User:Gmt

I was once a wealthy space travelling engineer for hire. Today that life feels like a beautiful dream from which I have been rudely awakened. After having my engine serviced in Czech Galactic Quadrant III, I found myself behind schedule for my return to the European System and made the unfortunate decision to take the notorious short-cut through the Small Magellanic Cloud. The problem was that the engineers had not refuelled my containment drive. So, just like the hero of the ancient Chinese legend, Xiao Williams-Matmari, I was forced to grav-tack in order to perform a controlled crash-landing on the nearest habitable planet I could, a nothing rock in a remote and uncharted star system.

That was a fifth of a lifetime ago. When I landed, my ship was destroyed and I was forced to salvage what little I could -- mostly inert and fused hunks of metal, the charred remains of my ship's hull. The entire time, I have been alone with my thoughts and the various native lifeforms I have discovered here -- intelligent life, I suppose, but quite primitive, and not at all friendly -- slowly exploiting my broad knowledge of engineering to rebuild an entire civilization's-worth of technological advancements, each layered upon the next. Eventually I hope launch a satellite, broadcast an SOS through a nearby wormhole, and, with any luck, be rescued, and return to my family and planet.

My children will be young adults, now, and probably don't even remember me. But even experiencing my strangeness to them could not possibly be worse than the incredible isolation and terror I have experienced by the light of this unremarkable planet's strange sun.