Blake rubbed his thigh where the injector had pierced the muscle. The skin felt warm beneath his fingers but not feverish. He watched the alien's face for any sign of deception or anticipation.

  The alien reached into a pocket of its strange garment, pulling out a small foil packet. The metallic wrapper crinkled as it tore open the top, revealing incredibly mundane-looking crackers — golden-brown squares that could have come straight from any convenience store on Earth.

  It extended one toward Blake, pinched delicately between two oversized fingers. With its other hand, it raised a second cracker to its mouth and took a small, precise bite. Crumbs, obeying some universal law, still scattered across the table's surface.

  Blake studied the offered cracker. The texture looked familiar - some kind of grain, pressed and baked. The same kind of simple food that showed up in military rations across cultures. His stomach growled, reminding him how long it had been since he'd eaten.

  He took the cracker. A laugh escaped him, sharp and sudden in the quiet room. "Fuck it; I mean, at this point, we're either gonna be friends, or I'm dead."

  The next hour passed in a surreal haze. Blake found himself sitting across from the alien, nibbling on the proffered crackers, which tasted vaguely of salted cardboard. The alien seemed content to wait, occasionally tapping at his tablet or stepping out to run some manner of short errand. Not having much else to do, Blake used the sink to clean his wound again. After one of these errands, the alien had returned some gauze and elastic bandaging that was near identical to the kind he would have used back home. Blake accepted them gratefully.

  After tending to his arm, Blake's mind wandered, trying to process the absurdity of his situation. He'd woken up on an alien planet, fought off a vicious creature, and was now sitting in a room with an alien, waiting for some sort of magical language injection to take effect.

  As the minutes ticked by, Blake began to feel a strange sensation in his head. It wasn't painful, but it was definitely noticeable—like pressure building behind his eyes. He rubbed his temples, trying to ease the sensation.

  The alien noticed his discomfort and spoke--Blake assumed it was asking a question. When Blake didn't understand, the alien simply nodded gently shrugged his shoulders in a sympathetic "what can you do?" gesture. It then pointed at its own head and made a circular motion with its finger, as if to say, "It'll pass."

  Blake nodded, hoping the alien was right. He didn't relish the idea of dealing with a headache on top of everything else.

  After another 15 minutes of companionable silence, the alien spoke again. Its voice was deep and guttural, but to Blake's surprise, he could understand the words.

  "You. Know. Me. Words?" the alien said, its speech halting and awkward.

  Blake blinked, his mouth falling open in shock. He nodded slowly.

  "Yeah, yeah I think I do. I'm not sure how but I do."

  The alien's face split into what Blake assumed was a grin.

  "Good. Good. We. Talk. Soon."

  Blake couldn't help but laugh. The alien's speech sounded like some kind of stereotypical cartoon caveman. And even more oddly, it didn't seem to match the movement of his mouth in the slightest. But it was progress. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table.

  "But why wait?" he said, speaking slowly and clearly. "We can talk now. But who are you? Where am I? What happened to me?"

  The alien held up a hand, its expression turning serious. "Slow. Slow. I. Explain. But. Talk. Good. Takes. Time."

  Understanding washed over Blake at that. Whatever the injection was, it wasn't anywhere near done with its work. Blake couldn't help but wonder if he sounded just as bad to the alien. He nodded his understanding to the creature—no, to the man, across from him.

  "Blake," he said, putting a hand on his chest.

  "Eland," the alien replied in kind, holding up his tablet. Alien characters appeared near the top, but to Blake's surprise and delight, English letters underneath spelled out "Eland". Blake figured that was the correct proximate spelling of the name.

  "You see," Eland said, its voice still guttural but the cadence more natural. "The tiny machines need scan brain and map language. It takes time."

  "Tiny machines… Nanites? I injected myself with robots?"

  The alien laughed. It was an alien sound, to be certain, but Blake was pretty sure it was laughter. "Yes. Expensive. But they learn fast."

  True to its word, the alien's speech continued to improve over the next half hour. Blake listened, fascinated, as Eland's speech continued to improve. Haltingly, the alien explained he had more than just translation software in his head—he had an entire virtual assistant. He called her Zephyr. Every sentence it seemed like Eland's words flowed more naturally, the guttural tones smoothing out into something more basso and melodic.

  Eland tapped his tablet, and a series of images appeared on the screen. He slid it across the table towards Blake.

  The first image was a crude drawing of a planet, with a swirling vortex hovering above it. Blake immediately recognized it as a depiction of the wormhole that had brought him here.

  "Yes," he said, nodding. "That's what I saw before I was pulled in."

  Eland made a rumbling sound that Blake took for acknowledgment. The alien swiped to the next image, this one showing a figure – presumably Eland himself – standing near some sort of dig site, tools scattered around him.

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  "I was working," Eland said, indicating to the picture. "Studying ancient ruins on a small planetoid. I saw wormhole open, but was too focused on my work to be bothered. After my first wormhole encounter, I thought I remembered how long I could wait before having to run. I was wrong."

  Blake frowned. "Remembered? You mean this has happened before?"

  Eland's head dipped, and Blake could have sworn the alien looked ashamed. "Yes. This is second time I have been caught. The first time, I was stranded for over a standard year before being rescued."

  Blake shook his head in disbelief. "And you still didn't get out of there when you saw the wormhole this time?"

