Soren slowly raised his arms up to his chest and began to push himself off the hard metal floor. Moving his limbs felt like wading through an immensely viscous liquid, maybe semi-frozen molasses. With great effort, he pushed himself up. Struggling at first, he concentrated and his torso began to lift from the floor. The back of his head collided with the underside of the table he realized he was beneath, and his already screaming headache grew worse. He felt dazed once again, and almost dropped his weight. After a moment of stagger, he slowly crawled backwards from under the small table.
Bringing his torso upright, he was kneeling on his knees in the center room of a small space ship. He was completely naked for some reason, but did not feel cold. To his right appeared to be the cockpit, to his left was the engine room in the rear of the ship. A small kitchenette was present in the room with him, and a small short hallway off in front of him had a single door on the left and right side each. Looking behind him, he spotted a couple more doors that appeared more advanced than spaceship doors he was used to, matching the others he had spied on the ship.
Lifting one leg up and planting his foot, he began to stand. When he was fully upright, his headache surged and he had to lean against the table to balance himself. Why did this ship feel too small for him? He wasn't sure if he imagined it, but the table he was leaning on seemed to be ever so slightly bending under his weight. Was this some cheaply built budget spacecraft?
He took several breaths to steady himself and then chose to explore the ship, starting with the cockpit. The ship’s design looked a little familiar, but much more was foreign to him. Looking out the thick glass window at the front of the spaceship, it appeared that the ship was settled somewhere in a slightly sandy forest. The various computer screens displayed some information and words he recognized, and a lot he almost recognized. He posited that the foreign words may be evolutions of language he did recognize, but where could that have occurred? He was familiar with the several dozen planets that had been explored after leaving Earth. The ones that had begun terraforming and marked for colonies weren't anywhere close to completion.
At the front of the cockpit was a dashboard of controls he could safely assume piloted the spacecraft, and another adjacent panel on the right hand side appeared to have some diagnostic scanning equipment. One of the pieces of equipment almost looked like it dealt with the new particle he had studied under The Professor. He saw what looked like a power switch for the scanning mechanism and he flipped it on. Immediately it filled the small cockpit with immense light before erupting in a small electrical explosion.
Coughing on the electrical smoke, he began to say out loud, “yeah, definitely cheaply built,” but as soon as he heard his own voice say the word ‘yeah,’ he was startled at how much more bass he emitted. His voice was normally not overly high, but now there was a low deep reverberance he did not recognize. What had happened to him?
He looked around the ship some more, returning to the central room and going right into the small hallway. He opened both doors; the left side was a simple bedroom containing two beds, and the right side was a semi-modest bathroom. He approached the mirror and was taken aback by his appearance.
He recognized his face for the most part, but his hair had gone from brownish-black to almost white. His torso and arms had gained significant muscle mass, and his legs and feet were definitely bigger as well. Holding his hands up to his face, they were immense compared to what he remembered; everything was. It wasn't the ship that was too small for him, he realized, he was too big for the ship.
He returned to the central room and looked through the various cabinets for something to measure himself with. He found a retractable measuring tape which appeared to only measure in metric. He could easily read both, but was used to defaulting to inches and feet. He backed up against a wall and measured his height. He had to triple check his measurement, then he looked over every centimeter of the measuring tape to ensure it was correct before measuring himself once more.
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There was no denying it. The tape showed 2.26 meters, he was seven feet and five inches tall. How the hell had he grown 17 inches taller? Was he in a dream? Had he met a magical wish-granting genie? If he had, he didn't remember it. In fact, he couldn't remember anything that had happened after—
Lulu. What the hell had happened after he grabbed those crystal power cables? His head felt like it was splitting apart, and trying to remember made the pain worse. Soren raised a hand to cover his face and massage his temples with his thumb and forefinger. When he took his hand away from his face, he realized his palm was wet with tears.
“I hope you're ok Lulu,” he said out loud. His voice sounded so foreign to his own ears, which he assumed were bigger as well. “Let's see if I can find some clothes.”
Soren walked over to the bedroom and rifled through the storage locker located by one of the beds. The clothing that was present was not made for his tall body, it seemed to fit someone shorter and rounder. He selected some simple beige trousers and pulled them on. They were snug on his newly massive thighs, and the legs ended halfway down his calves. He didn't think any of the shirts would fit, but an oversized long coat looked like it may possibly fit. He pulled it on and it just barely fit over his arms, the sleeves also ending just after his elbows, but due to being a long coat, it actually draped down to about the halfway point of his thighs. It was made of a mix of synthetic leather on the exterior with a soft material on the inside he wasn't familiar with. It was dark brown in color and Soren overall found it quite comfortable, if not a little tight.
He walked back out to the central room and gazed down into the engine room at the rear of the ship. He didn't see a lot of benefit in overanalyzing the room, so he chose to leave it alone. The only doors he had not explored yet were located on the starboard side of the ship, but he momentarily returned to the cockpit to determine where he should go. He found what he determined to be some navigational charts on a large computer screen at the rear of the cockpit, and analyzed where he was at.
He found himself once again surprised, as he recognized where the charts said he was. According to the computer, the ship was currently on the planet Nox, which was in the same star cluster as the planet he last remembered being on, Mandachor. That didn’t make much sense to him, both because he wasn’t sure how he made it from Mandachor to Nox, but also because Nox was not an explored planet yet. Preliminary scans had been completed revealing what could be expected when landing on the planet, but no manned missions had been launched. There hadn’t been as much time for exploration since the war had begun.
What was truly alarming, however, was that Mandachor was not listed in the charts. A black hole was listed that was named the Mandachor Abyss. Soren searched the charts on the screen for answers, and he found them, along with more questions than he could count.
Soren had been born on Earth in the year 2061, two years after mankind had made its first traversal beyond its native star cluster. When Soren was five years old, a man known as Professor Tywin had invented the first Jump Drive utilizing a particle that had been discovered only 21 years prior. Almost every innovation that the Professor produced was heralded by the scientific community as groundbreaking. Soren had heard about these from an early age and became enamored with scientific studies all throughout his childhood. In 2071, when Soren was 10 years old, the Professor developed a method of terraforming planets for future human habitation. Soren also learned later that around this same time, fissures in the scientific community had caused factions to rally both around and against the Professor. In 2079, an extremely bloody altercation between Earth’s government and the Professor's cult-like following occurred that later became known as The Razing of White Star. Soren joined the military 11 months later.
Over the course of a decade, Soren went from fighting against the following to fighting with them. Eventually, the Professor gained a mutual respect for Soren, and even began directly mentoring him. For 10 years, a war raged between Earth’s government and the Cult, during which time the Professor continued to produce groundbreaking innovations. New technologies, gene-splicing, gravity weapons, Professor Tywin was a scientific god among men. He directly mentored few people during this time, but along with Soren, he chose to instruct a beautiful woman named Lulu. He eventually chose to turn his scientific prowess on Lulu herself, and she ultimately killed him for it.
Soren’s head felt ready to burst as he struggled to make sense between what he remembered, and what the computer screen in front of him was telling him. According to his memory, the Graviton Engine had been detonated by Lulu in the year 2090.
And according to the computer screen in front of him, the year was 9982.
