[Short Story] How Did The Truck Get There To Isekai An Astronaut On The ISP In The Future

A man found himself floating. A sensation he is familiar enough with, trained for even. Comes with being an astronaut. The trips up to the expanded ISP weren’t the most exciting, but still quite exclusive.

There was one problem right now. He looked around, and yep, he wasn’t in a space suit. Sure, you didn’t need a suit while inside the station, but the last thing he remembered was being out in some routine maintenance. Besides, even while inside the station, you needed to wear clothes.

Oh, and speaking of the station, that was missing. In fact, once he managed to rotate to see behind himself, so was the Earth. The stars were still there. Maybe? He doesn’t like bragging about it, but he is pretty familiar with the constellations and here he is, unable to even find the Big Dipper or Orion’s Belt! Though fair enough, he guessed it should be expected if you can’t even find your own planet.

Though given his last memories, it did point towards a worrying conclusion.

<Yes, you have died.>

The man spins around, not finding anyone else. Which is also worrying. He had always felt “space psychosis” was more of a yay or nay sort of thing. And given his record of spacewalks? Well, maybe he couldn’t see any familiar landmarks besides the sun because he went a little crazy. Was he even in space anymore?

<Welcome to the afterlife in-between. Behold me and Know the Truth!>

Oh hey, the sun isn’t a sun.

Not that the man would have normally believed such a thing. Shame, whatever this being was, seemed to be unwilling to take ignorance as an answer. It wasn’t even something like information being injected into his mind. Rather, the being’s words were true. Which would have been a bit suspicious to the guy if not for the fact that his mind was incapable of doubting what was just said, not even enough to consider other options and worry about the implications.

“So...

How did I get here?”

<Not religious enough to be drawn to a normal afterlife. Nor Good, Evil, Chaotic, or Orderly enough to go to the more generic afterlives. Then on top of that, you died while beyond a biosphere you could be tossed into for immediate reincarnation.>

The man shakes his head, “While interesting, that isn’t what I mean and you know it. Presumably. Like, I assume you can read my mind. Not sure why we’re even bothering talking instead of you, just saying what needs to be said.”

<Known and unknown are unimportant. What we speak on is instead what must be said. As for how you arrived here in a more physical sense? Well, you were hit by a truck.>

The man squints, “Except I was in space? What kind of truck could hit me up there?!”

<You will now be reincarnated into a place that needs more people and is unrelated to your old world. Given how solid your soul form is, chances are you will remember more of your previous life than not and so you will be experiencing what your world has come to “Isekai”. About the only certainty is that you won’t remember your old name as it is no longer yours.>

The man snorts, “Just going to ignore my question? How did a truck hit me in space?”

<Irrelevant. Prepare for rebirth.>

The man tries to argue, but this doesn’t get anywhere, as first his words and then everything else about him fades away. And with a soft pop, the man is sent away.

With the lost soul sent on their way, the in-between afterlife freezes. Time and Space stop. Color and light not only vanish, but the lack of color and light also stops existing. All that a mortal soul would use to describe the in-between afterlife not only has stopped existing, but never existed in the first place.

Except the “Sun” and “stars” remain.

<Now get in this conversation! I want to know what allowed that soul to get here? All I’ve got is that he was killed by a truck. In space.>

A number of the stars are now Suns. Their attention focused on this event.

{Was it actually a terrestrial truck? Such realms can be light on sapient life, but an interstellar transport can qualify as a truck in our reports. This would not be the first disastrous first contact scenario.}

~Does the realm have magic? I’ve got a few pings for some kind of magical school truck. That’s not exactly a truck, but if there’s one magical transportation solution, there could be others.~

<To answer both of your questions, it was a bog-standard flat-fronted box truck. Which should have been evident by the fact that I didn’t bring it up.>

~Come on, silly. You know how little Information we get sometimes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the only thing you got sent on him was “Killed by truck”.~

<Fair.>

[Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, I’ll pull up a review of the guy’s death.]

{Eh, do we have to? That sort of thing draws attention from above. Managing lower realms like this can happen between moments. If those above us get involved, it will drag us into the True Timeline and I didn’t apply for this job to spend actual time doing it.}

[When joining, you signed all the oaths involved, which included the fact that at some point we would inevitably burn time. Part of our compensation is based around that fact. Now quiet down, I’ve got the record.]

The International Space Station orbited above the Earth. Now five times the size it was originally, with plans to double the current size, the place was quite active. At the moment, three astronauts are out on spacewalks. One was on an experiment and two were doing maintenance.

One of those maintaining the structure gets an alert. Not an emergency though, so they continue their current task and put away everything properly. Satisfied that their work is down, they head back into the station, their shift finished for the day.

Taking their place is a man familiar to those watching the scene. Though he doesn’t head to where the last astronaut left off. Rather, his assigned location today is one of the solar arrays. This brings him away from the main structure, though his safety line is more than enough to prevent him from floating away.

The man handles the maintenance well enough. Most of the work on this trip comes down to assuring the various wires that go across joints aren’t showing signs of damage. Then a truck hits him, and everything freezes.

<Okay, what the what?>

[Hmm, we might need a broader view. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be quite so literal.]

{Bah, you already pulled up the replay. Follow the truck. No reason not to.}

[That would be efficient. Okay, let’s take a look.]

The truck inches backwards from the fatal impact. Then, once clear of the immediate area of the space station, the reversal picks up speed. Except they soon hit a problem. Or rather, the truck doesn’t hit anything. The view follows the truck back as it passes through a few rocks and the sun itself. So yeah, the truck should not have survived to hit that guy.

