Episode 2: The Protagonist Goes Nuclear

"Haisai! It’s your boy Taro-chan, finding himself in a total deathtrap the second he opens his eyes! Maybe I’ll just kick the bucket right now, haha!"

Taro threw his arms up in a grand Banzai pose. He’d told himself he was fine with the lack of a straight man to call out his nonsense, but deep down, some small part of him had been hoping for a reaction. The crushing silence of the empty room made him feel like a complete idiot. He slowly lowered his hands.

"Actually, no. I refuse to die until I lose my virginity... wait, I’m not even a virgin!! ...Ugh, I’m starving. Is there a snack bar in this hellhole?"

Taro’s bare feet went pitter-patter across the cold metallic floor. He tried to psyche himself up for some grand exploration, but reality was a killjoy—there were only two places he could actually go.

"The computer said the next scheduled contact is in five years. Depending on how long I’ve been out, does that mean I’m stuck waiting for another five? Or if I’m lucky, maybe they’ll call tomorrow? No, fat chance. Even if contact was cut off, it’s not like they’re guaranteed to come looking for me. How does this even work? I have no clue. I mean, why the hell was I launched into space anyway?"

Muttering to himself, Taro walked back into the room where he’d first awakened. He pointedly avoided looking at the "forest" of upright corpses as he headed toward a display that looked like a computer monitor. A stray glance at a nearby body sent a wave of nausea rolling through his gut, but he grit his teeth and forced himself to ignore it.

"...Okay, where’s the 'on' switch for this thing?"

The display sat atop a sleek, round table—the kind of thing you’d see in a trendy high-end bar. Taro scurried around it like a panicked hamster, searching for a power button, but he couldn't find so much as a pebble-sized switch.

"Whatever! It’s not like I wanted to turn it on anyway! I wouldn't be able to read these weird squiggles even if it worked, so there’s no point! Hmph!"

Taro gave his hips a petulant wiggle in his solitude, then immediately slumped over, his head hanging as the emptiness of the gesture caught up to him.

"Dammit. Am I actually screwed?"

He’d barely been awake for an hour, yet despair was already nipping at his heels. He approached the machine that had served as his coffin and reached out a hand.

Type IV isn't total cryostasis. It should have been pumping in nutrients periodically. Oral consumption should be possible... The lock... if I switch it to manual control... the contact point is... no, that’s not it. This way. Shit! Why the hell do I know how to do this?!

Taro shuddered at the inexplicable sense of wrongness. He didn't remember knowing any of this, yet his hands moved with surgical precision, performing the next steps without a hint of hesitation. His brain fed him technical data about every component he touched. With terrifying efficiency, he dismantled the device and toggled the automated nutrient supply system over to manual.

"The handle... this’ll work. I don't care if it looks like a junk heap. It’s not like I have guests to impress. Now then, let's see what’s on the menu."

He twisted the makeshift handle, and a thick red liquid began to ooze silently from the tip of a needle. Taro’s face twisted in disgust, but he scooped some up with his finger and brought it to his tongue.

"Gah, it’s wretched. What is this? If I had to describe it... it’s like sweet iron. Okay, fine, let's be real. It’s straight-up blood."

Taro muttered a string of curses, then pinched his nose and started drinking. He tilted his head back and held his mouth under the flow, looking exactly like a kid trying to drink from a garden hose.

"Gwah-urgh!! Ptooey! Dammit, who could drink this crap?! I’m not a vampire!"

He spat the foul liquid across the room and hurled insults at the machine.

"Hah... but I’ll probably end up chugging it anyway. I’ll just wait until I’m literally dying of hunger. What else... I need oxygen and water. It’s not like I’ve got any buddies at NASA to call for a refill... For water, maybe I can use this thing's cooling system to harvest condensation? Wait, if the humidity in the air runs out, I’m toasted... The ventilation..."

Mumbling to himself, Taro craned his neck. He spotted a mesh grate that looked like an air duct in the ceiling. He scrambled up the side of the cryogenic sleep pod to get a closer look.

"It’s not coming off. Figures. Safety first, wouldn't want it falling on anyone... Is this the screw holding it? Okay, I could turn this if I had a wrench—as if I’d have a wrench!! I mean, what the hell is this? Who uses a heptagonal screw hole?!"

Taro hopped down from the machine, tossed aside a piece of scrap metal he was holding, and flopped onto the floor. The surreal nature of his situation had finally sapped his motivation, making him wonder why he was even bothering.

"Someone’ll probably come save me tomorrow anyway... Yeah. Definitely."

The bone-deep fatigue that had been haunting him since he woke up finally won. He reached out toward the machine from his position on the floor and turned the makeshift handle. Then, he lightly pricked his finger on the needle located near the "neck" section of the pod.

"Whoa, this is the real deal. Guess a high-grade sedative... really... works..."

Exhausted by the effort of trying to process his impossible reality, he lost consciousness before he could even finish the sentence.

I feel like garbage.

