Startled like a new-born baby and confused as one, he moved. Amazed at the distinctive lack of pain that followed his movement, he twisted his neck trying to get up from underneath his blankets. Looking for the sun rays that usually accompanied him in the morning, like an old friend; gently coaxing him awake.
Looking towards where his window normally stands. He panics as he notices the obvious lack of light present. Dread stirs within him settling in his heart. Frantically he turns entire body looking everywhere for the familiar light and yet all he could see was a suffocating blackness.
A distant part of his mind realized that he was not wearing a blanket at all or any clothes for that matter. That warm, gentle water was surrounding him. Yet oblivious to what a part of him has realized he continues to trash and panic. Letting out a scream of help, only for a wretched and twisted cry to ricochet back to him. Rapidly tracking the source of the sound, desperate as he is for any simulation/sense of direction, debatable as the source may be, he realized startled, that the sound came from his throat.
A thousand warning alarms and notifications settled in the background as his mind crashed like an overwhelmed computer. His attention flew towards to that distant part of his mind and the thought that lingered there – water.
He was floating in water, surrounded by it, caressed by a calm blanket of water. Startled by the realization, the panic that had earlier gript him was swept away as swiftly as it arose replaced by curiosity.
`I've been underwater for a while now and while tracking time is difficult without any stimulus to base it on. Surely it has been a while and yet I do not feel the need to breathe.` startled by the awareness he continued to analyse the situation.
`What is happening? Do I have superpowers, did I get bit by a fish and thus developed abilities? I can breathe underwater?` he thought to himself.
`Comon man that is not fair, I get fucking superpowers and all I get is the ability to breathe underwater? Where is my laser sight, my flight, my immense strength? `
Panic replaced by curiosity and curiosity replaced by fury, he swept his arms around him as if planning to fight the sea, only for the sensation of a spongy fleshy rope to provoke him like a cold bucket of water.
`What the fuck is that" he panicked, a roar tearing its way out of his throat and traveling through the water only to echo back. He grasped the rope and attempted to pull it away, only for massive amounts of pain, spreading out from his navel, to greet him in response.
`It's bitten me, what the fuck, I'm going to die` he shouted inside his head. He pulled harder and harder and as he did the pain within swelled and swelled to greater heights.
Surprised he attempted a tender tug only for tender pain to reply in kind, flabbergasted at the response he wondered ` Perhaps it only attacks me when I attack it?`Taking a leap of faith, guided by intuition he let go of the cord. Placing his hands on his stomach, he aimed to map out the extent of the damage.
`Where is the damage? All I can feel is a circular cord, seemingly attached to my stomach, around the area where I would expect my navel.´ baffled by the lack of wounds he furiously thought.
`There is no wound, yet pain lingers from my earlier battle with, wait, wait what? A circular cord attached to my stomach around my navel, I can't find my navel, where is my navel!´ He heatedly searched his stomach for his navel, unable to find it he started to lose his newfound mindfulness.
Realization stabbed him like a cold knife, `The cord is not a monster, it is my umbilical cord? Stumped by the very idea he reached for the cord once more, softly feeling how it was attached. `
"Yeaaah, that is my umbilical cord alright. Wait, wait what? Umbilical cord? Now I may not have a PhD in Biology. Still last time I checked only babies have umbilical cords. He thought and thought until you could almost see smoke coming from his brain as he attempted to logically come to a conclusion.
`When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Therefore it stands to be that I'm a baby. I'm a bloody baby. I've reincarnated.`
`I have reincarnated and now I am a baby.`
The cold enveloped him, the sensation of falling overwhelming his battered psyche. Like a cliff jumper he experienced an invigorating adrenaline shock as he plummeted downwards. The smothering blackness of the womb falling away as light at the end of the tunnel stand appeared as if an angel had descended.
The curtains are pulled away from his eyes and the stage before him is filled with such splendor that a lifetime can be spent to describe the first sight laid upon his retinas seen after a lifetime in darkness.
Muffled sounds greet his birth, the rhythmic sound of a clock reverberated in the room , a television to the left stabbing daggers of light into his eyes and white garbed giants' of humans surrounded him.
A singular phrase echoing on loop in his infantile head originating from the television through which a miracle or imaginably a curse allowed him to hear the sound crisp and clean.
"In a shocking event, America sits on the edge of their chairs, in mourning and in horror at the tragic events that occurred earlier today. When a singular aeroplane flew into the World Trade Center,"
With a cry he greeted the world, as the towers come crashing down. The sensations, the sights and the smell all overwhelmed him. The sensory simulation washed over him like a tsunami after an eternity in a desert. Stunned he drowns in their manifestation, eyes rolling back into his head as he falls into the darkness that he used to call home.
Like the towers; the realization that this is not reincarnation but rebirth comes crashing down with a thunderous boom crashing him into unconsciousness.