‘Premium emergency services not reached.’
’Contacting sPlatinum emergency services…’
‘sPlatinum emergency services not reached.’
’Performing visual scan…’
‘Please choose a destination to crash land.’
‘Planet (99.99% fatality).’
‘Moon (Unreachable, insufficient delta-V).’
‘Space Station A4398 (No atmosphere detected).’
‘Space Station A0672 (Histaff infection detected).’
‘Space Station A9582 (Decaying orbit).’
‘Spaceship I8326 (Nuclear meltdown detected).’
‘Spaceship I0832 (Emergency beacon activated).’
‘Spaceship I9273 (Massive loss of integrity).’
‘…’
Douglas looks at the wall of text in a daze. He had read the occasional shred of text that appeared during the tortuous broadcast on the tablet, but that had been a few words at most, most of them stylish nonsense. This is a lot to take in for Douglas. His thoughts spin through his head noticeably faster, but this text comes with a broad range of information and subjects that are totally alien to the skull.
Each word comes with a small hint of meaning, and it takes time to decipher them all into understandable concepts. Douglas starts reading the thing from the top once again when he sees that the screen has changed while he was slowly pondering and learning its meaning.
‘Suborbital course… Destructive atmospheric entry 1 hour and 12 minutes.’
Looking at the massive list of space stations and spaceships, he sees the possible destinations becoming grey one by one. Now really feeling a small thread of panic, he forms his good right hand into a pointing pose, randomly aims and presses the screen.
The nuclear meltdown spaceship his finger is resting on turns grey after a full minute. His bony digit does absolutely nothing to the screen. He starts pressing other options at random, his finger uselessly tapping against the unchanging monitor.
He presses too hard and starts rotating while flailing. Calming down now that his problem isn’t in sight, he instead stares at the empty sphere of the spacesuit’s helmet. He sees his distorted reflection in the round surface, a white skull with a fracture line on his cheek glowing blue. His eyes are two bright flames, and his forehead has a slight blue glow. He also sees the reflection of the hatch above him, including the pictures he had previously ignored for the much more interesting words.
A small figure of a being with just the wrong amount of limbs jumps into an escape pod. The being is wearing the suit and helmet in the next image and is tapping the screen in the last.
Douglas grabs the suit’s glove, pulling the white, padded fabric free from the mattress with a ripping sound. He then slaps the screen, hitting ‘Space Station A0672 (Histaff infection detected)’ with a randomly flailed movement.
‘Destination entered. No living beings detected. Safety protocols and g-force limits disabled. Economy mode enabled. Injecting pressurizing agent. Launch sequence in: 3’
‘2’
‘1’
‘Launch’
Douglas hears a loud clunk from above him. Before he manages to read the new text on the screen, he is flung upwards as the entire capsule shoots downwards. Flailing like only a skull with two arms can, Douglas tries to get in front of the changing screen. He is shot downwards when the sudden acceleration stops, smashing against the metal underside of the capsule. Disoriented, he starts spinning in place.
He barely manages to see bits of bone break again and shoot away. Then he sees his crumbling left arm float upwards, the jagged pieces slowly separating. The small room’s orientation changes again as it briefly and rapidly spins. Smashing against the interior like a bouncing ball, Douglas is thankful for the soft mattress. His momentum is lessened each time he crashes against the soft item, slowing him down enough to orient himself after only a few dozen more broken bones.
This is the second time something soft saved his life. First, it was the cushions in the room, now the mattress. The capsule twists some more as it adjusts its orientation with sharp staccato bursts of noise, the sounds of engines firing reverberating the entire vehicle.
Then Douglas feels a feeling he hasn’t felt before and can only describe it as ‘warm’. The brittleness of his bones that has become so familiar to the bouncing cranium fades as the emergency pod keeps injecting atmosphere. The temperature rises from hundreds of degrees below freezing to something more comfortable as the heaters are activated by hard-coded programming.
