Starship Rex

It was like a thousand moments had flown by my eyes in a moment. Words and phrases coupled with the impression of the meaning behind them were imprinted on my brain. It left me feeling like I had the equivalent of the spots in your vision when you’ve looked at a bright light too much.

And then as suddenly as it began, it was over.

I grunted, the noise coming out strangely through my dry mouth.

“Bloody hell,” I said, reaching up to my forehead, only to realise a moment later that I hadn’t said those words in English.

I had spoken… Basic? Apparently the language was called Basic.

How incredibly unimaginative, I decided. What kind of unimaginative loser would think of calling a language that? Someone writing for some no-name sci-fi franchise that would be going nowhere, I imagined.

This sci-fi setting wasn’t exactly impressing me so far either, but it was presumably the only one I’d be getting. Was this an isekai? I mean I was in another world, so to speak. I hadn’t needed to be run over by any heavy good vehicles though. I’d put that one down as a positive.

“You’re awake,” came the relieved voice of the girl, Rel, who was more or less where I’d left her standing beside the bed. She was speaking Basic too. “How do you feel?” She asked me.

“It worked,” I said.

“Obviously,” the girl replied dryly. “But are you okay, do you feel strange in any way? Education downloads aren’t supposed to be very safe.”

“I think I get why,” I said as my head spun. “But aside from being on a spaceship, and that I have no idea how I got here, I don’t feel strange at all,” I snarked back. I winced as a jolt of pain ran through my head.

“Mostly fine,” I clarified as I reached for the helmet and pulled it off. “How long was I in that thing for?”

“A while,” Rel told me. “I had time to go back to my ship and eat and sleep before coming back. But you’ve recovered much faster than I’d been expecting. Normally an education upload like that takes several day cycles for someone to wake up from, and those are the ones that are properly calibrated.”

“Oh,” I said as I turned to stand up off the bed, doing so a bit more gingerly than I otherwise might have. I let out a sigh, now I felt hungry.

“Starship Rex, does this place have any food?” I asked.

“There are no food stores currently aboard. Resupplying is recommended as soon as possible.”

“Great,” I sighed. “So you don’t have any… replicators to just make food or anything then?”

“Power supplies are low. Matter generation technology is currently unavailable.”

“Shame,” I said, mentally putting the really cool fact that this ship could do that to the side for the moment. For all I knew that sort of tech was commonplace but it likewise could be incredibly valuable.

“Okay, look, can I get some answers now?” Rel asked. “Like… how are you alive?” She asked with incredulity.

“I only just woke up here right before you arrived,” I told her, my brow furrowing. “But what do you mean about me being alive?” I asked with confusion.

The young woman offered me an uncomfortable expression.

“I think we should sit down and talk,” Rel replied.

***

We went to Starship Rex’s living area. It was pretty cool. I sat down in a comfy leather seat, more of a bench really arranged in a half circle around a table. Like much of the ship not made of black metal, the leather was coloured in a pleasing shade of blue.

Rel sat opposite me, resting her elbows and interlocking her fingers nervously.

“Okay, first I think I really need to clarify this,” she said. “You are Alex Murphy, aren’t you?”

“I am,” I said. “I didn’t tell you my last name,” I realised. Rel shook her head in agreement.

“Do you remember someone, a woman called Nelhana?” Rel asked.

“I don’t, no,” I said honestly, which didn’t seem to be the right answer based on Rel’s expression.

“She’s the same race as me, she would’ve been about my age last time you saw her,” Rel said.

“This is the first time I’ve ever met an alien,” I told her, starting to realise that something was clearly wrong about all this, at leat from Rel’s perspective. “Before waking up here the last thing I remember is going to bed at home, on my home planet, which hadn’t barely begun to explore space yet.”

“No, that doesn’t make any sense,” Rel replied. “You knew her for several years before, well,” she gestured around us. “Starship Rex was destroyed,” she told me to my surprise. “You weren’t on board though, you’d managed to sneak aboard a Megaship with some other people and you managed to blow up its core, but you didn’t get out in time. It’s only in the last few years that this sector of space has even been safe enough to explore again…”

She trailed off weakly.

She was an alien, but her mannerisms were human enough and I couldn’t sense any lie in her tone or expression.

“Again, I have no memory of any of that,” I said. “But… how long ago was all of this.”

“Years,” Rel replied weakly. “Before I was born. But I don’t understand, even if you had survived you’d be much older by now. And Starship Rex is here too. It doesn’t fit with anything my mother told me and I don’t know why she’d lie about this. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“You’re right this doesn’t make any sense,” I replied. None of this did.

I glanced around my surroundings and wondered if I should take a chance.

“Starship Rex, can you tell us anything about this?” I tried, wondering if the ship would actually answer the question. “Do you have a log or anything?” I suggested.

“Calculating,” replied the vessel.

I glanced at Rel, but she didn’t seem worried. Then the ship replied.

“Databanks indicate that this ship was destroyed in an explosion while aboard the Megavessel designated New Order. Captain Murphy was aboard at the time of the explosion.”

“That was definitely me?” I asked. “Who was Captain when you were blown up?”

“Alex Murphy is registered as the previous Captain of Starship Rex.”

