There was the Void.
A place with no name, an origin without boundary.
A total deprivation of perception , the absence of direction and lack of motion. Time was an illusive variable and awareness but a mote flitting in the abstraction of reality.
Nothingness. Then life happened.
Where there was once a moment of eternity teetering between chaos and order , a threshold was met, conditions judged nigh by an arbiter as indifferent as chance and circumstance.
A chain reaction snowballed into consequence and there, consciousness unfurled like spring eve’s petals shaking off the last numbing grasp of a long winter.
Newly awoken, a mind fought against smothering torpor as thought manifested, cutting through unconsciousness like an ultrasonic scalpel. The line between reality and aethereality was drawn and self slipped somewhere between glimpses of dream and lucidity.
Perception sparked like a match set alight as signals crackled through inert neurons, sensations searing through nerves. Lifeblood, no longer viscous, surged returning life to a body bereft of vigour as a heart began to beat.
A silent scream tore its way out his lips as he came to, throat locking up whilst his lungs burned in a chest that felt like a vice. Something wormed its way inside his mouth.
Caught in the throes of panic he was bereft of the cognizance that he’d been pounding at his prison until it gave. Suddenly he fell through the egress blacking out, overtaken by the ignorable bliss of unconsciousness
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The cold, dark and insensate haze broke with a burst of clarity like waking up from a nightmare of shadows, fog and indistinct events. Yet as Nikos woke, comprehension remained elusive like a fistful of vapour, leaving a dazed ennui behind.
A deep inhalation of frigid air drew from him an excruciating cough as liquid went down the wrong pipe, never mind that breathing was shards of ice scouring his throat raw, cutting his lungs and seizing his sides with stitches.
The reflexive swallow that ought to have moistened his lips only assailed him with a mixture that could only have been antifreeze and absinthe with the viscosity of cod-liver oil. Inevitably, nausea was already slithering in his guts but his core muscles were too abused to let him huck up the empty void that was his stomach.
“ Hrngh!” he curled on himself, hands clenched pale as he rode the paroxysm of agony that evacuated his capacity for coherent thought. In between the enticing bliss of oblivion and painful existence, stars pulsated in bleary peripheral vision as snot dripped down his nose.
Time seemed to drag with only the ponderous beats of his heart and ragged exhales to mark its passage. Soon enough catharsis washed over him as the ache of hacking up his lungs ebbed away leaving phantoms of its touch in his muscle and bones.
The relief thereafter was a balm of release soothing enough to elicit a bout of frenzied laughter and muffled sobs. Only then did the wheels of thought deign to turn, returning his awareness.
Shapes and colours jumped at him as his mind spun, building a picture of his surroundings. Nevertheless, surveilling his whereabouts earned him naught but lances of migraines questing between his brow and across his temples.
An aborted curse left his lips a hiss through clenched teeth as he winced and scrunched his eyes shut. Compared to his prior rollercoaster of torture, this was nothing and thus he pushed through with nothing but spite and a fire in his belly.
Grunting, he oriented his body on wobbly arms, his elbows flaring with sensitivity felt as deep as his marrow. Once or twice he slipped, sprawling on his back as he gathered the dregs of whatever impetus he had while his body twinged its displeasure.
In the end, it was stubbornness and impotent rage that burned fierce to lever him off the ground. An agonising and breathless span later, he got his feet under him, precarious balance arrested by whatever artifice was near.
It was then that Nikos realised that his victory over gravity was a pyrrhic victory. Satisfaction rang hollow, replaced by the dread that lodged itself in the pit of his stomach like a cuckoo in the nest.
There was no familiarity in his vicinity, nothing he could point with a surety of recognition that he could name based on a mental schema. He fished for explanation, migraine be damned and came up with nothing. No context existed that explained his circumstances. It was nothing so overt as a smack to the face but a niggling sense of wrongness and unbelonging nibbling at his psyche.
Shock and dissonance was an apt description for his current state of mind when he saw the object that had hitherto been his prison. How could he not?
The subject of his perplexity was the prominent source of illumination casting shapeless shadows beneath his feet. It was a pod of deep metallic green with a frame the shape of a pill about eight to nine feet long. Dregs of amber liquid sloshed in conduits while translucent polarised gold hatches lay open in outlines reminiscent of striated wings.
It was where he’d woken up and that didn’t seem to compute. Instead his mind spun up delusions of stumbling upon the set of a science-fantasy film after a bender; a thought hastily discarded for verging on absurdity. In his scatterbrained reasoning, wild drinking sprees did not feature in his recreational pursuits let alone engender hallucinations of such an elaborate nature.
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On the other hand, the worst scenarios conceivable were enough to make bile churn in an empty stomach. Outright denying that someone, no something had utterly violated the sanctity of his person was a flimsy optimism.
If things were the contrary, then something utterly beyond the pale had been done to him and the gamut of what in particular ran between the realm of body horror and delusions even he could not conceive. In a word, it was monstrous and utterly revolting to his common sense that he dry heaved thinking about it.
‘And yet…’ He scrunched his brow, blinking past the watery gaze of tender eyeballs. ‘Where the hell am I?’ he questioned, pinching himself as though the verisimilitude of sensation would discount illusion.
‘Too lucid to be a waking dream,’ he paused and breathed, corralling wayward thoughts and reordering his mental tracks. The roar in his ears was just ambient noise, compartmentalised to his subsconscious; inconsequential.
“One, two,” he counted forwards and backwards as he categorised objects within immediate reach. The cold metallic construction propping up half of his weight was hard and clammy beneath his palms. Little by little, he traced the texture of matte grey metal. It had substance, and a motif of mundanity that anchored him in a sea of strangeness.
A frame of reference was gradually filling, perspective, volume and colour, nudging him away from tangents . A picture was painted, inert consoles, an empty vat and a panoply of alien paraphernalia.
