Mecha System: Harem in The Cockpit

72 Hours

I staggered through my apartment into the kitchen and hobbled over to the sink, pausing for a moment to grab a glass from the cupboard. 

One pint of water later and my mouth was feeling somewhat rehydrated, it wasn’t until the second that the feeling of sandpaper finally subsided. 

An angry growl from my stomach reminded me that I still had to eat breakfast, which was weird considering I didn’t usually eat things in the morning. 

In fact, the idea of eating things in the morning was usually something that made my stomach do sumersaults. 

Something else was going on here. 

“Explain yourself, AI,” I growled while dropping a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster, “Why do I feel like I’ve not moved for a week?” 

“Well now, a week is a bit of an exaggeration,” The AI replied, not exactly giving me an answer to the question I had asked. 

“Oh really? An exaggeration, is it?” I snapped, violently pushing down the handle on the toaster so that it accepted the bread. 

“Yes, of course! You have been in a state of flux for the past 72 hours, and have thus remained unconscious for that amount of time,” the AI exclaimed as if that were a totally normal amount of time for a human being to spend unconscious. 

I stood deadly still absorbing that particular piece of information. 

72 hours?

My toast popped out of the toaster.

72 hours???

It sat there, slowly cooling in the breeze, begging to be buttered. 

I’d been asleep for 72 whole hours?

My stomach grumbled in protest. 

How the hell had I been asleep for 72 hours???

I grabbed the slice of toast and bit into it without bothering to slather the piece of warm, crusty bread in butter and instead turned on my heel and darted right back into my bedroom. 

I practically launched myself through the air and onto my bed and grabbed my phone from its place underneath my pillow. 

There were missed calls. 

There were so many damn missed calls. 

There were missed calls from my mum. There were missed calls from my boss at work. My friends. My sister. 

Oh… I was so screwed. 

“I’m sure it’s not all that bad,” the AI said sheepishly. 

“You stay shut up,” I grunted, thumbing through the menus to get to my voicemail inbox. 

I pushed the button and brought the phone up to my ear. 

“Welcome to your voicemail service!” The happy robotic helper on the line chirped, “You have seven new messages, would you like to hear them?”

I pulled the phone away from my ear, clicked the ‘yes’ button and brought it back up just as quickly. 

“First new message!” The robot chanted. 

“Xander, sweetheart, I’m just calling to make sure you’re okay after last night,” the voice of my mum came through the headset, “I know it’s early, but I just wanted to let you know that I love you, call me back when you get this message, okay?” 

Well, that one was relatively normal, but it also would have been sent on the morning after the crash and the explosion. That’s not exactly much time with me not answering my phone. 

“Second new message!” The robot chanted again. 

“Xander, please call me as soon as you can,” My mum said, sounding a little bit panicked now, “I haven’t heard from you all day and… it happened again, there was another one up north. Another space thingy crashed and exploded… Please, just call me back.” 

My blood ran as cold as ice. Another crash? I hadn’t expected another crash. I had expected my ship, my suit, to be the only one to come down. Did that mean there was someone like me somewhere else out there in the world? Someone else with an alien exo?

“Third new message!” The robot chanted for a third time. 

“Hey Xander, this is Mark from the office,” this was the voice of my boss, “I know there was that crazy explosion thing last night, but you still should have made the effort to call me if you weren’t able to come in. I expect to hear from you in the morning at the very least.” 

My stomach lurched when my boss started speaking, I thought he was about to fire me, luckily that didn’t seem to be the case just yet. 

“Fourth new message!” The robot said for the fourth time.

“Xander! Please! Why aren’t you calling me back? I’m getting so worried about you! More and more of those… things… are crashing all over the world and… they’re saying people are getting these crazy abilities as a result… call me back! Right now!” 

I felt like curling up into a ball and crying. I’d never heard my mum so distraught. 

“Fifth new message!” The robot continued on, undeterred by the content of the messages it was relaying. 

“Xander… I came over to your house today and… and you didn’t answer… your neighbors said they haven’t seen you in two days! Please… what’s going on… why is the world…” the message from my mum cut off there, as if she had given up entirely. 

“Sixth new message!”

“Xander, we still haven’t heard from you and you weren’t in again today. I am both concerned and disappointed. Please get in contact with us or we will be forced to terminate your contract,” my boss continued, considering there was only one message left I had a feeling I knew where it was going. 

“Seventh new message!” 

“Okay Xander, you have forced our hand and you can consider yourself no longer under the employ of our company. Please do not return to the office premises,” the recording of my boss said, and to be honest at that point I could hardly blame him. 

“That concludes all of your voicemail messages! Would you like to-”

I hung up the call to the voicemail service with an angry sigh. 

I had been asleep for 72 hours, and in that time it sounded like the entire world had been flipped up on its head.