A certain dark place.

A certain extremely perplexed scientist.

"Hmmm.... it certainly makes no sense at all."

When he had first arrived here, he had been fuming, cursing, spitting and generally rampaging about in a rage. Or he would have been if not for the stark absence of his limbs, mouth and other bodily instruments.

When he had finally calmed down, however, his methodical mind had sprung up multiple questions.

The most essential of them was naturally, where the heck was he?

The last thing he recalled was a godawful METEOR crushing him to oblivion.

And though he vividly remembered the dull *crunch* of the bone-shattering impact and a hellish, sizzling burn that had nearly cost him his sanity, his currently working mind clearly denied his death.

Was he perhaps buried in debries due to the fallout of the meteor shower? Were his limbs crushed and his body numbed due to shock?

The clarity of his thoughts however refuted this proposition. Being crushed was nothing new to him- it had happened several times on his amateur mineral-acqusition expeditions. As to why a scientist was also a budding miner... some things were better left unsaid.

What mattered was that he had experienced being pummeled by falling matter countless times in his rather uneventful life. And it always left him in a daze until money-gobbling, coin-crazy shark- *ahem* doctors could direct their precious medical aid to him. (NOTE: For reasons rather not known, the poor man had gone on too many of those expeditions- nearly ALL of which had an unnaturally high chance of failure)

So the first hypothesis was discarded.

Was he in a coma then? While the intricacies of a vegetative life escaped him and his limited medical knowledge notwithstanding, he did hear tales of the comatose being perfectly conscious even though they were unable to twitch a finger.

But living a life without his research- where the prospects of ever waking up itself were bleak, was so mentally traumatizing that he summarily dismissed it.

Following a scientific train of thought, he even briefly considered if his brain had been frozen in stasis after most of humanity died off in order to preserve his immortal knowledge.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

While that was probably the most likely conclusion, for some reason he was ultimately unable to accept it.

So here he was, back to square one, without a clue as to why he was still alive.

Not that he regretted not dying... being alive was definitely a must if he were to refine the final results of his research.

Not to mention that the world was currently unaware of it- a fact he must soon rectify.

He wondered how many had even survived that cataclysm?

However, that was when a sudden thought struck him.

All the research materials that he had gathered over the years, the various tools and scientific instruments he had pioneered, all the notes and records he had accumulated- surely they still existed!!?

Thosands of meteors striking down from the skies. Colossal earthquakes. Tall buildings crashing down to the ground.

And then he thought of his unreasonably modest lab/dwelling that had been the heart of his research after he had been kicked out of his workplace.

"DAMNIT!"

With his anger and hoplessness boiling up again, he suffered yet another bout of metaphorical violence.

Ultimately, he calmed himself down once more with a mildly pathetic reassurance- surely... SOME of it must have survived right?

Collecting his thoughts once more, he reached a decision- wherever this place was, he must go back to gather whatever remained of his research.

To return however, he must figure out where he was to begin with.

Renewing his efforts in earnest, he tried to feel for his limbs once more. He didn't know if it was because he had finally begun to acclimatize with his surroundings after all this time, but this time, his trials did yield some results.

But the results were what surprised all the more.

A feeling of crushing pressure- that was the first thing he felt.

And strangely, it didn't bother him one bit.

Instead, as he tried flexing his arms for the upteenth time, and burning with the desire to dislodge whatever was suppressing him, thought "MOVE DAMNIT!", he felt the queerest of sensations.

Ever felt your body dissipating as you pushed yourself down into a lake full of thick, viscous muck, only to somehow reform on its opposite bank? Yes, that was exactly how the disconcerted researcher felt.

Non-existing eyes twitching, he tried to move sideways, with the very same result.

Left. Right. Up. Down. With every time he moved, he felt a tiny bit of his sanity fading away.

What the hell was happening to him!?

He stopped and took a deep mental breath. He then tried to consolidate what his repeated experiments had yielded so far:

1. No matter how hard he tried, he could feel nothing other than an indeterminate amount of pressure

2. Trying to feel OR move his limbs yielded no results whatsoever- he could only choose to move in a particular direction

3. The feeling of pressure... in fact ALL sensations and thoughts disappeared for a moment as he 'moved'

4. From his trial-and-error, he could now reasonably assert that he was moving through matter

Up until point-2, he could control himself, but the with last two statements that summed up the absurd situation he was in, his breathing (metaphorical) began to hitch again.

Ultimately it begged what he now realized was the most essential question:

Not where... but WHAT was he!!?

At the very next moment, a blinding flash lit up his consciousness.

And that THING appeared before his eyes.

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