《The Stowaway》 Chapter 1: Shenanigans in the Crawlspace One day I made a completely reckless plan involving a food crate, some scrap, an environment suit, and a full engineers toolkit. What is this plan for? Why, to stowaway aboard the first interstellar starship of course! I simply placed myself into the crate, welded it closed with me and other materials inside, and voila, the workers did the rest of the heavy work. I, of course needed to get out before the I was busted by the final inspection so I stealthily slipped myself out of the crate, and hid inside the crawl space for the fourth redundant reactor of the ship. They built the ship, called the SUH Asteria, out of Mars¡¯ moon Deimos using materials taken from both the excavated interior of the poor moon and various pieces from it¡¯s brother moon Phobos. The ship in it¡¯s fully completed state is a cylinder that reaches a total length of 2.5 kilometers and a diameter of .7 kilometers. Most of that space is taken up by the living section which is a cylinder of 2 by .7 kilometers that has a small town built on the inside walls. Of course this cylinder is spinning to create an artificial gravity effect. The total initial population of the ship is 501. The last 1 is of course me, the stowaway. Luckily I as a part of the initial design team, before they kicked me out, I was very familiar with the various bits and bobs of the ship¡¯s construction. The miraculous ship had a maximum capacity of 2000 persons before the ship no longer became self sufficient. To make it short, having little me on the ship has no noticeable impact. I look forward to be a little bit tricksy during this trip to relieve my boredom. As you can imagine, sitting around near a constantly pulsing antimatter-matter annihilation reaction will shave a couple of years off your life. Even if the reaction is shielded, only sitting a foot away made sure that I was still bombarded with gamma radiation for a solid week. Luckily, the anti radiation coating of my environment suit worked pretty well so I should still be able to live to the age of 500. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. The wonders of nanites become clear when you look at the average life expectancy on Mars after their introduction to the population on Earth in 2030. Most people are able to live to at least 800 years, and some people (usually the wealthy) are able to get a ¡°reintroduction¡± at regular periods, allowing their lifespans to increase beyond 1000 years. In fact the inventor of the nanites still hasn¡¯t kicked the bucket, even after nearly 1300 years have passed. I am currently cramped up in the crawlspace and feeling unbelievably uncomfortable. Not only am I stuffed inside a crawlspace with barely enough space to fully extend my arm, I am realizing that I forgot to take off my undershirt. The residual heat from the reactor was causing me to sweat rivers on the inside of my suit. I decided to try and find a spot that¡¯s a little bit cooler so I start maneuvering deeper into the crawlspace. ¡°F***!¡± I hold my hand with tears in my eyes as the suit neutralizes the extreme heat that my hand just encountered. I look at the panel that clearly said DO NOT TOUCH in bold red letters and give it the finger using my currently non injured hand. After some time I finally find a section that seems close to the coolant and the surrounding temperature instantly drops to a much more manageable level. I hook myself to the wall and relax my body. I take a gander at my suit¡¯s nutrient supply and nod with satisfaction when I see about two weeks worth of compressed nutrient fluid remaining. A week passes by with only a few more embarrassing moments involving the DANGER panel as well as a couple of incidents where I almost got myself stuck when for some reason I decided to make an attempt to turn around inside the cramped crawlspace. After the ¡°grace period¡± that I had set to myself of one week, I crawl out of the reactor crawlspace that had become my home. I take a look around the engineering section. The space housing the four reactors, each taking up a volume of 100 square meters, is pretty cramped and because walkways become useless after the initial acceleration of the ship is finished, the space is completely covered in handlebars, mooring points, and cables attached throughout the room. I take out my leftover scrap and fashion a small cubicle on the least conspicuous area of the reactor room. Soon a small 2 by 2 meter space is isolated from the surrounding area in between reactors two and four. This cubicle shall be my base of operations until I can find a better spot. I strap myself to the wall and settle down for some rest. When I wake up, I guess I should secure myself a steady food source, starving to death does not sound appealing. Chapter 2: Shenanigans in the Reactor Room I woke up after about 10 hours of sleep and had a light breakfast of nutritional fluid that I still have stored in my suit. I pull on a cable and float up the keel of the ship up to a large door. Suddenly I realized a wee little bit of information that may be incredibly important. The FUCKING DOOR HAS A MOTHERFUCKING ALARM! I then proceed to punch the wall with a great deal of force which then leaves me spinning and floating away from the door in a gloriously uncontrolled fashion. Sadly my suit does not have a Reaction Control System