Chapter 1: The Stuff of Dreams

She wiped the sweat from her brow. The summer heat by itself was often too much for her, but having to sit in a car baked in the sun for hours was so much worse. At least she was on the way home and that the a/c worked in her car. Not only was she on the way home at the end of a workday, but she had a night of playing Pathfinder 2nd edition with her spouse and friends to look forward to.

Letting out a sigh, she switched to the next song on her fight scene playlist, getting herself pumped and ready for the fight her party’s characters were about to have. With a simple turn of the knob, she pumped up the volume loud enough to drown out the sounds of traffic. Just as she opened her mouth to sing to the song, a screech rang out far louder than her music. Before she could even look around, the impact of the car in her blind spot sent her car spiraling.

“Fu—” Before she could finish the word, her car slammed into the guardrail. The airbags on her sides went off with no issue, but the one on her steering wheel didn’t. A defect missed by the assembler over six years ago now resulted in her head smashing with full force into the steering wheel. There was no pain. No time to even register that the airbag didn’t fire. The world suddenly turned to nothing.

~~~

A vibration ran through the entire ship. One strong enough that it would have been audible if there was any air to conduct the sound. The only light from inside the ship radiated from the strange gold, shifting, and spherical device attached to the floor of the decently sized open area behind the open cockpit. The vibration grew worse as a glowing and floating circle appeared in the air around the device. Spikes grew from the glowing ring and penetrated the shifting gold metal of the sphere.

The glowing ring spun as two more versions of it split off and circled the device at different angles. Faster and faster it went until a blur of spinning rings engulfed the device. The vibration grew and grew until the ship threatened to tear at the seams. The few things that had stayed attached to the walls and floors of the zero gravity environment finally dislodged from their resting places. One of these objects was far larger than the rest. A simple yet elegant silver humanoid service android dislodged from the long dead charging port.

Slowly it flew overhead of the device as one final blinding flash erupted from the sphere. Quickly, the spinning rings disappeared, and the vibration stopped. The still glowing sphere opened at the top as it released a small golden glowing orb. As the orb left the chamber, all the device’s glow died. Flying gently upwards as if on command, it rose to the android floating above. Timing was not on the side of the collision as the two objects sailed past each other with only an inch to spare.

With the miss, the orb floated up towards the glass ceiling of the ship. As it almost hit the ceiling, the orb suddenly stopped. It spun around as if to stare at the passing android, then after a few seconds of stillness it zoomed towards the robot. As the orb connected with the back of the android, it melded through the outer silver layer and into the core of the humanoid figure.

She gasped in panic, but she made no sound. No air filled any lungs. Only a phantom body provided any sensation. Her mind was telling her that her body was there, but there was no input at all. The world around her wasn’t even dark, there was just no sight.

Oh, no no no no. This can ’t be happening. Please, someone help!

Had the crash put her into a coma? Was she going to be this way, with no senses, forever? Or would death hopefully take her sooner? If it didn't, was there a way she could live in this state without going insane? Panic rose up inside her as her mind struggled to process that new, rampant emotion.

An electric jolt ran through her phantom being, and it came with a strange sense of relief. She had felt something more than just an emotion. It was a physical feeling. Then there was another and another. Part of her was moving. She couldn’t feel that in the way she would have with her body normally, but there was some part of her mind registering that she was physically moving.

Thank the gods. Thank the gods!

A flash of bright amber light filled her vision. It quickly died away, and the world, instead of fading to nothing, faded to black. Slowly, ever so slowly, that blackness turned to a gentle amber as shapes started to appear before her. Blurry at first, but her vision grew, so did her sense of physical movement. Not only that, but there was a new sense telling her that she was floating. Panic started to fill her again.

Okay, okay. Calm down. Let ’s just take this one step at a time.

Her thoughts did little to help calm the emotions inside her. Nor did her growing vision. It was all tinted amber still, but the world became clearer. She was looking at a white and silver metal wall filled with dead screens, a barrage of buttons, and closed panels. Where the hell was she?

The shocks were still running through her, but now every time she felt her body twitch, and move with it. She tried to take control, but her body wasn’t responding the way it used to. Finally, she noticed that she was encroaching on the wall slowly, but there was nothing she could do to stop herself. She couldn’t even put her arms up to brace herself on the tediously slow impact.

I ’m just going to have to deal with this, aren’t I?

She tried her hardest to move before her face banged against one screen, but it never happened. At least in any meaningful way to stop herself. The impact wasn’t hard. In fact, she barely felt anything but the light pressure of it. There was no touch sensitivity in her face.

Did the car accident numb her? Even if it did, that wouldn’t explain how the hell she found herself floating and staring at the most sci-fi wall she had ever seen. The accident didn’t explain why her vision was entirely amber-tinted. There was one explanation that her storyteller mind came up with.

