“All locks are decoupled, you're free to go. Safe voyage,” came the standard message from traffic control.

  Grant flipped the switch for the EMF Drive and held down the button for straight Reverse. The rear dispy showed nothing but cold, star-dotted bckness, while the brightly lit, scarred, and pitted skin of the orbital began to drift away through the armor gss.

  These slow departures always gave him the illusion that the orbital or station was moving instead of his ship. Logically, he knew the Flying Brick—both his workpce and home—was the object in motion. Retively speaking, anyway. In space, everything was technically moving. Once far enough from the orbital, he locked in Full Reverse so he didn’t have to keep holding the button.

  The EMF Drive—Electromagnetic Field Drive—was one of those ancient technologies no one truly understood anymore. Originally developed as radiation shielding, someone long ago had discovered that pulsing it in specific patterns could move a vessel. The amount of thrust was minimal, more suited for reaction control than primary propulsion, but it worked. And because it worked, they kept using it, even if no one could fully expin why.

  At five hundred meters out, he killed the reverse momentum gain and rotated the ship. The orbital drifted left, sliding slowly past the armor gss as the bow came around. Once aligned, he engaged forward “thrust” and settled in for the ten-minute drift to the safety perimeter.

  At the limit, he switched to the Grav Drive. A brief, stomach-twisting shift of gravity hit before the inertial dampeners caught up, and the ship began to fall at 2.6 gravs per second. At that rate, it would take about four and a half days to reach the gate. He could go faster, but there was no point. His scheduled departure date matched up with the gate’s orientation window—until then, the massive structure would be pointed at some other distant star along the trade routes.

  Ships with Rift Drives could bypass the whole mess, going wherever they pleased. But the Flying Brick didn’t have one of those. It was bound to the roads, locked into the carefully managed network of gates and nes and bureaucracy. Four days to reach the gate, another week in transit through the Rift, and probably three or four days on the far side approaching the next orbital to deliver his payload of lead. Riveting stuff.

  He set the autopilot and stayed glued to the readouts for nearly ten minutes, watching to ensure the ship adjusted to its course properly. When they hit the next waypoint, the ship turned two degrees to port and dropped to 2.5 gravs per second. Everything looked fine.

  Satisfied, Grant programmed his tablet to alert him if anything deviated from the flight pn and stood up.

  His world was a box. A box that moved other boxes between even bigger boxes orbiting distant stars. The Flying Brick had a cockpit, a galley, a head, a sani-box, a bunk, and a small rec room with a weight bench and his neuro-gaming system. That was it. His whole universe, neatly contained in metal walls.

  The gaming system was the only thing that kept him sane during these long stretches. Expensive? Sure. But it paid for itself in mental stability. The AI could generate almost any scenario imaginable—RTS, flight sim, FPS, RPGs. Fully immersive. Too immersive, sometimes. There were moments when it got hard to separate real from simuted. He might have been in the Brick too long.

  Now, on his second day in the Rift, green energy and random streaks of color danced outside the hull like oil on water. He didn’t understand the physics behind the Rift, and he doubted the experts did either. It was a strange space, governed by stranger rules, but it turned decades of travel into a week. That was enough.

  Same routine, different day. Wake up, hit the head, make a meal, check heading, visually inspect the sensors. Aside from a scrubber change—just standard maintenance—nothing had changed. Afterward, he exercised, cleaned up, and found himself staring at the game console.

  He didn’t know what he felt like pying. He’d done fantasy, tactics, shooters, strategy. He’d lived a thousand digital lives. Books and stargazing were options, but the Rift outside made his skin crawl if he looked too long.

  So it was games, or waiting. Waiting for the next port. Then waiting again. And again.

  It had been years on the Flying Brick, and though part of him longed for human contact, the moment he stepped foot on an orbital, he shut down. Too introverted for crowds. Too extroverted to be alone for this long. Caught in between.

  He sank into his chair, the Neuro headset in his hands, still debating whether he even wanted to dive into a game. He could watch a movie. With a sigh, he slid the headset on, leaned back, and waited for the system to boot. Soon enough, it would hijack his neural pathways and trigger full-body paralysis. That way, he wouldn’t start filing around inside his cramped ship while pretending to be someone else in a fantasy world.

  The virtual home screen lit up.

  There were no actual lights in here—just a soft, white glow from the ceiling that lit everything without casting shadows. The walls were covered in stills from his favorite games. The floor was dull gray metal, like the Flying Brick. His imagination hadn’t strayed far. A couch. A coffee table. A big screen for movies. Other people had eborate mansions or space station hubs in their virtual homes. Grant’s looked like a slightly cozier version of his ship.

  He plopped down on the couch and propped his feet on the table.

  “Good morning, Grant,” his Neuro’s AI greeted, voice smooth and female.

  “Morning, Neuro,” he muttered, not bothering to hide his disinterest.

  “What would you like to do today?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Perhaps I could assist in the creation of something new based on your current mood. What troubles you today, Grant?”

