Chapter 1

I woke nude in my cell again. It was actually a large suite like you would find in the better luxury hotels back on Earth. It was very comfortable, but since I couldn’t leave I thought of it as a ‘cell’. There was a bed twice as large as the California King I wished I could have afforded before I left. Buttons on the side would change the temperature, make it vibrate, and play nature sounds or music. Another button replaced the sheets and blanket with clean ones almost instantly, assuming I wasn’t on it at the time. A dial would change the mattress from hard as granite to soft as cotton-candy, or anything between.

Instead of a bathroom with toilet, shower, and sink; there was a small shower-looking room I could stand in to have the urine and feces teleported out of my body. The sudden relief as the internal pressure disappeared was quite pleasant. My first day there I didn’t know the voice command for ‘remove waste’, and peed and pooped on the floor when I couldn’t hold it any longer. It was teleported away automatically, but later my alien ‘captors’ patronizingly told me that was messy and uncivilized. I was embarrassed as I shrugged and agreed with them. The shower could also spray me with warm soapy water, clean warm water, and then dry me quickly with a blast of hot air.

Four times a day, a meal and drinks appeared on a small and elegant dining table. It was some of the best food I’d ever eaten. My meals alternated between Chinese, Japanese, Italian, German, French, and American style. In between there were always a large glass of water and a small glass of a nice fruity-tasting green beverage on the table, which a teleporter would refill when I set them down. Sometimes the German and Italian meals included one glass of wine or beer which wouldn’t be refilled. Apparently the aliens didn’t mind me being tipsy sometimes, but they wouldn’t let me get good and drunk.

If I felt like walking, the space was large enough for me to go thirty paces, turn and go another twenty paces, then repeat. That’s assuming I didn’t want to step on the treadmill and run. There was also a rowing machine and an exercise bike. On the side opposite the gym equipment, there was a comfortable padded table. When I laid on it, robotic arms came out the sides and rubbed my muscles pleasantly until I sat up or told it to stop. Near a corner there was a plush chair I sat in as videos from Earth played. I could watch nearly anything ever broadcast on a wall-sized screen.

It was far from torture or mistreatment, but I badly wanted out. By the third day I was bored out of my mind! I hadn’t been with a woman in weeks and was quite horny too. Again, I cursed my luck at becoming the damn “Fastest Man in History!”

Scientists and engineers at the company I worked for built a new spacecraft with an engine unlike anything before. Four of them had repeatedly tried to explain how it worked but I was just a personal pilot, a glorified cab driver. They said it would be fast, and holy hippo hockey were they right! As the first test they wanted me to just fly the new ship on a straight course at low speed for ten minutes, with two other ships flying in formation. Everything started fine. Atmosphere, anti-neutron fuel, and all other systems showed green; so I buckled in and started the engine. My velocity went from zero to 600 kilometers per hour, Mach 0.5 or half the speed of sound, in only five seconds! I was crushed back in my seat by the fierce acceleration. Within a minute I was going 9,000 kph or Mach 7!

The other ships were falling behind and told me to slow down. I desperately wished I was able to! The engine controls were frozen! I was accelerating at 5 G’s and couldn’t slow down! My discomfort grew as the speed climbed. The saliva was pushed to the back of my mouth and the rest of it became quite dry. Breathing gradually became more and more difficult. My vision started getting blurry as the forces changed the shape of my eyeballs. The minor discomfort in my joints grew into serious pain. I struggled to stay conscious, but after nearly an hour enduring the massive stress on my body, I blacked out.

When I woke the control panel showed the engine had shut down after two hours and I had been coasting along for another three. The stars nearby were totally unfamiliar. I had the computer check my location in the star database, but it didn’t find any matches. As a last resort, I had it check the pulsar map. It took several minutes to determine I was on the far side of the galaxy!!! I’d travelled a quarter million light years in a few hours!!!

I pondered a little while trying to figure out what happened. There was no way I had flown over a million times the speed of light! I must have gone through a wormhole. They were only a theory, but the only thing that might make sense. I looked around a few minutes, then made the obvious decision to turn around and go home.

I tried to activate the thrusters to turn, but they didn’t respond! I tried again with no effect. I banged my fist on the side of the cockpit and silently cursed myself. Since it was planned as only a short and straight flight, I hadn’t checked the directional thrusters! I tried moving the engine gimbal mount to see if I could point its thrust the way I wanted, but it didn’t respond either. There was no way for me to turn the ship! I looked out the rear window and saw the engine had melted itself to slag!

There was a bottle of water and a bag of sunflower seeds in an armrest, but that wouldn’t last long. I could use meditation and breathing exercises to increase the duration, but would still run out of oxygen within three days. I had no tools to repair anything and no spare parts, if I even knew how.

Slowly I realized I was going to die.

I had well and truly FUCKED MYSELF!