Tap. Tap. Tap.
A nurse started her day by strolling around a section of the corridor on her clogs, checking the patients' condition in the area. Passing by a junction with a sign displaying Section 3B-A, she removed and picked up what looked like a transparent glass shaped like a tablet from the wall's protrusion.
It lit up and displayed a dynamic map reflecting each room's position with flashing notifications based on the patient's specific situation.
As she tapped and checked each alert in every room, one corner of the tablet issued an urgent sign.
It changed the heads-up display, illustrating the dynamic record of the specific patient named Quin Wells, with his current status changing from comatose to rousing.
She knew that only the nearest nurse on duty in the area will receive this urgent notification, so she went straight to Quin's location without stopping.
While browsing his files, she reviewed his situation and prepared for the conversation that will test his current cognitive capacity. She smiled while recalling some amusing memories arising from similar encounters in the past.
"I hope this will be the start of a good day." She quietly muttered to herself.
She had the tablet put down, examining the closest navigation screen showing her current position and the route pointing towards her destination.
...
As Quin woke up from a low activity state, his intuition gave him insight into how long it took for his consciousness to finish the synchronization that was required for the activation of his normal movement functions.
'I did not know that It will take a whole day.' He unleashed his perception, and scanned his current condition, checking for any omission.
'It looks like everything is alright and the wounds are all patched up.'
He had his eyes opened, and the first thing he saw was a box-like scanner connected right beneath his bed, pointing straight at his body.
'It appears like the technology on the usage of light and waves is already approaching between post-information age and pre-fusion age.' Quin contemplated.
Observing his surroundings, he notices that there's only one device connected to his body responsible for delivering nutrients standing near his bed. 'The technology tree is also the same uneven.'
Quin glanced at the transparent wall on his right, his eyes reflected the outside landscape full of unfamiliar high rises and familiar blinking neon lights left from the city's night revelry. It had some remarkable hovercrafts pass by, rushing at a fast pace, triggering some related memories to surface in his mind.
While Feeling nostalgic, he sat himself up from his inclined hospital bed as he witnessed a part of the transparent wall turning into a solid mirror showing his current features.
Sharp facial contours, a striking profile with dark violet eyes, having the same dark hair that had an unnoticeable dark violet highlight while it is being radiated by light.
'It seemed like I'm not in the same universe anymore.' Quin sighed over his assumption, he got into a daze while looking at the familiar face that is displayed in the mirror.
'It is the same face. Only minor differences in age, eyes, and hair.'
He scratched his scalp, now recalling the weak consciousness that was located in this body's brain just as he first landed.
'Right, what happened to that?' Quin acted as he thought about it. He scanned his brain area, only to have him detect its attempted fusion.
'So it was waiting for me right here, huh.'
He thought about it and figured out that this might be the consequence of two consciousness of disparate strengths having close contact with each other in the same container, especially with both having an identical frequency.
Quin had his eyes closed as he focused his consciousness and turned it slack, letting go of his instinctual defense.
This state allowed for the weak consciousness to blend with no issue, impressing him of it being perfect and complete all along.
'I knew it' he frowned while brooding over his conjecture.
Finished scanning back and forth, he summarized his gains in his head while weighing. 'Inspecting the result, while this opportunity allowed me to complete the fusion, this does not mean that the consciousness is devoured.'
With a flip of his thinking, he divided his consciousness into two. With each other being located over the left and right parts of his brain.
'This is a kind of interesting. Maybe I can throw the other one into another body and harvest a clone.' Giggling while thinking of other possibilities, he showed a wide grin, allowing his mood to lighten up and relax.
'Now we should start checking out the tether of the mind space.' Spreading his perception into the void, he perceived a thin film that appeared fragile but not, separating his consciousness and mind crystal into two separate dimensions.
Opening his eyes wide, he placed both palms on his forehead, feeling embarrassed while lamenting about the fact that something unexpected yet also expected happened. 'This is the outcome of not having core techniques and technology while relying on borrowed knowledge; In short, I knew it was unreliable.'
While he knew he was in an urgent situation with no other alternative when he learned and used the ritual. This awareness does not excuse him for acting straight up without being prudent.
Now he can only stay alert and check if every decision he made is based on his thinking rather than being influenced by his current state.
Quin summarized the problem and pinpointed some potential solutions, allowing for his mood to adjust back to its wonderful state, while giving a low sneer. 'I swear, once I settled down, I will dissect the mechanism of this thing and anything related to it.'
He rolled his eyes and scanned the film, hoping for possible feedback. 'So the missing link was something like building a bridge or tunnel, huh?'
Quin received a piece of incomplete information from his perception that gave him another unreliable conclusion.
'Now, I'll need to gather energy to somehow "drill" or "build" a road connecting each other. Hmm, the logic sounds workable.' Stroking his chin, he stopped thinking about this problem for now and focused more on figuring out a way of gathering energy instead.
Unleashing his mind's perception, he realized that the film locked the range inside his body.
He can only scan a rough idea of space outside his areas of contact.
Quin pondered for a solution and then displayed a decisive look.
He thought of the very first mechanics he came into contact with, resonance.
Quin chose some energy particles imprinted by his consciousness from the void for the experiment. He focused on his concept of movement, oscillating, and resonance while revolving his thought process around the particle, allowing for them to vibrate and reach the desired frequency.
'Got it!'
As the particles resonate with the outside free energy, it entangles each other, allowing for an exchange of information inside and outside their systems.
