Backdrop - A Protogen Backstory

Introduction

If you wake up in an entirely different body, you could kind of expect to be surprised. I guess that just wasn't the case for me. Of course reincarnation would be a strange thing, but it's what I've always wanted. A new, exciting world in a different body! Alas, the machinations of reincarnation are puzzling, so I try not to dwell on it. In any case, let me give you a little context on who I was before this whole... thing, to kickstart this odd journey.

I was your average middle schooler in the U.S.A., starting to think about what they would do with their life, and maybe thinking a bit too much on non-understandable things. Things like my place in the universe, what happened after death, and even the meaning of my existence, which I found that many other people had not found out too. The rest of my life is pretty clear to me, but I can't remember my death all too well. It's just all fuzz... I think that's all about my past life I'm gonna cover for now. Onto my new one!

So many things have happened since I first booted up, so let's start with slightly before then, when I hadn't even gotten my cybernetical bits installed yet. I woke up in a sort of lab, seeing only bright fluorescent lights and cold metal walls. I was surrounded by multiple humanoid creatures that weren't really human, as they had the ears of an animal on top of their head and fur all over their bodies with tails protruding from the bottom of their backs. All I could infer is that they were probably scientists that worked there, given their long, white coats. They were speaking some kind of foreign language that I couldn't hope to comprehend at the time. When I had awoken slightly more, I found that I was moving through one long hall, seemingly on a stretcher. Even then I couldn't feel or move my body whatsoever, no matter how hard I tried.

The scientists moving me didn't seem to notice that I had awoken. They were too preoccupied getting me to wherever I was going, and fast. I don't know how much time had actually passed, but it seemed like quite a while till I had arrived in the next room. It looked like the hallway I had just been in, same style with the lights and ceiling, except for numerous computers and various other instruments scattered throughout and a slightly lowered section, where all the cables were connected to. There was one main thing that the room was centered around, and that was the capsule.

The thing looked reminiscent of how you would think a cryo pod from a sci-fi book or movie might describe it. Sleekly designed, with multiple cables connected on the bottom and all around. While admiring the room and the machinery within it, I felt the building, or whatever that place was, shake, like something had hit it. I heard the scientists urgently conversing, then felt my body being lifted up into the now opening pod.

When the pod closed everything went dark. Then someone flipped a switch, and it was pitch white as far as I could see. Although all I could see was white, it was somehow comforting. After a short while I felt a sharp pain in my arm, and blacked out into a white abyss. When I finally returned to my senses, I found myself in an entirely different container, surrounded by ruins and rubble.