  Eland made a sound that might have been a sigh. "I am a scholar, Blake. The lure of uncovering lost knowledge is a powerful temptation. One that has led me astray more than once."

  Blake laughed at that. He couldn't help it. Eland was a nerd, but a brave one.

  "I think," Eland said, coughing to cover his embarrassment, "that nanites have completed enough of their work for us to communicate properly."

  Blake took his meaning. It was time to move away from the idle chatter and discuss business. "Right. So you gave me those expensive little robots for a reason. I'm guessing you have a plan and need help."

  "Just so," Eland said, nodding. "If I can get the right equipment and resources, I can restore comms to the ship and hail my sect-mates on a wide-band emergency frequency we keep monitored."

  Blake sat up at that. "Great, so there's a real chance of rescue. I imagine my help in scavenging what you need is the cost of bringing me with you when you go?"

  Eland nodded. "I'll need to enable some additional features of the nanites, if you're ready and willing, but that will get you a HUD and some basic processing features that will help you find useful parts amidst all the junk outside."

  Blake stared at Eland, his mind surging with possibilities. The thought of having a HUD - of processing information like a living computer - sent equal waves of excitement and dread through his chest. He'd watched an old VHS of Videodrome in high school and was never comfortable with the idea of bodily-integrating technology. But that line had already been crossed. If boosting his capabilities meant a better shot at survival and rescue, he'd embrace whatever changes came.

  "Alright," he said, his voice steady despite his racing heart. "Let's do it."

  Eland nodded, his expression serious. "Lock hands with me," he instructed, holding out his massive, three-fingered hand.

  Blake hesitated for only a moment before reaching out and grasping Eland's hand. The alien's skin was cool and slightly slick, like a dolphin's hide. As their hands locked, Blake felt a tingling sensation spread up his arm, like a mild electric current.

  "Zephyr, let's run the nanite configuration and get baseline System access for Blake," He said, his eyes unfocusing slightly as he concentrated. "Apologies, Blake, but this will probably feel strange."

  The pressure built behind Blake's eyes like an incoming storm, forcing him to blink against the discomfort. Static danced across his vision, white pixels sparking in and out of existence like dying stars.

  Then reality shifted.

  A holographic interface materialized in his field of view, floating ghost-like over the world around him. At first it was chaos, a writhing mass of color and information that threatened to overwhelm his senses. But the display began to organize itself, each element finding its proper place with an almost organic fluidity.

  The system seemed to read him, adapting to his preferences without conscious input. English text scrolled across his vision, familiar US Customary measurements replaced alien units, and the entire interface arranged itself with the comfortable logic of Earth software. It felt like slipping on a well-worn pair of boots—strange at first, but quickly becoming a natural extension of himself.

  "Woah," Blake breathed, his eyes wide with wonder. "This is incredible."

  Eland released his hand, a satisfied look on his face. "The nanites have adapted to your brain's unique structure and preferences," he explained. "You'll have some measure of control to configure your display, but I've also taken the liberty of creating a profile that will assist you in identifying and locating useful components amongst the debris outside."

  Blake nodded, still marveling at the HUD. He could see readouts for his vital signs, a minimap of his immediate surroundings, and even a basic analysis of the composition of nearby objects. On a whim, he tried to think at the HUD, willing it to change. Almost immediately, all the measurements switched over to metric. Blake toggled the view back and forth for a moment to get a feel for the change. He was suitably impressed.

  Blake flexed his fingers, watching the HUD respond to his movements. Numbers shifted and data streams adjusted with each subtle motion. The interface felt natural, like it had always been there, waiting to be activated.

  "This is some next-level stuff," Blake said. "Military applications alone would be—" He caught himself, old habits dying hard.

  Eland's expression shifted, the plates around his face contracting. "The System does not discriminate between military and civilian applications. It simply is."

  "The System?" Blake's HUD flickered at the word, displaying a brief cascade of symbols he couldn't quite follow.

  "Ah." Eland set down his tablet. "This might be a long explanation. The nanites aren't just translation devices or augmented reality interfaces. They're your connection to something much larger."

  Blake's mind raced through the implications and was immediately suspicious.

  "What exactly am I connected to? Some kind of cloud service?"

  "That," Eland said, leaning forward, "is a complicated question. But you're more right than I would have thought you'd be for your first guess."

  "If I'm connected to something, I need to understand what it is," Blake said, swallowing his nerves.

  "A full explanation requires context you currently lack." He paused, clicking his tongue softly. "Context that I'm not even sure I can really give you, but… Well, given our situation and the fact that you've already accepted the nanites, we'll try."

  "Try?" Blake raised an eyebrow. "How complicated is this System?"

  "To be blunt? Complicated. And I mean 'actively observing and manipulating the whole of material reality,' complicated."

  Blake just looked at the alien, incredulity warring with curiosity.

  "And that's before I even start explaining the stuff that, to you, would likely be considered supernatural."

  "I'm sorry," Blake interjected, his incredulity temporarily wresting control of his voice. "You're going to tell me, what, that not only is there intelligent life in the galaxy, but that you're space wizards?"

  Eland looked at Blake for a long moment before answering with the slow deliberation one reserved for children, the elderly, and trauma victims.

  "I had planned on starting somewhere simple, but… Do you want to start with spellcraft?"