Prologue
COLD JOLTED ME awake.
Dark, freezing cold.
Where was I? A sea of magnificent stars swirled before me, vast and incomprehensible. I’d never witnessed such a sight in all my life.
“What in the world?” I mused.
Stars, nebulas, even clusters of asteroids—they wound through the heavens, so close I could almost reach out and touch them. But how could that be? No vantage point on Earth allowed a view like this. Somehow, I could see asteroids with nothing but the naked eye. This was like something out of a movie or video game.
“Am I dreaming? But this cold…” The chill piercing right down into my bones was too real to deny, as was the anxiety churning in my stomach. “Where even am I?”
I couldn’t make out much beyond the dazzling celestial display before me. It felt like I was somewhere small, somewhere confined. A belt or strap of some sort kept me tethered to a chair. That sent a bolt of panic through the anxiety. Was I being detained in some way? What the heck was going on?! I panicked, jerking in the chair until my eyes finally adjusted to the darkness.
“This is…” There was something familiar about this place. I had seen this room—no, this cockpit—before. “This is the cockpit of that ship from my video game, the Krishna. Am I dreaming?”
I searched for a more reasonable explanation, but everything about the space around me screamed that this really was the cockpit of my beloved spaceship Krishna from Stella Online.
The mixture of online action and soft sci-fi flavor in Stella Online had kept me hooked for years now. On top of that, the game offered players unparalleled freedom to adventure through a vast universe. Nowhere else could you navigate battlefields as a mercenary, participate in trade as the owner of a container ship, or embark on just about any other adventure you could imagine. The sky was decidedly not the limit in this game; every player got to invent their own style and play in their own way.
I played as a standard mercenary and started off mostly doing random odd jobs like pack-muling so I could save up to buy a ship built for battle. Once I obtained a powerful enough ship, I went right back to mercenary work, until I could afford the next ship, and so on.
My current love, the Krishna, was a state-of-the-art machine that I obtained from an in-game event a few months back. The ASX-08 Krishna stood out even in a game with dozens and dozens of ships to choose from. It combined the maneuverability of a small craft with the firepower of a heavy cruiser. My Krishna could even take on a battleship.
“But dang, it’s cold,” I said. I used the touchscreen control panel to activate the main generator and bring life support systems back online. Warm air rushed into the cockpit. The system’s status screen showed oxygen levels rising after dipping terrifyingly low. The temperature, which had started just below –5° Celsius, also ticked upward.
“Phew, that was close. If I hadn’t woken up, I would have suffocated.” Crisis (narrowly) averted.
I seriously don’t get what’s going on here. I crossed my arms and surveyed the now-lit-and-warming cockpit. No matter how many times I blinked or pinched myself, the truth remained clear—this was definitely, absolutely, undoubtedly the cockpit of my beloved spaceship from Stella Online.
Dreaming of the game I obsessed over was one thing. If you played horror games enough, you started having nightmares. If you played sword-and-sorcery RPGs, suddenly you dreamed of being the hero yourself. Most gamers could relate. But this was on a whole ’nother level.
“So, what? Is this a lucid dream or something?” I’d heard of lucid dreams before, dreams so intense and real you knew you were dreaming. But from what I remembered, people woke up the second they understood what was happening—and I sure wasn’t waking up. Worse, the gradually rising temperature of the cockpit felt way too real and tangible to be part of a dream.
“Hmm.” I searched for an explanation but came up empty. I even slapped my cheeks, but all it did was sting a little. Was this really not a dream?
Nuh-uh. No way. That couldn’t be.
“The controls are surprisingly simple,” I said. Out of other ideas, I tried piloting the Krishna. The control column and foot pedals confused me at first, but once I visualized them like a keyboard and mouse, it clicked into place. Now that I understood the machine, I could even make precise movements.
“Still not waking up yet, huh?”
I accelerated and decelerated repeatedly. Each time, I’d sink back into the seat, then jolt forward into the seatbelt. Even that wasn’t enough to wake me up, though.
“Okay, fine. Daddy’s gonna fire off some weapons, then!” Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe I’d just lost any hope of waking up. Either way, I brought the weapons systems online and activated the armaments. The ship changed shape around me, revealing four weapon arms. Powerful, military-standard heavy pulse lasers extended from the hull. These were the strongest of the heavy laser weapons in Stella Online—and I had four of them!
Two gun barrels also jutted from the sides of the cockpit. These “flake cannons,” as they were called in the game, operated like shotguns with spread fire. That kind of firepower made them the superior point-blank weapon as far as I was concerned. Most small craft would explode after just two shots.
I had one more ace up my sleeve, but now wasn’t the time to test-fire it. The ammo cost was exorbitant.
“Fire in the hooole!” I let loose on a nearby asteroid with four heavy pulse lasers. “Whoa?!” Four green beams of light shot straight toward their targets, obliterating the asteroid in a single volley. Fragments of the asteroid scattered in all directions, pinging against the Krishna’s shields. With each impact, the shields flickered.
“That was stronger than I expected,” I said in amazement. This was the true power of the heavy pulse laser, a weapon that could melt a battleship’s shields in an instant and totally wreck the ship itself. It was no joke…and speaking of jokes, at this point, there was no more laughing this off.
I had to face reality: “This isn’t a dream. It’s real.”