Sally woke, warm and comfortable. Her bed was nice. She snuggled down. Just a little more sleep before she had to get up.

Her eyes popped open. She could hear the trickling of water! That wasn't right.

She sat up, or tried to. Instead, she ended up having to turn onto her side, work her arms under her body, then heave herself up. Eventually, she was sitting and supporting herself with her wobbly arms. Success!

After yesterday's revelation, Sally had decided to focus on things she could do something about. Which, granted, wasn't much. She was reintroduced to the bathroom troughs and that was about all she could handle. As she flagged, the boy mentioned something about his grass needing light, then moved her blanket to another patch of grass near the center of the room.

One obvious thing she could see was that overnight everything had grown! She called it overnight because she had slept quite a while, but the light was the same as always. Maybe there was no overnight.

Around her were a number of small trees, all the same size, looking like they were growing in rows. In fact, more than being the same size, the trees looked completely identical, but that couldn’t be right! There were large patches of grass surrounding most of the scrubby brush growing in clumps around the room. Now that she was near the middle of the room she could see that there was a stream running diagonally across the room, in a slight depression. The floor was made of wood, so it was strange to see the water flowing on it. The stream appeared to come and go through the ends of the room, from raised sections, the one where the water exited was her bathroom trough.

She looked around, marveling at the oddness of the room. She peered through the windows at the building across the way. She hadn’t really noticed much about it before, but now Sally could see that it was made entirely of glass windows that formed tiers. These tiers didn’t form straight lines, they sort of oozed and flowed. It was very artsy.

Each end of the room had two levels of doors. On one end the boy was going from door to door, crouching down and waving his normal hand in front of each opening. The sensor thing was flying around the room, sometimes near the boy, sometimes going through the doors, and sometimes just hovering in place.

She tried to get up but found she was still having a lot of difficulty moving and couldn’t manage it. Darn it! She didn’t like this helplessness. Instead of asking the boy for help, she decided it was up to her to do something. The wheelchair was nearby, the boy must have moved it too. Sally stared at the chair. She would get on it... or not, but at least she would try.

She dragged herself across the floor. It was slow going. Her legs weren’t any help, so she couldn’t really even crawl, she had to pull herself along with only her arms. It took a while, but she finally got to the wheelchair. It was quickly evident that she wasn’t going to be able to simply climb up onto it from the floor.

Looking around the room, she noticed that the troughs were lower than the wheelchair seat there was a buildup of dirt and grass next to them that would provide a bit of a ramp. She sat up as high as she could and formed a plan. She would drag herself, the IV stand, and the chair over there, around that, past the other part, and then to the trough that was waaaay over there. Then she would haul herself up onto the trough and transfer over to the chair. Easy! No problem. Besides, she could always call for help if she needed to.

Sally started her trek, pushing the chair and IV stand so that they rolled ahead in the general direction she wanted to go, then she pulled herself up to them, and repeat. Her arms were really wobbly, her legs were useless, and this whole thing was hard, but she would do it!

A little twinge reminded her she shouldn’t doddle. It seemed that she needed to pee quite a lot. Probably a less devastating side effect of whatever had been pumped into her when she was in the hospital room. Sally modified her task list, she would get up on the trough, pee, and then climb onto the wheelchair. Excellent plan.

At the halfway point she took a break. Really not the first break, but this was the first planned one. She had a drink and watched the boy, who was still peeking into the end rooms. He had to know she was out and about, but he was letting her do her own thing.

Enough rest, time to finish the job.

Even after leaving the IV stand behind, the second half was very slow and frustrating, but she persevered. Finally, she managed to drag the chair over to the trough and work her way up until she was sitting on the edge. Along the way, she enjoyed an impromptu butt dunking in the stream, but only one. Sally celebrated the success of the first half of her task by peeing. It felt good. She was fairly proud of herself. In one day she had gone from having to be hauled everywhere, to be able to slowly drag herself around. Even better, she didn’t need the kid to hold her up when she went to the bathroom.

