My “cell” is actually a large suite like you would find in the better luxury hotels back on Earth. It’s very comfortable, but since I can’t leave, it’s a cell to me. There’s a bed twice as large as the California King I wished I could have afforded before I left. Buttons on the side change the temperature, make it vibrate, and play nature sounds or music. Another button replaces the sheets and blanket with clean ones almost instantly, assuming I’m not on it at the time. A dial can also change the mattress from hard as granite to soft as cotton-candy, or anything between.

Instead of a bathroom with toilet, shower, and sink; I have a small shower-looking room I stand in to have the urine and feces teleported out of my body. The sudden relief as the internal pressure disappears is 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 can 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 appear on a small and elegant dining table. It’s the best food I’d ever eaten. My meals alternate between Chinese, French, Italian, German, Japanese, and American style. In between there are always glasses of water and a nice fruity-tasting green beverage on the table, which a teleporter would refills when I ask. About half my meals include one glass of wine or beer which doesn’t refill. The aliens don’t mind me being a bit tipsy once or twice a day, but won’t let me get good and drunk.

If I feel like walking, the space is large enough for me to go thirty paces, turn and go another twenty, then repeat. That’s assuming I don’t want to step on the treadmill and run. I also have a rowing machine and exercise bike. On the side opposite the gym equipment is a comfortable padded table. When I laid on it, robotic arms come out the sides and rub my muscles pleasantly until I sut up or tell it to stop. Near a corner is the plush chair I spend half my time in, watching videos from Earth on a wall-size screen.

It’s 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 months 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 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. 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 reached Mach 8, and Mach 15 in under two minutes!