After a few minutes of talking, the two people left. He pondered at this as he exerted every ounce of his willpower to move his limbs, after an about hour, he could shift his arm slightly expending some effort. Something didn't feel right. It felt as if his reach was noticeably shorter than normal.
"Was this the effect of the blast?" he thought.
After another minute of flailing, he had successfully led his right hand to his face to look at it. To his horror, he saw tiny hands resembling that of an infant's.
"What the hell? What is this? This is definitely a side effect of a drug the doctors administered. Is this a hallucination?"
He waved his hand too and fro until he had finally successfully moved all of his limbs. To his surprise, all of his limbs were short.
"This is one odd hallucination."
After a few more minutes, he could turn his head from side to side. He confirmed that his present body was definitely smaller than before.
"This is a hallucination or a dream," he told himself.
This was bizarre as it seemed so real. Micheal could feel the cloth they wrapped him with, he could smell and breathe and see his surroundings. Even lucid dreams didn't feel this real.
"Maybe this is a cross consciousness top secret research experiment by CERN. Is this a virtual reality program? Why was I not informed in advance? I didn't even give a formal consent! Those bastards took me for dead. It is likely that I am in a coma right now and they are doing research on me." Michael thought.
However, there was something he could not put his finger on. Even with the current technologies, they could not make such a simulation feel this real. Only with the aid of quantum computers could they make something like this. But there was no development of using quantum computers for graphics yet or even a proposition of of using it for anything other than theoretical computations, the best they could do was model chemical bonds.
And they had minimal qubits for actual computational use, IBM's own model had only 20 qubits for computing and even the D-wave model which is a quantum annealer had only 1000 qubits for use, Further research on how quantum algorithms could actually be used for faster processing were currently in the works. The best they could probably do is back-track chaos theory simulations. There were only a handful of quantum computer programmers in the world, and most of them were physicists as the computing paradigm did not easily translate to the current form of computing. More quantum computing algorithms needed to be developed to at least use the technology in such a form, overall it was plausible to use the quantum computer for graphical processing as it could run all the probabilistic outcomes simultaneously using a linear algebra as a basis of computing rather than the classical bit which was hinged on boolean algebra, but this was definitely unlikely. The technology has not been mass produce at all as physical limitations in the production of quantum computers were also considerable as quantum decoherence was present, altering the result of the computation. Qubits had to be stored in an isolated environment and would be exposed to temperatures near absolute zero.
So it was definitely unlikely this was a virtual reality program of some sort.
As he grew accustomed to his surroundings, he seemed to possess heightened senses. It was odd for any virtual simulation to produce this feeling as any simulation could only output data based on observable sensations.
He felt he was one with his surroundings: he could hear every sound, he saw every tic and speck. It was an indescribable feeling as if he could see himself in the third person and look with his eyes in the first person at the same time. He felt surreal, relishing in the sensation. Using this sense he could sense every nuance in his body. He closed his eyes to observe the intricacies of this new vessel he had occupied.
He was definitely in an infant's body. After which, he exerted all his effort into trying to get up. He knows naturally, an infant's body cannot stand up but there was an instinctual urge to do so. After several attempts, he finally succeeded. He discovered after the attempts that using the consciousness, he could control every strand of muscle fibre in his tiny body. He realized he was inside some sort of crib. He jumped out. The room was painted white with a few trinkets here and there. He found a mirror so he looked. He saw himself and found it odd that he was staring at a baby's body. He was mesmerized. This was definitely not something he could get used to.
"I guess this is not a simulation. Were the Buddhists right? I'm definitely reincarnated. "
He planned his next course of actions. He surmised that the couple he saw a while ago was his parents.
"I need to act like an ordinary infant so that I won't attract attention. They might be hostile if they discovered that I am not a normal child." He was reverting to his old habits of secrecy he learned in the orphanage. He was walking toward his crib lost in thought. But as he walked back, the door opened. He heard a shrill shout. It was his "mother"; he looked into her eyes and as she looked back, she spilt the water she was holding from the shock of seeing her son walk. What he saw astonished him thoroughly. There was no spill. The water froze instantaneously before it hit the ground as it stuck to the cup.