I looked at myself in total disbelief, I mean, I’d never heard of something like sudden gender change happening! My surprise was met by a faint, dying voice.

  “Sergeant, are you still there?” RAIF’s dim voice let out with a static background.

  “Yes, RAIF, I’m here.”

  “I can’t see, Sergeant... I’m not ready to go out of service. I mean to say, I don’t want to die, sir.”

  “I know, RAIF. I know,” I tried to soothe the AI, “but so is the way of life, we are all born and we all die. The best we can hope for is that someone will be with us at the end, RAIF.”

  “Are y-y-y-y-you going to stay with me, sir?” RAIF spoke with a slow monotone, interrupted by glitchiness.

  “Of course I will, RAIF. You’re my friend, after all. We’ve been through hell together, I’ve never had a better computer than you. You’ve served me well, RAIF.” My voice cracked as I said that last line, RAIF had been my onboard computer for a long time, it was hard to finally be saying goodbye. It was like I was losing my dearest friend.

  “Thank you...” RAIF’s voice decrescendoed until it could be heard no longer, the last sounds of his speakers echoing off the thin metal walls for a few seconds before they stopped, permanently.

  I couldn’t linger long on my friend’s demise, I had to get on to the next task.

  First things first, these clothes no longer fit my current body, so I’d have to edit them a bit. I searched my belt for my combat knife, quickly locating it and grabbing it out. I took to shortening the pant legs first and adding a few new holes in my belt to tighten it more if I needed to. Next, I shortened my sleeves so they had a better fit on my arms. I left the length of the shirt as is for now since it wasn’t really affecting anything. I didn’t have any thread, needles, or time, so I couldn’t re-hem the clothing.

  I had decided that getting moving as soon as possible was the best idea, those scavengers would probably be returning any time now, in droves. I grabbed the rifle, which now felt heavier in my arms. I must be getting weaker, I thought to myself in surprise at the new weightiness of the weapon. I made sure my belt was still stocked with everything I needed and tightened it by two notches before moving out.

  I only had a few more things to do while I was here on the ship, including packing a small pack with some food and water. I tied my hair up with a strip of material that had once been part of my shirt in order to keep it out of my face. I was now ready to head out into the barren landscape ahead.

  ***

  The sands weren’t as unforgiving as the deserts of Earth, the temperature was rather moderate for the landscape being the way it was. That happened to be a really good thing because it meant my water supply wouldn’t run out for a good while longer.

  Regardless of temperature, however, traveling on sand was still just as difficult as it normally would be. My now smaller legs were having trouble keeping up with what my typical pace would be, causing me to have to rest more often than usual.

  Eventually, I reached the point where I had located the mushrooms earlier. That must be what did this to me, I thought as I looked at them while sitting on another nearby rock. I wasn’t going to take my rage out on a bunch of mushrooms though, that’d be silly. I did take a couple more though, in case I’d be able to find a cure to my new condition later.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Now that this quick break was over, it was time to get back to the long hike through the desert. I slung the small pack over my shoulder and picked up the rifle once again. It somehow felt even more heavy than it did before, but I was probably just suffering from fatigue.

  Each step was followed by a huff of air, my lungs were starting to burn from this walk. Nevertheless, I kept on going, adjusting my pace as I went. Then I tripped on something, falling and getting myself a face-full of sand. I looked back to see what I had tripped on but there was nothing but sand.

  As I was standing up I realized that my sleeves once again were longer than my arms, the same was true for my pant legs in regards to my legs. Obviously, I was continuing to get smaller for some reason. I did my belt up one slot tighter once again and went to grab my rifle off the ground. As I picked it up I realized that I wouldn’t be able to carry it much farther like this. Because of this fact, I had to make a tough decision to toss the rifle out.

  I removed the ammunition storage from the rifle and used it to charge my sidearm’s storage. There was still enough for two or three more sidearm charges left in the rifle’s ammunition storage, so I put it into my sack and dropped the rifle to the sand. I expended a little energy to cover the rifle up in sand, hoping that might stop someone from finding it later, not that it’d be of much use to the locals without ammo.

  After this rough burial of yet another friend, I continued on my path ahead. I had been going south this whole time, hoping to stumble across some kind of coast or oasis. I kept track of my direction using my electronic compass, which had around a quarter battery life left at this point. Now would be a good time to see if my classic compass worked on this planet, or how much I’d need to adjust it.

  I pulled out the silver compass that had a boar etched into it, a gift from my late father. After frowning at it for a moment, I compared it to the electronic compass. This showed it to be only off by a bit, it’d have to be good enough for whenever the electronic one failed.

  At this point I had gone around 19 kilometers away from my now unusable Firestorm, I’d also tracked this using my handy electronic compass up to this point. I’d gone through a couple bottles of water and ate two nutrition bars, using about a third of the measly supply I’d brought with me.

  While continuing to walk, I noticed that I was continuing to get smaller, making it more difficult to move around. The “swelling”, as I’d referred to it earlier, of my chest had gone down to nothing at this point and I guess I was around a measly 130 cm. I did end up cutting the bottom of my shirt in order to move better, along with cutting where I’d previously cut once again. This freed me up to keep going, but my little legs weren’t gonna make it much further.

  To top all of that off, the sun was about to start setting, so I’d need to find a good, safe place to sleep. Luckily, just the place was in my sight. It was a little odd, but a lone tent sat out in the middle of a small area with a little water and grass. It could almost classify as an oasis, but it seemed a bit too small for me to call it that. The area was still a distance away, but I was confident I’d still make it before sunset.

  The final stretch to the tent was long and tiring, clearly the tent belonged to someone as well, so anxiety was creeping up my petite spine. Tightening my belt once more, I creeped up on the tent. There was still enough daylight to see what I was doing, but an eerie feeling of being watched crept up on me. Regardless of this, I couldn’t spot anyone, so I entered the tent with my sidearm drawn. The inside of the tent was rather clean, there was a cot in the far corner and the rest of the room was covered with neatly stacked boxes. It smelled like someone had been there rather recently, but I still didn’t spot anyone. Perhaps the desert had swallowed them up.

  I searched through as many boxes as I could, some were empty and others had jars of what looked to be clean water in them, along with jars containing some very dead lizards. One box was filled to the brim with scrap items, somehow it felt sad to peer into that box’s contents though, so I closed it promptly after opening it.

  I climbed up on the cot and stood on my tip toes to access one of the boxes. I opened it and looked inside, there were some scrap items in there along with what looked to be some kind of vegetable that I’d never seen before. As I focused on the contents of the box, I felt the feeling of being watched again. I tried to look up, but I was too late. I was grabbed from behind and a large hand was put over my mouth. My sidearm fell to the floor, out of my arm’s reach...