She rested for a while then reached for the wheelchair. Her hand hit one of the arm supports and it was immediately obvious that she’d forgotten to set the brakes, because the chair rolled a few feet away. She stared at it and willed it to come back, but it was apparent that her psychic powers were as strong here as they had always been. She had to get down, chase down the chair, return, set the brakes, and repeat the climbing process. A copious and steady stream of invective helped immensely. Sally’s aunt had not approved of swearing, but there were times when it was necessary. One last mighty effort and she managed to transfer over to the chair.

She was startled when she looked around and found the boy standing right beside her. He was back to …normal? The covering was over the opening in his forehead, and he had two ordinary hands. He was wearing the red pullover shirt, long blue pants, with no shoes or socks. Same as yesterday. Like “overnight”, Sally wasn’t sure if “yesterday” was the right word, but it was good enough, for now. She looked at him. He stared back.

Time for some more answers.

Sally went over their discussions from yesterday, still having a bit of trouble keeping track of things. She was somewhere, for some reason, with him as a friend, helper, companion... or something.

There, that was all the questions answered, her work was done.

What about the boy? A robot, really? She thought it over. It seemed too pat. He had tentacles, and he wasn’t very good with the social stuff. For instance, at the moment he was just standing, watching her and not moving even a little bit. Kind of creepy.

Yesterday she sort of went with the flow, but today she was feeling much more herself. That was, she was reasonably alert, and had higher energy levels. Some of what he’d said yesterday she’d just let slide, today she would try and get some better answers.

“Can I ask you some things?” she ventured.

“Yes.”

“Yesterday you said you didn’t know where we were, then you said we weren’t on Earth. Why didn’t you think thatlittle bit of information was important? I want to know! WHERE ARE WE????” Without waiting for an answer, she stormed on, “And I’m remembering more, waking up in the hospital. What the heck was that all about? What’s going on? What are you? There’s nothing like you for real. Aliens? Give me a break! This has to be some big joke, like a TV program. Where are the cameras?

Now that she’d started her rant she couldn’t stop. “And where are my aunt and uncle? They wouldn’t sign me up for this!” She was so charged up! Her heart was racing and she was panting. With a mighty effort, she managed to pull herself to a stop.

“Wait,” pant, “wait... ‘till I get my breath.”

She breathed deeply a few times. “Let me start again... uh, no. Give me a sec.”

She took another breath, paused, then another.

“Ok, ok...” pant, “ok… first… my throat is dry.”

She looked at the stream. “Uh... can I drink that?”

“It is not advised you drink that solution,” the boy answered. “As “solution” implies, it is predominately water, but it has traces of substances that are incompatible with your biology. You should only drink from the IV bag; the fluid it contains has been tailored for you and has what you need to remain viable and to function adequately. Because it was designed to sustain you when in an unconscious state, it will be necessary to find a way to supplement it once you become more active.”

Sally understood most of that. She had a new worry. “Wasn’t that what they,” whoever they were, “fed me to keep me asleep? Is that why I’m so weak? I don’t want to be knocked out like the way I was when you found me!”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

The boy responded, “I have disconnected the feed of technologies that maintained your unconscious state.”

The boy just didn’t talk like real people, but she got most of what he said. He didn’t seem to be lying, but he wasn’t really answering all her questions.

Sally thought some more. If this was some sort of prank show they wouldn’t waste all the money they’d already spent and just tell her. What she could do is pick at what the boy said until the real story came out.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean “technologies”? Don’t you mean drugs?”

“No, a drug is typically a chemical compound. What was given to you was a mixture of various molecular machines that were programmed to maintain your biological machinery and keep your thought processes in a low energy state.”

Sally didn’t know what to think. She had just finished high school, but she wasn’t stupid. She had never heard about machines that could do anything like that. Even if they did exist they wouldn’t be used on her. Heck, her health coverage wouldn’t even pay for a Band-Aid.

“I don’t believe you.” She glared at the boy.

They looked at each other. After a minute Sally couldn’t maintain the glare. She was pretty sure the boy wasn’t going to crack.

She tried something else. “Ok, then. Are you sure I can’t drink the water? How would you know?”

