- Survival in Space
As I looked up at the night sky, the Milky Way shone brilliantly – a sight impossible to see in the city. At 55 years old, having recently retired from my office job, I had begun living a leisurely life of my own choosing. I had come to this campground alone, located in Yamanashi Prefecture.
“Solitary under the vast heavens.”
I was born in Kansai, but at 12 years old, I moved to Kanto with my parents. In university, I studied international politics and chose the path of becoming a public servant. Now I live alone, never having married. Since long ago, I’ve felt a sense of dissociation from the world around me – like this world was not where I belonged. Because of this, I hardly made any friends, living a largely solitary life.
However, around the time I began this free lifestyle, I started trying various new things to enjoy life more. This camping trip was one such attempt. The campground was located in the woods, with a river nearby – a hidden gem perfect for fishing and camping. I set up my tent in a clearing in the forest, boiled water over a campfire, and began preparing my dinner.
Not to boast, but thanks to going to the gym twice a week, I look the part for this setting. With my 180cm height and fairly good looks, I probably came across as a rugged older camper. As the sun set behind the western mountains and the cicada calls faded with the darkness, I put an instant ramen into the pot of boiling water and timed it. This gourmet instant ramen included chicken broth, a konbu tsuyu base, cabbage, green onions, plus boiled egg and chashu pork. After eating, I began stargazing.
Not serious astronomical observation, but rather casually viewing the Milky Way, constellations, and moon through binoculars. Sitting in a folding chair, gazing up at the Milky Way, time seemed to pass slowly in a relaxing way. As I searched for the brightest star Deneb in Cygnus, the starry sky appeared to warp and distort for just an instant.
“Huh, what was that just now?”
I tilted my head, then observed the night sky again. It looked perfectly normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“Come to think of it, I did see some strange news online recently.”
It was about a rise in missing person cases, where people alone in nature would seemingly vanish, as if abducted by someone. Online speculation was spreading that it could be the work of aliens. While missing persons cases aren’t that unusual nowadays, the common thread seemed to be that these incidents occurred in remote areas like campgrounds with few people around. And the other commonality was that they went missing on beautiful, starry nights.
Rumors of alien involvement sounded pretty insane…the kind of thing you’d have to question someone’s sanity over. Chuckling at the thought, I returned my gaze to the stars. That’s when I heard a faint, mechanical whirring sound in the distance. As I wondered what it could be, the whirring came again, seeming to slowly draw nearer and putting me on edge. When the sound grew louder again, branches of a nearby tree rustled noisily.
Standing from my chair, I surveyed my surroundings warily. The firelight only illuminated so far into the woods before being swallowed by darkness. Something seemed to move out there in that blackness, but I couldn’t see what. An unsettling feeling crept over me.
I decided to go to the campground office and check with the manager. Grabbing my flashlight, phone, and heading for the paved road to the office, a blinding light like headlights shone on me from behind. As I turned around, searing brightness flooded my eyes, blinding me. A zapping sound rang out as something pierced through my body, sending shooting pain coursing through every fiber of my being, leaving me unable to breathe.
Lights began dancing around me in a frenzied blur. Sensing danger, I tried to flee, but my body was paralyzed, unresponsive no matter how fiercely I willed it to move.
The lights closed in, and the moment I thought it was over, darkness consumed my consciousness.
- *
I am Jingguji Zen. Slowly regaining consciousness from the void of blackness, a chill ran through me. Even trying to open my eyes, my eyelids refused to move an inch.
“Injecting the body-regulation nanomachines, following the immune system and language comprehension nanomachines.”
“Get on with it already.”
Strange, gravelly voices with an odd accent reached my ears. While not Japanese, I could understand the words perfectly. What was happening? Was this a hospital? A stinging pain shot through my shoulder – it seemed I had been injected with something.
“How long until he can move?”
“He should be able to move in roughly one ax.”
The strange, sucking accented voice mentioned “one ax,” which I simultaneously understood to mean about one hour – as if automatically translated in my mind.
“Once he can move, you take over and start his training, got it?”
“Y-Yes, understood.”
Training? For what? Where was I?