installed so I will have to remain moving in this fashion until one of two things happen. I can hit a wall or cable which would be pretty painful or I can be found by another human being which is honestly not a probable option. After about a minute of not moving a muscle while spinning and floating out of control, I tried to remember the EVA lessons I took before working on the ship. I can¡¯t remember a thing. Wait no, I remember one thing, I can spread myself out to decrease my rate of rotation! I proceed to spread my limbs out and as expected, my rotation rate slows down considerably. I look at my surroundings and I realize that by random chance I am moving in a direction that has no cables to grab onto. As I may have said before, the reactor room is massive. Each reactor being a cylindrical shape with a length of 300 meters and a diameter of 200. The room, in order to fit four of those monstrosities has to be at least 300 by 400 by 400 meters in size. Of course, by my suggestion, it is a bit larger than that so it comes to a cubic room with the side lengths being 400 meters. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Unfortunately I¡¯m moving about .1 meters per second so it may take a little over an hour for me to reach the other side of the room. After about 20 minutes have passed, I have realized something very important. Changing the rate of rotation while floating is surprisingly entertaining! I started to play around with it and I ended up doing a little dance while floating through the reactor room. ~¡±pffft¡±~ I hear this on the com and I freak out a bit. I spread eagle and look back towards the door. At the door I see a person in an EVA suit at the entrance pointing a finger and laughing at me! ~¡±What do you want!¡±~ I say over the comms. ~¡±What are you doing?¡± ~The masculine voice answers, obviously holding in another bout of laughing. ~¡±Nothing really¡± ~I answer. I begin to formulate a lie to prevent myself from being labeled as a stowaway. The person finally calms down. ~¡±Don¡¯t you worry Mr. Stowaway, your secret is safe with me. I¡¯ll come and go every once in awhile so it is a pleasure to meet you!¡±~ And with those suspiciously friendly words he turns around to leave. ~¡±Ah wait!¡±~ He turns to look at me. ~¡±What do you want?¡±~ I say, hoping for some salvation. ~¡±Nope, have fun!¡±~ He says with some mirth as he leaves the room. I sigh to myself and wonder what the hell that guy is thinking about. I also realize that I have another 40 minutes of floating to do so I buckle down to perform another rendition of ¡°The Nutcracker, Space Edition!¡± The 40 minutes passes quickly and I am now really close to the wall. I begin to calibrate my rate of rotation so that I can hit the wall facing it. FUCK! I yell, as I timed it wrong and I am now floating in another random direction because of the very elastic collision I just had with the wall. It seems like this is going to take a while. Chapter 3: Shenanigans by the Lake After a great deal of bouncing around and swearing, I finally get myself in a state where I can control my movements and I come to a stop at the nearest railing. I give a brief thought towards the man who so rudely interrupted me but I quickly put it to the back of my mind as I can worry about that some other time. I have other things to worry about. The chief concern for now is food and water. As they say, a person can as long as they have food, water, and shelter! Unfortunately out of the three I have only secured shelter. A small wave of depression hits me as I take note of my dwindling water and food supply. After some time I decide to make my first steps into the world above. I maneuver myself to the airlock and find that it has been kept unlocked by my new favorite friend, hooray! After some messing around with the control panel, a complete map of the ship shows on the screen. The interior of the ship appears to be fashioned in a very diverse fashion. Remember, the interior is cylindrical making the view from the reactor airlock especially good. With a central shaft running through the middle with spoke poking off in each direction. Above my head, I see large plots of farmland stretching out. To my right, I see a grouping of what look like small communities. Under my feet is a vast lake spreading out and to my left is a dense tropical forest, seeming to be teeming with creatures. As the land in front of me slowly rotates, I ponder on which biome I should choose to sustain myself in. Ah, who cares about that, there¡¯s a freaking lake spread out in front of me! The lake must hold more water than I have seen in person, in my entire life! But before I get too excited there seems to be a slight problem keeping me away from my new paradise.