“I have done an analysis of your technology, and the water, and the results are conclusive.”

Sally jumped on that, “How would you know? I haven’t seen any labs or anything you could use.”

“I contain the necessary faculties within my body, it is part of the tools I have to facilitate the gathering of information. When I discovered you in the room I took a number of samples to determine your technology, and I also sampled the various substances entering and leaving your body.”

Sally shied away from what that implied, she’d already had an example of what he meant.

Oops, she was starting to slip, she almost fell for his story. Darn it, she’d been so full of energy, now she was losing focus and getting tired again. And thirsty.

What could she do?

Her thinking went back and forth for a while, should she keep drinking the fluid, or not? Well, there really wasn’t any choice, and she had been drinking it all yesterday.

“Ok,” she said, eventually. “Give me the tube.”

So far, her plan to uncover the truth wasn’t going so well.

She wasn’t ready to believe the boy, yet. When she had more energy, she’d keep digging into the mystery of whatever was going on.

He handed her the tube. She examined it, then the stand. Maybe what he’d said about disconnecting the bad stuff was true. Some of the lights on the boxes were dark. She gave in and drank.

When the bag was empty she handed the tube back to the boy and looked at him.

“About your name, you really need one.”

“I have no need of an individual moniker. If you need one you may designate it yourself.”

Sally guessed moniker meant name, so she asked, “Do you have a preference?”

“No.”

Sally thought for a moment. He was kind of like a doll, even though he was sort of a person. Sally had never been much of one for dolls, but long ago she’d had a particular one, a sort of sorry rag doll that had been her companion for quite a while. She had to admit that the doll’s life had been hard, up until it expired in the wood chipper incident.

“Ok, then, I will call you Jon, without an h.”

When she was little she spelled the name without the “h” because she had sounded it out.

“Just stay away from big machinery,” she snickered.

The boy, Jon, didn’t respond. Sally took this as acceptance. It was tiresome to extract information from Jon, she would think of more ways to trip him up and hit him with them later. For now, she decided to roll over to the windows to see if she could pick out any details of this “strange new world”.

With the new grass in the way, she had to roll back to where her bed was and approach the windows from that direction. This would require that she wheel the chair through the stream then up to the windows. No problem.

It turned out to be easier said than done. Her arms were better, but still weak enough that even wheeling through the few inches the floor dipped for the stream was difficult. Persistence paired with a little swearing eventually worked, and she made it to the windows. Looking down she could see a small ledge outside the windows and beyond the ledge, everything dropped off. She couldn’t see a bottom. Peering up, all she could see was more of the building across the way.

Hmmm, no sky, no ground, she looked left and right, nothing but building. She tried to look through the windows across from her, but they were too far away and might be mirrored. All she could see was reflections of more windows. She turned back to the room.

Jon had gone back to playing in the doors. Sally looked at the stream that flowed to her bathroom trough. It went from the floor up to the trough and then left the room. There appeared to be a waterfall between the two levels.

It struck Sally that what she was seeing couldn’t be right! How could the water fall up? She rolled over, and yep, the stream came across the floor to the “waterfall” and then somehow flowed up to the higher level. Maybe there was a tube or something that she couldn’t see? She reached over and put her hand in the water. Nope, no tube. Sure enough, the water was rising all by itself!

Sally played with the waterfall, um, water rise? water un-fall? … thing for a while. She wasn’t sure what to call it. When she put her hand in the water she didn’t feel anything to explain the mystery. The water simply pushed her hand in the wrong direction.

She sat back in the chair. This little thing nailed the coffin shut on any idea that she was anywhere normal. Her confidence that this was a prank was wavering.

Time for more questions.

Joy. Talking with Jon was such fun. In addition to the effort to get answers that she could understand, she might not want to hear what he had to say. Really, she didn’t want to have to do this.

She looked around the room while she talked herself into quizzing Jon.

Wait, what? There was some movement in one of the clumps of bushes! Sally stared, but for a moment she couldn’t see anything. There! More movement! There was something small and brownish rooting around in those bushes. Maybe it was one of Jon’s rabbits!

