to power needs or the fact that somebody had to flip the switches while wearing a bulky space suit, Tao wasn't sure, but he would have bet his money on the second one, considering how much effort he had to expend just to reach up to the main breaker and push it to the side.

  The little screen popped up with Initializing, Testing, then the breaker tripped off and the screen flashed to Fault.

  ***

  “The main breaker says FAULT,” Tao reported.

  “Turn all other breakers to the OFF position and retry.”

  Tao did it as instructed. This time the main breaker flashed GREEN and happily declared that it was ON.

  “OK, the breaker is ON. Do you want me to just go down the line and turn… each one back ON?”

  “No. Start with the… main system’s distributor.”

  Tao flipped the switch for the main system’s distributor, watched it go through its initializing, then clicked OFF. This time the smaller breaker sang FAULT while the main breaker stayed ON.

  “Says FAULT.”

  “On the rear wall, there should be two spider repair drums.”

  Tao turned around, shining the flashlight along the rear wall. While he wasn't particularly happy with the idea of spiders, the two bots were placed on the wall in cradles like they were some sort of tool. The black-and-yellow paint job somehow reminded him of road construction.

  “Found them.”

  “I do not have access to the spider repair drums. However, you can give them orders via the engineering tablet, likely located in the corner of the crew module.”

  Tao opened his mouth to point out that the module was gone, but Ava beat him to the punchline.

  “Oh, never mind. Next to the spider repair drums, there should be a cabinet with various tools.”

  Tao found himself poking his head into the maintenance tunnel underneath the deck plating in the main corridor. For once, the lack of gravity was actually a blessing. Once the panel had been removed, he simply detached the magnetic locks of his boots and floated himself into a position where he was upside down compared to the floor, his head hovering into the maintenance tunnel.

  The flashlight beam showed that the pipes and wires were safely nestled—or securely nestled—into their couplers attached to the engineering bay. Slowly turning around, Tao found the clear and obvious problem.

  “There is a sharp piece of metal jutting through the floor into the cable and a pipe labeled…”

  He turned the flashlight until he could see the labeling clearly on the pipe.

  “Wastewater.”

  “That is good,” replied Ava. “The tools and equipment for repairing the cable can be found in the engineering bay near the tool cabinet.”

  Tao tried to imagine the monotone voice sounding more relieved. The previous conversation made it sound like damage to the distributor was considerably more permanent, and once his AI companion turned itself off, he would have been completely alone on a dead spaceship.

  The task that Ava described was rather simple. Simple, however, did not mean easy. The parts and tools needed to fix the cable were readily available and easy to find—attaching neatly to the carabiners on his suit so that they didn’t float away.

  All Tao had to do was remove a couple more floor panels, disconnect the cable from one of its harnesses to give himself a little more slack, cut out the damaged area of wire with the provided tool, then reclamp on the coupling system made for repairing the cable for situations like this.

  Again, the task itself was simple. In an area with atmosphere and gravity, it was a fifteen-minute job, even with his unexperienced hands.

  Everything was made so much harder by the giant fucking spacesuit. Two hours of grinding his teeth, sweat puddling around his eyeballs, and cursing every god, saint, and demon he could possibly think of, as he tried to keep his head inside the maintenance tunnel while working on the three thick cables that made up the main power cable. He grunted through the simple wrist-turning motion of attaching the power couplers together, a task that should have been easy but at this point hurt his wrists, arms, and even legs. When he finally had all three completely connected back together, he took a deep breath and just floated, letting the fan inside his helmet continue to attempt to cool his hot, wet scalp.

  Tao drifted down the corridor, bumping off the walls in a mostly controlled tumble toward the engineering department. He glanced at the little oxygen indicator that had long since gone from green to yellow and was now edging into the orange section. Once he reached the hatch to engineering, he reoriented himself and locked the magnetic boots down to the deck plating.

  Slowly and painfully, he made his way over to the breaker box, took a deep breath, and then flipped the breaker. Initializing… Testing… Then it flashed GREEN and claimed it was ON.

  “Huh,” he said, almost surprised. “It worked.”

  But the last statement came out half as acknowledgment of success and half as a question.

  ***

  "Yes, I'm no longer dying," Ava said.

  "Oh, that's good," Tao replied, working rapidly and wondering what the next problem was going to be. "So, we're good now?"

  "I am fine," Ava said. "But you only have forty-three hours of oxygen left."

  Well, there it was.

  "OK, what does it say?"

  "Well, at least that's it for twelve hours. Please slowly turn on each breaker."

  Tao turned on the breakers one by one, each one coming online the same as they were on without tripping.

  "Alright, that's done." He blinked several times, only now realizing that the red light had faded and was replaced with white light. It had come on so slowly, he hadn't even noticed.

  "Thank you for removing the horror movie lighting. Can I get out of this damn suit now? I gotta piss."

  "Yes. However, if you can take the time to replace the deck plating, I can reactivate gravity and you can walk on the floor."

  "Then gather all supplies possible and move to the cockpit. I will re-pressurize there.”