Chapter 1 Crash Landing
Crash Landing
Jake looked out the window. The endless darkness spread out like a void, feeling distant and empty. Even the window he leaned against felt cold. The glass, perfectly isolating the outside from the inside, was frigid. It was evidence that no source of heat existed beyond the window.
The reflection of an older middle-aged man appeared on the black glass. He was no longer young, nor did he look as vibrant as before, but instead, his face bore the marks of maturity and experience. Once black hair was now dusted with gray, and the deep blue eyes, shining brightly, still proved that he had a strong character. Overall, he was a man with bold features, thick eyebrows, and a striking presence. He was quite tall, and his muscular build suggested that Jake was a healthy and robust man.
The dog tag hanging around his neck glimmered in the light of the indoor lamp. The metal piece, worn and faded, testified to the many years it had been with him. It was now a relic, holding memories of a time long past. Judging that it was too cold to stand by the window in a sleeveless outfit, Jake turned away.
He had been sailing for several months now. He decided to set aside the question of whether this situation, where he was being transported in a spaceship without manipulating anything, could truly be called sailing. After all, people commonly referred to a vehicle moving through space toward a destination as sailing. The only thing Jake, the sole occupant of the ship, did was occasionally check where he was and report to the home planet. He was now traversing a perfect vacuum, with neither the home planet he had departed from nor a star emitting warmth in sight.
Surely, the hull was moving at a speed close to the speed of light. Yet, with nothing to compare that speed to, it felt to the occupant as if he were in a state of stillness. Being aboard a spaceship drifting through the dark void of space made one realize how meaningless it was to struggle in silence.
Fundamentally, space was a realm that instilled doubt in people.
Staring at the overwhelmingly empty expanse made Jake feel despondent, and various thoughts began to flood his mind as if trying to fill that void. One of Jake’s main routines was daydreaming. Since he wasn’t particularly imaginative, most of his daydreaming time was filled with reflections on his past life and worries about the future. He had listened to the music he brought with him hundreds of times, and aside from regular reports, he had no one to communicate with. As a result, social desires began to rise within him. He had always considered himself quite taciturn, but he never imagined a day would come when he would feel such a strong urge to talk to someone. Each time that feeling arose, Jake would deliberately speak aloud to himself or hum softly to alleviate his boredom.
It was during the third month of the voyage that he realized how lonely it was to spend time alone in the cramped spaceship without anything to do. He thought that at this rate, he might really forget how to speak, so he occasionally recited verses he had memorized or created various reporting repertoires just to maintain communication. Then, when he suddenly made eye contact with the endless expanse of space, he would sink into contemplation about whether this path was indeed the right one. Physically and conceptually.
The spaceship was flying toward its destination according to an automated system, and by schedule, he should have seen the star Centric, which was in orbit, by yesterday. However, whether it was that human eyesight was not sufficient to detect the star or if there was an error in calculations, the view outside was entirely black. No matter how slight the error might have been, Jake tried to reassure himself that he would surely see the star after a few more days of sleep. He decided it was best to stop worrying about whether he was moving in a straight line toward nothingness or if he was destined to die alone inside the spaceship, abandoned in space.
However, it was true that lately, feelings of doubt and anxiety had been creeping in more frequently. When he closed his eyes, countless human skulls he had encountered in the jungle would often flash before him, waking him up drenched in sweat. The anxiety or fear of death must have dredged up dark memories from the past.
In such times, he needed to move his body. Exercise was a good way to soothe fear. With a firm belief in the importance of exercise, Jake immediately began to work out, attempting to calm his mind. Each time he lifted the heavy dumbbells, the muscles in his arms and chest twitched. When he entrusted his body to the exercise equipment installed on the ship and moved until he could no longer run due to breathlessness, the heat filled his body instead of random thoughts.
When he grew tired of even humming lyrics to satisfy his social needs, he would choose to sleep, even if it wasn’t time for bed, and close his eyes. Thanks to that, his resilient abs and firm chest muscles did not deteriorate even as the voyage extended. In fact, having developed a lifelong habit of training, he felt uncomfortable if he didn’t exercise.
After a round of exercise, his entire body was drenched in sweat. Along with that, the small scars etched on his body glistened under the indoor lights like medals. Before the voyage began, during a three-month leave, he had run outdoors every day in preparation for his next mission, resulting in his nose, forehead, and forearms being sunburned by the intense sunlight. Only the parts of his body that were properly clothed retained their pale sheen. However, after months without seeing the sun, the tanned skin gradually faded back to its original color.
This meant that the duration of the voyage had lengthened. Jake stroked his stubbly beard, which had grown from a few days without shaving, and wrapped a towel around himself. The exertion left him too fatigued to think. That was all for today’s schedule.