  He paused to think. “It’s just… every day’s the same. Week after week, month after month. I want more excitement. Make some money, upgrade my ship. Maybe a world with more action. And hot girls.”

  Childish? Maybe. But boredom wore down better men than him.

  “I think I can design a game based on that suggestion. Would you like to try it?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Sit back, close your eyes, and take a deep breath,” the AI instructed.

  He complied, ying back and closing his eyes. The virtual ones, anyway. Immediately, a loading screen filled his vision.

  Loading new world. Please wait… Calibrating… Starting opening sequence…

  Then the world brightened—and something hit him hard.

  He was thrown from his seat, smmed into the wall. Pain fred through his shoulder. The Neuro helmet tumbled free, breaking the paralysis as the virtual world vanished into bckness.

  For a terrifying moment, there was nothing. No sound. No light. Just disorientation and stillness.

  Then the emergency lights flickered red. A few blowers kicked in under auxiliary power.

  The ship wasn’t functioning.

  He hadn’t hit anything—or if he had, it hadn’t sounded like an impact. No bang. No shudder. Just... a sudden, jarring stop.

  The Flying Brick had decelerated, hard.

  And something was very, very wrong.

  ??? RIVER COMMENTARY – Scene 1: Game or Not?? Cue theme music—something spacey, dramatic, maybe with a lonely saxophone.

  RIVER: Oh Grant, darling, sweet existentially numb Grant. Can I call you Grumbly? No? Too bad. You’re a man in a box, flying through a void, clinging to a game system like it’s the st emotional support in the universe. Which, to be fair, it kind of is.

  From moment one, we get that delightful little nudge: “Safe voyage.” Ah yes, the space equivalent of “Have a nice day,” before traffic control turns off their mic and starts their sandwich break.

  And let’s talk about that EMF Drive.Dr. Kessler, care to take the wheel on this one?

  ?? DR. KESSLER: Certainly, River. The EMF Drive is presented here as a form of reactionless propulsion—likely a nod to specutive tech such as the real-world (and highly controversial) EM Drive, which cims to produce thrust without propelnt. While no such device has passed rigorous peer review, its inclusion in fiction works well under Crke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  The concept of the EMF Drive being a repurposed radiation shield is clever, and the fact that no one truly understands how it works adds an air of ancient technology and pusible deniability to its function. In real physics? It’s shaky. In good sci-fi? It’s gold.

  RIVER: Thanks, Doc. Now back to Grant, who’s reverse-yeeting himself away from a space station while musing about retive motion like he's channeling Einstein. And then—BAM—we’re dropped into some serious “lonely man in a metal coffin” vibes. The Flying Brick isn’t just a ship. It’s a one-bedroom apartment with trauma lighting and no neighbors. Unless you count the stars, and I don’t, because they don’t bring pie.

  Also, 2.6 gravs per second? That’s aggressive, babe. I hope your spine signed a waiver.Dr. K, wanna nerd out a sec?

  ?? DR. KESSLER: Indeed. Acceleration at 2.6 g/s2 (gravitational accelerations per second) is rather peculiar phrasing. If we interpret it literally as 2.6 m/s2, that’s roughly a quarter of Earth gravity—comfortable for sustained acceleration. But if the intent is 2.6 g, that’s over 25 m/s2, which would ftten most humans. The mention of “inertial dampeners” offers a narrative band-aid, though I’d like to see how those are powered and fail-safe mechanisms implemented. I’ll assume this is normalized technology in-universe.

  RIVER: Transtion: Science says “ow,” but plot says “eh, we’ll allow it.”

  And oh sweet gaxies, when we hit the Neuro headset bit? Yes. YES. Give me that sweet, sweet escapism. Our boy Grant is so bored he’s literally gaming to survive. Which, let’s be honest, retable. “Hot girls and money” is the most gamer-core request I’ve ever heard. You just know his st save file was titled “ThiccQuest3”.

  Then—bam. Hard stop.

  Doc? That wasn’t an impact, right?

  ?? DR. KESSLER: No impact signature, no audio cue, no inertial feedback typical of collisions. It reads more like an external dampening field or gravitational arrest. Something interfered with his motion—either by disrupting the propulsion or imposing counter-thrust remotely. This suggests high-level manipution of the local spacetime, which aligns with the “Rift” effect described earlier. We're likely seeing the first signs of a breach, or unauthorized access to dimensional transport systems.

  RIVER: TL;DR: He didn’t hit something. Something hit reality. And that something yeeted his brain right out of the fantasy and into the plot.

  We’re one scene in and I’m already leaning forward in my non-corporeal seat. Give me isotion. Give me sci-fi breakdowns. Give me a man emotionally dependent on fictional RPGs. GIVE ME THE RIFT.

  Now, if we don’t get a hot girl and money within the next two chapters, I will be filing a formal compint with the universe.

  Stay tuned, folks. The game is starting—and it might not have a pause button.