Starsnatcher - Trapped In An Alien World [COMPLETE]

Chapter 1.5

Day 1-2

This morning, my alarm clock didn't work. Not that I was complaining. I mean, what was I supposed to do anyway? Get up to check my emails and learn I've been fired because the kitchen shift went terribly? Nah, I'd rather make up for the sleepless last night.

But to be honest, I wasn't feeling all that good. My bed linen was softer and smoother than usual, but the pillow was much harder and more uncomfortable. The brightness was disturbing, too. For some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to drag me outside so that I could wake up under the pale blue sky. Judging by the redness of the Sun it was still early in the morning. On the other hand, it was too close to the zenith for it to be morning.

What was this? Did someone drag me outside for a grill party?

Time to lift my head and look.

Instead of a grill, I merely saw a rock wall. Instead of lying in my bed, I was lying on dried mud. And instead of my pajamas, I wore a gray, rubbery spacesuit with gloves, boots, and everything. That thing behind my shoulders must have been a backpack and that "hard pillow" was my transparent helmet then.

My heart raced. Was I dreaming? Was I on Mars or something? Just recently, I dreamed of a UFO, and now this?

I tried to pinch myself, but the suit was too thick for that.

I pressed my hands against the ground to get up. Everything was painless at first, with no trace of a shattered knee. But despite not being painful per se, getting up was exhausting, almost as if someone had increased gravity overnight. I couldn't stand yet, only sit and pant, my back bent.

Slowly, I adjusted. Was the gravity really higher or had I only imagined it? Or was it perhaps only a bit above what I was used to?

The rock wall before me was part of a hill, or at least the side of the hill that was facing me. From my vantage point, I could roughly estimate its distance and height at thirty feet. It consisted of layers of earth that alternated between pink and brown. Was there such a thing on Mars?

The dried mud I was sitting on was definitely light brown rather than red. Judging from the "normal" atmosphere, I wasn't on Venus either. I would have burned to a cinder on Mercury and from the Jupiter and Saturn moons, the Sun would have been much smaller than it appeared here.

The cracked mudstone on which I lay was surrounded by a sandy desert. Thus, my sitting place was essentially a dried-out lake. At the horizon, a mountain range rose into the air and from it, a huge mud fan spread out onto the ground. Very earthly here.

Did I land in some sort of sci-fi movie where the creators filmed their "alien planet" in their garden? Or did some rich pranksters abduct me into an earthly desert? I could have taken off my helmet to test the air had it not been so risky.

When I tried to walk, something dragged behind me.

A parachute was attached to my backpack. With the black ropes connected to a floor-sized white tarpaulin, it didn't look alien-made in the slightest. To be fair, it's not like the laws of aerodynamics permit any exotic design imaginable.

Given the lack of spacecraft nearby and the parachute, I must have been dropped from a high altitude.

Assuming this was real and no dream.

Okay, okay, let's assume this is for real. What was the point of this? I mean, these creatures weren't even trying to cut me up or anything? Did they want to see how a random human would survive on a planet that looked just like Earth?

When I untied the parachute from my backpack, I noticed a pouch attached to the plane. My laptop was inside. So were my flashlight, my camera, and the green singularity stone.