******

Right after the first Ripple . . .

There are days where sane people consider ending everything, usually after a horrific divorce or losing a job when the banks are breathing down their necks, or when their health takes a turn so drastically wrong that the pain simply isn’t worth it. That was my life. Every day. My entire life, I have been trapped in my own body, and all I wanted to do was have it end. But I couldn’t. I literally, physically, could not if I wanted to. Couldn’t wipe my own ass. Couldn’t feed myself. Couldn’t brush my teeth, shit, I couldn’t even walk to the bathroom to get the whole damn process started. MS was its name, multiple sclerosis for the uneducated, and fucking over my entire life was its game. I had, in the words of my doctor, ‘the autoimmune disease equivalent of a quadrapalegic’. But mine was worse than that because I couldn’t even move my mouth to communicate how much I wanted to have this cosmic irony that is my life over with. That is, until I had the weirdest dream.

Usually, waking up is kind of a dreadful affair. My dreams generally consist of me flying around like Superman, or wrecking a taco eating contest, or just straight up owning the Olympics in every event, and leaving said dream is a rude awakening back to my normal hell. The small-ish television in the corner of the small hospital room blaring whatever channel the nurses decide to put on. The best time of my life was when some lady obsessed with learning only had the Discovery channel on, and I got to watch all kinds of survivor shows. Then some fat lady took over and all we ever watched was Telemundo. Thankfully, I had eventually learned to read years ago through matching the spoken word to subtitles, so it wasn’t too bad. I got the gist. At least they were nice enough to give me a decent position so that I could look out the window and see the boring outside of suburbian Woodbridge, VA. Nothing ever happened here.

But this, this wakeup, wow. I went from dreaming about about ripping monsters apart with my bare hands on top of the Empire State building to the sensation of a soft blue light entering my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that I was definitely not in a bed anymore. First of all, I was floating in some kind of cylinder filled with blue goo, and second, the only reason I figured that out is because my hands MOVED on their own to swirl the goo so I could see it. I moved. I fucking moved! My hands, each one moves as if they had been waiting their entire existence to do so. Bony white fingers fit for a skeleton curled and twisted, to which I made each hand touch the other. I had never touched someone, or something else before and felt it! Oh, many people have moved me or talked to me while holding my hand, but never did I have any agency, any kind of power or motivation to engage. But now, they moved! And move them I did. I moved them up and down and swirled my bony hands connected to my bony arms in the blue goo, not even questioning if this was a dream or not, because I could actually feel!

---- Subject A000000000001 response to liquid tactile stimulation proves genetic recombination is viable for lower life forms. Appendage motions are well within predicted parameters for range of movement. Suggested implementation exceeds minimum requirements for enhancement. This suggests that Lower Humans are more malleable than the Predecessors. Nanotech assisted reconstruction combined with lessening quantity of stored CHAOS suggests internalization of healing and possibly deviation in line with neurochemically enhanced subconscious desire of communication and movement. Dreamstate may have been a factor. Recalculating. -----

Hearing the mechanical bite behind each word let me know that no human spoke those words. Reaching forward, I put both hands on the convex walls of the tank. Looking around for the first time, I could see that I was actually lying in a tank that was horizontal. Large, things, walked around in shiny metallic jumpsuits, some of them holding glowing crystals in the shape of a clipboard. Other things yelled at other things while gesturing wildly around at other pods in the area. I couldn’t clearly make them out. Some seemed to be wearing giant fur cloaks, or was that their skin? Others were weirdly tall and stretched out.

Humans. Out of the corner of my eye, I recognized those shapes. Those other pods were filled with humans. I could see a girl floating in a tank next to me, both of her legs were missing as she floated unconscious in the futuristic tank filled with goo, but hers was green. Turning my head, a new first for me, the person on the right was fat, egregiously so. Several cords of dark metal were plugged into his gut and more throughout his body at random points. Never before had I ever been able to talk, let alone scream or communicate with anyone about anything. But right now, somehow, my body knew how. My sheltered, cynical prison of flesh reacted to my emotional state, and I SCREAMED with everything I had. As hairline fractures creased my mask, I saw even bigger cracks begin to worm their way through my tank, as if two giant hands were simultaneously squeezing and pulling on the tank.

