The station had an antigrav stretcher, which made moving Rosalia from the ship's pod to the infirmary significantly easier. The medical device hovered silently above the deck plates as I guided it through the station's corridors, Rosalia's unconscious form secured to its surface. She remained unaware during the whole process, the medpod's sedation protocols ensuring she felt no pain or distress during the transfer.

  The station's medical bay was far more sophisticated than the cramped corner I'd designated as an infirmary aboard the Mahkkra. On the back wall, the medical pod hummed with quiet efficiency, larger and far more advanced than the one on the Mahkkra. I carefully transferred Rosalia from the stretcher to the pod, watching as its transparent cover closed over her and its systems began a comprehensive diagnostic scan.

  According to the new pod's readout, it would take her three more days before she could leave its care. After that, she would still need to return to the pod for a few hours every day for a full week in order to complete her recovery. The internal damage had been extensive, but the prognosis was good. Given time and proper treatment, she would make a full recovery.

  After that, I made myself a feast for dinner. I went all out, ordering small portions of all of my favorite dishes, even trying new ones when the description piqued my curiosity. And then, finally, I went to my quarters, put on my soft pajamas and lay on the bed. That wonderful antigrav bet. As I was drifting to sleep, I felt the tension in my body start to ease. You made it, Nico. You survived and saved her. Tomorrow, you can rest…

  On the following day, after a good night of sleep,I was surprisingly well rested. All my aches were gone. I found myself restless. I needed to find something to do.

  So, with Rosalia's immediate medical needs addressed, I turned my attention to repairing the Reizen's damaged cheatlight drive. I spent hours in the yacht's engine room, diagnostic tools in hand, trying to determine the exact nature of the damage and what would be required to fix it.

  Well, actually, I couldn't figure out how to fix it. The Reizen's cheatlight was manufactured by a high-end brand, and every single component was proprietary. No port or connector followed standard specifications that would work with the spare parts I had in storage. Each piece was custom-designed, with exotic materials and intricate geometries that defied simple replacement.

  I guess there are companies like that in every universe. Ones that convince their customers that they are so exclusive and good that not conforming to industry standards is a sign of quality rather than a cynical way of locking them into an expensive ecosystem. Good for their wallet, very annoying for me.

  I quickly realized it would be easier to install a brand new drive altogether than try to repair the existing one. When I said "easier," I didn't mean simple. Installing a new cheatlight drive was more like "doable" while repairing the original was effectively impossible given my resources. But it was anything but simple.

  Thankfully, I had access to a state-of-the-art engineering lab in the station. In Life Among the Stars, the lab had mostly been used for daily quests where I'd talk to an NPC, bring some raw materials, and occasionally be given a random reward. It usually was an armor or weapon mod, sometimes a ship component. Crafting in the game had been a set of entertaining minigames performed at various workstations. I'd loved those minigames and had invested quite a lot to build the best lab possible.

  But in the real world? Well, it was completely different. It felt more like actual engineering but with fantasy-sounding materials, tools, and crafted items. The holographic interfaces I'd used in the game were present, but they displayed complex technical specifications and required genuine knowledge rather than simple button presses timed to a moving target. Despite being real engineering, though, it all sounded like techno blabla, and I loved every part of it. This is the life, I kept repeating to myself, a big smile on my face.

  The physical work was challenging and occasionally dangerous, but in a way that would make for great stories later. I almost severed one of my fingers twice while working with precision cutting tools, which had me laughing at my own clumsiness. "Two near misses in one day. That's got to be some kind of record," I muttered to myself, flexing my intact digits with newfound appreciation.

  During one particularly memorable session, I depleted my personal shield's battery when I accidentally lit a plasma torch the wrong way and blew superheated plasma toward myself instead of the piece of metal I was trying to cut. The shield had absorbed the blast with a spectacular flash of blue energy, leaving me standing there with singed eyebrows and a stunned expression. After the initial shock wore off, I couldn't help but burst into laughter at the absurdity of it all.

  "If Lucas and Claire could see me now," I chuckled, remembering a similar incident from our gaming days.

  We'd been on a virtual expedition to repair our ship after a pirate attack, and the game had thrown a series of engineering minigames at us. Lucas, always overconfident, had insisted on handling the plasma conduit repair despite having the lowest engineering skill in our group.