Whatever she had seen was diagonally across the room, near where the stream entered. Sally slowly wheeled closer. Very slowly. She had crept up on squirrels when she was younger and had learned to be very quiet and stealthy. As a kid, she had thought of it as her one super-power.

Sally approached where she had seen the movement. It appeared to be a loaf of fur. Maybe it was eating the grass? Was it a rabbit, or more like a groundhog? She couldn’t tell.

She stopped about ten feet away from where the thing was rustling around and watched. Whatever it was remained partially hidden by the foliage but Sally was patient.

Eventually, the creature edged onto the floor area. It looked like a small carpet of fur which rippled as it moved, but she really couldn’t make out much in the way of details.

Sally coughed. Just a little. The results were dramatic. Way too many bony legs shot out from the creature and started scrabbling at the floor, then it spun in circles a few times until it caught some traction and shot off toward one of the hallways. At the same time, Sally yelled and tried to climb over the back of her seat to get away, but only managed to turn the wheelchair around.

Sally panted, and eventually calmed down. A little. Through her pointless defense, she had kept her eyes glued to the creature, which was now long gone.

She berated herself. Well, that was useless! All she’d done was scream!

She looked at the place the creature had been foraging. It had left behind a gift of droppings. Sally jumped a second time as the pile of droppings started moving in small random circles.

“What the hell?” she exclaimed, but once was not enough, “What... the... hell?”

The pile suddenly broke apart into a bunch of smaller parts, which headed for the foliage around the area and disappeared into the brush.

Sally just sat, breathing rapidly. Her first thought was that she had to move where she slept. Her second one was another “What the hell?” as was her third and many more.

Jon appeared beside her. “I see you met the rabbits.”

Sally stared at him. “That was no rabbit! I don’t know what it was. What was it? Some sort of rabbit-spider thing? What the hell, I mean heck, is going on?”

Then she looked at him more closely. “Wait, did you just volunteer something without me having to ask?”

"I have been working on resolving the typical behavior with which you would be familiar. It took time to develop a compromise between my default mode and one which you would expect. I have implemented an approach which I posit will make you more comfortable. I have also gauged the level of information you can handle and the use of vernacular you expect. I will modify my methods as events dictate.”

“What?” Sally forced out. "What?”

He looked her in the eye and then said, “I speak gooder now.”

Sally laughed, and then laughed some more. She had gone from a world that didn’t make sense to another world that didn’t make any better sense.

Eventually, the laughter receded to giggles, then tapered off.

She calmed down, took a breath and then looked at Jon. “If I understand what you said, which I don’t entirely, you mean you have done something to be able to talk to me more like a normal person? Is that what you said?”

“Yes, essentially.”

A wave of exhaustion rolled over her. She hadn’t been awake very long and once again she was almost completely drained of energy.

“I'm not sure I can take in any more, right now. I need to eat something and sleep some more.” Then she had a thought, “But, I don’t want to sleep with the things that, that… rabbit left behind. By the way, what was that spider-rabbit thing? Is it dangerous?”

“It is a creature that fills the ecological niche that an earth rabbit does. It is not really dangerous, except when cornered, and there are some questions about its presence that I want to have answered as well. As to what it left behind, these are both droppings and its young. They are meant to distract predators. The young are a pest, similar to fleas. My analysis shows you and they are biologically incompatible. You cannot digest them, and they will not survive biting you, although their bite would be an inconvenience. I will take steps to ensure they do not bother you.”

Sally thought about what he’d said. She wondered, “I’m not sure I can call that thing a rabbit. It isn’t like any rabbit I have ever seen! What is it called where it comes from?”

Jon looked at her. “The closest I can come is...” and suddenly his head was surrounded by a bunch of sparkles with bits of some sort of string fluttering through them.

Sally stared at him. Eventually, the light show died down.

This raised even more questions, but Sally was too worn out to chase them down right now. She simply said, “Ok, spider-rabbit it is.”

She rolled over to the IV stand, had a scrumptious meal, rolled to her bed, and fell into it. She dreamed of little bugs carrying the bed away.