Douglas waves away the cloud of bones littering the capsule’s interior as he makes his way over to the screen. Looking at the glowing but near empty humerus of his left arm, he decides to let the bones float around the capsule’s interior for now. He starts reading the screen.
‘Welcome to your emergency landing. You have chosen: Space Station A0672 (Histaff infection detected) as your landing point. Your trip will take the following steps:’
‘1 - Course correction burn.’
‘2 - Aerobraking, 5 orbits.’
‘3 - Apoapsis course correction burn.’
‘4 - Aerobraking, 3 orbits.’
‘5 - Apoapsis course correction burn.’
‘6 - Suicide burn.’
‘7 - Docking manoeuvre.’
It takes Douglas a long time to comprehend what the seven points on the list mean. A lot of the finer details remain vague until he finds that the screen can act as a dictionary. Pressing one of the words with the suit for a few seconds brings up a description of said word. He’d like to claim that he deliberately found this feature, but the loosely flapping space suit arm did it randomly while he was spacing out again.
The word aerobraking means that a vessel skims the atmosphere of a planet, bleeding off momentum as it flies through the planet’s thermosphere, or even its mesosphere.
The apoapsis of something is the highest point in its orbit.
A suicide burn means that the engine will fire at the last possible moment when coming to a relative halt.
Douglas has to think about these new words a long time, feeling a bit smarter with each new concept he understands. He starts pushing on the words in the descriptions he didn’t quite understand, like vessel, atmosphere, planet, thermosphere, and much more.
Very slowly, he learns. A few hours later, he thinks that it’s a shame that the dictionary function stops working two levels in. He can press on the description of a word in a dictionary popup, but that’s where it ends. Many words still ring hollow and empty in his head, the concepts containing a slight bit of meaning but lacking true understanding.
Having explored all he can from the actual text, he looks at other parts of the screen. A small icon of a dot with some circles around it is the first anomaly to catch his attention. Douglas decides to go wild and presses the item with his loose glove.
A small and grainy image of a metal fragment pops up. It takes him a while, but Douglas recognizes a few of its features, determining it to be the spaceship wreck he occupied previously. He looks at the slowly rotating thing with fascination, curiously studying the seemingly small fragment he had occupied for many hours.
Pulling at the glove to change the screen, he sees his left arm. His repeatedly shattered left limb is reassembled again, and the bone fragments in the capsule are mostly gone. It has even stopped glowing as much, now only showing small cracks instead of large gaps between fractures. Moving his left hand experimentally, he finds the grinding of his joints much diminished.
Then the image of the tumbling metal hull changes, the red planet shooting into view behind it. The hulking metal frame lights up with bright orange fire, leaving a smoke trail behind. And then it’s gone, swallowed up by the planet in but a few seconds.
Douglas feels like he should swallow.
The feelings of dread and relief aren’t really there, but he can somehow still feel them. If he had departed only a very short amount of time later, he would have been
in that vessel. He would have started smoking and burning and disappeared, just like that.
Then Douglas makes his second big decision ever. He promised himself he will stop getting lost in his actions like he did so many times before. He tells himself to always keep an eye out for potential danger, to scout out the situation first before focussing on one object obsessively.
Then Douglas breaks his own promise immediately because he finds a small stock of emergency rations. The capsule he is floating in is more than the minimum screen, spacesuit and g-force absorption mattress required by government regulation. It also contains the minimal, legally required survival items, namely a small med kit, toolbox, and ration kit. Douglas sees the rations first, the large words rather eye-catching in the slowly dimming light of his bones. The panel is quickly opened, a small latch all that’s keeping him from the contents within the small compartment.
Foil wrapped bars, a strip of pills, and two bottles of water, Douglas manages to open and eat them all. He finds out that he loves eating. He has not a clue where the food goes, but the faint feeling of texture and taste that he experiences when chowing down is the most intense bodily sensations the shattered skeleton can remember or has ever experienced. Douglas is hooked and vows to eat a lot more in the future.
