He found himself in a darkness he'd never seen before. He felt free yet confined at the same time. He felt like he was floating in the air, but at the same time, cramped and cooped up in a tight space. He felt a pressure that encompassed the outside of his face and he realised that that was because he lay on the metal bed with a slot made in it to place your face on.
Metal bed, metal room, metal ship. Spaceship. Insanity. Everything that he experienced recently was just insanity. How did he get here? Why are someone else's memories in his head? Is he even sure that those memories aren't his?
No! They're not his! He remembered a small apartment. Was it his? Was it his family's? Did it have two, or three bedrooms? He remembered a man and a woman. The man seemed old, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember much more details than that. The man seemed old — oh, and short! Was the old, short man his father? That felt right.
The woman…his mother…she was also short — shorter than him and the old man — and he remembered that she had curly, light-brown hair. And he also remembered that she had a kind aura around her. Not that he believed in auras in that sense. It was more that he felt loved and calm whenever he thought of her.
If someone were to place a gun to his head and ask him to remember, he wouldn't be able to remember their names. Hell, besides the scarce details he'd thought about, he couldn't remember anything else. He couldn't remember any more details of what they looked like, he couldn't remember their age, he couldn't remember what their voices sounded like. It was all fuzzy and blank.
When he brought his attention to himself, the same vagueness happened. He couldn't remember his name, his height, his build. All he knew was that he wasn't this person named Jafferson, he was a separate being stuck in Jafferson's body.
He needed to differentiate himself from this other guy.
What's my name? He thought, my name is…Jaff…Yeah, I guess I'll shorten it for now. I can't think of another name to use right now. At the very least, if someone asks for my name, it wouldn't sound weird if I identified as Jaff.
He felt satisfied. So many things had happened, and he found himself dragged from one moment to another. First, he found himself on a spaceship, then he got told that his name was Jafferson, then he apparently insulted somebody when he called him "dude"?
At the very least, he now had something to call himself by.
Through the darkness, Jaff heard muffled noises. He quickly worked out that the muffled noises were muffled voices. It sounded like it was repeating something. Before long, he could hear a man's voice call out to him as the darkness receded and he found himself still lying down on the metal bed facing the floor.
"Mr. Palmount, can you hear me?" the man patiently said, "If you can, wiggle your fingers for me."
He wiggled his fingers, but because his head was still groggy, his fingers felt like they were so far away.
"Ah, great! I see the wiggling," the man said, "Welcome back. The implantation procedure went perfectly."
As he got more and more awake, Jaff could hear more and more noises around him. He then recognised that there were the voices of the people that he had been in orientation with. The floor that he was stuck staring at seemed a little different than the metal room that he entered before he was anaesthetised.
Jaff felt his body shift in the distance, and he found himself being moved from the metal bed onto an empty metal chair. The cold metal on the skin of his arms was cold and jarring, but at least it woke him up from his daze a bit more.
He groaned in the slight discomfort and groggily looked around at his surroundings.
It was a similar-looking lobby that he had found himself in earlier before the classroom-looking area. He now had a little bit more strength in his neck, before he realised that there was something placed around his neck to keep it straight. Jaff carefully placed his still slightly numb fingers on the thing on his neck and quickly worked out that it was some sort of neck brace, soft to the touch but still firm enough to do its job.
The man who had been talking to him was a different staff member than all the ones he'd seen up to this point. He had the nametag P. Waden-Shi embroidered on his chest. He stood a little bit away from Jaff with a small pack that hung over his shoulder.
Waden-Shi noticed Jaff lightly poking at the neck brace.
"That's just there to keep the incision site out of harm's way until the med-gel finishes healing it," Waden-Shi explained calmly.
"I-Incision?" Jaff's gravelly dry voice croaked.
"Water?" Waden-Shi held out a small metallic container.