<Okay, you can cut the feed. The truck is literally going in a straight line, irrespective of anything that should have gotten in its way. We need to call in someone above us. Because the best explanation I have for that is the replay not actually showing what the truck did. Even an illusion would have been affected by a sun.>

~Yep! This seems to be a Fun problem. And in case you all didn’t check. There isn’t a significant level of magic around that solar system.~

[Sending up a message.]

Then technically, it takes forever for a response. Yet, as will all things, forever passes, and the giant seconds hand of a metaphorical clock advances. Which is where I get involved. I simply need to deactivate hidden mode and I should be good. ░▒▓

So, what do you guys, gals, and non-binary pals want from my interference?

[Well, we’ve hit on a bit of a snag. I sent along the situation file, so you should be up to date on what has happened.]

{Yeah, just fix things and move on so we can get away from the actual timeline again.}

<Sir, please excuse my colleague {} for their rude remarks. We will gladly take any assistance you can provide.>

And how about you, ~~? Any opinions on the matter?

~Well, you already know everything, including what we’re thinking. I assume this is one of those “learning moments” you higher beings seem so enamored with.~

I wouldn’t quite say that? More along the lines of letting the four of you hash things out and silently judging your decisions.

~You could have stayed silent about that.~

Eh, you’ll either take it as a joke or will have already assumed my time is worth micromanaging the four of you. Now, what do you want me to do?

[We can start with the truck. That was literally a white box truck. I’m mostly sure the truck matches an existing brand found on this Earth. So what’s up with that?]

There hadn’t really been a plan behind the truck? When starting this realm, the prompt was basically just “guy in space is hit by a truck and then gets Isekaid.” You could honestly say that everything that has ever happened here was all leading up to that one event. Isn’t that weird?

<What?>

[I have to agree with <> on this. Though also, that doesn’t explain the truck. If you just needed this event to happen, you could simply make it happen. There’s no reason to create an entire realm.]

Hmm, I can see where you’re coming from. You see all of this and it feels as if I made an entire movie for a single screen cap. Of course you would ask why I made the movie instead of just creating the scene.

But that’s the thing. The piece of paper with the still on it? While it might seem contained, that is only from close up. This situation is like that one saying on that Earth about how to make a truly homemade apple pie, you need to first make the universe.

So, not only would the lore behind the picture extend outward. That picture is part of the bigger picture of everything else in the realm it was crafted within. And for me? This entire realm might as well be that piece of paper upon which I made sure that one snapshot of a moment showed up.

I literally could not make less. All of this realm extends backwards and forwards through time. So, now that it has happened? Well, life goes on.

[The truck. Explain how the truck happened.]

So yeah, there isn’t really a good reason for that type of truck to be out there? And yes, I could have gone all Boltzmann’s brain on it. After all, no matter how unlikely, there is always a chance that a bunch of interstellar dust happens to gather together in exactly the shape of a common box truck with a legitimate VIN number on the parts. A number that happened to not actually get used, though totally would have been for a box truck.

But that felt like more of a hassle. Instead, I made use of the Isekai aspect to inject some Mana into this realm. Said magic spread a little. Not much, but enough to justify dropping the idea.

<So, if doing a quick little vignette was not in the cards and creating the truck on site was too much of a hassle, what Did you do?>

Simple enough. When you send a soul on like you did, if one side has more magic, there will be a puff of said magic.

~Wait, but I didn’t sense any magic. We checked the recording and I was specifically on the lookout for magic or what have you.~

Well, if you’d let me explain, I would have answered that.

Anyway, the first time around there wasn’t a truck. Dude just died of a blood clot. There wasn’t anything special about what happened, so <> sent them on their way. And with that, basically any other such event would be over. A small bit of magic would get added to the realm, but you’d need entire populations for millions of years for that magic to build up to a level that would allow the natives to cast spells and such.

Instead, that puff of magic did something silly. As the magic entered this realm, it immediately, without even fully entering and this while still undetectable, went back in time.

And through pure chance, the time-traveling magic hit an empty truck, which teleported said truck into orbit on a crash course for a certain space station.

[Sir, wouldn’t that create a paradox?]

Meh, the integrity of what happened was maintained. While his cause of death changed, the guy died at the same time and the moment he died; the magic does what it did. So while this is a bit of a loop, the structure is solid.

Now, if it took some time and the guy had managed to be reincarnated before the magic went back in time? That might have been bad. After all, someone who died of a blood clot will likely act differently from one who died of a truck hitting them in space.

[Um, sir. Doesn’t this mean there isn’t anything to fix? And you knew about this the whole time? Why would you bother showing up?]

{And wasting Real Time!}

Oh, I simply felt like bragging about it. After all, it isn’t like I just set this all up. To get this all to work right? I had to set up two realms and make sure the starting conditions led to this happening. The magic realm was easy enough as I simply had to make sure magic from there would do the time travel gimmick when injected into this realm.

But do you realize how hard it is to make sure a civilization this far from the start of the realm develops into a technological society, builds a space station, and yet misses the signs that one of their astronauts are about to die? They’re still in the phase where they’re sending their best! Sure, anyone could die at any moment, but some things just tend not to be in the cards.

Anyway, I’m going to mark things as fixed. Have a nice time! ▓▒░

<Wait! What are we supposed to do?>

{I think they’re already gone.}

[Sigh, well if they actually marked things as fixed, we don’t Have to do anything. Also, I guess at least we now know that if stuff like this happens again; we know what’s up and don’t have to call those above us.]

~That was weird. I had fun though.~

<Of course you did. Let’s just return to our jobs and let the realm play out.>

And yeah, they basically did that. It was a fun watch.