Unable to move my body at all, time passed. Then I began feeling heat welling up from inside, and slowly my limbs became able to stir. My eyelids opened, allowing me to see my surroundings. And the first thing I saw was a human body from the neck down, but with the head of a dog atop it – a bizarre dog-human creature. Its canine face resembled that of a Shiba Inu. Was this some kind of Halloween prank? They don’t do cosplay in hospitals, do they? What kind of anime character was this?
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“Banatsu, you’re awake,”
the dog-person said to me, the words ending in an odd, drawn-out way I couldn’t quite place. And ‘Banatsu’…what was that?
[Is this a hospital?] I asked in Japanese.
The dog-creature’s face contorted in confusion. Oh, so it wasn’t just an elaborate mask?
“I don’t understand that language. You should be able to speak the common Gaban tongue.”
It seems that this dog-person cannot pronounce “su” and instead says “shu”. Well, that’s fine, but when they tried to say “impossible”, they realized it might actually be possible. I discovered that I somehow had knowledge of the Gaban language in my mind.
“Who are you? Is this a hospital?” I tried in Gaban.
I was shocked at my own ability to speak it so naturally. What was going on?
“I’m Sario-Barakel of the Kushi tribe. This is not a hospital, but the interior of the supply ship Brava of the Gonuva Empire,”
A ship? Were we at sea? I sat up in the strange bed I had been lying in. Looking around, it was a small, enclosed metal room with four unusual capsule-like beds, one of which I had seemingly been occupying.
“Let me go back, I need to get home…”
I started, then trailed off, realizing this wasn’t anywhere near Japan. The dog-person looked at me with what seemed like pity.
“What are you saying? This is outer space.”
It then led me to an observation room of sorts. Peering out the window, I was rendered speechless. Against a pitch-black backdrop, innumerable pinpoints of light twinkled in the void. The lack of any visible surface below made the eeriness of this scene sink in – this could not possibly be Earth.
Any doubts that this was truly outer space were erased when Sario took me to what seemed to be a storage room. The moment I stepped inside, my body began to float upwards, and I had to catch myself from drifting into the ceiling. There was no gravity here. With Sario’s help, I exited into the corridor outside.
“Ah! …… “
—
—
The dreadful reality, coupled with utter confusion, washed over me. I had just been camping, hoping to enjoy myself…
“You understand now, don’t you? This is outer space,”
“B-But there was gravity in that other room…”
“That was artificial gravity. The crew’s living quarters have manufactured gravity fields.”
While not quite Earth’s gravity, they could apparently produce a similar artificial pull. At this point, the dog-like appearance clearly wasn’t a costume – Sario was some kind of non-human being. I then asked how I ended up aboard this spacecraft.
“You, a Banatsu, were purchased as an illegal lowclass by the Goblin military forces from the Shadow Syndicate of the Oni people.”
So I was called a ‘Banatsu’ – though that hardly mattered next to the claims that I had been abducted by a criminal syndicate and sold into essentially slavery as lowclass stock to some ‘Goblin military.’ This supply ship was built by that very military force.
Sario showed me a model – it had an antiquated, rugged look reminiscent of an old diesel locomotive, but over 170 meters long and painted in dark green, the standard color for Goblin warships apparently. But…Goblins? The only ‘goblins’ I knew were the ugly little tricksters from fantasy tales.
I tried to stay calm, but it was no use. The words ‘lowclass’ and ‘slave’ echoed incessantly in my head, driving me into frenzied panic. I began shouting abuse at my alien abductors, demanding to be taken home – though in Japanese, which Sario didn’t comprehend. Once the yelling and fatigue left me clearheaded again, I noticed Sario watching with resignation, as if all too familiar with such outbursts.
“You’re…really saying I can’t go back?”
“Screaming won’t change anything. If you defy us, you’ll be killed,”
I gulped hard at those words.
“Touch the back of your neck – you’ll understand this is reality.”
Reaching behind, my fingers met with a firm protrusion, some kind of embedded object creating a lump under the skin there. I looked back at Sario, wondering if this dog-person was older or younger than me.
“What is this?”
“It’s a disciplinary terminal device. If the one holding the controller presses the switch, agonizing pain will assault your entire body. In severe cases, it could kill.”
“Who is holding that controller?”
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