In the dark, freezing cold of space, koji woke up musing.
Where am I? A sea of magnificent stars swirled before him, vast and incomprehensible. He had never witnessed such a sight in all his life.
"What in the world?" Koji muttered.
Stars, nebulas, even clusters of asteroids wound through the heavens, so close he could almost reach out and touch them. But how could that be? No vantage point on Earth allowed a view like this. Somehow, he could see asteroids with nothing but the naked eye. It felt like something out of a movie or video game.
"Am I dreaming? But this cold..." The chill pierced right down into his bones, too real to deny, as was the anxiety churning in his stomach. "Where even am I?"
He couldn't make out much beyond the dazzling celestial display before him. It felt like he was somewhere small, somewhere confined.
A belt or strap of some sort kept him tethered to a chair, sending a bolt of panic through his rising anxiety. Am I being detained?
What the heck is going on?! Koji panicked, jerking in the chair until his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness.
"This is..." There was something familiar about this place. He had seen this room—no, this cockpit—before. "This is the cockpit of that ship from my video game, the Warhawk. Am I dreaming?"
Koji searched for a more reasonable explanation, but everything about the space around him screamed that this really was the cockpit of his beloved spaceship Warhawk from Astria Online.
The mixture of online action and soft sci-fi flavor in Astria Online had kept him hooked for years. On top of that, the game offered players unparalleled freedom to adventure through a vast universe.
Nowhere else could one navigate battlefields as a mercenary,
participate in trade as the owner of a container ship, or embark on just about any other adventure imaginable. The sky was decidedly not the limit in this game; every player got to invent their own style and
play in their own way.
Koji played as a standard mercenary and started off mostly doing
random odd jobs like pack-muling so he could save up to buy a ship
built for battle. Once he obtained a powerful enough ship, he went
right back to mercenary work, until he could afford the next ship, and
so on.
His current love, the Warhawk, was a state-of-the-art machine
that Koji obtained from an in-game event a few months back. The ASX-08
Warhawk stood out even in a game with dozens and dozens of ships
to choose from. It combined the maneuverability of a small craft
with the firepower of a heavy cruiser. His Warhawk could even take on
a battleship.
"But dang, it's cold," he said. Koji used the touchscreen control panel
to activate the main generator and bring life support systems back
online. Warm air rushed into the cockpit. The system's status screen
showed oxygen levels rising after dipping terrifyingly low. The
temperature, which had started just below –5° Celsius, also ticked
upward.
"Phew, that was close. If I hadn't woken up, I would have suffocated." Crisis (narrowly) averted.
Koji seriously didn't get what was going on. He crossed his arms and
surveyed the now-lit-and-warming cockpit. No matter how many
times he blinked or pinched himself, the truth remained clear—this was
definitely, absolutely, undoubtedly the cockpit of his beloved
spaceship from Astria Online.
Dreaming of the game he obsessed over was one thing. If one
played horror games enough, one started having nightmares. If one
played sword-and-sorcery RPGs, suddenly one dreamed of being the hero yourself.
Most gamers could relate. But this was on a whole 'nother level.
"So, what? Is this a lucid dream or something?"
Koji had heard of lucid
dreams before, dreams so intense and real that one knew they were dreaming. But from what he remembered, people woke up the second they understood what was happening—and Koji sure wasn't waking up.
Worse, the gradually rising temperature of the cockpit felt way too
real and tangible to be part of a dream.
"Hmm." Koji searched for an explanation but came up empty.
He even slapped his cheeks, but all it did was sting a little. Was this
really not a dream? Nuh-uh. No way. That couldn't be. "The controls are surprisingly simple," Koji said. Out of other ideas,
Koji tried piloting the Warhawk.
The control column and foot pedals
confused him at first, but once he visualized them like a keyboard and mouse, it clicked into place. Now that Koji understood the machine, he could even make precise movements.
"Still not waking up yet, huh?"
Koji accelerated and decelerated repeatedly. Each time, he'd sink
back into the seat, then jolt forward into the seatbelt. Even that
wasn't enough to wake him up, though.
"Okay, fine. Daddy's gonna fire off some weapons, then!"
Maybe Koji was going crazy. Maybe he'd just lost any hope of waking up.
Either way, Koji brought the weapons systems online and activated the
armaments.
The ship changed shape around him, revealing four
weapon arms. Powerful, military-standard heavy pulse lasers
extended from the hull. These were the strongest of the heavy laser
weapons in Astria Online—and Koji had four of them!
Two gun barrels also jutted from the sides of the cockpit.
These "flake cannons," as they were called in the game, operated like
shotguns with spread fire. That kind of firepower made them the Superior point-blank weapon as far as Koji was concerned. Most small craft would explode after just two shots.
Koji had one more ace up his sleeve, but now wasn't the time to test-fire it. The ammo cost was exorbitant.
"Fire in the hooole!" Koji let loose on a nearby asteroid with four
heavy pulse lasers. "Whoa?!" Four green beams of light shot straight
toward their targets, obliterating the asteroid in a single volley.
Fragments of the asteroid scattered in all directions, pinging against
the Warhawk's shields. With each impact, the shields flickered.
"That was stronger than I expected," Koji said in amazement.
This was the true power of the heavy pulse laser, a weapon that could
melt a battleship's shields in an instant and totally wreck the ship
itself. It was no joke…and speaking of jokes, at this point, there was
no more laughing this off.
Koji had to face reality: "This isn't a dream. It's real."