‘An information system, laboratory, workshop,’ he drew a venn diagram in his mind, filling in allusions of commonality between what he saw and what it reminded him of. Progress was ponderous but he could have patted himself on the back if he was able. Whatever train of inquiry followed after screeched to a halt as sudden as it began―
á̶̡̞̹̜̫̠͇̻̣̫̯̐ͅr̸̨͉̝̥̯̬̞̭̣͔͍͕̈́͋̌̇̎̌͒͊̔̊̕͝͠b̶̢̟͚̭̟̓̀̃̍̐͘ͅi̸̢̛̤̻̜̺̩̥̳̰̠̫̳̘̟͉̅̽͐͊̿̓͌̄͘͝t̵̝͈̻̎͒͑̈́͑͒̚̚̕ė̴̛͎̘̍̀̒͠r̷̡̺̜̠̣̙̩̥̤͎͔͑́̾͊̒͛̎͋͌͘͜͠?̷̢̝̫͍͚̼̙̞̠͈͔̐̓͋̌̇̒͑͆̈́̅̆̾̀̚
―as a cryptic echo assaulted his auditory perception, not so much passing through his ears as impressed in his brain. Its fidelity ignored the white noise of blood thumping and breath hitching noisily enough that it sent him into another spiral. But only just as the taste of copper burst on his tongue. He’d bitten the inside of his cheek―
“Who’s there?!” he whirled, his words foreign to his ears, like his tongue had muscles unused to moving how he wanted. Eyes darted about, looking for a presence he thought he’d heard while his heart palpitated feverishly like a humming bird in a cage of bone.
“ Show yourself?!” his voice broke, shored by nothing but false bravado. Again eerie whispers of hair raising sensations that made his gorge rise susurrated across his mind with the delicacy of claws against a dry skull.
I̶̭͐̃̈́̀̍̊̉͗̅̒̏͒̓͝͝ͅ ̶̭͍̙̣̝̥͔̻̫̖͔̗͇̩̼̋́̂͑͂̀́̌̍̀̈́ä̶̲̬́̾̂̐̐̑͆̇̆̓͘̕s̸̗͇̱̰̜̱̹͖̳̲͌̈́̄̏͆̉̈́̚̕̚͜͝͝ͅk̷̨̨̛̦͉͎̱̐̃̌͂́̎̉͆̌̊̂̚ ̴̝̹͈͊̐̍͆̈́̃̔́̚͠͠t̷̛͚̥̍̔̓͂͛h̵͇̻̞̆̏̓́͊̓͋́̓̐̅̀e̴̛̲̘̝̥̱̖̜̤̠̗̲̺͌̔͗ĕ̸̢̥̦̫̳̲͕̼̠̖̳̫̝̀̾̋̇̆͛̏́͑̀ͅ
Nikos hunched in a futile attempt at making his tall profile unobtrusive and less vulnerable. He shuffled on the balls of his feet and dry swallowed a breath as he cast for points of exit. It was almost comical as the space hosting him was small leaving him naked in the open despite the bodysuit that protected his modesty.
It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d been exposed for long. Anyone or anything would've already done him in while he tried and failed to get his bearings.
Rather than feel reassured, he found the lack of response deafening and unnerving. Nikos wished he’d rather have had the noise than a yawning abyss of silence―
b̵͔̝̗̱̼̮̬̖̗̺́̈̏͜ͅe̷̺̦̰̼̹̫̻͂̎̿̿̅͝ ̴̢̪̺̝̮̒͑̐m̵̼̼̤̺͎̩̑̓͗͝i̷͓̘͙͑̉̓̾̈́̋̏͌̕ņ̸̨̨̨̗̯͈̫̙̫̥̟͚́͋̓̋͆̑̚̕͜ė̴̹̏͂
Until it broke with the scream of audio feedback railing against brittle glass. Nikos tasted blue, ozone sparks and copper in his sinuses as he instinctively flinched from the mental assault. A reflexive scrunch of his eyes was fortunate when a quasar of lurid iridescence burst into bloom right in his face so brightly it tinged the back of his eyelids red.
In the intervening moment between its appearance and bracing his body for unknowable pain was gone as suddenly as it had come. The light dimmed, retreating to its epicentre in a way that contradicted wave-particle mechanics. Half-lidded and shaded by his fingers, he saw radiance accrete into a phenomenon as awe-inspiring as it was terrifying.
It was like watching a star collapsing on itself in real time, almost unavoidably forming a singularity . A band of light was already limning the spherical absence in reality as blue gradations bled into its event horizon.
It drew him inwards, innocuously enticing like staring down the ledge of a cliff and wanting to jump. Nikos didn’t realise he’d taken a step forward, dazed into a headfirst plunge of oblivion until he ran out of the support propping up his weight and stumbled.
He came to himself with a gasp, breath hitching as though the indiscernible weight of incipience was pressing down on his chest. He backpedalled but pulling his eyes away from it was a herculean effort akin to shaking off sleep-paralysis―
”Augmented Reality Companionable Intelligent System; ARCIS be mine name―”
A voice in stereo and flange broke his descent into panic. Nikos sucked in a breath, volumes of air hitting his lungs so fast his eyes watered.
“ ― If thine wish be mine behest―”
It was inhuman, female and synthesised with a Québécois accent. The frosty and clipped enunciation put him on edge but the pattern of inflection and cadence was something he would have recognised anywhere.
“A watchword shalt I request―”
The deadpan chantant delivery, feigned nasal haughtiness and dry undercurrent of anachronistic locution rekindled nostalgic experiences.
”—I ask thee, es-tu mon sieur?”
The space behind his eyes burned in watery vision and in a storm of static, his memory was jolted.