Striking while the iron is hot, he went ahead and tried to increase the magnitude of oscillations of each particle by focusing on its sole concept, allowing it to produce pulses of waves that can receive information via movement and reflection just like the way radar works.
But as soon as the entangled free energy particles in his surroundings produced a pulse, he discovered that everything he thought of was way off from the estimated environment.
It had an excessive amount of this unfamiliar energy particle reacting to his action just as how carbon dioxide and oxygen scatter all over the place.
'!!!!' Feeling something bad about to happen, he concentrated his perception to a point and converged everything inside his consciousness while cutting every sense that is connected to his system and stopping the entanglement by force.
Just right after he did all he could, the wave of information started crashing down and reflecting on the surroundings!
With an exaggerated amount heading in his direction, passing by and being received and reflected by his body.
'Damn! This thing is useful as an information bomb, not a wave scan. But it might be effective for disabling people who love to peek using perception… Wait a minute, that's a good idea! I'm such a genius!' He widened his eyes, and smacked his tongue, smiling deprecatingly, thinking that it was a close shave.
'While the idea was correct, I miscalculated the environment's situation, leading to the increasing magnitude of the reaction by the free energy particles in the air.' Contemplating and taking notes of his mistakes, he moved on and prepared to start another try.
'It's alright, they did say that failure is the mother of success. Let's do it again and start from individual particles instead of bundling them into some random structures just to be safe.'
Quin tried it one more time, he started the pulse, only to have it spread in a minuscule area, giving feedback close to nothing.
'Good, that is enough for now. I just need to figure out the number of active energy particles needed to display the technique, and I can become a humanoid radar!'
He sorted out his gains and experience from the trial-and-error process, he leaned back to his hospital bed, relaxing and smiling. 'Speaking of which, it seems like no one has visited this body for a whole day while being unconscious.'
He mulled while turning his head around and checking out the surrounding layout of the hospital room. Light blue paint, homely furniture decoration. It looks like a design you would like for your room instead of a hospital ward.
'People here sure know how to enjoy themselves.' He noticed while looking around, snickering.
'But I'm not complaining about it either, being the beneficiary and all. Rather, this is good for me.'
Letting himself get distracted by random thoughts for a while, he snapped out of it when the corner wall on his left side changed into a door. He caught a glimpse of some fine mechanical movement from each side, turning into a handle.
As he prepared to sit up from his bed to welcome the incoming visitor, the guest halted in front of the door and notified him of her presence.
"Mr. Wells, this is the current on-duty nurse checking in on you. We noticed you are already awake from your short-term comatose. I'm dropping by to check your status and ask you some pertinent questions related to your health."
While hearing the upbeat voice of the nurse from the speaker, Quin brought up a smile on his face, thinking it had been a while since he conversed with a human in proximity since he departed from his home planet.
"You can come in."
As Quin responded back with a crisp and straightforward voice using his acquired void knowledge to translate his thoughts into the native language, the room suddenly came alive!
All the decoration that allowed for the space to be and feel comfortable retracted into the walls and changed into steel creations.
The overall color scheme of the room turned white from light blue and the transparent wall-sized window turned into a whole screen monitor showing his vital signs and overall health plus detailed records.
It changed everything into what a hospital room should look like rather than that of a personal master bedroom.
"???" Quin had his mouth agape, watching all the transformations happening around him.
It got him confused into thinking about how much energy is there available for the people of this planet to allow them to splurge it in this way.
As Quin judged at the top of his head the possible big phenomenon from the small, he guessed that the energy usage of this society should be sky high relative to his cognition, and, the total amount of energy available for exploitation should also be massive enough for the people to be allowing his perceived squandering of it.
'H*ll, maybe in their cognition they do not even think they are squandering. Just, even pre-fusion age and early fusion age planets do not dare to play like this.' Shaking his head, he stopped thinking about this mess that makes him dumbfounded, noting it down for future investigation.
Now, all he needed to do is to wait for the incoming nurse.
As the door opened, a tall lady wearing a fit white coat with cogs for her feet, covering her face with a clean white face mask, and a nurse's cap on her head only showing her dark eyes approached with a transparent tablet on her right hand that is showing Quin's information records.
"Mr. Wells, based on the injuries you received in the accident you were involved in, we estimated you should now be afflicted with partial amnesia that has most of your non-essential memories deleted or turned into chaotic mixed with each recall. Only leaving your general common sense and some impressive memories intact."
As she read Quin's information, she looked into his eyes and smiled apologetically, showing a posture of condolence.
Hearing what his situation was, Quin kept on nodding while rolling his eyes around distracted thinking about a pressing problem. 'So how can I act like someone who has a partial amnesia when I don't know jack sh*t about their actual common sense?'
His face got pale by the second as he imagined getting locked and being sent to a laboratory table and dissected by scientists for academics once his active little tail got caught.
"Excuse me, are you feeling okay, Mr. Wells?"
Halting her ongoing recitation of his information, the nurse stared at him with concern, wondering if there are any sequelae from the accident.
"I'm fine. Trying to recall things made me kind of uncomfortable. Would you excuse me for a bit? I just want to have my brain at rest for a while." Quin asked as he let out an uneasy chuckle.
Snapping out of that horror story, Quin closed his eyes at the sight of the doubtful nurse. He scrambled his thoughts into producing an idea about any countermeasure he can do, at least not allowing him to appear suspicious.
He knew that creating a relative little glaring flaw can also distract the observer from discovering the biggest inconspicuous fault.