*
Jake had once been a soldier. Now retired, he was engaged in other work, such as attempting trade with outer planets, but he had devoted nearly his entire youth to the military. He still couldn’t conclude whether that was a good decision. It had simply become a thing of the past, and even if he lamented, he couldn’t change it, so Jake did not attempt to evaluate the value of his military service. After all, the most stable job available to someone from a lower class background, where he could have three meals a day, was that of a soldier. He thought it better to directly eliminate the threats rather than beg in a slum or live in fear of dangers outside the jungle, which led him to enlist.
Although he hadn’t attended school, Jake was able to learn about the current cosmic political situation and the history of humanity through the mental training provided in the military. About 300 years ago, according to the cosmic standard time, humanity originally lived on a planet called Earth, but due to careless handling of nuclear technology, they rendered the planet uninhabitable, as he learned from his instructor. Thus, only those humans untainted by technology escaped into space to pioneer new planets, and that was how they arrived at the present day, a fact that always felt unreal to him. Growing up on the home planet Akbart, Jake felt a sense of alienation knowing that his ancestors had once lived on another planet.
Did that mean humanity was considered aliens from the perspective of this planet?
Even now, when aliens came from outside for negotiations, it became a major issue that was widely reported, and their appearances always felt strange. Some resembled humans, but most did not, and some even evoked an instinctive fear, as if encountering a large monster. The fact that humanity was actually on the same level as those strange beings, which he had only seen on broadcasts, was hard to accept.
Moreover, the military endlessly repeated education about the “Indigenous Lifeforms,” the enemies of humanity. The terrifying stories about the shapeless, leech-like beings that originally inhabited this planet sounded so absurd that they seemed almost fabricated. The true enemies of humanity were grotesque creatures that lived in the jungles where the current humans had built cities, and they were so bizarre that they could hardly be called beings. They were amorphous, lacking vocal organs, and were described as shadowy, soft, and limbless, yet capable of stretching and crawling along the ground.
Fortunately, Jake had never encountered those monsters in person; he had only seen them in educational pamphlets or photographs. Even in those images, the grotesque creatures were covered in short fur, with what appeared to be cute patterns on the parts presumed to be their heads. When Jake first saw that strange creature in a photograph, his initial impression was, “It doesn’t seem like a very threatening creature.” However, the next image showed the creature’s mouth opening wide, ready to swallow a person whole. Seeing the bizarre depiction of a creature larger than a human, with its toothy maw agape, made Jake grimace.
The more horrifying fact was that those creatures could transform into the same form as the people they devoured. The instructor instilled fear by explaining that those beings might one day wear the faces of neighbors and family members, infiltrating society to disturb them. Furthermore, he added that those who had gone missing and returned were already long dead, no longer your neighbors, so report them quickly. Even if they had once been your comrades. Although many Indigenous Lifeforms had been exterminated, leaving their kind nearly extinct near the city, it was still possible that they lurked somewhere in the jungle, especially at night when it was hard to distinguish between darkness and their forms, so one must never stray from the march.
After the instructor left, someone joked that it felt like a courage test, but thinking that such monsters had once crawled on the very ground people were now walking on made it impossible to laugh. At least, that was how Jake felt.
When marching into the jungle, an ominous feeling and fear would invariably prick at his back. As he pushed through the lush jungle under the scorching sun, Jake suddenly imagined an Indigenous Lifeform jumping out at him. What would he do if a comrade were eaten right before his eyes? No one showed any signs of anxiety, and everyone moved in unison with black paint under their eyes, but it was clear they all shared the same unease.
Then, someone in the front row stopped walking. Shouts of “It’s a person!” followed. Someone claimed to have stumbled upon a human skull. Everyone thought this place had once been the site of a fierce battle with the Indigenous Life Forms, so they lined up to pay their respects.
Despite the hot, humid air causing sweat to pour down like rain, the skull on the ground stood out vividly. Jake lowered his eyelids to relieve the sting in his eyes, only to have sweat droplets fall into them. The old skull was as hard as a stone and as dark and rotten as a tree root.
As they continued marching, they occasionally encountered more human bones. Each one appeared to have been killed by tools or had suffered brutal fates. Some were even preserved in a state where their wrists were intricately bound behind them, and their skulls were shattered. Everyone trembled at the cruelty of the Indigenous Life Forms, vowing to shoot them dead if they appeared before them, and Jake felt the same. The memory of burying the remains of victims while continuing to march was vivid, even though it was something he had experienced as a rookie; it felt as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.
Beyond the jungle, the soldiers discovered a vast wasteland. In front of the land where not a single blade of grass grew, they despaired, wondering when the jungle had ever existed. They had believed they would find a massive water source that had nurtured the lush jungle, but all that lay before them was a parched land with not a drop of water.