Please don ’t tell me I’ve been isekaied. Don’t tell me I’ve been isekaied! Please, I have a spouse! Kindred! Family! Friends! Stories to finish…

The panic again grew inside of her to a level that typically caused her to have a meltdown. Mentally, she was starting to have a meltdown, but oddly enough, not being able to move her body was helpful in preventing her from physically harming herself.

A new shock ran through her, but this time in her mind and not her body. Pain filled her mind as she felt something fighting against her. The fight only lasted a second before whatever had been opposing her lost.

What the fuck was that?

She reached up to rub her head even if the pain had fully disappeared. Only when her hand touched her smooth head did she realize she had moved her arm of her own volition. Her whole body stiffened at the realization that she was in control of her body. She would have sighed in relief, but she couldn’t breathe. Panic might have consumed her if she hadn’t realized she hadn’t taken a single breath this entire time. Theories began to bounce around in her head of what might be going on, but she didn’t need to think of theories now. With freedom of movement, she could explore and find out.

Before turning her head, she wished she could have taken a deep breath to steady herself. At least her heart wasn’t pounding as hard as it should be. Wait, she couldn’t feel it beating at all. Something to panic more about later, but for now it was time to look around. The strangest thing was that instead of looking from side to side, she looked up instead.

Wow …

An inky black sky lit up by millions upon millions of stars filled her view. Gone was the amber hue as she watched the imperceptibly slow spinning of galaxies, the bursts of supernovas, and subtle disappearances of stars passing through the event horizon of a black hole. In her twenty-eight years of life, this was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. So beautiful that she would have cried if she could have.

This is the stuff of dreams.

Too long had passed watching the stars go by before she managed to tear her eyes away from the glass ceiling. Following the ceiling to her side, she found an open cockpit of what could only be a starship. Three white and silver chairs sat in a triangle in front glass nose that gave a full hemisphere of visibility.

Almost like the Cobra Mk V in Elite Dangerous, but better.

A jolt of impact on her back made her realize she was still, in fact, floating. Quickly, she did her best to spin around in the no gravity environment before reaching out to grab onto anything. Thankfully, there was a small handle she could grab onto set at the top of a long rectangular panel. The only downside was she finally saw her hand and arm. It was almost classic chrome silver, and a strange robotic mix of clockwork and cyberpunk aesthetic. Slowly, her eyes scanned down her arm and to her body. She was an androgynous, and silver robot.

Dysphoria was something she had known all her life, even well into her transition. That word wouldn’t even begin to describe the way this body made her feel. With her free hand, she ran it over her new unclothed form. A body like this didn’t need clothes, but she felt so naked without them. As her new metal hand ran across her torso, she could feel that there was pressure from both sides of the contact and acknowledge the touch, but there wasn’t any sort of touch sensitivity. She could feel no texture on either side, nor temperature.

Though she no longer had the breasts she worked so hard on growing, or the genitals she had paid thousands of dollars for, the strangest thing she missed about her body was her toes. This one had no toes, just what looked like metal shoes. Her body started to shake as she continued to look down at herself. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t her.

Fuck …

It was at least half an hour of staring down at her body with her mind in a panicked blankness before she finally managed to take control again. Breaking down wasn’t going to help her find a way home. If she could go home… How many isekais had she seen where the main character finds out only at the end of their journey that there’s no going home? How many sci-fi isekais had she seen where the main character got to go home? Even better question, how many sci-fi isekais had she even seen? The only one she could really think about was that one on the website she posted her stories to. Waking up as a Spaceship , or something like that. One that sadly never got an end.

Does Futurama count as an isekai? It ’s technically just the future, but still.

The desire to find a way home and the desire to accept that there might never be a way home fought inside of her. Her eyes drifted back up to the glass ceiling as she tried to find a truce between those two feelings. Something she had only ever seen in stories had just happened to her, and regardless of whether those stories had any merit to her predicament, she was still here. In a universe potentially not her own. One that she might have no understanding of. A reality where there was nothing she felt she could trust right now. Deep down there was a scared part of her that worried she couldn’t even trust her own memories, just like that one story…

Her mind drifted back to her own stories. The chapters that would never get uploaded. The tales of love that would never be finished. Was this the end to her own personal love story?

No, my love for them won ’t die nor be forgotten, even if we are to never be together again. My story doesn’t end here.

A resolve settled inside of her. One that told her that whatever may come, her spouse wouldn’t want this to be her downfall. Whether there was a chance of going home or the need to accept a new life with never going back, she wasn’t going to get anywhere if she didn’t understand what was going on right now.

Let’s get to work.

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