The Watch – Part 185:

I found myself lying face down on my living room floor. The moment that I woke, I felt uncomfortable. Moving my arms and legs, the room started to spin, and I started to feel queasy. My arms and legs were aching from weakness, my neck was stiff from not moving much and the aching in my back started to die down.

I groaned as I forced myself up. My stomach was doing backflips as my head continued to spin faster and faster as I gradually twisted my body so that I could push myself up with my hands and knees. I didn’t want to risk standing just yet, so I sat down on the sofa instead. From the way my back reacted to the soft cushions, wherever I was, I must have been lying on some hard surface, probably something wooden.

Now that I’m sitting I can have a good look around. This may be my living room, but am I in my living room. I turn my head to look outside and immediately regretted it. The sunlight hit my eyes and I nearly threw up. I had to breathe in deeply and slowly to keep myself from having to run to the bathroom. From what I saw during that minute glance, a person was walking past the window, and a car was driving past. Everything looked normal. Eventually, my body settled down a bit and I was able to move without any side effects, but I still didn’t want to risk standing up. That will have to wait until I’m sure my head and stomach can handle it.

‘What happened?’ I asked no one in particular. It was at that moment that I remembered that Amy and Tom were still there, wherever I was. They are still being held in those glass containers.

‘I need to save them,’ I said standing up. Bad idea. My stomach wasn’t ready. The room started to spin. I was losing my balance. I fell to my knees and didn’t make it in time to the bathroom.

After that incident, my body seemed to be a lot better. My head wasn’t spinning as much and my stomach had stopped dancing. I was able to stand up and keep myself up. I looked down at the patch of mess that I made and nearly gagged. I had better clean that up.

Walking was something I had to get used to again. The achiness in my legs meant they were a lot weaker than usual. From the way they were bending and buckling under my own weight, they might not have had any use for a long while, and when I went to pick up a simple, empty bucket and a mop from the kitchen, my arms felt the same way and the mop went clattering to the floor, making a loud booming sound that echoed around the kitchen that forced my hands to my ears.

I’ve felt something along the lines of this after my first trip through the Void, but never at this magnitude. Recovering from dropping the mop, I picked it and the bucket up again and headed back into the living room where I very slowly and carefully mopped up the mess that I had created. Luckily it was all over the wooden floor and not the mat in front of the sofa, so it was a relatively short procedure. Once finished, I disposed of it all and put away the bucket and mop and headed back into the living room once more.

Sitting down on the sofa again, I sighed. All I can remember is just before I pressed the button to teleport me directly to where Amy and Tom were being kept. After that, there’s nothing. There’s only one person who can provide me with all the answers that I need, hopefully.

‘Interface,’ called. He appeared in front of me. He stood in his usual, upright position in his usual immaculate suit.

‘Hello, Sebastian,’ he said in his usual robotic sounding voice complete with an ordinary human-like voice, ‘how may I be of help to you today?’

‘What happened?’ I unintentionally demanded. ‘I mean, when I teleported, what happened? Can you explain to me as much as you can, if you can?’

‘Certainly,’ he said bowing his head. ‘Just before you did teleport directly to where Amy and Tom were, you were intercepted by a teleportation ray. As you were not using the watch to teleport, you were not protected and so you went in to a state of shock. It took you to an underground scientific research facility where you were then captured and injected with a substance that was designed to send you to sleep for a maximum of twenty-four hours. You were then strapped into a machine where you were injected with another substance that was designed to induce realistic dreams. The stronger the dose that you are subjected to, the deeper the sleep is and the more intense the dreams are as well. Due to you having the watch, they didn’t want to take any chances and so injected you with the strongest dose they could provide and you were sent into a strong coma-like state.

‘They then attempted to study the watch and find a way to take it off your wrist. They suggested amputating your hand off and sending you back to the surface, but, as strong as the substance is, it will not prevent you from waking up if your body goes through an intensive shock such as having a body part amputated.

‘Your body reacted to the substance almost immediately which is why you were questioning the inconsistency. Any other person would not have done so.’

‘So my body tried to fight it off. Is that because I have the watch or something else?’

‘Your body reacted to the substance because you were not from that world. You are from this one and therefore have different genetic makeup to theirs.’

‘But who was that person that was speaking to me? All those holograms. Was everything that happened within that ‘dream’ because of that substance?’

‘It was,’ he said simply. All of what happened. It feels as if it should have a much better explanation. I’m struggling to believe that everything that happened, including that person, was all down to that chemical that was being pumped into my system and I somehow just automatically rejected. And it’s that simple. Because I’m from a different world to them that I reacted to the substance. No other contributing factors?’

‘I can scan your body to give you a list of possible reasons,’ he said.

‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ I sighed. I was starting to regain my strength. ‘So, that substance is now out of my body completely. There are no long lasting side effects or anything that I should be worrying about.’

‘Your body has finished rejecting the substance. There are no side effects.’

‘Good.’

‘Is there anything else that I can help you with?’ he asked.

‘How come you didn’t help me?’ I asked. ‘How come you didn’t warn me that I was being captured and injected with these foreign chemicals?’

‘I am not programmed to help you unless instructed,’ he said.

‘I could have died,’ I snapped.

‘There was no valid possibility of that happening,’ he said.

‘That’s just another way of saying, ‘but you didn’t’. You said that you are here to help me, yet you stand back and let that happen to me, without a care in the world.’

‘I am not programmed to help you unless instructed.’

‘So you said,’ I was starting to get angry. But what reason do I have to get angry. In a way, he’s right. He isn’t programmed to help me unless instructed. It’s extremely lucky that my body does have a different genetic makeup to the people in that world. It would have been a different story if I had the same, and I don’t want to start thinking about that.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘You do not have to apologise. You did nothing wrong.’

‘I know. And neither did you.’ I sighed and rubbed my eyes with my fingers.

‘I need some fresh air.’

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)