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Without any warning of where I was or how I got here, my ears roared with the ringing of fatigue while my eyes were blinded by all the mysterious lights above me. Every nerve in my body tingled with a most painful sensation, making me want to scream out as loud as I could, though I held it in. In and out of consciousness, I woke, only to beg for the mercy of sleep again and again, passing by an unknown level of time through such mental haze.

Once I was finally feeling strong enough to let my eyes adapt to the new environment around me, I took very slow steps getting my bearings. However, once I saw Lumina and her sisters standing in the same room adjacent to the medical bed, I quickly pieced together what must have happened. I didn't care about the sentiment of the moment or the sensation I was supposed to feel; only all logical details mattered. Though Lumina was ecstatic to finally see me awake in the flesh, I wasn't willing to match her energy.

"Reed," she whispered with tears of joy in her eyes.

I glanced all around the room, then back down at my own body to be sure. All of my normal human skin I have been so used to was gone, replaced by these mechanical looking formations of suit and wire, mixed with white and blue. "If I'm here, if I'm in this body... Then that means, I must have died."

"It's okay though. You're with us now." Lumina stuck to her reassurance that everything was okay, given the evidence that the transperation process into her world was a full success.

If I'm here instead of on Earth, in Altiri sector space instead of the Milky Way, then I should be happy to be here... But I'm not happy at all. I don't feel anything; I care about nothing. "Inadequate," I muttered out in neutral. Even as I stood up, my facial expression was stuck where it was, to a sense of lost purpose and unhappiness. "I require a task or instruction. Please show me to my new job."

Finally confused, Lumina slowly took steps towards me, denying the obvious mistake in her desperate assumptions. "You're my husband Reed. That is your job now; to be with me forever... You do remember me, right?"

"My memories of my previous life are functional. However, being a husband is not an adequate role for a productive use of time. Please designate me to a task."

"Reed?" Though her face was beginning to melt into sadness, Lumina kept trying to bring me out, nervously keeping her distance while her sisters stood back and watched the chaos unfold. "You do love me, right?"

"I remember sustaining several emotional sensations, but I do not remember how any of it feels." I held up my hands in front of me again, acknowledging that I wasn't really back to normal, yet I could not understand why. "I feel no emotion. I sustain no leftover passion. Whatever this love is, I recognize it no longer."

That's all it took; my words, and my stone cold emotionless expression shattered Lumina's heart into tiny little pieces, while I simply stood there caring about none of it. "You... You don't feel anything?"

Rose chimed in, realizing what the problem was before anybody else. "It's not his fault Lumina. The transperation must have gone wrong in some place after all. Whatever allowed Reed to feel all emotion has been wiped away."

Lumina was having none of it though. She held herself on her knees, sobbing into her hands as if her life were over. Whatever she was expecting me to say or do when I woke never happened.

That was all I could guess anyway. The only thing on my mind were thoughts of logical tasks or jobs to complete. The emptiness inside my heart knew no boundaries, and I didn't feel the least bit guilty about Lumina's odd behavior. Until I can be assigned a suitable task of production, I shall wait patiently for further instructions.

Just when I thought I had everything figured out, a surge of mental alertness spiked through my mind, forcing me to awaken once again, this time in the comfort of my old room. So many feelings flooded in at once, I couldn't stop crying at what I had just saw. I knew full well that I was only asleep, dreaming of the most insane situation possible, but the threatening realism of that dream is what had me shaking in fear the most. Not long after I took my first fresh breath of air, the familiar and powerful urge of certainty flooded my thoughts, confirming to me that this was no dream, but rather a premonition.

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<09/17/2012 - 09:15 | Cage High School (Gym), Austell, GA, USA>

"Thank you for staying with me today Lumina. You have no idea today..." I couldn't even finish the sentence, because remembering what I lived in that dream was just too unspeakable for me now. As I slowly crept and walked around the gym of my second period class, my eyes still felt wet and warm from the crying I did this morning, once at home, and once more in the bathroom. I was lucky to be allowed to contact Lumina today, but I asked her desperately to stay with me without phasing out.

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After having more time to think, I was able to confirm what I dreamt about and what it all meant. The sensation of certainty and familiarity is what alerted me that the dream was another one of those odd premonitions. If it were only a nightmare, I would have calmed down by now, but since I was so certain this moment of time was bound to happen eventually, I became unraveled inside, talking to nobody except for the one person I trusted most.

"I'm always going to be here for you Reed. You don't have to thank me for that." I felt all warm inside from her words alone, cherishing this sensation as much as possible, before I someday take it for granted. "Do you want to tell me about this dream? I don't think I understood when you mentioned it the first time."