----- Warning. Fragility of subject’s mental state not factored in. Scanning . . . . . Subject has never received experiences through self piloting. All experiences were shown through primitive television. Grasp of reality seems to be tenuous. Recalculating . . . . . . Administering psychologically targeting injections. Warning. Subject’s mental capacity growing. Burgeoning psionics detecting. Internalized CHAOS is being assimilated by the subject at an exponentially increased rate. Warning. Warning. Implementing Emergency Procedure ROGUE ARCHON. Power levels exceeding containment protocols. Subjects within containment area are at risk. Possible actions. Silence, ineffective. Psionics overriding sound waves, mental fluctuations cannot be contained. Tranquilizers to aid unconsciousness, ineffective. Mental energy rejects outside influences. Termination. Ineffective. Delivery equipment and nearby personnel have experienced cranial hemorrhaging. Last avenue possible. EJECTING. ------

I was still screaming. I screamed as I heard the voice that tasted like iron. I kept screaming as it contemplated how to deal with me. And then I screamed some more as every color known to man plus some invaded my being, then it all stopped. I was back. In my bed. But it was dark. Thank god that nightmare was over. Sitting up, I put my head in my hands and rubbed at my temples which hurt worse than the last time the doctors tried some weird ass medicine on me.

Wait, in my dreams I could move, but now I can. Looking down at my bony hand, I reached out and touched my leg. The cold, but soft touch of my finger was felt by my leg. Tears leaked from my eyes as I opened my mouth, stretching my jaw. Oh god, it was real. The whole thing. But how. Turning my head, I looked around the most familiar place in the world to me. The lights were off and the tv had a giant crack running through it, but I was fine, I was cured!

Hopping off the bed let me know that I wasn’t completely ready to go. I landed harshly in a tangle of uncoordinated limbs, my legs smacking into the underside of the raised bed while my arms barely prevented my head from getting to know the floor. I could feel and move my legs, but the strength to do so like I had seen the rest of humanity possess wasn’t there yet. But I could feel it just out of reach. My arms didn’t have much strength either, but lying on the ground in my hospital room reminded me that I was but naked. Odd sounds croaked out of my mouth. Yes! Come on, speech! My next obstacle! “Uuuhhhhh,” I groaned some more. Damnit, almost. Forcing myself to move, I commanded my body to cooperate. I had a goal, the chair two feet in front of me. Left hand forward, plant on ground, do the same with right hand, pull with both arms while attempting to push with legs. After sweating for five minutes, manually contracting each individual muscle, I moved four inches. I managed four inches.

My frustration began to boil over. I was healed, cured, but still couldn’t do shit! Couldn’t talk, couldn’t actually ambulate to a fucking chair. Again. Pull with arms, push with legs, flop with belly, and . . . another four inches in five minutes. FUCK. I let out another frustrated groan. Another twenty minutes of struggling combined with ten minutes of rest and I’d be at the chair. As my anger reached a boiling point, I pictured a gentle giant of a hand picking me and putting me in the chair, taking great care to to orient me correctly with my but in the seat and me facing forward. What happened blew my mind. It felt like someone grabbed me by my ass cheeks, flipped me around and chucked me into the chair, which only stayed upright as it was back against a wall. My view during the second scariest time of my life is what I imagined a rollercoaster looked like to normal people, just flipping shit around so that you completely lose your bearings.

Looking down at my naked body and wondering how I didn’t get knocked out, I could see that there was nobody else in the room with me. My bed was to the left of me, broken tv off still sitting in its corner, and my naked way too skinny body sprawled in a chair. I moved my arms to cover my privates, hahaha, another first. Was that me, did I do this? I’ve watched a lot of tv, more than anyone else I’ve ever heard of in my life, and I recognized the word ‘psionics’ out of that mechanical babble. Something to do with with mind over matter or moving shit with my mind. But, that’s not real. Is it? So how do I, a rational former prisoner to my own mind and body, explain this? My body did not get up and put me in this chair. The drying sweat from my body proved that. So, what the fuck did?

----- Appropriate containment measures found. Retrieving temporarily portaled subject A000000000001. Mental dampeners fabricated and implemented in Neutron Class pod . Initializing . . . . . Subject found within acceptable proximity to transient dimensional weakening. Retrieving . . . . Importation successful.

Colors flooded worse than last time than faded as my body was taken, again, from my hospital room and dropped into the blue goo. I got a better look at my captors right as I started to scream again, but a quick slap to the face shut me up as the overbuilt alien with odd facial structure that resembled a human forced a helmet on me complete with a mask, then dunked me in the tank. Taking a breath of the hissing air being pumped into my mask, I flailed about trying to sit up. A strange lethargy overtook my limbs, and my eyelids closed.