The whirring noise of the machine steadily filled the background as the doctor went through the same speech he had each of the thousands of times he had done the procedure. “The procedure is harmless Xavier, I know you already know but I still have to say it. You know how this goes, the scanner gets going and it takes a snapshot of your full brain activity, then the backup goes off to the hospital data banks, and you don’t have to come back until next year. Got it?” Xavier nodded and Dr. Hallaway brought down the scanner to rest over Xavier’s head and the whirring sound the machine made started to grow. When the noise reached its peak Dr. Hallaway took a brief look over the scanner and nodded to himself before stepping out of the room for a while to let the machine run.

A few minutes later the whirring began to falter, though it didn’t slow like it should, but Xavier took no notice, soon after his vision started to to jump and crackle like the screen of an old tv and dark patches began spreading across his vision like a burning photograph. Yet there was more than anything a feeling of relative boredom, as if the terrifying experience were happening to someone else. Even as the noise of the machine began to disappear entirely, falling into a rhythmic pounding sound of crackling static and blisteringly loud feedback sounds, all Xavier could feel was a sense of detachment from the experience.

Through a small remaining clear spot in his vision Xavier glimpsed Dr. Hallaway as the man came back through the door and walked towards him. As the last piece of clear sight started to fade away along with the rest of his sight Xavier saw the doctor saying something to him. The words were almost completely drowned out in the crackles and buzzing sounds, and the words that did make it through were an unintelligible garbled mess. “Alright, you’re good to go!” Was all Xavier could make out as he felt the constant thrumming of the machine begin to slow even as the sensation in his body began to fall away. Even the horrible screeching sounds in his ears gave way to silence as all sensation began to give way to the strange void of feeling. The last thing there was before it was all gone was the feeling of motion as he began to rise from the chair, and the sharp antiseptic scent of the hospital.

He had no idea how long the experience had lasted, it was very hard to track time without any input from his surroundings. To him, the limbo was a strange experience, for a brief moment he was in a totally blank space. It wasn’t a void because there was nothing there to begin with, or nothing that Xavier could feel but even still, he couldn’t bring himself to conjure any emotional reaction beyond apathy. At least he was aware now, or at least enough to think, suddenly Xavier had some sensation in his limbs, but it was incredibly faint. He tried to wheel himself around and get a sense of his surroundings and found himself looking something in the emptiness. A little pinprick of light was there hanging in the lack of substance, like a star in the night sky. “That wasn’t wasn’t there before.” he thought and to his surprise Xavier found he had heard himself muttering.

“I can hear myself again!” He shouted as loud as he could just for the fun of it. “Is it because of the light though?” Xavier wondered, frankly he was relieved to just have a little sensation again, but with the return of his sensation Xavier was losing his sense of detachment towards being caught in the empty space and felt a rising anxiousness in him. Xavier looked back towards the mystery light so he would have something to focus on. As he looked at the light he realized he was hearing a humming sound like the one he had heard from the machine in the doctor’s office. Could it be the same device from earlier? Could he still there in the machine having a hallucination? Was he having a stroke right there in the hospital? “Well at least if it’s that last one then I won’t have to wait for an ambulance.” He tried to play the thought off as a joke but the humming was hardly a better alternative to the silence Xavier lapsed into at his own remark.

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Instead of letting his thoughts grow more wild Xavier let himself fall back into the calm he had felt while everything was empty. It was hard to keep those thoughts at bay but there was a definite peace to floating in the unused space watching the light in the distance. After what felt like a few minutes, Xavier was briefly roused from his dozing by the humming growing louder in the background. He gave the star an odd look as the humming grew even louder. ‘No.’ Xavier thought to himself. ‘It’s not humming, it sounds like clicking.’ The clicks were so fast the blended together and sounded like a single drawn out hum. Something well beyond strange was already happening to Xavier, but with this he was completely at a loss. Then, without fanfare a new light appeared next to the first clicking as well. With the new light, Xavier got back more of his senses. A few moments passed and there were four stars. Each click grew increasingly less distinct as the volume rose, the lights rapidly multiplying, quickly restoring Xavier’s senses. Yet even as the lights brought sight and sound back to the empty space Xavier lay within, lead only to a new loss of sensation as the clicking rose to deafening levels. Each and every click grew to possess a cacophonous quality as the eardrum shattering sound echoed around, washing over him like a tidal wave.

Quickly moving far beyond what anyone should ever have reason to try to withstand, Xavier was caught in the center of the discordant sound. The lights began spreading and flooding his vision with blinding light as they rushed in to form new walls trapping him in a fresh nightmare of constant unrelenting stimulation. Xavier found himself in the fetal position as each wave of sound brought back more sensation compounding the misery of the experience. As Xavier’s sense of touch returned he felt every inch of his skin buzz, he could feel the vibration deep in his bones causing a pain like his tissues were trying to rip themselves from his body. The light was growing beyond was Xavier could stand as he tried to close his eyes once more to seal himself off from the light, but his eyes would not respond. Frantically Xavier aimed to pull his eyes shut by hand as his hands quickly shifted to searching his own face for his eyes, when his fingers actually reached them. Xavier’s eyes were already closed, cut off from the outside world and already as removed from the light as was possible. Xavier was frantic, the sounds and lights kept growing brighter, and his limbs were still merely a theoretical existence attached to his head but still causing incredible pain. Each new wave of sound and light stacked up on Xavier’s mind, adding constantly increasing pressure on Xavier’s already strained mind. As the lights raced to fill the last spot of empty darkness, the sounds of the lights battered Xavier like a physical thing and his muscles twitched as the buzzing of his skin was growing unbearable, and just as he thought he couldn’t take anymore, it all stopped.

There was no sound aside from his own heartbeat as the clicking vanished. His body was mercifully still, absent of the horrible buzzing and twitching but he kept hold of his senses, but the darkness remained. The lights had left along with their horrible noise, but the darkness had come back and Xavier was stuck again, until he opened his eyes. The light came streaming back in, blinding him for a moment, but the light didn’t grow brighter and Xavier’s vision was quickly returned to him and he was left breathless. He found himself standing on a perfectly smooth pillar of black marble as he looked out at the horizon. He could see an endless sea of clouds rolled straight past the horizon on every side, Xavier let out a relieved sigh and collapsed limply onto the pillar’s surface.