The toolbox is equally fascinating. Short descriptions, combinations of pictures and text, are included with all items he finds in the parcel. The bundle is rolled up and stuck together with the same loudly ripping material that had kept the spacesuit’s arm stuck to the mattress. Unrolling the thing, Douglas sees a small booklet and four items embedded in the rigid cloth.
The first item is a ‘PPP’, a plasma photon projector. A large warning label tells Douglas that once activated, the battery will only last for a single year and is not replaceable. Besides that odd notice, Douglas sees a small figure point the cylindrical object at darkness, lighting up a cone-shaped area. Next, the figure uses it to cut down a tree. Lastly, the person uses it to light a fire made from the chopped up tree.
Then there is a strand reel, a flattened, donut-shaped device with a hole in the middle. A small black sphere is sticking out of the side, and a small button is located a quarter turn away at a sharp end. The booklet shows a figure using it to climb down a cliff after sticking the black protrusion into a large rock. The button is then pressed, which causes the line to reel back inside.
The water condenser is a folding fan. Douglas reads that he should wave it around in order to generate drinkable water.
Last is the sonic mapper, a sphere stuck on a handle. Douglas can use it to scan a large area using sound. There is a rather garish warning note not to use it near any sound-sensitive dangers. It will send the results to the suit’s computer and otherwise lacks a screen.
All the items are a glossy white and seamless. Another picture has the figure wearing the spacesuit with all the items stuck to its hips in their designated places.
Having fully explored the survival tools, he loses interest and lets them float around. Douglas looks at the last item, a med kit. It is wrapped similarly to the toolkit, stiff white cloth rolled in a small bundle. He pulls out a folding strip of push-through pills. Douglas eats them all but none of them taste nice. Reading the descriptions, they are supposed to help with disinfection, bone growth, and healing. Looking at the glowing cracks in his arm, he notices no difference in healing speed.
He also finds a small object with a grip and a blank face. There is a hollow space where, according to the accompanying booklet, the small vials from the last item can be placed. These vials will then repair physical damage. Douglas suspects that these healing items aren't designed for skeletons, so he leaves the folding case with the vials alone.
Looking around some more, he finds another booklet attached to the spacesuit he has been using as an improvised pointing device. Reading it through, he sees a figure lay on the suit. Next picture, the figure is wearing it and smiling. The text tells Douglas it’s vacuum resistant for up to a year, and once worn, the batteries will keep the wearer warm and breathing for up to a month. The batteries cannot be replaced, however, and any improper use will void the guarantee. The last part is repeated very often.
He also finds an improper use section, its printed text so small Douglas can barely read it when he holds the text directly in front of his eye socket. The text is so long-winded and convoluted even Douglas’ endless patience gives up ten minutes in.
Instead, Douglas decides to look at the booklet’s last few pages. An emergency protocol that some law demands is included in the suit, allowing anyone to manually wear the thing. It requires the person to take the suit apart by pushing and pulling the object in a rather complex pattern. The suit will then come apart, allowing someone to wear it even with all electronics fried.
Douglas spends the next three hours slowly and meticulously stripping the suit into its separate parts before reversing the entire process, this time with him inside it. The suit doesn’t activate at all. The message ‘no life signs detected’ keeps appearing on the inside of the spherical helmet until Douglas finds a relevant piece of small print. This allows him to override the suit’s normal functions, restarting it in a sort of safe-mode that allows for manual operation instead of the patented nWear sVital automated functions.
Another two hours later, Douglas is wearing an activated and manually controllable spacesuit. The legs and lower torso float around aimlessly, their lack of filling apparent by the impossible folds they keep making. The helmet is a reflective silver on the outside, the round headpiece separated from the rest of the white suit by black lines.
