11 hours had passed, but to me, hovering in this vast emptiness, it felt like eternity. I felt like a prisoner who had been sentenced to wear away the entirety of my life.
Around the fourth hour I began to doze off and actually managed to fall into a sleep when the pod's AI jolted me awake.
Apparently A meteorite had been passing way closer to us for the AI's comfort, It had therefor automatically put itself into the hovering mode which essentially would enable it to hover away from any obstacle that would come hurtling through its way.
After that, I couldn't get any more sleep.
Around the eighth hour I began stress eating...it was my fucking specialty anyway... How I had never gained weight beat me.
Thing is, I had food to last me four days here and air that could only last me two days. I could not stomach the irony of it all.
What was the purpose of rationing? Even if I rationed,without air, I would die and leave all the foods around here.
I began contemplating which would be the best way to die.
I had almost drowned once while attempting swimming. It wasn't a pleasant experience. Still, I had watched apocalyptic movies and seen people maim and eat their body part out of starvation. That to me seems like the nastier way to go.
It's all I could do to stop myself from opening the pod's door and walking into the death awaiting for me outside.
I presumed it wouldn't take long, a couple of minutes and I would be dead... And maybe I would wake up in my normal life.
I didn't take that option though, something sick was telling me there might be no normal life to wake up to.
Fuck.
After a while, I finally realized I still hadn't scrutinized myself. These pockets... what was I carrying?
In fact, I realized for the first time I felt heavy. I began probing pocket after pocket. Soon enough, I realized I was actually a fucking smuggler.
There were a lot of physical credit chips inside every pocket and Every pocket seemed to store chips of different value. Now, I knew the republican digital chip which was the mainstream currency but still for a smuggler, they mostly dealt with physical credits... stuff that could leave no trace. And I had several of them. I counted about 3,600 credits...that was fucking a lot.
Over 3,000 credits and nothing to spend it on. It made me wonder what was the ship had been smuggling anyway to warrant such a pursuit
maybe I just had been passing the wrong route that the patrol happened to be.
For a while, I contemplated veering my pod and heading back to the mothership. I knew probably by now it would have been destroyed already but I felt a strong curiosity of wanting to know what I had been transporting.
Maybe spices For one of the numerous outer rim syndicates?... Or may be wet cargo... humans?
No, no, it couldn't be humans or any other species of beings for that matter. I would have known. Somebody would have screamed probably.
Still I felt even more pressured to head back.
I however decided against it.
Survival rule 101. Have your priorities right.
Right now, my priorities were staying alive until help came even though I didn't know how that would happen. If I began splitting my interest on various tasks, I would burn out of fuel real quick and then it wouldn't matter whether help came or not. They would be coming to rescue a dead man.
In any case, even if there were others aboard, so what... I mean there was only room for just me in this pod. Unless I was willing to trade positions and I knew I wasn't that noble.
On the 13th hour, it actually occurred to me I had someone I could chat with, the AI.
I began to probe question after question but even for the AI, there was only limited answers it could offer me. All of them were tied to the survival of the pod. It couldn't tell me the state of the mothership.
It couldn't tell me where we were. All it could do was ask, what can I do? What can I adjust? What can I do? Eventually, I was tired but by then I had learned one thing. I was in the 32 BBY which brought another shockwave to me.
32 BBY? That was around the time of the Galactic Republic. That meant Palpatine was a fucking chancellor and the Jedi were still the puppet of the senate though they still believed they served a noble purpose or the force's will.
That was interesting. The only problem was that I was gonna die anyway. Didn't matter.
Wait a minute,
something else occurred to me. If we were in 32 how come people still used navigation beacons.. I could almost swear I had seen one while the ship's Ai tried to identify the stuff we had been avading.
But At 32 BBY, ships were essentially equipped with navi computers. In fact, mine also had a navi computer.
That meant a navigation beacon had been rendered obsolete by then.
So how was this interesting? It was interesting...?
Well, because it meant although I had jumped into the wild space, it wasn't entirely wild, at least not to the smugglers.
A navigation beacon means it was a route either the smugglers or the earlier core word explorers used, until maybe they discovered that that route did not lead to any interesting planet that they could exploit.
That is in case it was the explorers. If it was the smugglers then it means it was an uncharted route as far as the mainstream hyper routes were concerned but it still could be an active one.
This brought a jolt of hope to me. Maybe I would survive after all.