“Okayyy,” I said carefully. I was doing a frighteningly good job of staying calm, if I do say so myself.

“Then what the hell is happening? Why am I here?” I asked. “I don’t remember going to bed on board a spaceship, o-or leading an attack on a super spaceship or whatever it is that happened. I’m not him, so how did I get here?

“Calculating.”

There was another pause, that only inflamed my growing confusion and anxiety.

“No data available.”

“Oh come on!” I shouted in exasperation. “You speak English, but the rest of the galaxy doesn’t? How did you learn to speak my language then?”

“The language designated English was programmed into this vessel by Alex Murphy,” the ship’s AI voice spoke.

“I just woke up here!”

“This doesn’t make any sense. There can’t be two of you,” Rel said, interrupting me briefly, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

“Well you’re goddamn right about that!” I responded.

I looked up, at the ceiling, because I couldn’t bloody look the spaceship in the bloody eye now could it?

“I wake up here, naked and with no idea how I got here and the first thing that happens is you tell me that you want me to be your Captain. You must know something.”

“No data available,” was the only response I received.

I scoffed.

“Maybe Starship Rex doesn’t know how you got here either,” Rel suggested. “It’s just a computer.”

“Then why did it ask me to be its Captain?” I asked. “Once you were on board it could’ve offered you to be the Captain, you’d make more sense than me,” I pointed out. “I know fuck all about any of this. I don’t know the technology, I don’t know how to fly a spaceship. Until five minutes ago I didn’t even speak Basic.”

Rel opened her mouth to reply but couldn’t produce an argument against what I’d said.

“Well?” I asked the spacecraft. “Why was I the one you wanted?”

“No other suitable candidates for Captain were available,” Starship Rex told me.

“And she’s not a suitable candidate?” I asked, gesturing to the alien woman opposite me.

“Correct.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been insulted by a spaceship before,” Rel muttered.

It was those words that finally took the wind out from my sails. I slumped down into my seat and chuckled weakly.

“I just don’t get it,” I said.

“Maybe whatever brought you back to life just didn’t do a good job with the memories?” Rel suggested. “Firstech can do pretty much anything, as long as that’s part of its functions, maybe it couldn’t fix everything, or maybe something went wrong.”

“What’s Firstech?” I asked before immediately chastising myself mentally. It was a stupid question. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out.

Meanwhile Rel seemed slightly surprised by my lack of knowledge before remembering my words before about not knowing anything about anything.

“It’s ancient technology from before the current era that’s survived to the present day. From before any of the modern races started to travel through space” she told me. She lifted her hand, the one with the bracer holding the yellow gemstone in it for me to see.

“There’s plenty of it but nobody can figure out how it works or replicate it and plenty of people can’t even use it. This thing produces whips made of light and can electrocute things too, but that’s pretty simple as far as Firstech goes. There’s supposedly one that can make miniature black holes but the Federation won’t admit to having it. Maybe someone got hold of something that rebuilt Starship Rex and brought you back to life, but not with all your memories.”

“Maybe,” I said.

I could certainly think of some ideas how sci-fi technology could be used to bring someone back to life. When you got to the precursor race’s technology it was basically space magic, not space science. Literally anything could be possible.

Maybe I was a clone? Recreated from some kind of copy someone made however long ago before the original died. I decided I could hold off on the existential crisis until that was confirmed.

“Or maybe… I dunno it reversed time,” I thought out loud, trying to figure out any ways that could justify all this and fit with what I’d been told. “If it had rewound time just for me and the starship, but it’d rewound me too far and now I didn’t have any of my more recent memories.”

It sounded stupid, so incredibly stupid and contrived, but Rel actually shrugged weakly as if to agree with the idea.

“What really, you’d believe that?” I asked.

“Firstech can do anything,” she told me. “It sounds outlandish, but if that’s what happened then it’d explain why you’re the same age as you were before.”

“Damn,” I muttered. “So what? I got isekaied years ago and now I don’t even get to remember it?”

Or maybe this was a time travel deal, somehow. Some bullshit wonky continuity thing. But that wouldn’t explain the fact the ship knew who I was.

“I don’t know what that word means,” Rel said apologetically. “But this ship’s supposed to be Firstech too,” she told me.

“Is it?” I asked. “How do you tell?”

“There should be a gem like this one,” Rel laid her arm down on the table and she pointed to the yellow stone on the bracer. “It’s probably in the engine room, or maybe somewhere secure. Every example of Firstech has one.”

I leaned forward and looked at the gemstone on Rel’s wrist. On closer inspection it wasn’t just a gem. It was like there was some liquid in there, barely moving, but there was definitely something there, trapped in a perfectly spherical shell.

“Cool,” I said. “So if this ship’s Firstech then what makes it so special? Can you at least answer that?” I asked, looking up to indicate I was speaking to the ship’s AI.

“Starship Rex is the finest ship in the galaxy, built for comfort, speed and style,” Starship Rex replied.

“That’s one hell of an advert,” I said dryly.

“Unknown vessels detected,” Starship rex suddenly declared.

A second later the ship shook wildly and a rumble of noise echoed through the walls. I had to stop myself from being knocked around by gripping the edge of the table.

We were under attack!