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I am currently sitting 250 meters above a mass of water. Now taking the spin of the cylinder into account, the average acceleration I will feel on free fall is around 4.9 m/s/s. That means It will not be wrong to say I would end up impacting water at a speed of nearly 20 m/s or for you imperials, about 40 mph. Now unfortunately I am incapable of surviving that kind of impact so I will have to think of something else. Oh, I know! I can just use one of the maintenance ladders on one of the spokes! Haha, how convenient is that! It¡¯s almost like I planned it like that! (I didn¡¯t) I then happily start my descent down to the surface of the ring. I also think it is awfully convenient that these ladders are covered, preventing prying eyes from seeing my magnificently thin frame slowly climbing down the ladder. I reach the bottom and decide to test the water and find that¡­ It¡¯s fresh water! Hooray! It seems that either luck is on my side today, or I am a freaking genius that is capable of seeing whether or not a body water is salty or not from a distance. Now I have a new problem, how do I fill up the suit¡¯s reservoirs without specialized equipment? I faintly recall a lesson saying that a suit will have a hand pumping device attached to the pack so I reach behind my back and see a tiny hand pump connected to a bundle of tubes. I stick one end in the water and the other in the water access port and start pumping away. After a solid hour of pumping I decide to take a rest and see the progress that I have made. A small tear drips down my face because the progress bar shows that after ten minutes of nothing but pumping, I have filled the reservoir only up to the amount required for a day. Not that I expected anything else, but to have my fear confirmed is quite brutal. I stop and give myself a good cursing to. I pause, then I sigh and pack up the tubes as I realize that I might need a better way to fill up the tanks. After all I am not really confident enough to be sneaking around for at least two hours every day just to get myself some water. Well, now that I have some extra water, I think it is time for me to get myself some food. I look into the depths of the pool and find that there are a few fish swimming in this lake, maybe I should have a go at some fishing shall I? Chapter 4: Shenanigans for some food Let¡¯s just say that fishing is not going to be a possibility for me. After various attempts using all of my skills and techniques, the damn fishes aint biting! Well, I am willing to admit that my fishing ¡°skills¡± and ¡°techniques¡± can be summed up as nil and zilch so I am not that depressed at my lack of progress here, but it would seem that I will have to find a more reliable source of sustenance if I wish to continue on living. I dismantle my makeshift net (aka my suit torso) and place it back where it belongs (my body) and I climb back up the maintenance spoke to hatch my next plot of ingenuity. Once I reach the top of the spoke I use my immeasurable genius to perform my next task, lying down and catching my breath. What? I¡¯ve been sitting around for the past week, of course I would experience some sort of muscular atrophy! You try climbing 250 meters of ladder in one go! Once my breath is successfully caught, I begin to plan my next great expedition. Stage 1, go to the communes Stage 2, steal some food Stage 3, profit Yup, definitely seems like the most well thought out plan I¡¯ve ever hatched. Maybe I should go to the farms instead? Ah! But you must realize that I can¡¯t even catch a fish much less a chicken or, god forbid, cultivate some crops. I¡¯m a freaking engineer not some farmer!Stolen novel; please report. After deciding that my sneak skill must be considerably higher than my farming skill I decide that stealing from the commune is the most prudent course of action. I walk my way to the nearest commune spoke and make my way down the long ladder. I¡¯m going to do a lot of ladder climbing arn¡¯t I? Once I reach the bottom of the damn ladder I quietly peek my head out of the bottom of the protective covering and observe my surroundings. The spoke comes down in the middle of a large building which I assume to be the town hall? I quickly jump out and utilize my sneakiness to make my way out a door, down a hallway, and into another room. I hunker down in a closet and ask my suit to access the network and pull up a map of the commune and find myself looking at the exact plans for the little town. It would seem that I am looking for the food warehouse and I find it! On the other side of town of course. Woe is me, it would seem that some acting is in order if little me wishes to get to my precious goods. Suddenly, an alert shows up on my suits HUD ==SYSTEM NOTICE== ALL CITIZENS PLEASE REPORT TO MEETING HALL FOR WEEKLY DEBRIEF It would appear that lady luck is finally smiling down upon me! This is the perfect opportunity for me to steal some food while they are preoccupied with their meeting thingy! I slowly make my way out of the town hall and as soon as the streets are clear I make a dash for it. Luckily, I fail to encounter any people so I smoothly make it to the warehouse which, unfortunately for me, is locked. Noticing an open window, I once again wonder how I am being so lucky and climb into the warehouse and promptly land on my ass on the other side. My eyes open wide with delight as before me lies a veritable cornucopia of fresh farm goods, ranging from packages of smoked ham, to boxes of freshly picked blueberries. It would seem that I will be having a feast tonight. Quickly stuffing a couple of kilos of food into a convenient sack, I rush out of the door and sprint to the town hall. Once again, with ever increasing luck, I make it back to the spoke and after climbing up a good 10 meters I stop to give myself a little rest. As my beating heart subsides I begin to make my way back up the ladder and hype myself up for the following few days of laziness and contentment.