For some unknown amount of time, I had only brief moments of lucidity.

I remember the scent of blood, the fumes of petrol, and the acrid smell of smoke.

I remember finding myself strapped into an unusual seat as everything was shaking and I felt like someone was standing on my chest.

I remember a moment of weightless freefall, still strapped into the seat.

I remember the heavy pressure on me again but without the shaking.

I remember seeing through a viewscreen a barren grey mountainous and cratered desert blur past as I watched a large blue and white marble sink below the too-sharp and too-near horizon.

The last thing I remember before my final blackout was seeing a strange dimly illuminated shape – an axle with three wheels – growing larger on the viewscreen. It was floating in front of a background of stars that didn’t twinkle. I had no idea how large it was, but as it became larger on the viewscreen, I got the impression that maybe it was huge.

As I finally returned to consciousness fully, I found myself naked and strapped into and reclined in something like a kinky dentist chair. I could feel some kind of frame locked around my head all the way down to my shoulders. A bright light was dazzling my sight which made everything else seem darker, and the room wasn’t well lit, at least not for human eyes.

I could tell this place wasn’t in the sausage-shaped spacecraft. From what I could see the ceiling was flat and too high to fit inside the craft that abducted me. This room would not have fit inside unless its insides were bigger than its outsides like a certain blue police box, but I was pretty sure it hadn’t been. There were ambient sounds like the rhythmic tonal beeping you might hear in a hospital and shuffling-like sounds like a stockyard.

“You awake now. Nǐ hǎo. I Dr. Saw, your doctor. Qǐng calm down. Your surgery very delicate now,” a male Chinese voice said from somewhere behind me, and it completely failed to help keep me calm. He seemed to be saying something about an ‘eye doctor,’ an optometrist maybe, but what did he mean that he had seen my doctor? Where was my surgeon if I was in surgery!?

“Nurse Munch, make patient ānjìng,” the mysterious Chinese voice said.

I suddenly realised my eyes must be crossed and I probably was still high on something because I saw double as an anime lab rat leaped onto my chest holding a syringe almost as large as themself. Then I realised I wasn’t cross-eyed, there were truly two of them, each with a syringe, but they had different coloured furs. One was pinkish, and the other was in cyan.

“Narf! Gee Brain, what are we gonna do tonight?” I said dreamily as I drifted off to my happy place.

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I heard a Ding. In my field of vision appeared floating words, “[Neural interface verbally initialised. Warning! Stand by. 69% integration remaining.]”

Well, that was something.

“Hǎo, xièxiè,” the Chinese voice said appreciatively.

“Munch has not administered any doses yet,” the pinkish one said as something lit up on their chest, “and Munch technically hasn’t earned a nursing degree,” the cyan one added, also with something illuminating on their chest, “although, Munch has earned a midwifery degree,” the pinkish one clarified, “but Munch believes this patient is not prenatal or postpartum,” the cyan one diagnosed, “and Munch thoroughly checked,” the pinkish one concluded.

“The answer is this is a bad trip. I’m hallucinating and have a case of the hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional munchies,” I said indifferently.

“[… 42% integration remaining.]”

“Toxicology jiéguǒ negative,” the Chinese voice said as a green-feathered and brown-scaled dragon’s head peered down at my upturned face from behind me. It looked upside down from my view. “This mean psychosomatic yuánqì,” the dragon said in the same Chinese voice a pair of long opposable claws gently, with their blunt sides, widened my right eye, so it couldn’t blink, while a small bright light dazzled it. The dragon turned its head, so we were eye to eye. “Condition shock cause zìjǐ mèngyùn state, with dissociation,” said the dragon, who had a head as large as a horse’s head, but a mouth much bigger and with sharp pointy teeth. “Patient no jíshí risk,” finished the dragon, which, other than the feathers, looked more like a Western-style dragon, but it clearly had a Chinese accent and was dropping Mandarin words, so was it an Eastern-style dragon? Was I a dragon-racist just because I wasn’t sure?

For some reason, the potential origin of the dragon caused me some worry. I suddenly realised why. I didn’t know Kung fu – I wasn’t a fan of wuxia or xianxia – had I been isekai’d? I hadn’t been hit by a truck, though technically I had been in a truck accident. But really, I had been ‘kindly’ kill-napped by kransky-kun. Still, any situation with a dragon, regardless of their heritage, did seem pretty fantasy. The dragon in question, indifferent to my internal anxiety, used a stethoscope to listen to my chest.

“You aren’t lab animals. You’re all just cryptic cryptids. Would that make you two mogwai?” I asked while eyeballing the furry little pre-gremlins standing on my chest.

“[… 24% integration remaining.]”

“A correction, Munch is animals with many labs,” the apparent cyan miniature-animal lab-mogul disclosed, bad grammar aside, but the pinkish one said nothing. Maybe they were some kind of experimental plush robot?

“And I vet, not mó guài,” the dragon of indeterminate heritage interjected for some reason, but it was good to know they were a military veteran, I supposed. Though I had no idea what kind of high fantasy war a dragon would fight in as part of a military. Then there was the ‘integration’ thing which seemed ‘system,’ but maybe it was more cyber-punk?

“So, what does that make you,” I said, eying the pinkish suspected furry-bot, “a Tickle-Me-Furby?”

“[… 3.5% integration remaining.]”

The pinkish creature said, “Munch is…”

Unimaginable pain shot through my mind.

Ding! “[Self-assembling intracranial neural tech integration complete. Allocating storage. Excessive free volume detected. Bonus upgrades have been unlocked. Uploading Platinum-tier Extras Package. 100% installation remaining.]”

The pain returned even worse after a too-brief respite and continued for several minutes at least, or one subjective eternity. There may have been elevator music.