Insight

Chapter One: Reorientation

I awoke in déjà vu. Nurse Allison was standing over me.

"Syany! You're awake finally."

Syany. The name was strange and extremely familiar at the same time. I instinctively knew that this title belonged to me, but simultaneously my designation was A3975.207731X. I shook the feeling off and sat up shakily. I swung my legs over the side of my bed even though my muscles were screaming in pain. I stood up, my knees starting buckling, and Allison caught me as I began to collapse. She sat me back on the hospital bed.

"Thank you, Nurse Allison."

"Will you need a wheelchair to attend to reorientation?"

Something buzzed in the back of my mind. The word reorientation held both a negative and positive connotation. I blinked several times before the feeling wore off.

"Are you okay, Syany? Do you need a wheelchair?"

"No, Nurse Allison, I'd like to build my strength back up. But I do feel peculiar."

"It's normal to feel a bit strange after waking up from your dream world. But I see you've found yourself."

"I've become more stubborn it seems." I reached for another word, but found my vocabulary decreasing. "My speech is degen- deteriora- it's.. um... Worsening...?"

"It's because you reached a higher intelligence in your dream world and when you awaken, you lose every aspect of yourself but your personality from when you were the same age in the dream world as you are now. In other words, your intelligence is decreasing to the same level as you had before."

A memory surfaced in my mind and I tugged at it. I voiced my findings. "But wasn't I highly intelligent beforehand as well?"

"Yes, well, um, it's possible that having taken the anti-serum, you could've obtained some brain damage. We're going to be checking on you more than we check on the others because you took the serum we know so little about. The last person that survived was set back a little, but soon regained his lost knowledge from beforehand. Of course, he was more of a test subject, while you're more a volunteer."

"What's the difference between a test subject and a volunteer?"

"Well, the test subject is recommended and prepped for longer to take the serum, while a volunteer...volunteers. But both know the possible consequences and are treated morally."

Suddenly, a memory overtook my senses. Nurse Allison handed me a cup and a handful of antibiotics. "These will help you go under better, and will help your system accept the drug. If the drug is rejected, some young women somewhere is going to be traumatized because she'll have a miscarriage in her dream world." I nodded, popping the pills into my mouth. Another nurse came by and handed Nurse Allison a paper, which she, in turn, presented to me. She pulled a pen from the breast pocket of her lab coat. "You need to sign this. It states that you understand the possible consequences fully and are still willing to take the anti-serum, and that you won't hold anything that happens due to your injection against us." I nodded again and signed on the respective line. I gave her back the paper.

"Okay, you're good to go. Get comfortable on the bed, you'll be there for Those Who Be know how long, and when you're ready for the Administer to put you under, press the button on the side of the bed."

I came back to see Nurse Allison looking at her holowatch. The luminescent green numbers projected against her arm said it was almost twenty-seven o'clock.

"You have about an hour until the reorientation. I would suggest we go ahead and start walking over."

"Twenty-seven o'clock?" I asked simultaneously. She glanced at me questioningly. "Aren't there only twenty-four hours in a day?"