//Gestalt Insertion…Initializing…

Seriously, if that was karma's idea of a joke then trust me, I would have been crying laughing—I'd finally cracked. What I was experiencing was something that was leagues ahead of VR contacts if there was ever such a thing. I wouldn't know, it had been a while since I'd scrolled past MKBHD's channel or any other tech channel for that matter.

// Neurocognitive Status…Check…

Yep, I was definitely not dreaming. Also whatever entity was intruding on perception, it seemed to intuit my state of mind. I should have been screaming right then. Instead, I packaged whatever panic attack had been waiting to go from zero to nervous breakdown into a little black box and tossed it into oblivion. Compartmentalizing—it helped deal with overwhelming stimuli. The last time I let everything run haywire I was decidedly not myself and I lost a month and a half from it.

// Neurocognitive Status…Pass…

“Ah, K…you okay there bud?” Lucas spoke up. I could see him waving in front of my face but I didn't dare move a muscle because—I don't know. The fact that I was aware of Lucas' at the same time it was happening meant everything was happening in real time. As i thought that, I felt a tingle at the base of my spine and then—

// Gestalt Insertion…Success…

// Loading Interstitial Buffer…

“Bruv? Whatever you're doing it's not funny man,” Lucas became insistent. “Snap out of it,” he said. His hands were now on my shoulders—yet I could not pull myself away from what was happening

// Identifying Attribute Markers…

I felt warmth permeate every single inch of my person. You know that feeling after the first sip of good liquor hits your stomach? No? Too bad—that was the same feeling, only that it began from the tips of my toes and slowly rose, by the time it had reached my head, my face was flushing and my eyes were almost on the verge of watering.

I felt as if static was crawling right across my skin. Then it ended, I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. In real time, only a minute had passed and yet, it had felt more than that. I could also tell it wasn't over—

“Bruv, what the hell was that for?” Lucas said, punching me on the shoulder. “For a moment there—your eyes seemed to glaze over,”

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” I said. And I meant it. as wild as his account of the incident was, I doubt it could match what was happening to be. I didn't even have a frame of reference save something Lucas had been pestering me about—some work of fiction.

“What do you think happened back there?”

Lucas frowned in consternation. He was joining the dots—I knew the first thing at the top of his list had easily been discarded. For better or for worse, his association with me had often led him to stop and think before he jumped the gun.

“Try me,” Lucas said grinning. Of the two of us, he was considerably accepting of things. However there had been no missing the tap-dancing when he was narrating the story of what had transpired. He mentioned the boat, us diving and taking pictures and then mentioned something about a freak of nature that was utterly unexplainable given the circumstances we'd found ourselves in.

A whirlpool had come out of nowhere swirling like a tornado. I'd dropped the torch and with it went visibility. The rest of occurrence consisted of Lucas lost in shock and subsequently roused out of it by a low air alarm that forced him to surface.

He'd been a mess as he tried to explain to Cassandra that something just grabbed me. Of the two of them, Cassandra had been the most level headed to take action by calling the authorities. He was in emotional distress and therefore even Cassandra had been forced to take everything with a grain of salt.

Maybe he'd been avoiding the issue for fear that I'd brand him a loon. He never had the steel to tell me that the things that came out of my mouth sometimes hurt. I was not that brusque but I didn't like window dressing issues I knew would one day come back to bite me in the posterior.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It was easy to see through him and know that the last part had been an exaggeration. That he hadn't told anyone else revealed he'd keep mum about things if it came to it—

“I—” I almost bit my tongue off with that as I felt the most debilitating pain like I've ever felt before. All my muscles suddenly cramped and locked as if some current was grounding through me. I'd been standing, so the first thing that occurred was my body suddenly listing to the side.

// Inserting Attribute Markers…

“K!” Thank goodness for those linebacker reflexes. I was not really going to split my head on the floor like a cantaloupe if I could help it. But I could barely curse out as the next thread rolled across my consciousness.

// Instigating Neural Black-out…

Everything went numb. My eyes closed of their own volition as though someone had hijacked me and initiated a force shutdown—Yet I was lucid enough for the next part of it. I could feel that somehow, the neural blackout was meant to be the equivalent of general anesthesia. I could vaguely feel that pain was just waiting on the fringes of my awareness, like a monster waiting for the lights to go out so they could cross the distance to eviscerate you. I was insensate enough that a shudder felt out of reach.

// Attribute Harmonization…In Progress (1%)

I watched the numbers tick up, right behind my eyelids. My environment was lost to me— I was a truly disembodied persona. I trusted that Lucas would cover for me.

// Attribute Harmonization…In Progress (20%)

I wondered how much time was passing outside of my awareness. With my sense of time being out of whack, why did I even try?

// Attribute Harmonization…In progress (47%)(24:31:12 | 00:28:48)

That was oddly, specific. Hours, minutes and seconds to completion at what rate? The math didn't stack up—though it was definitely not a straight rate. I guessed I would be comatose for a while, yet try as I might I couldn't bring myself to sleep. I had more entertainment staring at a wall or watching the percentage crawl up as I defragged a SATA harddrive with 5400rpm worth of platter speed.

----------------------------------------

// Attribute Harmonization…In progress (97%)(00:01:59 | 24:58:01)

Even for a person who tended to get lost in something in front of their face, my thoughts tended to scatter after a while. I was not so conceited as to think I was some high functioning human being or someone who belonged to some niche proportion of a demographic with high IQs. I disavowed myself of those notions long before I clocked 20.

That said, somewhere at the back of my mind was my own voice playing devil's advocate as it prodded me to question my sanity. Ordinarily, I would have gone along with it like everything else that had been happening to me. I cringed at the thought that I'd almost blurted out the first thing that came to me in the heat of the moment.

While I trusted that Lucas had the best intentions at heart, there was no telling whether he would pave my road to a hell of staring at white padded rooms. Well-meaning and kind human beings could sometimes set off unintended cascade effects. I couldn't even play it off as some epileptic seizure; that was needlessly cruel even for me.

Perhaps we could pretend it never happened like the incident at the Baltic Sea. Thus far, Lucas had been doing a good job of it. Sooner or later, it would crumble down the line like a tower of Jenga. Keeping up a ruse like that when I'd been in contact with so many people was a class act in and of itself.

I could not shake the feeling I would be under a microscope when I went back to my apartment in Zurich. Perhaps the Kaufmanns had space for an extra pair of hands at the farm but I would hate to be that person. I could not take advantage of their kindness more than I already had.

Actually, the best thing I could do was pretend that nothing had ever happened. I could go back home to my apartment. I didn't actually have a housemate but I had to get over the awkward phase where my neighbors tried to fuss over me sooner rather than later.

I could even go back to the White Raven's to show my face just in case—that was the most rational thing an innocent person with nothing to hide would do. Crypto or not, I needed to get in touch with the bank to make sure I was not the recipient of illegal money.

While trades could be anonymous, I knew that there was a way I could trace the money back to its source without jumping through hoops and convoluted wizardry like some protagonist in a mystery novel. I was no hacker . Also, hacking did not work the way people thought it did.

But first, I needed to wake up—

// Attribute Harmonization…(100%) (00:00:00 | 25:00:00)

// Neurocognitive Load Limit…Unlocked!

//Allostatic Load Limit…Unlocked!

// Homeostatic Load Limit…Unlocked!

//Node-Gestalt Handshake…Success!

// Visualizing Attribute Markers…Success!

//Instigating Neural Vivification…

I roused with the gasp of a drowned man.