  "How hard can it be?" he'd said, just before catastrophically failing the timing challenge. His character had been blown across the engine room, shields depleted, health bar flashing red.

  Claire, usually the most level-headed of our trio, had laughed so hard she'd missed her own timing window on the coolant system repair, causing a cascade failure that vented the atmosphere from half the ship. We'd spent the next hour desperately trying to patch the hull before our oxygen ran out, all while Lucas's character limped around with comically bandaged arms and legs.

  "At least there's no one here to record my failures for posterity," I said aloud to the empty lab, imagining how Lucas would have turned my plasma torch incident into an endless source of teasing. The memory brought a smile to my face as I returned to work, this time making sure the torch was pointed in the right direction before igniting it.

  I smiled bitterly. Those were good memories. Memories of a happy time. Of a companionship I was now missing. And the void left by their absence made the joy of being in this fantastical universe a little less. I loved remembering them. But it always left me feeling lonely.

  Despite the setbacks, I started to make progress. The station's fabrication units were capable of producing most of the components I needed, though some required materials I didn't have in stock. For those, I had to improvise, repurposing spare components for non-essential systems.

  The work was exhausting but oddly satisfying. There was something deeply gratifying about solving each technical problem as it arose, about seeing the new drive assembly slowly take shape under my hands. It was different from the artificial satisfaction the game had provided, this was real accomplishment, born of genuine effort and practical problem-solving.

  During breaks, I would check on Rosalia, watching her vital signs improve day by day on the pod's monitoring system. The medical technology was working its magic, gradually repairing the extensive damage to her internal organs. According to the readouts, her recovery was proceeding on schedule.

  As I continued working on the drive installation, I found myself collecting mental notes of all the mishaps and near-disasters to share with Rosalia once she regained consciousness. Something told me she might appreciate the humor in my fumbling attempts at spacecraft engineering.

  — o0o —

  Then came the day for Rosalia to wake up and leave the medical pod. I still had a lot of work on fixing the Reizen’s cheatlight drive, but I decided not to work on that day. To me, it was a huge event, and I was so nervous about it I had to stop working in the engineering lab or I would most certainly have hurt myself. With my recent track record of near-misses, continuing to work while distracted was practically begging for disaster. So I slept in, and spent the morning lazing around, coffee in hand, mostly stargazing to calm my nerves and avoid thinking too much about what would happen after Rosalia awoke.

  I made my way to the infirmary twenty minutes before her scheduled wake-up time. Checked the pod’s readout. Paced. Checked again. Paced some more.

  Fifteen minutes before her wake up time, I tried reading. The words blurred together. My leg wouldn’t stop bouncing.

  Ten minutes before her wake up time. I was Pacing again. “Screw it.” I pulled up an episode of Chester and Frilda on the wall display. I was hooked on that popular series, it would surely help me think of something else.

  Chester was trying to explain to an alien dignitary why Frilda had accidentally married the dignitary's sentient houseplant. Despite my nerves, I was grinning, completely engrossed in the shenanigans of the couple.

  The episode hit its climax. Chester had improvised a diplomatic solution involving a challenge to the houseplant to ritual combat: a dance-off. “Oh, my, his world sure has some very good shows. I almost don’t miss Earth”, I blurted, laughing at what I was seeing.

  The episode ended. Crisis resolved, evil thwarted, Frilda having the last laugh. I turned to check how much time before Rosalia woke up and found her, sitting in the pod, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The pod’s transparent cover had opened at some point and I was too absorbed in the show to notice. Nice one, Nico.

  "Oh!" I exclaimed. "Hum, sorry. Uh. Well. You see, I was getting restless waiting for you to wake up so I put it on and then. Well... I just got way too fascinated by it?" I added sheepishly.

  She was looking at me with a strange expression, her eyes narrowed slightly as though trying to solve a puzzle.

  "Hu. Hello? And how are you feeling?" I stammered. "Is something wrong? Oh, I know. Yes. I'm sorry, we talked about traveling to the imperial outpost. But you see, you were injured and I was alone so I could not take both ships to hyperspace, and the imperial outpost was way too far for cheatlight."

  I was rambling now, words tumbling out to fill the uncomfortable silence.

