Voidwalker Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Awaken

It came without warning.

One moment I was sleeping, and I knew that I was because I had been dreaming. One of those dreams with no meaning, as everything jumbled together in a mashed-up cavalcade of nonsense.

Next, I felt pain. Intense pain that covered my very being. Everything hurt, and I felt every muscle in my body tighten up to the point where they were solid as stone.

Then it stopped, and the pain went away. I felt myself standing upright.

I opened my eyes, and everything was white. It hurt to look at… I felt like I was floating in the air…

Begin Initialization? [Y/N]…[Y]

White suddenly began to change and it was now yellowish green. That’s…the sky. It was full of stars.

I blinked. I felt my eyes. My face shift as my brows furrowed, and slowly looked down and around. I wasn’t at home, in my bed.

“Commencing Atlas Suit Initialization”

I tensed when I heard the voice, and my awareness of my environment grew quickly. There was nothing but a snow-covered landscape around me, with skies darkened with thick clouds. I felt somewhat at ease with familiarity of my surroundings, but even so…

“Where the hell am I?”

“Life support systems, activated”

Letters and words appeared in my vision, and I realized I was wearing a helmet. I raised my hands, and saw they were gloved. Looking down to my feet, I saw the glowing chest plate and suit. White with orange highlights and blue trim.

“The hell am I wearing?”

“Shield kinetic system, online”

My vision glowed for a moment as new indicators appeared in my vision, or rather in my HUD as I realized what I was looking at.

“Ariel Propulsion Jetpack, online.”

I blinked at the new icons. “Jet pack?” I asked as I turned my head and jerked back when I saw a camera staring at me, before it moved back and blinked.

“Uhh…”

“Multi-tool and Mining Laser attachment, operational.”

Hearing a beeping from my right hip, I looked down, and saw the gun-shaped device suddenly appear in my hand.

Slowly, I held it before me as my thoughts finally caught up with the present, and something clicked. I knew this device. I have seen it before. Turning it over, it was on the edge of my tongue, but my thoughts were interrupted.

“Thermal Protection, falling.”

I blinked; I had been dealing with so many things at the moment that I had dismissed the fact I was in a wintery locale. Looking over my HUD, I saw the temperature gauge and I was boggled.

“Minus seventy degrees Fahrenheit?!” I shouted. That temperature was enough to kill via exposure within a few minutes, unless you wore properly insulated clothing. Not cheap crap either, but full on suits with thermal layers.

I watched as the “shield” was draining and I was at a loss of what I could do about it, only for the HUD to prompt me to do a scan.

“…Hold up.” I murmured as I calmly looked onto the HUD. The familiarity of it all suddenly hit me. A chill going traveled down my spine, before causing my stomach to drop as I looked my suited body over, finally finishing with a glance at the orb-like camera that hung off my left shoulder from the backpack.

A part of me wanted to call bullshit on this whole situation. On the other hand…

Pointing and firing the device I held, a bright green beam flashed out. I jumped lightly in shock, but was otherwise grimly accepting of what I now know to be true.

“Alright…somehow…someway…I am now in No Man’s Sky.”

“Alert. Thermal Protection, falling”

“…and I’m about to die by freezing to death.” I groused.

I had to get my head on straight and deal with the problems I had before me, and right now that was a failing shield. I had to scan for Sodium.

“Okay. Since I’m in NMS, first thing I need is to figure out how to use this system of mine.”

An icon of a scanner appeared on the center of the HUD, and I quizzically starred at it. A small circle appeared and filled slowly, before finally being filled and activating the feature.

Only for it to fail.

“Oh, come on! We’re doing the tutorial stuff?! Ugh, Fine! Let’s be quick about this!”

An icon of the multi-tool flashed on the side of the HUD, and I stared at it, but as the circle icon began to fill, I wanted it to just open. In that instant, the circle filled and opened quickly.

“Oh, so it’s not just based on looking at it, but my intent? Oh…right, AI and mind/machine interface.”

Soon enough I looked at the scanner and found it needed materials, of which was just ferrite dust.

“Right. So, I’ll get that but first.” I said out loud as I backed out and looked over the empty spaces of the multi-tool. I had expected options to build new things to open, but nothing happened for several seconds.

“Nothing?”

