Another morning... Location?, somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. That is all I'd know about my whereabouts for the next five years. I started the day by unpacking all the audio equipment and bringing it out to the living room, I sure hope they got all the cables, finding a patch cord near Betelgeuse may prove difficult.

Solitude is something I'd grown accustom to on Earth. But I did have a companion of sorts, Olaf. I still can't for the life of me figure out why he picked that name, even if I thought about Frozen as often as I did. I could now leave that life behind, I was getting a fresh start. I just hope they saw fit to have a mate for me, maybe they picked out someone for me like a profile from a dating site.

I always hated the idea of those places, I wanted to accidentally bump into the love of my life. I remember the woman I ran into when I was in line at the cable company to turn in all my TV crap and tell them where to cram it. She was a vision of middle age beauty, with emerald green toe nails. She was doing the same thing, and I couldn't resist starting a conversation with her. Of course she used the dreaded 'we' word, but I expected her to be married. She was one of the good ones. Still,... she was a delight to talk to, and at least I tried, baby steps.

I spent the better part of three hours setting up my two stereo systems. One was designed for hard core rocking out, and the other was designed for late evening sessions with jazz or classical. One thing I hadn't considered until this point was the loud system was designed for my aging ears, I wondered what it'll sound like now that I have the ears of a two year old?

"Michael, the power pack will be here within minutes."

"Thanks Olaf. But how will it get here?"

"That way." I looked outside to see a simple rectangular shape that looked like a long tombstone land in the yard. I walked outside and as I approached the vessel the shield went down on it. On the platform was what looked like a power strip with no cord, and eight outlets that looked very normal, like it was purchased on Amazon, bet they wished they had some of these delivery platforms. Oh wait,... I bet Amazon is a distant memory for folks on Earth right now, and they'd be happy to just not starve.

So I plugged everything in and took a deep breath. If something broke there would be no repairing it out here, or so I thought.

"Michael, if you don't mind, I'd like to hear the electron beam vacuum equipped system first, and I'd also like to deep scan everything."

"Knock yourself out, Olaf" I think he knew what that meant.

So I put some Coltrane on the tube system, turned on all the switches, and waited for the warm up. All the tubes lit up, that was a good sign. I set the needle in the groove and sweet music came forth. At least I'd have something to do, I haven't heard this stuff in a while.

Olaf seemed fascinated, well as fascinated as a metal ball could appear, anyhow. His laser scanners pored over every millimeter. For him this would be like unearthing some ancient dinosaur.

"Olaf, can those beams penetrate to the interior?"

"Yes, I'm recording all aspects of it's diagrammatic content and layout, plus measuring all voltages, currents, and frequency responses."

"Good, hopefully you can manufacture parts if anything breaks."

"By the results of this scan it should be possible." Well, that's a relief. I don't think there's a Radio Shack within twelve parsecs of here.

Something had been gnawing at me all day, so I just blurted it out.

"Olaf, Ive been wondering. Since my body has been rejuvenated, what's my life expectancy?"

The dreaded pause; "Approximately two hundred and fifty years."

"WAIT, WHAT?!"

"Like I eluded to earlier, Michael, your DNA is easily manipulated and repaired, there is some logic to our decision on picking your race."

Holy shit!, not only did I stumble onto the fountain of youth, I'd get thrown immortality in as a bonus. Yea, I know two hundred and fifty years isn't immortal, but who the fuck wants to live forever.

All good things come to an end, all.

So we got our fill of the laid back stuff, it was time to crank up the 'Sand System' and rock out. So I picked the hairiest Hair Metal eighties record I had and set the volume to eleven. Olaf went up to every driver in the cabinets and checked each one out. I could tell the difference in my hearing, what once was loud is now ear splitting. I only listened to a couple of songs that way, I just got these ears fixed, and now they had to last another two hundred and thirty years.

"So, Olaf, what do you think?"

"These relics are amazing, Michael. But from what I gather from your database, loud music fell out of favor."

"That's true, Olaf. This was the stuff of old people." When I was young we went to rock concerts that were twice as loud as this gear. We were the rebels, and old people didn't understand why we needed it so loud. But loud music is visceral, you can feel it, and in my older age, that helped, I think I was hearing at lot though my body that my ears could no longer catch. It saddened me that the bonding experience of twenty thousand people starring down fifty thousand watts of audio gear to get blasted out in a drug hazed orgy of sound would be something of the past, we thought it would last forever, but...

All good things come to an end, all.

Over the next few days I finished unpacking what little was left of my life. My laptop was here, but Googling anything was going to be difficult.

"No internet connection available." Yea, no shit. Still, my stories were there, so I could at least read those, and I guess traveling on an alien spaceship across the galaxy should provide some ideas for my muse. but for now, I should just do a journal. Tools. Hmmm, I wonder why they got those. With replicators, what was there to build? At the bottom of the last one, they had slipped in the one remaining piece of my Frozen collection. It was a solid plastic figurine of Anna, in her coronation day dress. Oh, how I had longed to dance and twirl with her in that ballroom.

Really I wanted to learn ballroom dancing anyway. The idea of getting dressed up in fancy clothes, and spending an evening with the one you love face to face, holding each other and spinning about had fascinated me forever. Society had other plans and this activity had fallen out of favor. Now it was just considered 'gay'.

All good things come to an end, all.

I took out my laptop, went to the veranda, and popped it open.

I starred at the blank screen and nothing would come. Anna was the driving force of my writing, it looks as though those days are over. I really needed to start over, this tremendous gift had been handed to me. But as I sit here starring out over this breathtaking landscape I have to wonder what's in store for me? What will this new chapter in life be like, and who will I do it with? Within a week I would find out, and it would be the shock of my life.

All good thi..., screw that. This is a beginning.