  "So I took the decision to bring you here. That's my station. Better medical facilities, as you can see. But don't worry, I towed your ship. It took me some time but I figured out how to extend the Mahkkra's warp bubble..." I droned on, but she was still looking at me intently and staying silent. So I stopped talking.

  After what felt like a long time, probably just a few seconds of awkward silence, I asked, "You're starting to freak me out, you know. Why are you looking at me like that? Did I do something really bad?"

  Still looking at me very intently, she said: "While watching the show, you said 'this world sure has good entertainment'. What do you mean? Where are you from exactly? And when we met, you mentioned not being sure where you were from. So I ask again. Who are you and where are you from exactly ?”

  I froze. Then I started to open my mouth to respond, but stopped. My mind was racing. Could I tell her the truth? Should I hide it? I'd been alone with this secret for two months now, with no one to talk to about the impossible situation I found myself in. Part of me desperately wanted to unburden myself, to share the truth with someone, anyone, who might understand or at least listen.

  "Okay." I took a breath. "Okay. The truth."

  Where did I even start?

  "I'm not from around here. Obviously you figured that out. But I mean I'm really not from around here. Different world. Different…" I stopped. "No. Different reality. Maybe. I think."

  Rosalia said nothing. Just waited.

  "There was this game. Life Among the Stars. That's what it was called. A simulation. People, I mean millions of people… They'd put on these headsets and suddenly they were in space. Flying ships. Exploring. It was." I laughed. It sounded slightly hysterical. "It was the best part of my life. Which is pathetic, right? A grown man whose best part of his day was a video game."

  "It doesn't sound pathetic," Rosalia said quietly.

  "My parents died when I was twenty-one." The words came out abrupt. "Car accident. I was still in university. Computer science. After that, I was just... I was alone. I finished my degree, got a job in software engineering, but it was just something I did to pay rent. I'd come home and the apartment was empty and I'd eat dinner alone and go to bed alone and wake up alone and do it all again."

  My hands were shaking. I set down my glass before I dropped it.

  "For two years. Two years of just... existing. And then I met Lucas. In another game. It doesn't matter which one. We clicked. Became friends. And when he got invited to beta test this new space sim, he brought me along. And suddenly I had something. Someone. A whole group of someones."

  "Frirends," Rosalia prompted.

  "Yeah. Friends. We were what we called a guild. The Origin of Life. Stupid name. We were all beta testers. Lucas, Claire, Jeremy, Mahgret, a few others. We'd never met in person. We were from all over. Mostly Europe, but all over the world. France, Belgium, USA, Denmark, Korea, Italy. But every night, we'd log in and we were together."

  I was talking faster now, words tumbling over each other.

  "We'd explore systems, fight pirates, run these huge raids with dozens of people. Claire was like the mom of the group… “ I couldn’t stop talking. Words were spilling out of my mouth. “She was always checking in, making sure everyone was okay. She ran this whole in-game charity thing. Lucas was the legal nerd. He helped write the game's laws, used real maritime law as a basis. Jeremy was our mechanic. He could fix anything. Mahgret was in special forces. Retired. With PTSD. She preferred the virtual world to the real one. She was afraid she’d hurt people around her."

  I stopped. "Sorry. You don't need their whole life stories."

  "I want to hear them," Rosalia said. "These were your people."

  "They are my people." My voice came out fierce. "They're still out there. On Earth. Probably worried about me."

  "Earth."

  "My world. My planet. It's… God, how do I explain Earth?" I ran a hand through my hair. "It's a backwater. One species, one planet, no FTL. We thought we were alone in the universe. Turns out we were just too primitive to notice everyone else. Or."

  I stopped.

  "Or I'm in a completely different reality and Earth doesn't exist here at all. I don't know. I don't know anything."

  "Tell me about the ship," Rosalia said. "The Mahkkra."

  "It was mine. In the game. I found it. Spent months on this really difficult quest line. Following obscure clues, raiding shadow labs for a terrorist organisation. It was then quest reward. Supposed to be a unique legendary ship."

  My voice broke.

  "And then I woke up here. Not in the ship. In this station. Hyperion Deep. In the same medical pod you were just in, actually."

  Silence.

