Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Normal Dan, that’s what people called him. Normal Dan, a dutiful sidekick of Average Joe, a faithful initiate within the Cult of Boring. He was, to be painfully frank, a stunning example of mediocrity. Just enough higher education to secure a comfy, if lifeless, day job that he wasn’t really qualified for. Just enough charisma to land a steady, if bland, girlfriend that he probably didn’t value enough. Just enough blind luck to be promoted slightly higher than where his work ethic should realistically place him.
He was like a younger, less bald Homer Simpson. And boy wasn’t that an unfortunate thought.
A red light flicked on, an alarm blared. Dan pressed a switch and the alarm fell silent. The motions were automatic at this point. He wasn’t entirely sure how to operate the piece of technology in front of him, but random guesswork had kept him alive so far.
Dan sat inside what one might generously call a spaceship. It was fairly cramped. Between the large console covered in flashing lights, the insanely comfortable chair (real leather, why did a spaceship need real leather?), and the glowing… thing in the center of the room, there was probably about five square feet of empty space. More of a spaceboat than a ship, really.
Now, a more learned man might be less concerned with space, and more concerned with space. That horrible not-stuff lingering just outside the boat ship. Lingering, like a sneaky snake whose bite didn’t envenom people so much as caused them to implode. Alternatively, the previously mentioned scholar might be distracted by the technology on display: thrusters that were silent, even within an atmosphere, artificial gravity in a ship roughly the size of a large truck, a blue flare lining the hull that suggested some sort of intangible shield. Also, some truly fantastic air-conditioning.
Dan noticed exactly none of these things.
His eyes were fixed on the glowing green biohazard symbols plastered all over the walls, and the rapidly fading blue dot outside the closest window.
Dan wasn’t panicking quite yet. Despite flying towards open space and consequently almost certain death, Dan couldn’t help but feel a tiny ember of excitement. You see, long before Normal Dan had secured his position as the gold standard of standard, there had lived a young boy named Daniel Newman. Daniel had dreamed of being someone important, someone special, someone unique. He had dreamed of traveling the land, the seas, the stars. He had dreamed of adventure, of being a hero and fighting monsters and saving princesses.
Young Daniel Newman would not have blundered his way inside of a secret spaceship while looking for an unoccupied bathroom at work. Young Daniel Newman would have very purposefully and deliberately stepped inside the darn thing and fired himself into space. Well, no. He probably would have been arrested outside of the facility, as the existence of children was frowned upon within corporate buildings.
Too much imagination, you see.
But! Assuming Daniel had found himself in front of a spaceship, he almost certainly would have activated the thing without a seconds hesitation.
So, Dan wasn’t panicking. Little Daniel was too busy screaming in excitement. It was really quite distracting.
“PRESS ALL OF THE BUTTONS!” Daniel demanded.
Probably a bad idea. There was a reason why children weren’t allowed to make big decisions. Dan’s luck would only hold out for so long, and just mashing the console seemed like a great way to kill himself. On the other hand, they were very shiny— no. No no no.
The blue dot had disappeared into the distance, its fading light lost somewhere in the void of space. Or perhaps Dan had simply lost track of it when he’d glanced at the console. Either was possible, he was no astronomer. The result was the same regardless, as that dot had been Earth, and Dan was now officially Lost in Space. Even if he figured out how to pilot the spaceboatship, he had no idea where to point the stupid thing.
Did Google Maps work in space? Unlikely.
Well, Dan would simply have to refer to his survival training. He had seen all seven seasons of Man vs Wild, and Bear Grylls would surely guide him through this situation. First he had to identify his environment.
…
Yup. Definitely space.
Next, Dan carefully catalogued the items within the craft.
To wit:
1) A large center console, covered in buttons of varying colors and sizes. Most were circular, with a few hexagonal, and a single diamond-shaped button emblazoned in gold. Daniel really wanted to press that one. The buttons seemed to be carved out of gems of some sort. They were almost translucent, catching the light and twisting it in odd ways. The console itself was metal, though Dan couldn’t even begin to guess at the specific type.
