Tales of PulchraGea, Vol. 1

2: Not All Who Wander Are Lost (Final Version/3775)

I stumbled through the hills that night, nearly falling over several times after tripping on rocks and vegetation. After a short while, the inclines of the hills became too much. I felt the knee of my left leg buckle beneath me, then staggered several steps before falling into a bush. My entire body lit up in pain as the leaves and branches clawed at my wound, although the light quickly darkened as I slipped into oblivion.

I awoke in a white room, sterile and pure like a hospital. I was quite reasonably confused, as my last conscious memory was me in the process of dying. I think the first thing I noticed was the discolored area of skin where my wound used to be. It was smooth and cool, like plastic. The second thing I noticed was how featureless the room was. There were no doors, windows, cabinets, nothing save the inside of a featureless white box. The only furniture in the whole room was the bed on which I lay and even this seemed to be fused with the floor rather than laying on it. The walls seemed to possess a faint luminescent glow that seemed to be a bluish hue, though the walls neither changed color nor gave off any actual light. It was like an invisible calming aura designed to put me at ease. Right above me and to my left hanging in the air was a display of varying colors, with odd symbols that I couldn't read but were fairly obviously vital signs. I reached up gingerly to touch it but my hand went. right through it, although there was some resistance.

I still had issues moving, as if my foot were asleep except across my entire body. I tried to sit up but found that I simply couldn't. A red warning light started flashing on the display, probably to tell whoever was taking care of me that I was awake and moving.

Within seconds a seam appeared in the wall perpendicular to my resting place, which then differentiated itself into a door. A woman, in her late twenties I estimated, stood just behind the door. She wore white scrubs that seemed to be tailor made to fit her frame. She was slim and relatively tall, perhaps 5'7" or 5'8". Her shoulder-length auburn hair perfectly framed her heart-shaped face.. Her skin was as flawless and pink as a newborn and her lips the shade of a Tropicana rose. Her eyes, however, were unnaturally large, perhaps a full third larger than normal. The iris was daisy yellow and took up a majority of the real estate of her eyeball. Her composure and posture were flawless, and the second the door was open her large eyes scanned the room like a mouse searching for predators. She took note of my alertness with no change in her composure, then gave a shallow bow.

"Welcome to the medical facility of Diamond Terrace Farms," she said in perfect English. "My name is Neume. I have been taking care of your wounds for the past week."

I was startled; a week was a long time.

"Wur ma?" I asked. My jaw was so stiff and sore that it was difficult to speak, as if I'd been clenching it the entire week.

"The medical facility of Diamond Terrace Farm," Neume reaffirmed stoicly.

"Na wa mint," I said, shaking the blue fog from my head. The aural affect was impeding my ability to think. "Wahs Dine Terse, a tan?"

She still didn't quite understand. I put in a herculean effort into sitting up. My side lit up with pain and I fell back down onto the padded mattress of the bed, which I suddenly realized was only an exam table. Neume glided over and supported me in my effort to try again.

"You're still suffering from hibernation sickness," she explained. "When we found you facedown in our fields, you'd lost a large amount of blood. Infection had already set in. We cleaned your wound and performed a transfusion with an oxygen-rich solution. All standard operating procedure."

She materialized something that looked like a tablet PC. It was the right shape and size, but hollow like a picture frame with no glass. As her fingers approached the center the air within rippled like water and resolved into something resembling a three-dimensional medical chart. The holographic representation of a human body- my body, I realized- floated in the middle. This form flashed as she held the frame up in my general direction. She touched a floating icon and the view changed from a detailed surface view to that of my circulatory system. Large portions of it were covered in white lines, especially in the portion where my wound was visible, while some of it was entirely pink where my natural blood was mixing with the transfusion fluid.