Hello?

All touch is, in a way, pain. Nerve endings receive information and convey it to the brain, which causes muscles to react accordingly.

Hello?

Some humans can’t feel pain. All they feel is pressure, but there is never an automatic negative reaction to any touch. This causes severe problems.

Hello?

On the other side of the spectrum, humans who have lost limbs sometimes feel pain in that limb. Their brain cannot comprehend a lack of something it’d had for so many years, and insists something must still be there.

Stolen novel; please report.

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Fear itself can cause pain, unrelated to any physical touch. Goosebumps, the tensing of muscles, clenching hands and teeth so tight they crack: all a result of fear. And with no body, only a mind detached from all else, fear can cause a human to feel pain as if their whole body were present.

I know you’re there

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No one liked the possibility that a solar flare had eaten the reflected light packet.

Humans on Mirror Station 07396 didn’t like being so close to a star that could stop their only way home.

Scientists didn’t like a station being so close to a star that had taken light.

Scientists didn’t like that they hadn’t considered solar flares a threat when placing mirror stations.

Governments didn’t like the idea of moving mirror stations to be in safer locations. That would take time, money, and probably the construction of a few more extremely expensive stations.

Humans on planets didn’t like the thought that a light packet had gone missing, no matter the cause or solution.

And the families of the five missing people didn’t like that their relatives were lost forever.

No one was happy.