[Would you like to enter the Primordial Expanse?]
'Yes.'
Alex closed his eyes and prepared himself for the same feeling of powerlessness as he would be sucked into the mysterious vortex.
But contrary to his expectations, no such thing happened.
Instead, when he opened his eyes again, the system prompt was still in front of his eyes.
Only this time, the text on it was different.
[Insufficient energy.]
That was it.
'Insufficient energy!? What the fuck??'
'Insufficient energy my ass! There was never such a prompt before, what the fuck are you playing at now stupid system!?'
Alex was rightfully frustrated, as he had just gone through all that preparation and planning, using what little time out of the 2 hours remaining to prepare himself for whatever situation he might find himself in.
But instead he got blue balled like this!
He voiced his frustrations to the system.
Well, not voiced, since the whole no sound in space thing...
But it could understand him somehow.
[In case you haven't noticed, those other times you entered were quite different from this attempt, weren't they?]
[Insufficient energy means what it means, it doesn't need further explanation. You simply lack the resources to open the gate to the Primordial Expanse. That's it.]
'But how can this be the case, there was never anything about my energy being required to enter the Primordial Expanse before, nor did I ever feel a drop in energy whenever I entered or left the Primordial Expanse previously, so why now?'
Alex was full of questions, and he was impatient in receiving an answer.
He wanted to understand why he couldn't enter the Primordial Expanse, and quickly.
He only had so much time left before his iq dropped below room temperature thanks to the lack of oxygen.
[There was never a requirement for YOUR energy, if you read carefully, there is never any mention of YOU in the previous messages. The energy required to open a gateway comes from heavenly bodies like planets, releasing their energy into their atmospheres.
Time passed excruciatingly slowly when you knew you were going to die...
And nearly an hour later, he was still drifting, looking lifelessly into the distance.
He was about to close his eyes for the final time, but a small glint caught his eye.
At first, he thought it might just be some sort of supernova in the distance, a small speck of a star disappearing from his view forever...
But the small glint started growing bigger...
And bigger...
Until it came close enough that Alex could make out what it was.
'It's a ship!'
Hope surged through Alex, and he started waving his arms madly, trying to signal the ship that he was there. The hope that they would even see a small speck like him with the naked eye was slim, but with how advanced technology was in that day and age, even the most basic of ships had sensors that could detect moving 'objects' like Alex in the vicinity of the ship.
But the hope that they would even bother picking him up was even slimmer...
Luckily for Alex though, it seemed they might actually do that!
The ship changed its path and started heading in his direction after a few minutes passed.
It seemed he had finally entered the range of their sensors.
'YESS!!'
Alex was ecstatic.
By now his iq was probably at the same level as an unawakened person. Any longer and he'd end up a vegetable.
He kept waving, hoping to attract more attention, as the ship grew closer and closer.
'It looks a bit strange, I guess it must be a new model.'
His mind was foggy from the lack of oxygen, his thoughts a jumble, but the sight of the ship definitely didn't fill him with any familiarity.
He could be seeing all kinds of hallucinations at this point, but this ship definitely didn't look like something produced in the federation.
However, Alex was too stupid at this point to see the irregularities in this.
He was just happy that someone had finally come to his rescue.