Future Displacement

Chapter 1- Introduction

"Oy! Kanza flensh?!" A woman's muffled voice yelled from somewhere nearby before Conner opened his eyes. But rather than the ceiling he'd expected to see, there was nothing but a green helmet with a woman's face behind a clear visor attached to it. And as she grabbed his head and started shaking him gently, it appeared that he must have a helmet on as well as he only heard a knocking sound and she wasn't touching him directly.

"What the heck?!" Conner yelled as he shied away from the unknown woman only to then hit the back of his helmet on the wall of the small hallway that he found himself in. However, seeing as he'd just been laying in the bed at his apartment, he had no idea how he'd even gone from laying down to sitting on one of the benches which lined the each side of the hallway. And he wasn't alone in sitting down either as the benches were completely packed full of soldiers who, with their bulky armor, looked as if they'd climbed right out of a science fiction movie. However, despite there being so many of them, he appeared to be the center of attention for some reason before the entire hallway shook and they all turned their attention to an open door with a cockpit of some kind and two pilots beyond it. And as he saw it, he finally recognized the hallway for what it was as it was actually the inside of a Viper Dropship from on old virtual reality game that he used to play called Conquest of Stars.

"Log out." Conner immediately ordered since he had no wish to be playing at the moment. Though while he was surprised by his sudden appearance in the game, he became worried when he wasn't logging out and he could actually feel the dropship shake.

"Dasaka?" The woman continued to hover over him before bracing herself as the dropship shook again.

"Brosa! Ise kari gakuda!" A man at the back of the dropship yelled and the woman looked between him and Conner a few times before eventually sitting back down in the only vacant seat in the dropship which was directly across from him. "Conner, kanza flensh?"

"I can't understand a word that you're saying!" Conner called out as he recognized his name.

"Grah!" The man spat in annoyance. "Ret gunno yetis! Iskevar!"

On the man's words, whoever they were, all of the soldiers sat up at once with Conner hesitantly following them as he didn't know what was happening before the woman that had spoken to him before pushed him back down.

"Nok." The said while pointing towards him. "Nok."

"What the heck does 'nok' mean?" Conner asked, though he never got an answer as the dropship started slowing until it eventually stopped completely and the back hatch lowered into a ramp to let them out.

"Ik! Ik ik ik!" The man from before yelled as all of the soldiers began filing out of the dropship and into what appeared to be a grassy clearing. However, after Conner watched the others all leave, the woman who had yelled at him before stayed behind as well.

"Nok." The woman held her open palm towards him as if telling him to stay put, and he did as he was told since he still had no idea as to what was happening before she turned and followed the others. And once she was out, the woman turned and beat on the side of the craft to let the pilot know that they were ready before the ramp raised and he felt the craft begin to take off again. Though now that he was alone, Conner raised his left hand to find that he was encased in the same heavy armor that everyone else had been in, that being a suit of nearly nothing but army green plates that were all connected by ballistic weave at the joints and all of the circuitry underneath the entire thing. Though he only knew this seeing as he'd seen this exact armor in the game, but all of the characters had spoken English so why weren't these? Why could he feel things? And why the heck was he here in the first place?!

Moving his right hand so that he could see it, he found that he was gripping a large rifle which he knew to be the standard service rifle in the game. However, when he took out the magazine and examined it, while he shouldn't have felt anything at all, it felt like he was handling a real gun... And it wasn't just the feeling of things that had changed either as the inside of his armor felt hot, smelled like a new car and he even thought that he could taste the air. And all of those senses were things that the current virtual reality systems couldn't replicate yet, so what the heck was going on? Was this just a really realistic dream?

After attempting to find a place to pinch himself just to make sure that he wasn't in a dream and failing since he was fully encased in the armor, Conner soon couldn't think on the matter any more as the hatch which acted as a ramp earlier was suddenly torn off in a flurry of sparks. And while fire washed over the interior of the dropship for a moment, it was all sucked out just as quickly as it'd appeared before the craft began spinning. But if being hit and crashing wasn't enough, Conner was ejected from his seat from the force of the spin before he was slammed into the opposite wall and stayed there due to the g-force.

"Freaking-! Hell!" Conner yelled while slowly crawling towards the opening since, even though he'd gone through being in a crashing dropship in the game, experiencing all of the pressure and uncertainty that went along with it personally was another matter altogether. And as the pilots yelled from the cockpit, he finally made it to the opening before he was sucked outside and found himself free falling in the air with the wind whistling outside of his helmet. But while most wouldn't have wanted this outcome, Conner thought that it was much better than the alternative as the large ball of fire which was once his dropship fell past him while rapidly heading towards a rain forest beneath him. However, he currently had more important things to worry about other than the scenery as he quickly thought of what he could do.

"Initiate fall protection protocol!" Conner called out while hoping that his armor would register his voice.

"Mesna ka?" A woman's robotic voice answered and he swore to himself as the armor's voice commands obviously weren't going to register English. And now, as he started spinning through the air himself, his right hand opened a small panel on his left forearm's armor where a terminal that controlled the armor's systems resided. However, when he saw it, he cursed again as it was all written in some kind of strange symbols that he didn't know how to read at all. But since the game had once been his life, he prayed that he could remember the sequence that was required in order to activate the system manually as he pressed several buttons that he had no idea what they did.

Failing once, Conner thankfully achieved success on his second try with his body immediately snapping to attention afterwards as the armor moved and locked itself into position. And while he'd been spinning before, now he only wobbled slightly in the air with his feet pointed towards the ground as he fell like a meteor out of the sky. Though as he passed the burning dropship, he clenched his teeth and closed his eyes until he suddenly felt like throwing up as his momentum stopped in an instant as he hit the ground and heard the sound of something breaking in his armor before he opened his eyes again to see that the visor in front of his eyes was red with a small suit icon in the corner of it indicating that it had damage. And as the armor released its locks and allowed him to move again, he looked down to see that its reinforced braces had been completely shattered, though that thankfully only meant that he couldn't drop from distances now or he'd shatter his knees as the suit would continue to work correctly otherwise. Which was a good thing seeing as, with the dropship hitting the ground a small distance away from him and detonating in a large explosion, he figured that he might need both the armor and the rifle which had magnetically attached itself to his right arm since he had no idea what was happening around him.