Previously a pristine white and silver, the entire suit is now striped by black lines, a clear indicator to the rest of the universe that this item is no longer covered under any form of warranty. Douglas doesn’t care about that at all; instead, he thinks that the stripes look rather fetching. He ignores the way the suit sags over his bony limbs, his arms barely filling any space.
[ Previous outfit ‘tattered armour and sword’ is no longer present ]
[ You have donned ‘nWear sVital autoSuit’. You have one outfit slot remaining. Activate ‘nWear sVital autoSuit’? ]
Douglas happily agrees.
[ Donning sVital nWear autoSuit. System integration of outfit will take time based on the complexity of outfit. ]
[ Integration time remaining; NAN ERROR ]
Douglas then empties the med kit and clumsily snatches the floating tools out of the air, sticking them on the designated areas of his suit. His legs floating over his left shoulder and his suit filled with empty emergency ration wrappers, Douglas feels ready to take on the world.
Chapter Four – The Journey and the Destination
Douglas feels like he should know more about himself after learning so much about the capsule and the items around him. Now that he’s an expert on topics such as orbits, apoapsides, and burning suicides, the gap of knowledge concerning himself is rather glaring. He lacks knowledge about some of the things that his very own status page tells him, so the first thing he does after donning the white spacesuit is explore these unknowns.
[ Name: Douglas ]
[ Race: Lesser arcane skeleton ]
[ Level: 8 (6102/25500) ]
[ Class: None (1) ]
[ HP: 5/20 ][ HP/h: 0.0012 ]
[ MP: 180/180 ][ MP/h: 19 ]
[ STR: 10 ]
[ AGI: 7 ]
[ CON: 2 ]
[ VIT: 2 ]
[ INT: 18 ]
[ WIS: 19 ]
[ Arcane Skeletal Constitution (Human) ]
[ Darkvision ]
[ Universal Language ]
[ Shattered; Con max 2, Vit max 2 ]
Homing in on the unknown terms at the bottom of this page, he mentally asks whoever is showing him these things to enlighten him about the last four items.
[ Arcane Skeletal Constitution (Human); you are a much-diminished being, only bones remaining of your corporeal form. A skeleton held together a
nd animated by mystical energies, you are effectively immortal, don’t need sleep, sustenance or air, and are immune to poison and bleeding. You are weak to cleansing magic, anti-magic, and crushing damage. Mana can be used to heal damage at 0.1 times the effect of health regeneration ]
[ Darkvision; Darkness is no match for your magical vision. Renders darkness as late twilight and late twilight as mid-day to your eyes ]
[ Universal Language; Able to understand all intelligent life, spoken and written words ]
[ Shattered; you are missing over 80% of your body mass, limiting health regeneration by 80% ]
Douglas speeds through this text in a literary blaze, barely having to pause to understand the meaning of this small wall of text. He isn’t totally sure how he should feel about being a diminished and immortal version of his previous self. He already knows that he doesn’t need sleep. The food and water he consumed was tasty but did nothing for him beside the sensation. The poison and bleeding bit is so obvious to the now slightly less dumb skeleton that he tries to roll his eye flames when reading the line.
He is unsure what to think about the cleansing and anti-magic and will retain his judgement until he learns more about how widespread their usage is.
Looking at his nearly repaired left arm, he confirms the bit about mana helping him heal. He is unsure how many hours, days, or even weeks he has spent on that cold piece of now non-existent metal. He does know that repairing his shattered self is going a whole lot faster now that he is both a magical skeleton - as opposed to a necromantic skeleton - and no longer freezing.
He then spends two hours doing mental math when he realises that the shattered status still reduces his health recovery by a large margin. Although it will no longer take four years, his calculations tell him that it’s still going to take over fifty days to recoup the rest of his health. He then realises that he forgot to include the mana regeneration bonus from his race change, and that the shattered penalty will become less with each ten percent of body mass recovered. He tries to do the mental math for a bit longer but keeps losing track of his calculations.
Histaff Page 5
