He had been continuing on the routine of thinking about programming and meditating. While it was very hard to tell the passage of time due to his easily onset fatigue and the lack of any sort of indication of day or night, he was certain that at least quite a few days had passed since he had decided to relax and not worry about his current situation.
While the concern that he might have to live the rest of his life in this state of limbo without anything to do except staying in his own head was starting to creep up once more, he had managed to keep it in check due to a piece of good news that he had only discovered very recently.
He seemed to have slowly gotten stronger and had managed to finally open his eyes.
Alas, all he had seen was pure darkness. And he even thought that he might in fact be submerged in some sort of liquid due to the way his eyelids blinking felt. In his view, this strengthened the possibility that something had happened to him that had caused him to now be put in some sort of device that was both sustaining him and causing his strength to slowly return. If that was indeed the case then it bore both good and bad news.
Good news since there might be a chance that he will be able to fully recover given time, but bad news because he was certain that whatever this device was that was facilitating his recovery, he was sure that it had to be disgustingly expensive. Whatever the expense was of this procedure that they were doing to him, he knew that he would have to work his entire life to pay off the costs incurred.
Another fact that strengthened the chance of this being the case was that warm feeling that he could feel only during a half-meditative state. That feeling seemed to stave off the exhaustion. And after studying the feeling for extended periods multiple times and finding out that the feeling always seemed to come from all directions at once, along with his theory that he was most likely submerged in some sort of liquid, probably a perfluorocarbon mixture of some sort, he came to the conclusion that the most plausible explanation for the source of that feeling was the liquid surrounding him.
Most likely this liquid mixture was so potent that once he focused his mind very heavily, he could even actively perceive the liquid at work, being absorbed even through his skin by some method, slowly making him stronger, thereby causing the fatigue to stay at bay for slightly longer periods of time. This was why he was so certain that this procedure that he was undergoing was likely excruciatingly expensive.
He had simply come to terms with the fact that he might have to be in massive debt to the government for the rest of his life if he recovers. Besides, it was not as though he could do anything about it in his current situation anyway.
And after recalling all these thoughts in his head, he thought about coding languages a bit more before finally starting to feel fatigued and drowned himself in meditation until he eventually drifted off to sleep.
This routine continued on for many repetitions until one day, when he was still sleeping, something very unexpected happened.
He was startled awake by one of the most horrifying sounds he had ever heard.
-=-=-+-=-=-
As he rushed into the room, he quickly went to her side to hold her hand. He felt two very conflicting emotions at the same time. He was both very anxious and extremely ecstatic. He had been ever since he had heard the news.
"She has been taken to the medical wing and Suna has been called." His secretary had told him after barging into the room, "It is time."
He smiled at Alsea and she smiled back. Suna was by her side, focusing on reducing her pain as much as possible, reducing it even more than the medicinal paste applied to her lower back was.
He stayed silent and kept her palm squeezed slightly, as she frowned ever so slightly and kept her eyes closed. It wasn't possible to completely negate all feeling, but she was also not a stranger to pain. Overall, the pain was only at a level where it could cause a frown for her and nothing more.
After what felt to them like an eternity, the sounds of cracking was engulfed by the sounds of a screaming baby, and they both burst into smiles.
-=-=-+-=-=-
*CRRCK*
He did not know whether it was something outside or his container itself, but something had started cracking. And as if the sound was not horrifying enough, it was still pitch black around him and he could not see how bad the fractures were or what was causing them.
He had gotten significantly stronger over time and could now move around his hands and feet much more dexterously. He had already discovered by feeling around that the container he was in was oval in shape and that there seemed to be a tube stuck to him that originated from somewhere outside the container, probably also putting some sort of medicine into him.
*CRCCK CRRRRK*
He turned his head towards the sound and was able to see light for the first time. But he was far from ecstatic.
He could now see the fractures forming. They were mostly thin cracks, only some of which were just wide enough to let the tiniest amounts of light through. Out of pure fear and curiosity, he very gently tried to feel the cracks by sliding his fingertips across the biggest one.
He could feel that there seemed to be a thin layer of some material that was still holding the harder pieces of the container together. The material was thin enough to let some faint blurry light through but was tensile enough to keep the hard material together and not leak any of the liquid inside out, similar to laminated glass.
*CRRRCKCRKCKCKCCCKK*
Just as he was feeling that there might be some hope of the container not being completely broken through by whatever was happening outside, the cracking started intensifying and started moving from the middle of his container outwards in increasing intensity, letting more and more light through.
Even though he knew logically that if the material really was similar to laminated glass, the chance of there being a puncture in the container was extremely unlikely, the fear of the unknown, of whatever was causing the stress and fracture, of the chance that there could be an earthquake happening outside, possibly burying his container with himself in it in large debris, consumed him fully.
As he let out a scream from his very depths, consumed by the fear that it could truly be over for him this time, he passed out, both from his fear and from the overwhelming emotions causing his fatigue to kick in in full force.