Chapter 2: A New Life

Something tickled my nose. Grass, rough greenish-brown blades pressing against my face. I pushed myself up. The grass stretched on and on, over the next hill, and it was all blue sky and small, fluffy clouds above. A warm breeze pushed waves across the grass. Stunned, all I could do was stare at the scenery.

My shipmates were nearby, waking up, catching my attention. “Hey! Is everyone alright?” Then I realized. There were only seven of us. “Who’s missing? Uh, who’s here?” None of us were wearing our impact suits. I had pants on. Rough and beige, with a thick, uneven leather belt, and an empty gun holster on the right side. And leather rope coiled around a hook on the left. Light beige shirt with a satchel, and a kind of cowboy hat. Gosh, I thought to myself, I hope I have stubble to finish off the image.

“What the hell?” Takao touched his face, rubbed his eyes, stood up, scanning the environment, staring off into the distance for a while. Then, he shook his head, “Everyone! Roll call. Takao, checking in.” He was more or less wearing normal clothes. A cotton shirt and jeans. Ignoring his outfit, he counted each of us on his fingers.

“I’m here. Sorry. Marci. Uh, checking in.”

I turned to look at her. Wearing a light blue dress, with white lace around her neck and each wrist, her hair was golden in the sunlight. Yet something else seemed different about her, but I couldn’t immediately tell what. Her eyes brightened like tiny flashlights briefly. She gave me a smile.

“Dylan here. What is going on? I seem to be wearing thick leather clothing.” It wasn’t just thick, but generously studded. And he had a sword on one side of his belt, a mace on the other.

The next person to stand, if he was a person, had light green skin and muscle upon muscle. He had a padded leather vest on, a backpack beside him “Fred here.” He was now larger and taller than he had been.

Takao looked just as shocked as I was. “Fred? What happened?” Takao looked at me, worry in his eyes, quickly examining the others one by one.

“Whatdya mean?”

Another lightly green person stood, this time a woman, but equally massively muscular and likewise outfitted in a vest. Except she also had dark brown leather sleeves on her forearms. “Avery here.”

“Avery too!”

“Yup, I’m here.”

“No, you guys . . . your bodies are different. You have green . . . skin.” Takao asked, “How do you feel?”

“The thing is,” Fred scratched his chin, “uh, well I’m security. The voice said half-orc was the strongest player race. So, I picked it. I guess they have green skin.”

“Me, too,” said Avery. She flexed, biceps bulging like a body builder on stage, “This is good.”

Takao was looking at them, eyes wide. “Ok. River, Marci! Check them out. And Bentley, stop staring at your clothes. I called for a check-in.”

Bent, wearing grey robes that went down to his shoes, tied with a belt in the middle, making him look like something out of a fantasy novel, was staring at his hand. He looked up, “Sir? Right. Bentley, checking in.” Then stood and started patting himself down.

I walked over to our security team. Green skin! They looked like something out of an old scifi show. Enormous biceps and triceps, leather vests over their bulging pecs, canines longer than any human ones and mottled, green skin. “Aren’t you worried? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t seem human anymore.”

Fred was looking at his well-muscled arms. He put his hand on them, flexing, nodding. “I still feel normal. Really good, actually.”

“And you, Ave? How do you feel?”

“Strong.” She jumped up, easily clearing two feet. Smiling, she hefted a long-shafted metal hammer. “My weapon, I think.”

“I’m very worried about your physiology. What did this to you and how?”

She scowled at me, then went back to admiring her war hammer.

Wondering if I had changed, I held my hands up. They looked like mine, felt like mine. Except I was, if anything, a little more sensitive. The leather of my sleeves was rough, texture dragging just slightly at the skin of my fingers in a way I’d only experienced with velcro before. Yet there was no visible difference, I couldn’t figure out what had changed.

Marci walked over to us, said to me. “You look like someone out of an adventure movie.” Atop her light blue dress was a silver necklace with a clear, sparkling gemstone.

“You . . . you have pointed ears!” I reached up to touch them but stopped myself just before making contact. “Sorry. Hey, your eyes, were they always blue? And wide, they’re wider now.”

“Blue? Ears?” She touched her ears. “Whoa. When I chose sorcerer as my class, it suggested elf as a race. Uh,” she held up her finger, “hold on,” then turned around, pulling her dress forward and looking down. “Oh my god! Holy. I think I’m smaller.”

“Smaller!?” Panicking, I checked immediately.

“I’m definitely bigger.” Avery smiled, flexing her forearms, stretching, “In all the right ways.”

“Well?” Marci asked, turning back toward me.

“No change, I’m happy to say!” I suddenly felt embarrassed and gave what I hoped was a smile. “Just, uh, as awesome as ever. Hey, did it, the voice, ask you what sex you wanted?”

“Yeah. That was weird.” Marci said to Avery, reaching toward her, “Ok, pass me your arm. I’m going to take your pulse.”

Bentley, pulling up his robes to avoid stepping on them, walked over to Takao, they began talking.

Takao soon faced us all and said, with a loud voice, “Jadon doesn’t seem to be here. Any of you seen her? Or recall what happened to her?”

Jadon was our communication officer. If she was missing, it’d be much more difficult to get coms working. If we still had coms, if we still had a ship. It was nowhere to be seen, the grassy plains nearby were empty of space vessels. “I wonder if she’s with the ship.”

Bentley scowled a bit, “That would be the best-case scenario.”

“Where do you think we are?” asked Marci.

Bentley continued, “On the planet’s surface, clearly. But it doesn’t make sense that we didn’t crash land. I wonder . . .”

“I meant on which continent. Are we close to cities? Are there people around? That sort of thing. But if we didn’t crash, how’d we get here?”

“Nanotech. The warning alarm.” I looked around, eyes wide, “It has to be nanotech. All of it. Otherwise, how would your body change? Fred and Avery? This might be very bad.”

“And our clothing, all changed,” said Marci. “Yours, I think, is the best.”

“Mine?”

She quickly smiled, looked down and turned to face Takao and Bent.

“We could be plugged in.” Bentley looked at the sky. “Into a simulation. We wouldn’t notice the difference.”

“I don’t think so. The nanotech alarms went off. And we observed a completely altered planet. This place used to have technologically advanced and large cities. Massively connected, roads, trains, air travel. Something big, something catastrophic, happened here.”

Dylan said, “What kind of a monster would unleash ubiquitous nanotech on a planet? And where would they get it? It’s very difficult and almost impossible to develop. Eridani did not have the industrial capabilities.”

Bent asked, “Could it have evolved from targeted nanotech?”

“Unlikely,” said Marci. “No one puts that kind of code in. Targeted doesn’t replicate, it can’t. If this really is nano, it’s different than anything we’ve seen before.”

“No communications, no ship. Just primitive tools,” Takao ran a hand through his hair, scanning the horizon.

Bentley walked over to me, asking, “What are you supposed to be anyways? Your class, I mean. You look like a cowboy or something. That doesn’t really track with the rest of us. Especially with your pistol holster.”

“Uh, explorer. Whatever that means. I’ve got some rope.”

Marci chimed in, “That’s not rope. It’s a bullwhip. Ropes don’t have handles.”

Looking down, I touched it. Leather, tough, and bearing a wooden handle. “Huh. And what about you?”

“Wizard,” said Bentley, “I asked for a class that was powerful. The voice said this one.”

“Ok guys,” said Tak loudly, “enough banter! Form up! We have to get our bearings, figure out where we are and what’s happened to us, and how to contact the Victoria.”