Taro woke up to a cocktail of intense lethargy and crushing stress.

"My body... ah, ghhk!"

He tried to stand, but the shooting pains in every joint forced him to settle for a very convincing impression of a caterpillar writhing on the floor.

"Dammit, how long was I out?"

Groaning, he reached for the cryo-unit. The nutrient fluid was still trickling from the handle he’d left open. He checked the analog gauge that tracked the remaining volume and realized with a start that he had been asleep for nearly two full days.

"Crap. I guess winging it with experimental drugs is a bad idea. A little more of that sedative and I would've starved to death in my sleep... That’s not even funny."

He rubbed the crust from his eyes and sucked down more of the flowing nutrient fluid. He gagged and spat it out a few times because of the fishy stench, but eventually, his mouth went numb. He managed to force it down and lay still for a while to let his body recover.

"Hah... I guess nobody’s coming. This is the kind of place you can't reach without being frozen. Of course it’s going to take time."

Despite his low expectations, the confirmation of his isolation stung. He pouted, then reached out and began doodling on the floor with the spilled nutrient fluid.

"‘Abandon thy virginity,’ says the voice of God. Taro Ichijo's death poem... Oh, wait, I forgot the seasonal word. Do I even need one? Whatever, I’ll just say it’s the 'Season of the Virgin.' That sounds like Spring."

He kept muttering to distract himself from the soul-crushing loneliness.

"Well, who cares. After I'm dead, someone will... read this... read it?"

Taro stared at the characters written in red fluid, his face going blank. He froze.

"What is this? Wait... what? This is supposed to be Japanese, right? Why..."

He had written the characters fluently, without a second thought, yet now his own handwriting was utter gibberish to him. It wasn't because it was messy; he could see the shapes clearly and knew they were exactly what he intended to write, but his brain refused to translate the symbols into meaning.

"Oh, Jesus... is my mind finally snapping?"

He’d heard of cases where psychological trauma caused specific memory blocks. Deciding he was in a worse state than he realized, he forced his aching body to stand. He had to stay busy, or he was going to lose it.

"Okay, let's get serious. People have survived drifting in the Pacific Ocean for months. Space is basically the same thing. Just a slightly larger scale. Yeah. Exactly."

Clinging to that tiny shred of hope, Taro walked over to the pod next to his—the one that still held a human skeleton. He pressed his hands together in a quick prayer, then began scavenging for useful parts.

"Who cares if it’s a heptagonal screw. I just need something that fits the hole, right?"

He pulled out several components and tested them against the duct’s screw holes. He found a slightly oversized L-shaped bracket that looked promising and grabbed a heavy-looking part to use as a makeshift hammer to reshape it.

"Wha—? Dammit! What is this stuff made of?! It’s too hard! Is this not iron? Titanium? What the hell?"

No matter how hard Taro hammered the bracket, it didn't even have a scratch. Realizing that brute force wouldn't work, he pivoted and grabbed a long, wire-like component.

"They said these things were designed to be assembled and disassembled without tools. I used to think that was a waste of money... but I take it back. When your life’s on the line, this stuff is great."

With practiced, nimble fingers, Taro stripped the device. He climbed back up to the duct and began wedging the component into the mesh holes. After a few failures, he managed to anchor one end of the L-bracket into the mesh and tied a wire to the other side.

"Ta-da! [ANMIT CORP STRENGTH FIBER]. The tensile strength of carbon fiber is over twenty times that of iron. Go ahead and try to snap it!"

Taro tied the other end of the wire to the refrigeration unit he’d been using. Once he was sure it was secure, he reached deep into the machine and slammed down a red lever. The room began to hum with a minute vibration as the heavy refrigeration unit began its slow, mechanical descent.

"Please work. I don't know if this is hydraulics or magic, but give it a good tug! Come on!"

Taro clasped his hands as if praying to a god he didn't believe in.

The descending pod finally pulled the slack out of the wire—

"SACHER TORTE!!?"

Something whistled past his face at Mach speed.

The projectile clipped a few strands of Taro’s bangs before ricocheting off the floor with a lethal ping and vanishing into the darkness. Immediately after, the duct mesh crashed to the floor with a thunderous, metallic roar.

"...T-That was close. I need to be more careful. That screw was basically a bullet. Though, I’d really prefer it if there wasn't a 'next time' to worry about."

He watched the lethal screw roll harmlessly across the floor and let out a long, shaky breath. Once his heart stopped trying to jump out of his chest, he grabbed a thin wire he’d pre-hooked to the ascent lever and pulled.

"Oh, it’s like a little elevator... and here we go. Now then, let's see where this rabbit hole leads."

Taro stepped onto the rising platform. As he ascended into the dark hole above, he let out a heavy sigh, his heart a mess of anxiety and stubborn hope.

The atmosphere still feels a bit heavy, but I don’t intend for this to be a gloomy novel. Just relax and enjoy the ride! The protagonist is currently in a manic state brought on by loneliness and confusion, but his mental state will surely evolve along with the situation.