Time flies by when you're sleeping

Chapter 2: Artificial

The lights in the room turned on, but John was still lying in bed, tired. He felt like he slept for only five to six hours so he decided to sleep a little more. John was disappointed that he had no dreams because dreams were god for people suffering from amnesia. They were a good way to jog someone's memory. He fell asleep for a while. He was awoken by the noise from opening the small door made. Again, a metal tray was pushed into his room.

John was hungry, his stomach was rumbling. He didn't eat anything yesterday, but with food like yesterday, he feared that he also wouldn't eat anything today. He lifted his head to look at the metal tray, expecting the two bowls again, but instead of the bowls, there was a light brown brick in the middle and dried fruit on the side. 'So breakfast is different from dinner. That's good to know. Let's see if this tastes any better than the stuff from yesterday.'

John got up and sat on the floor in front of the tray. He examined the light brown brick from all sides and ate one of the dried fruits. 'Ok, the fruits are a bit bitter, but at least they are edible.' He took a bite from the brick, it didn't taste as horrible as the stuff from the bowl, it tasted like it was made from different ground nuts and walnuts. There were no other flavors so John ate it together with the dried fruit, looking suspiciously at the glass, on the tray, full of red liquid. He smelled the red liquid but couldn't recognize the smell. He tried a sip and instantly spit it out. The red liquid tasted like rotten tomatoes filtered through dirty socks. It was a good thing he had a bathroom and water.

After breakfast, John noticed a small camera in a corner of the room, so he started jumping and waving his arms saying. "Is anyone there? Can I talk to a biological being? I think we got on the wrong foot. Can you let me out? I didn't do anything and there's nothing to do here." John stopped for a second to see if someone will answer him but he got no response. "Ok. If you don't want to let me out then please don't give me the reddish gelatin-like liquid to eat, please."

With nothing to do and still feeling tired, John lay down on the bed and fell asleep. He was awoken by his stomach rumbling. He looked at the floor by the small door but there was no metal tray. It occurred to him that he had no way to tell time. Although if he had, there would be no point. He didn't know the alien's day cycle. Earth day cycle was twenty-four hours, but to these aliens, it could be anything. He hoped that their cycle was close to Earth's because he was starving.

'He got in the shower and saw a green and a red button and a lever that turned left and right. There were alien symbols on each side of the lever but he didn't understand them. If this was anything like sonic showers on human spaceships the lever adjusted the temperature of the sonic wave. If you turn the lever left, the sonic wave was warmer, if you turn it right, it was colder. With that logic in mind, John turned the lever halfway to the left and pressed the green button. What followed could only be described as a scream of someone whose tooth was pulled out alive.

John quickly turned the lever all the way to the left thinking that the sonic wave will warm him. That was a huge mistake. The sonic wave was so hot that it burnt the top layer of his skin. When he got out of the shower, he looked like a sausage that walked off a grill. Pissed, he went over to the sink, pulled the lever to the left, and cooled his face with the cold water.

Jon entered the room and tried to find a less painful position to sit on the bed so he could get dressed. He grabbed his shirt and put one arm into a sleeve. He let out a quiet whine as tears started to form in the corners oh his eyes. He went back to the bathroom and took two towels with the intention to put them on the bed and try to lay like that until the pain stopped.

As he finished putting towels onto the bed, he heard the door to his room open. Outside the door was a machine, waist-high, and a robot behind it. The machine entered the room and the robot closed the door. The machine moved forward, not caring that John was looking at it confused and asking. "What are you? What are you doing here?" The machine stopped a few paces away from John and extended a red tube towards him. The tube stopped and at the end of it, like a hand fan, a platform unfolded.