The Spacefaring Diary of an Isekai'd Earthling, Vol. 1

By Collins Lok

The protagonist woke up to find that he was in a light novel situation: transported to another world.
Except this other world is a highly advanced, spacefaring civilization.
Join us, as we take a sneak peek into the protagonist's struggles as he ventures into the unknown, armed with nothing but a bunch of half-baked knowledge he learned from Earth, and a semi-lackadaisical approach to deal with just about anything this new world would throw at him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Collins Lok
• Release date: Sep 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005029531

Collins Lok

I'm just a novice light novel author trying to figure out self-publishing.I write just about anything that's fiction. I mean anything. Why not? It's not nice to discriminate, right?

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COPYRIGHT

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE SPACEFARING DIARY OF AN ISEKAI’D EARTHLING, vol. 1

Copyright © 2022 by Collins Lok

Cover image by vectorpouch on Freepik

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

First eBook edition September 2022.

Published by Collins Lok

[e-mail]

PROLOGUE

How did I end up here?

Wait, that’s not the right question. That’s not the right first question.

Where the heck is here?

Where am I?

I woke up feeling sore on my back. I opened my eyes, looked around and found myself sitting on an uncharacteristically large executive chair of some sort, in a dimly lit and unfamiliar environment.

There was a large screen terminal of some sort in front of me, with a bunch of buttons lined up on both sides of the screen.

Am I inside a first-class cabin of a long-haul flight?

I tried to remember what happened that led to me being inside a passenger flight like this, but couldn’t recall anything. The last thing I remember was hosting a drinking party with some friends at home. I was chugging down a couple pints until I…

Wait a second. I don’t remember passing out. I don’t even remember being close to passing out.

What the fuck happened? I can’t have passed out just from a couple pints. That’s impossible for me.

As I began to collect myself, I started to take stock of my surrounding. I realized this was not how a first-class flight cabin would look like. A flight cabin would not have a large window in front of the passenger, staring out into the night sky.

It didn’t even look like the night sky. It was almost complete pitch-black darkness. Almost, because there were a few specks of tiny bright dots.

Doesn’t this look like something the astronauts would see from the ISS?

So, I’m actually inside the cockpit of a spaceship? Is this some sort of newly developed, super realistic VR simulation?

Fuck this shit.

This was starting to feel kind of freaky. How the hell did I end up here? Was I kidnapped and currently being held hostage in a prototype of the latest Universal Studios joyride or something?

I decided that my most immediate concern was to get out of this place. So, I turned around and began looking for an exit. I quickly found something that resembled a door at the end of a short corridor. It was a door that looked remarkably like something you’d normally see in fictional spacecraft images.

Have you watched that movie The Martian? There was that scene where Matt opened the door but got shot out of his Hab right? The door in front of me looked exactly like that door.

Seriously, an airlock?

Anyway, there was no other doors that I could find, so I thought this should be the exit I needed. There was an [OPEN] button right next to the airlock, so I quickly went over and pressed it.

There was a whoosh and the airlock door opened… was not what happened.

Instead, a buzzer blared and a computerized voice delivered this message.

SECURE DOCKING NOT DETECTED, AIRLOCK OPEN DISABLED.

What?

CHAPTER 1

DAY 1 – 16.5.2025

I’m fucked.

No, seriously, I am so fucked.

I’m being held hostage inside a spaceship. I think.

No, that doesn’t make much sense, does it?

I believe a more likely explanation would be that someone has locked me up inside this facility which is made to look like a futuristic spaceship.

After hearing the AIRLOCK OPEN DISABLED message, I did exactly what everybody else would do.

I freaked out. Big time.

What do you mean disabled? Stop fucking with me!

After freaking out for like, a minute or two, I calmed down a little. I began to look around for another exit. I found a few doors along the corridor. Those doors did open, but my excitement was short lived. Instead of opening into an exit, they opened into a bedroom, a bathroom and a pantry shelf respectively.

And then I arrived back at the cockpit and had another bout of freaking out. It seems that that airlock is the only door out of this place.

Losing both patience and mental fortitude at the same time, I decided to try and brute force the airlock door open.

There was no knob or latch of any kind. So, I pushed on the door. I pushed really hard. I pushed really hard for a few minutes.

When that didn’t work, I looked for a lever but couldn’t find one, so tried forcefully slide the door by hand. I tried to slide four ways, up down left and right.

When that too didn’t work, I punched the door for a few minutes. No, not really. I punched the door once and quickly realized that there was no punching open that door. It was a thick and sturdy metallic door.

When my attempts to open the airlock door failed, I started to freak out even more seriously.

There was only one thing left to do.

I shouted. I was hoping that whoever outside would open the door for me.

That didn’t work either. There was no response even after an hour of sporadic shouting.

Dejected, I went back to the cockpit and sat down to collect my thoughts. It was then that I found my smartphone still inside my left pocket.

I was delighted. Even in places with no reception, dialing 999 should still be possible.

But the delight was short lived. As it turned out, there was indeed no reception. And then, like a slap on my face and a punch to my gut simultaneously, 999 didn’t work.

This is my current fucked up predicament. Held hostage inside a spaceship joyride with no means to get out and no way to contact anyone on the outside. I’m recording this log into my smartphone. Worst case scenario, I might die, and then someone might find this and know what actually happened to me.

Also, if you are watching me, my dear kidnappers, if you want to discuss ransom, isn’t now about time to reveal yourself? You guys know the only one who has access to my money is me alone, don’t you?

After sulking for what felt like an eternity, with nothing better to do, I decided to investigate this spaceship much more thoroughly. It was more in the hopes that I might discover something I overlooked earlier, something that might lead to me getting the hell out of wherever this is.

I sat down at the cockpit and fiddled with the screen terminal. The operating system was easy enough to understand. I mean, I’ve played a couple of space exploration based online games. This looks pretty similar to the in-game screen of those games.

I found the controls for [SHIP INTERIOR] and quickly ramped up the internal temperature. The effect was shocking. Within 5 seconds the ship’s environment quickly warmed up and stabilized. Seriously, what is with this almost instantaneous change? Do air-conditioners work so quickly? That was like, super impressive!

Unfortunately, this also means bad news. Since the temperature controls seem real, does this mean all the other controls are real too? I saw [WEAPONS] and [NAVIGATION] too.

I decided to try [WEAPONS] next. Upon activating that system, the entire screen turned into the view out the window, with two target cursors overlaid on two specific spots. The Shoot button lit up as well.

Seeing this, there was really only one thing to do, right?

So, I pressed the Shoot button. Immediately I felt the ship shake lightly. And then I saw four streaks of light shoot out. Two on screen and two outside the window.

Shit, this feels very real too!

No, don’t panic yet, a high-tech VR based 3D joyride could reproduce such vibrations, I think.

Unfortunately, there was nothing in my line of sight except for empty space, so what was presumably laser shots had nothing to hit and disappeared into nothingness.

I’ll leave playing with guns alone for now.

I then switched to the [NAVIGATION] system. This time, a map of the solar system showed up on screen. There was a big bright