That's because I could barely let any of it out. Now that I was calmer, I did my best to fill her in, to warn Lumina about the next phase of transperation that was doomed to fail. "It wasn't a dream Lumina. It was a premonition. That's what makes it so damn scary. I don't know when it will happen or why, but the transperation process is not going to be successful on me, not unless all of you go over my biometrics with a fine tooth comb and scan every little thing for errors." They already ran a scan of my body when I was asleep prior to telling me, just to ensure accuracy for comparisons later.

"But that doesn't make any sense. We know exactly what we need to do with that biometric data to make it work properly. The conversion process is something we're all taught in class how to do. Even though it's been a while, none of us have forgotten how to make the conversions work."

"The conversions involve transforming and generating a new Altiri body for my soul to be brought into after I die. But trust me Lumina. Something isn't quite right with how you have things set for now. Besides, you're used to learning about how to transform female humans into Altiri, but I'm a male human, so it must be a bit different."

"I'm telling you, it has to just be part of a dream—"

"No Lumina! You need to trust me!" I cut her off, unwilling to let her ignore this situation. "The way I watched your heart destroyed in an instant... I can't go through my days thinking that might happen again. Check all the hormone levels; rework all the neural mapping of my brain as it is for that new body. If we don't fix this, there's a strong chance I'll be transperated without any emotion at all. I don't know why Lumina, but can you please just take the class on transperation again? I need you to be fully brushed up on every small detail."

"Reed..." I couldn't tell at the moment what Lumina was thinking now. The thought of her making a mistake with something so critical as my own resurrection didn't put her at ease, but she took her time to make any specific decision. "You're really scared about this, aren't you?"

There was a totally separate element about this premonition that had me freaked out, enough for me to still be shaking now, but I didn't tell Lumina about it. Death is still one of those scary things I try not to think about, even though I know where I'll be going after I die. I don't know when this premonition was set to occur, but I couldn't shake the felling that is was much sooner than I would have liked it to be. The problem is, if I'm supposed to be transperated soon, this also entails the fact that I will die fairly soon.

"Okay," she huffed. "I want to make sure things goes right too. So I'll comply with your request. This winter, me and my sisters will all retake the course on transperation. I'll also talk to the queen about any subject differences in gender that we might have overlooked."

"Thank you Lumina. I feel much calmer now that I know you mean that." If these really are premonitions of the future I keep having, then the only way to avoid a bad outcome is to change the future before it can happen, turning a premonition into nothing more than a false prophecy, or in this case, a simple nightmare.

I didn't really understand the science behind transperation itself. It mystifies me how the same soul can be brought into a totally different body structure and still retain all memories and personality without being a direct clone. The catch is, transperation is not the perfect science I assumed it to be. There are many things that can go wrong if the conversion data is not set exactly right to accommodate the neural pathways already built into the human brain; which is the reason the bodies are scanned once we are already dead instead of anytime sooner.

"I promise you! I'm not going to mess this up. I would never let something like that happen to you."

"I hope you're right Lumina." Despite my calmer state, I still was forced to walk around the gym. Even though we were in high school, the coaches still allowed for plenty of days of free periods, proving to me that some things never change. Though today, I welcomed having no official obligations given how I felt.

I spoke with Lumina passively for the rest of the period this way, but I still had to deal with the other problem I placed on the backburner of my mind. If I'm to assume Lumina is serious about ensuring nothing goes wrong, then only one of two factors will be changed about the future that I saw. When I die, my transperation will be without error. As comforting as that thought is, I still have no idea how I died in the first place.

When did it happen? How or why did it happen? It was the one thing about this dream kept out of my knowledge. Most times, I wake up from these types of dreams having a fair idea when the event will take place, but not this time. If it's supposed to happen soon, won't that mean something in the near future will try to kill me? How can I avoid such a fate when I have no details on it whatsoever?

I still kept this part from Lumina, doing my best not to worry her. By the time gym was over, my future death was all I could think about, leaving the transperation aspect in the dust since I was sure it would be taken care of properly. On the other hand, Lumina tried contemplating more about the status of my premonitions and what it all really meant. I'm still not one hundred percent sure if these are merely dreams or psychic visions of the future. They feel very real, and I won't take any chances with something so important if I am gazing beyond the current point in the timeline.

Maybe this is a good thing. If I can see every horrible event that might ever happen to me, I have a better chance to prevent those dark spots of my future from happening. That's what I thought anyway. What I had yet to realize, is that seeing into the future for better or for worse has devastating consequences. It was a power I had not asked for, a power that did not go away. Before long, I would rue the day these visions first started.