The days turned into weeks, sliding into months. Still, he had no idea what planet this was. Nothing made sense, and he was starting to doubt his brains were intact.
First off, the people here acted as though this was some kind of resort planet, and immediately took him in and gave him a medical diagnosis and treatment, new clothes, some basic survival tools, and some money. They said he should have gotten that at the entry way, but somehow he must have missed it.
The place did have a sort of vacation look, even aside from the nature. None of the buildings he could see were utilitarian, at all. There were malls, restaurants, plazas, hotels; no homes, no factories, not even a grocery store. No one lived here, and all the workers were droids.
What was stranger, though, was that not a single person he ran into had any idea of any part of the galaxy he knew of. Nothing. Not one planet, star, starship, race, anything. How far could he possibly have drifted? Was he in a coma? Was he…dead?
No, he knew somehow he was quite alive and awake. Or at least had a really strong feeling this was the case.
Some of the people here were certainly abundantly wealthy, and must sure be very well traveled. And the technology level was obviously high, and spoke of a large and prosperous civilization behind the design.
As he asked around, trying to determine his whereabouts, he made friends occasionally, and had some interesting adventures along the way. He sat on the back of a vehicle that appeared very much to be a regular automobile, with an internal combustion engine, similar in nearly every way to ones from his home world- but different, the animal on the front reared in the opposite direction; the tail lights went sideways instead of up and down. He rode in a helicopter, watching the alien forests rush by below. He got two rifles and a huge amount of ammunition as a gift, almost by force, from a man wearing head-to-toe blue armor that gave him the appearance of a droid, but was also wearing a red with white fur trim jacket, pants and hat, with stout black boots, and had the appearance of a ludicrous holiday satire. But he didn’t appear to get the joke, or know what holiday he was depicting.
As he explored, he found the life here amazing. Somehow primitive and raw, like primordial creatures fresh from the dawn of evolution. Savage gorilla like things with faces so terrible that he froze with fear when they came close; another vacationer had to shoot several to rescue him. Enormous reptile like things with long necks and massive legs, standing taller than houses. Hideous furry mammal-like creature with several bulging black eyes and hideously fanged maws. Dreamy nightmare zoology.
It was apparently a significant source of entertainment for vacationers to hunt them for sport, competing to most kills and variety. They were always restored shortly, and available to be hunted again- Lalslan suspected cloning, or even printing or manufacturer. There seemed to be an endless supply despite being hunted daily; no ecoystem could be large enough to support this. The creatures, of course, could be quite dangerous- but medic droids were always on hand if you were close enough to a settlement. If you went out into the wilderness and got hurt, drones would find you and bring you back to a medic unit; however, those services were for people that paid to be here, not interstellar vagabonds.
Slowly, day by day, he formed a new plan. If all these people were on vacation, they must have come from somewhere, and gotten here somehow. He was going to get on one of those spaceships, and go where ever it went. Somehow he was going to get back home. If he couldn’t figure out where he was, at least he knew where he was going.
