I threw my plans of leaving out the window immediately and decided to take the time to learn about the world around me through the media library. To that end, I decided on a new routine. I shrank my morning exercise to one hour, and skipped the shooting practice. But I kept my flight time as it was.

  I wanted to spare several hours a day to consume entertainment but did not want to cut on what I saw as necessary to keep in shape and continue to excel as a pilot.

  The media library was, at first, a bit overwhelming. The documentaries were a must, of course. I was afraid they would be dry and boring, but I noticed some biopics and historical dramas. Those would be easier to watch, and I did not need to know the exact academic truth, what the everyday inhabitant of this world knew and believed in was more than sufficient.

  Ok. I need to watch some comedies. It will keep me entertained and seeing what people find funny should also help. And some family dramas, those are usually a good representation of how people live their everyday life. Oh, and stuff about space and space travel, that’s a given.

  I ended up with too many categories and too many shows. One of my problems was, again, related to empty databases. I had all the shows, but no comment, no “most viewed”. So I had no idea what was good and what was bad, what was truthful and what was the equivalent of science fiction. I started to design a system to rationalize my playlist, a color-coded spreadsheet in my mind with categories. It was a beautiful system. It lasted all of five minutes before my impatience kicked in. Screw it. I picked the one with the coolest-looking spaceship on the cover, and hit play.

  More than a few shows got ejected midway through. Some were just boring, but others committed the cardinal sin of ignoring physics. I watched a pilot pull a 180-degree turn at full impulse without turning his crew into paste on the back wall. Nope. Deleted. I refuse to believe the laws of conservation of momentum are just friendly propositions and not laws.

  I quickly got some interesting and very valuable information. Most of the known world was actually barely a third of the galaxy and it was all under the rule of a single galactic empire. Also, humans were the dominant species. The most numerous, the most widespread. That’s a relief, I should blend in easily , then.

  Most of the documentaries were a bust. I tried one on the Fiscal Reforms of the 65th Century, and I think a part of me died. I didn't travel to another world to learn about space taxes.

  I finally landed on a docu-series called The Khunde Echo: Humanity's Lost Genesis. The narrator's voice was deep and rich, keeping me engaged. It explained that humanity's origin, Earth and the Sol system, were lost to myth. Okay, standard sci-fi trope. But then it got weird. Apparently, thousands of years ago, a mad emperor named Khunde cloned himself millions of times and sent them across the galaxy in colony ships. This was presented as historical fact. My jaw slowly dropped. Apparently, the Empire was still, to this day, regularly making first contact with lost human worlds that are just... more of this guy's distant, inbred relatives. It's an entire galaxy seeded by one dude's colossal ego. I fell down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theory videos after that, watching crackpots claim it was all proof of the impossibility of humans emerging on a single world, and a cover-up for “natural convergent evolution” or “proof of progenitors seeding”.

  The family dramas were a total letdown. It turned out interstellar empires don't stop people from arguing about who forgot to fill the quantum dishwasher. My eyes were glazing over until I stumbled on a show called Corsair's Call. It was pure, unadulterated space action: a scrappy crew hunting pirates in a pimped up freighter. Finally, something I can get behind. I was hooked. The main character kept talking about filing his bounty with the “IMG.” I paused and did a search in the media library on that and I found several shows and documentaries about the Imperial Mercenary Guild. A real, officially chartered organization. My heart started pounding. I went into a binge frenzy. It was tasked with solving small scale problems that the imperial navy was too busy taking care of, from pirate hunting to space phenomena investigation and exploration. The guild provided a legal framework and was also acting as a sort of union.

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  I found a high production space drama about a crew stranded in deep space far from any known routes. They were members of a sub group called the Pathfinders. The show had me on the edge of my seat while making my mind race with possibilities. I wanted to be there, to chart the unknown.

  I found a biopic on Thessera Chen, the founder of the Corsair Alliance. Another sub group of mercenaries, this time focused on hunting pirates. This one was not as good, but the few recordings of her actual space battles made me hold my breath every time. I watched it a second time. Oh my god oh my god. I want to do that too. This is exactly what I was doing in Life Among the Stars. This is my dream come true, a miracle of a second chance. I need to become a member. I need to live that life.

  That night, sleep was a long time coming. My mind raced with visions of dogfights in asteroid belts, of outsmarting pirates, of finally putting all my skills to the test.

  All this entertainment helped with my feeling of isolation. The constant stream of new faces and stories, even fictional ones, was a welcome distraction from the silence.

  I found myself becoming a fan of some fictional characters. There was one show I became so obsessed with that I had to program my holobracer to make it impossible to watch more than two episodes per day, after I binged a full season in one day.

  I was a goner from the first episode, captivated by the delightful chaos that was "Chester and Frilda." Imagine a cosmic blend of slapstick comedy and philosophical musings, all wrapped up in tales of spacefaring shenanigans. The humor, with its perfectly timed dry jabs from Chester, contrasted by Frilda's irreverent and artful anarchy, was brilliant. Their antics were a necessary balm for my soul. Each episode was a masterclass in controlled chaos. One minute, Chester, the stoic ex-legionnaire with a face that could curdle milk, would be meticulously calculating fuel-to-mass ratios for a simple cargo run. The next, Frilda, a whirlwind of bright scarves and even brighter ideas, would have convinced him that the best way to bypass an HTN customs blockade was to disguise their ship as a migratory space whale... by covering it in tons of very smelly, very illegal cheese. Watching Chester deadpan about “unforeseen aromatic consequences” while Frilda cackled with glee was the highlight of my day.

  Two weeks passed in the blink of an eye. But I was, again, starting to grow reckless and decided it was finally time to leave and go explore.

  One thing was certain: this universe bore only a passing resemblance to *Life Among the Stars*. The game's tech was a pale shadow of what was real here, its map a tiny corner of this galaxy. And yet... the similarities were what truly unnerved me. Why was the Mahkkra here, a perfect working replica of the game version? Why did the logo of many corporations from a video game exist in this reality? It was unnerving, but I had no answer so I decided to push it to the back of my mind.

  But it wasn't all space pirates and goofy comedies. A historical drama about imperial law gave me a rude awakening. This place had a neo-feudal pyramid structure. Emperor on top, nobles, citizens, and then at the bottom: vassals. It reminded me of Ancient Rome. And I'm not a noble. A cold knot formed in my stomach. I'm not even a citizen. I have no papers, no ID, no history. What does that make me? A vassal by default? Or worse, an undocumented nobody? My first priority just became crystal clear: figure out how to get Imperial Citizenship. Being a second-class 'vassal,' with travel and tech restrictions designed 'to let my society evolve naturally', which was clearly bullshit for 'to exploit you better', was not going to cut it.

  After careful review of my flight plan and adding as much as I could store in the Mahkkr’s database of the media library, I was finally ready to move on and go explore.