When Jaff nodded, Waden-Shi slid open the opening of the container and helped Jaff drink some of the stale-tasting liquid inside. Jaff was taken by surprise at first, but after the initial shock that it didn't taste like the water that he seemed to remember drinking, he happily gulped down all of it.
"Yeah, it's only recycled water, unfortunately," Waden-Shi apologised, "Maxo's Lightbringer's only a C-tier Cryo-Ship. Only A-tier ships who work for the Central Ship Alliance get to have fresh water."
Jaff wiped some of the spilled water off his face and cleared his throat, "You said 'incision' before?"
"Right," Waden-Shi put the empty water container away in his pack, "So, to implant the N-HUD, they make a small incision at the base of the back of the neck with the auto-doc. It then inserts the whole N-HUD implant through the incision."
Waden-Shi then pointed at different areas of Jaff's head as he continued his explanation, "The auto-doc then carefully and accurately manoeuvres the smaller, extension nodes of the N-HUD to specific spots around the brain to gather data for the N-HUD to work."
"What does the N-HUD do exactly?" Jaff asked.
Waden-Shi laughed, "Basically everything. It connects to the frontal lobe to allow for usage through our thoughts. It works with the occipital lobe and temporal lobe so that it's patched into what we see and what we hear. By Kor, the main N-HUD computing node even connects to the brain stem so that the system can keep track of your health and temperature."
Waden-Shi swiped something in the air in front of him, similar to how the pretty staff member, Molwerk, did in the classroom area.
"Well, it's about time we take that brace off you. The med-gel should be done by now."
Jaff didn't kick up a fuss when Waden-Shi slid the neck brace off. Waden-Shi examined the base of his neck and nodded happily, "Yeah, it looks great as always. Almost as if nothing even happened."
"Can I touch it?" Jaff asked as Waden-Shi stepped back, folded the brace up and placed it in his pack.
"Sure, it's all good. Feel around for the slight bump."
Jaff found the slight bump almost straight away. It felt weird to him, but he decided to keep his thoughts to himself. It seemed like the N-HUD was something as common as…recycled water is to people in this world.
"Alright, let's start up the N-HUD's installation process for you," Waden-Shi explained as he grabbed a small, oval-shaped device from his pack as well as what looked like another metal water container.
He placed the water container on the ground next to Jaff before asking Jaff to turn around a little.
Waden-Shi then waved the oval-shaped device a few centimetres away from the small bump at the base of the back of Jaff's neck and Jaff could feel an odd sense of something whirring in that area. It was soft, barely noticeable and before long it disappeared, and Jaff couldn't feel it anymore.
"There, you should have felt the computing node start up a little. Don't worry, that doesn't last long," Waden-Shi explained, "now, I must move on to help with the next person, but soon something will pop up in front of your eyes. That'll be the N-HUD starting up and don't worry. It's all normal. Just follow its prompts."
As Waden-Shi started to walk away, but quickly stopped and turned around, "Oh, some people struggle with the N-HUD at first, some might even vomit, so there's a waste container in the seat next to you. Take your time and wait until you get used to it before you stand up."
Waden-Shi turned back around and walked away from Jaff.
A few seconds after Waden-Shi disappeared from Jaff's vision, a big golden box that floated in the air in front of Jaff appeared and he gasped. In the middle of the box, like a program window, a small message window appeared with the message:
[NUROTek Neurological-Heads Up Display version 3.0712a-c is being installed…]
Jaff chuckled softly, he recognised that this was the 'N-HUD' that was being installed. The similarity of the message to a computer program being installed onto an operating system.
Suddenly, a separate window appeared to the side, almost at the corner of Jaff's vision. Unlike the golden colour scheme of the N-HUD window, this one seemed to irradiate an almost-white light.
This second window also had a weird message that only confused Jaff.
<character: Palmount, Jafferson has received the in-universe-tool: N-HUD!
User is now able to receive SYSTEM messages.
Welcome User to show: "THE METAL PUSHER", episode: "PILOT">