No answer came, and I exited out of the multi-tool display. Glancing around me, there was nothing but snow. Of course, given I was knee deep in it, I had to assume this was more like reality than the game. So, I fired into the snow.

It melted through it in seconds, and for six seconds it kept burning through, letting off steam which melted more snow above, and creating warm water which froze almost immediately after it flowed. Finally, it hit the ground, and my HUD showed it was hitting something, which then burst apart into dust, and was soon absorbed into my inventory.

“What the hell?”

My HUD alerted me that the inventory now carried Ferrite Dust, but also Silicon Dust, and Aluminum? I was also not getting dozens of units of each element, but one to five points of each.

“That’s different…” I murmured, suspicion filling my mind before I got back to it. Soon enough, I had melted a circular hole into the snow that revealed the ground beneath. I continued to melt snow, and gather materials, and found what appeared to be dead plants. Grass, and small bushes. Using the multi-tool on them, I found myself gaining Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon all at once, but in single digits.

The points of various items began to add up, and it was not just the big objects, but anything the laser brushed over was taken apart at the molecular level. I nodded to myself; a thought having been confirmed.

“If this is all real now, then it makes sense that it would be survival mode in terms of how things are. Breaking down everything rather than just specific game objects, and only getting a small amount of everything as the clutter is dealt away with. Not all the dust of whatever I break down is useful, or in abundance.”

I took a pause as the suit alerted me that I had enough Ferrite to repair the scanner. Glancing over at the shield, it was around seventy nine percent, so not as dangerous as I thought initially. I suppose that’s another difference between the game and real.

Opening the multi-tool window upon my HUD, I looked upon the scanner, which expanded with the required icons to repair it. With a look, the icon flashed, and my suit applied the fix. A circle filled up over a second, and the familiar sound of application showed the task was complete.

With that done, I returned to my normal view, and was about to glance at the scanner icon, before realizing that the suit could read my intent. I thought ‘Scan’, and a sudden flash of a scan-wave filled my view.

“Nice!” I grinned. So I didn’t actually need to look at icons, they just were there in case I wanted them.

“Scan Complete.” The AI announced, and I saw a handful of icons of objects with high oxygen and hydrogen content. No Sodium anywhere.

“Shit. If I cannot charge my shield I will have to…wait a minute.”

With a thought, I opened my “Construction” menu, and grinned when I saw I had some things in there already. The most important things were the base computer, portable refiner. With those, I could get started on making more of everything.

Before that however, I checked my multi-tool to see if I could install new tools upon it. All of the starting tools could be placed, including the terrain manipulator. With a small cheer, I installed all of them, and began the process of getting the materials I needed to finish them.

Only to stop as I realized with growing horror that I couldn’t make some of these. Specifically the Terrain Manipulator.

“I need Di-hydrogen Jelly…and there’s no such thing as Di-Hydrogen occurring naturally. That’s a game thing.”

I glanced at the shield, now at seventy five percent. “Okay…let’s not freak out. Let’s work it out. What can I do?”

There wasn’t much I could do, but maybe…wait. I have Hydrogen. Di-Hydrogen is two hydrogen molecules bonded together. The refiner…

“Can it do that? Force Hydrogen to become Di-Hydrogen? It can make Carbon into Condensed Carbon…and Di-Hydrogen into Jelly. So, why not?”

Not having enough materials, I mined the ground beneath the snow for more, melting more snow into water in the process, and by the time I reached sixty percent on the shield, I had enough to construct a portable refiner.

“Alright. Let’s make this here.”

I saw the red visual representation of the refiner in my HUD, just as it was in game before you built something. Placing it where I wanted, I entered the command, and in an instant, it was constructed before me.

“Woah! That is so cool!” I cheered as I witnessed nano-construction in progress. With it finished, I touched it, feeling the solid casing of the device. It was real enough.

“Nice.”

I gave it what Carbon I was able to give it, remembering to use what’s left to recharge the mining laser, and used the HUD control system to place the Hydrogen into the refiner. To my relief, it could make Hydrogen into Di-Hydrogen, at a two to one ratio. I began the process, and it took about ten seconds to turn forty hydrogen units into twenty Di-Hydrogen.

“Alright. I have the means. Let’s get back to it then.”

Putting the refiner into my inventory, I began mining again. My shield lowered to sixty five percent by the time I had enough to make the jelly, which I used the refiner to make since it took only thirty units instead of the forty the inventory required.