But even if it was a smuggling route, it's not every often that a smuggler comes passing by.
'fuck!' What was I doing anyway? I was building and killing my own hope. I had a lot of things trying to do that. The least I could do was give myself hope.
'They will come' . I said to myself... 'they have to come'
This wasn't the way I was gonna die. It wasn't. I insisted...
'any God out there.. I swear if I survive this I would cancel all those pervy onlyfan subscriptions... Fuck, I would be celibate it I had to.
Around the 15th hour I was almost murdering myself. You never really appreciate noise until silence is screaming into your ears.
I was floating in the heart of nothingness.
For a while I even missed the meteor that had almost crushed into me. Or had it been an asteroid? I couldn't recall.
I missed something.
Eventually, I succumbed and took the ship out of the hovering mode. I began to explore a few busts of areas around me. After three or four hours, around the 20th hour, at least judging from the countdown on the life support systems on the pod, I finally gave up and brought the pod back to the hovering mode.
I commanded the pod's Ai to switch to radio mode, maybe I would catch someone broadcasting . I had to repeat my command three times before the AI reiterated that it was already in radio mode.
I listened for a while... There was nothing. Not even a crack of a wave. Nothing.
My hope began to leak minute by minute. Then I told the AI to play some jazz riffs. And after a while also, I finally gave up. I felt like I was singing at my own funeral. Because if everything went right, like it was going right now, this would be my coffin and my tomb.
There was no way I could tell whether it was day or night. So far up here, changes in the day did not matter. Everything was black anyway.
Come on, please. Come on, you smugglers. Come on, you fucking smugglers. Why can't you smuggle something right now?
The one time somebody needs smugglers to come their way is the one time nothing happens.
Then again, judging by the vastness of the galaxy, it really began to make sense to me.
As a fan down there, or wherever earth was now, you really don't take time to process what a galaxy meant. You only enjoyed. But it's only now I was beginning to understand the precariousness of my situation.
A Galaxy was vast. It's not a planet. It was made of countless planets and star systems. Come to think of it, there was a good chance I would die here and nobody would ever see me in about another million years.
'Fucking don't say that'
I prompted myself as I took my head from my devastating thoughts.
They would see me, I reiterated. I suddenly sat up.
Did I hear something?
I stared at my broadcasting display. There was nothing. I could swear I heard something.
"AI, did you hear something?" I yelped in excitement
"There was a shift in the wave," AI said. "But it could be just one of the planets nearby moving. Or another meteorite...."
'Fucking pessimist.'
I definitely heard something.
It came again. And this time it registered on the display.
It was definitely a broadcast signal.
"Incoming signal detected. Incoming signal detected." The AI now confirmed it.
"Hello? Someone out there? Help me please, help me. Someone out there?..."
There was nothing.
"Hello? Someone out there? I screamed. Help, help. I need fucking help."
There was another crack and then a hoarse voice came through. I couldn't tell you how happy I was . I almost screamed in joy. Though the voice from the other end didn't reciprocate the joy.
" If you could fucking slow down and explain yourself and what you are doing in our route, we might consider helping.
" My name is Jax"i screamed immediately . "My father and I were travelling through this route when our ship hit an asteroid . I quickly thought of a lie that would make me appear friendlier to whoever was on the other end.
It didn't .
" Well Goodluck Jax, we don't save lairs,it tells me you're not worth our time."
" Wait, wait wait" I screamed before they cut off . They were literally my only hope.
"Please, I need help... I am running out of air"
There was another silence before the hoarse voice resumed.
"Well, start with who you are again. This time, be honest. And what you... And your father are doing in these routes? I'm sure by now you know it's uncharted.
" But I... We didn't know. We were being pursued by some republic patrol ship. We had no choice but to jump into the wild space."
There was a crack of laughter from the other end.
"a You're fucking kidding me. You had no choice? No choice? Everyone has a fucking choice other than jumping into the wild space, you idiot. Only mad men jump into the wild space as an alternative."
"well and us..." someone added in the background
" They were gonna open fire on us" I said another pause. Then the voice was back. "Which means you are on our trade then. Hold your coordinates. We're heading to you. You better be interesting. In a smuggling kind of way, if you know what I mean. Otherwise we'll finish the job for the republic, like every good citizen should ."
And the signal terminated.
I fell back onto my seat, breathing heavily.
" I'm saved. I'm saved. I'm finally saved."