  "I went to sleep. I was with the rest of my guild, attending this convention. In Vegas. That's a city on Earth. I went to sleep, in my world. And I woke up in a medical pod, on an abandoned station, completely alone. The Mahkkra was docked in the hangar. My ship. From the game. Real. Solid. Actually real."

  I looked at her. I could feel my eyes burning, ready to tear up. "Do you understand how terrifying that was? Everything I knew was gone. My home. My friends. My entire reality. Just… gone. Replaced with this universe that looks like the game but isn't."

  "What do you mean?", she asked with a soft voice. Gently probing me for details.

  "The game didn't have an empire. No emperor, no vassal states, no churches. The tech was similar: cheatlight drives, plasma weapons. But the context was completely different. It's like someone took the game's pieces and rebuilt it differently."

  I was breathing too fast. I forced myself to slow down.

  "I've been here two months. Two months of pretending I know what I'm doing. Two months of being completely, utterly alone."

  I felt tears on my cheeks.

  "I miss them so much. Lucas and Claire and the others. Are they worried? Do they think something happened to me? Or do they think I just... abandoned them? Just stopped logging in without a word? I don't know. I'll never know."

  I had to stop. My voice was breaking.

  "But here's the thing." I laughed, bitter and broken. "I can't go back. I don't even know how I got here, so how could I possibly find my way back? So I made a choice. I'm going to live here. Build something here. Find a purpose here."

  I met her eyes.

  "Because what else am I supposed to do? And because…" My voice dropped. "Because this is a dream come true. I spent years in a simulation of this life. Flying ships, exploring space, being someone who mattered. And now it's real. Actually, genuinely real. How can I not embrace that? Even if it means I'm alone. Even if it means I'll never see my friends again."

  Rosalia reached over the edge of the pod and took my hand.

  I stared at her, vision blurring.

  "You're the first person I've told," I whispered. "The only person who knows."

  "I believe those are your memories," she said softly. "And that is exactly what you believe is the truth."

  My heart sank.

  "But," she continued, "I can't say I actually believe all of it. However," she squeezed my hand, "there's a Church in the Empire. The Church of the Omniversal Consciousness. They have myths about consciousness and being in other worlds. When we reach imperial space, you should seek them out."

  "You think they'll have answers?"

  "I think they might have context." She smiled gently. "And Nico? Don't tell anyone else this story. Not yet. If you do, you'll end up as a test subject."

  It wasn't belief. But it wasn't dismissal either.

  "Thanks," I said, feeling a weight lift from my shoulders despite her skepticism.

  Seeing the change in my demeanor, she laughed. “Another point in favor of your story is amount of psionic energy you are leaking”

  I blinked. “The… what?”

  “Psionic energy.” She said it like it was obvious. “You’re radiating it. Emotions, mostly. It’s how I knew you weren’t a threat when we first met. I could feel your sincerity. Your fear. Your… earnestness.”

  My stomach dropped. “You’re saying I'm broadcasting my feelings? Like some kind of telepathy?”

  “NOt telepathy. No. But essentially, yes, you're a beacon of emotions.” She tilted her head. “You didn’t know?”

  “I… No. How would I…” I stopped. Pacing. The medical scanner reading, the mystery energy radiation. “Sorry, but… would a scanner register that ‘psionic broadcast’ as energy radiation?”

  She tilted her head, thoughtfully. “Maybe. I think it might. I’m not a specialist. The churches are the only ones allowed to train in the psionic arts.” She caught my eyes. “But if you crossed from another universe, it fits. Psionics are said to be accessing energy from higher dimensions. Crossing might have exposed you to so much psionic energy that you’re… basically irradiated.”

  “Fantastic,” I muttered. “So anyone with psionic sensitivity can read me like a book”.

  “Most people can’t sense it at all.” She offered. “It require extremely rare talent or extensive training. And those who can would probably assume you are just an untrained latent prodigy. Not that you are from another world.”

  Feeling reassured, I gave her a weak smile.

  She smiled back at me. “Now, could you give me some privacy? I want to get out of this pod.”

  That brought me back to my senses. Cheeks flushed, I ran to the storage with the scrubs and brought some to her, before leaving the room. “I’ll wait for you on the other side of the door. Take all the time you need”.