I watched the refiner spin, giving off a blue mist as it did its work and created the jelly. Upon finishing, I placed both the jelly and refiner back into the inventory, and finished the Terrain Manipulator.

“Alright…I’m not a dwarf, but I’m digging a hole.” I grinned, as I pointed down at an angle, and fired.

The ground, covered in ice melted from the snow I hit with the mining laser, shattered like a gunshot, and the ground was suddenly, and violently, shoved downward. I yelped in a fright, not expecting that, but kept going and soon had a tunnel going into the ground. I also gained a decent amount of silicon dust.

“That seems to be true to the game.” I noted as I began walking down. I felt out to the wall and touched it, finding it was solid as rock. I had a few theories about how the Terrain Manipulator worked, but I did not actually know how it functioned beyond that it broke down molecular bonds like the mining laser, but in a wide range as opposed to a focused beam. When I get things under control I’ll try to see if the sit can give me details about it.

I glanced at the shield, now sixty percent, but the temperature was still extremely cold, though now only negative sixty. With a hum, I turned around, changed over to create mode, and sealed the tunnel behind me. My flashlight was all that kept the light in this place now.

“Shield Stabilizing.”

“Ah. So it worked…Let’s make this bigger.”

I reopened the tunnel, turned around, and switched the diameter of the mining mode to its largest, and dug. Now there was a tunnel that was three times larger than before, going on for sixty meters. I then sealed the tunnel again.

“Noice.” I nodded.

Sitting down, no longer worried about freezing to death, I just…allowed myself to think. I basically hit the ground running, working on a lot of assumptions, but I hadn’t given it any thought of how exactly I got into this situation to begin with.

So…I’m somewhere, I don’t know if it’s on Earth or another planet entirely, and I have the technology of No Man’s Sky. Putting the technology, the world around me, my current situation, there’s a lot to unpack here.

Almost too much to unpack really. Atlas, what it really is. The universe it created. The players who got stuck in the simulation when their real bodies were cut off and died. The creator of the AI being the Anomaly, the main character of No Man’s Sky, and the Last Traveler. The distortions in the simulation causing glitches, which caused entire worlds to look weird.

The Sentinels, their whole plan to basically copy everything and everyone into the “World of Glass”, or in actuality, an external hard drive unit separate from Atlas, where they all can survive Atlas’s inevitable breakdown.

The three races, Vykeen, Korvax, Gek. Their lore and stories, and how it all connects because of Atlas’s breaking down. Korvax Prime dies because of the First Spawn invading, this causes the Sentinels to freak out and try to preserve all worlds to prevent a second Korvax Prime. In turn they go over the line in conservation of the universe, and destroy entire civilizations. The Vykeen declare an unending war upon the Sentinels because of the Sentinels conservationism, and fight the Atlas after a vision given to the two figures of their faith and history. The Korvax, after being conquered by the First Spawn sacrifice some of themselves to change the First Spawn into the Mercentile Gek, and create the Convergence to replace Korvax Prime.

That’s not even taking the likes of Null into account, or the semi-insane AI that was meant to monitor Atlas being shoved into the Exo-suit of the Traveler, which could be in this suit as well.

My anxiety made me try to rub my face, only to remember I was wearing a helmet. Dammit.

“Be really nice if that girl would call me right now?” I said aloud, hoping Atlas took the hint and appeared in some way. After a minute, I grumbled.

“Of course not. That’d be too easy.” I said dryly.

With no answer’s forthcoming, I stood up and decided to focus on the here and now. I’ll deal with the potential existential horror that is now my current self later.

I began to work on the multi-tool. I quickly realized I couldn’t actually finish anything except the Analysis Visor, as everything required materials I just didn’t have. The visor would point me in the right direction if it worked properly though.

“Alright. Let’s try this.”

Turning on the visor, my HUD shifted, and I saw…nearly nothing. There was practically nothing around me in any direction, save what appears to be a deposit of…

My eyes boggled. “Holy Shit, Activated Indium!”

I had no idea where I was going to get minerals to make Chromatic Metals, save copper, but the nearby Activated Indium deposit near the surface, about five hundred meters away on the surface, will solve that problem handily.

Multi-Tool in hand, I began to tunnel towards the deposit. Base Building, here I come.