Era of Madness

The mistakes you can't fix 1

4 years earlier

Light, blinding light. Light that ended everything. His family, his friends, his colleagues, everyone was gone.

His small spaceship, that might as well be called a space cabin due to how small it was, kept drifting in space. He desperately tried to stabilize its trajectory, but to seemingly no avail. Eventually, his mini-spaceship hit the Outercoat of a nearby planet. Happily, the small spaceship was far more resistant than the current average spaceship, and remained in one piece, successfully getting through the Outercoat.

Still, it wouldn't change the final result if he didn't manage to put the ship back on tract before crashing: a violent death. Pushed by despair, he did absolutely everything he could to try recovering the ship's control. Eventually, he managed to take back control, but it was already too late: the small spaceship was already too close to the ground.

Therefore, he instead focused all his efforts, focus, and the bit of strength he had left to try and control the fall to make it non-lethal. At the last moment, he managed to eject himself with a parachute. Fortunately, he was still high in the air when the ship exploded down below, but he was still blown away by the explosion. Miraculously, the parachute didn't get ripped to bit and not only remained impact, but also still functionnal.

However, it didn't make the impact upon connecting with the ground less brutal, and he passed out from the shock and exhaustion.

"AAAAAAH!"

John screamed as he suddenly opened his eyes, extricated himself from the parachute and sat up. Breathing loudly and panting, he looked around. This... everything around him... it all looked so different...

Suddenly remembering something, he looked upward and saw them: the stars.

Where John lived before, he could never get any occasion to see the stars, but now here they were.

"Why..."

As he kept looking upward, tears started flowing off his eyes. Not tears of happiness: stars were just numerous blazing suns all over the cosmos, and to him they were nothing more than bright points in the sky, and potential dangers if he ever travelled to space again.

"Why..."

No, he cried because he knew that if there were stars around, it meant that he had successfully escaped. And that all of this was not a dream, that he would never see any of the people or place he had known ever again. It was all gone and now, he was all alone.

"Fuck, why did it have to happen! Why, why, why?!"

He kept sobbing.

"Why..."

He was so devastated, in such emotionnal and psychological distress, that he couldn't even perceive what was happening around him. He didn't even noticed the loud alarms ringing around, and the heavy footstep that were quickly approaching. He only ended up snapping out of his transe when a loud shout rang around:

"Hands up and on your knees! No sudden moves! Faster than that, or your skull gets it!"

Oh. Of course a spaceship crashing on the planet wouldn't go unnoticed. At least, it meant that the planet was liveable. Now, it was another question if he could live much longer on it, considering that there were a dozen people holding him at gunpoint.

As peacefully and slowly he was able to in his current state, as his entire body was shaking and especially his hands, he put the formers up and got on his knees without resistance, all while analysing the surroundings. No matter how much he thought about it, in his current situation, there was no way to get out of it.