2) A large chair made out of what appeared to be tanned cattle hide. Though, large might not be the most descriptive of terms, it was certainly accurate. Dan himself was neither large nor small, sitting pretty at about five feet and eleven inches, nor was he particularly broad, weighing in at one-hundred fifty pounds of piddling muscle. At a rough eyeball, the chair was roughly three “Dans” in size, in both dimensions and weight. It was, to reiterate a very large chair.
3) The walls were made of the same dull metal as the console. They were unremarkable, save for the paint job. Biohazard symbols were not a popular design choice. Glowing biohazard symbols were a downright worrying design choice. The images pulsed like they were alive, seemingly growing and shrinking in tune to a silent heartbeat. They blinked urgently at Dan in what he could only assume was Morse Code, desperately warding him away. The warning would have been quite useful if only it had been given five minutes earlier. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts, right?
4) A squirming, beating, wiggly thing hovered in the center of the room. Roughly circular, it looked like what one might get if they crossed a man’s heart with a live wire and dyed the result neon blue. Electricity arced out of the center every now and then, with a hiss and a pop. The jagged bands slowed as they left the center, slowly twisting into thick ribbons, before snapping back onto the surface of the… device? The thing. The result of this slow process was an outer shell of thin blue strips, like a rubber band ball formed out of lightning. This was also the sole source of light within the ship, somehow providing steady illumination despite the fluctuating surges of electricity. Past the shell, the heart of the beast. Literally, a beating heart, thumping merrily along, unconcerned with the incongruity of its own existence. It just… hung there, suspended by nothing, like a glowing eldritch Tootsie Pop.
And that was everything. No resources that Dan could work with, but the cataloguing was useful nonetheless. Most of the interior had not been immediately obvious to Dan. The heart-thing hadn’t even started beating (or glowing) until the craft was in the air. It was completely understandable for a person to mistake the dark room for a toilet, trip over the chair, and fall onto the center console.
But Dan could ponder his misfortune at a later date.
The ship rumbled, and Dan pressed a button at random. The rumbling continued, worsened if anything, and Dan pressed his face against the closest window in a doomed attempt to see if something had come loose outside. He could see absolutely nothing of note, save for a brief flash of red that he strongly suspected was Mars.
Ah, the ship was speeding up. It would normally be incredibly difficult to gauge speed while in space, as the distances were often too large to judge by. Dan, however, felt reasonably confident in his assessment. The stars outside the window were starting to blur. The lights visibly extended, gaining little tails as the ship blazed past what Dan considered to be a safe cruising speed. The not-heart beat faster and faster, thumping against its shell, a pounding rhythm that sent shivers through Dan’s body.
thump-thump thump-thump THUMP-THUMP THUMP-THUMP THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP
The ship’s interior began to warp, twisting in ways that hurt Dan’s brain to look at. The walls tied themselves into knots, and the glowing green biohazard symbols elongated into grasping tendrils that flowed across the the floor like water. The center console split in half with a screech, the jagged metal edges sharpening into teeth while the gemstone buttons formed a hundred glaring eyes. Reality itself began to fracture, and Dan’s senses told him things that couldn’t possibly be true. He could see the quiet of space, could taste the acceleration of the ship, could feel the sound of reality melting into fractals.
“I am now beginning to panic,” Dan stated aloud, his voice remarkably steady in the chaos.
And just like that, the oddities stopped. The world smoothed itself out, his senses returned to normal, and the walls, mercifully, stopped trying to jump ship. Dan fell to his knees, gasping for breath. His arms flailed about, looking for support, and landed on the window sill. He dragged himself up, resting his forehead against the glass. Outside, looming large in the window, a blue gas giant.
Beautiful.
Also impossible. Dan couldn’t help but stare. That, right there, was Neptune. No man had seen it before in the flesh. Not even close. Out of every living person on Earth, he was the only one who had seen this. Just him. Just Daniel Newman.
He found that rather comforting, really. The thought helped soothe his runaway heartbeat, helped stifle his adrenaline shakes. He’d never really had a unique moment. There was nothing in his life that he could point to and say, “This, this is mine. Mine alone. Just me.”
Now he could. Even if—and he was trying very hard not to focus on this bit—he was probably going to starve to death on this tiny ship, he could die with the knowledge that this moment was his.
Dan squinted into the distance.
Well, his… and whoever was inside that space station.
A station that was slowly growing larger in the window.