Dynamic Reality

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Kari blinked herself slowly back into consciousness. Her drug induced slumber left her head pounding and her vision blurry. She found she was sitting uncomfortably upright, and the room she was in was blindingly white, save for a hazy figure before her. A few more lazy blinks, and she saw that the figure was a man she had never met before, sitting across from her at the small white table. He was in his mid to late forties, and had a crop of red, thinning hair. By his greyish skin tone, he didn't seem to get a whole lot of sunlight. The vibrant sickly colors stirred her vision more, sending more throbbing pain to her head. The corners of the mans thin pale lips turned upwards as she stirred, and he picked up a small round object resting in front of his neatly folded hands. The object was black, and had a seamless design about it. With minimal exertion, he sent the small black mass up roughly a foot off the table, and it expanded imperceptibly as it hovered. He stayed his gaze and his hands re assumed their position, as the black material began to bubble, then spike sporadically outwards. The object then changed its shape entirely into a black brick. A small cylinder emerged from the center,and the wavering texture in the middle of the cylinder settled on a smooth glass surface. It looked to Kari like a small high tech camera. Her assumption then provided itself more evidence, as a small screen materialized next to it, displaying the subject by which the strange device was recording.

Her.

She nearly missed the vital details of her own face. It had been some time since she last saw herself. Karis messy red hair was tangled and caked with dirt. Her pale white skin was nearly unrecognizable under the thick layers of crusted dirt and dark splotches of what she hoped wasn't dried blood. Her plain black tank top looked no better than the rest of her. She almost felt ashamed by her rabid appearance, but that feeling remained on the back burner of her mind. Right now, fear and confusion were in control. She tried to move her arms to tend to her carelessly tangled hair, to retain any iota of dignity she might have had left, but her arms were bound tight to the chair she was in. Looking down, she saw that her arms, from her wrists to her elbows, were secured by a thick white material, that felt cool like metal. A green light oscillated on the left encasement, in sync with the slow beat of her heart. Her legs were also held fast to the bottom of the chair by the same peculiar white metal.

"Hello Kari," the man said, in a smooth, virtually mechanical articulation. "My name is Douglas Reynolds, Class C agent of the Dimensional Union". His foggy grey eyes looked as sickly as the rest of him, as he stared unblinking, still smiling, at Kari. She tried to readjust herself, her bindings momentarily escaping her focus, as her green eyes locked in on that uneasy gaze.

"Do you know why you are here, Kari?" Douglas inquired in his smooth, unbroken voice.

She attempted to shake her head no, but a throbbing pain on the left side of her neck hindered her response. It was then that she realized just how much her body really hurt. Her aching back felt as though she had attempted to lift a tank, and her chest felt like it had been borrowed by a marathon runner and given back to her in a much shabbier condition. Her limbs bore a vast array of throbbing bruises and stinging cuts. The pain nearly overpowered her. Through the storm of hurt in her head, she could not recall how she had gotten so battered.

"You have accumulated quiet the collection of injuries. It is against proto-call to expend resources on convicted inmates, however for our purposes here, I will have my assistant administer a healing serum." He pulled down a sleeve on his black jump suit, exposing a small wristband made of the same white metal that adhered Kari to her seat. He tapped the center of it twice and spoke in an indiscernible language.

"Badocus, gabusnaylana nacusyamnajo miahyameem yameemna lanajagelkay," He returned his sleeve and his hand, and lifted his unsettling gaze to the wall behind Kari. On the floating screen, she saw the wall split open, and a pint sized man stepped through. He donned the same morose countenance as the man across from her. Without so much as a glance towards Karis' eyes, He walked to her left side, and produced a small syringe from the lapel of his black jump suit. He stuck her between the middle and index finger. The infantile sting from needle washed away as the cool liquid deposited itself into Kari's veins. The green light on her left arm began blinking rapidly, and a small trickle of blood left the tiny opening the needle left behind before her cells reacted to the serum, closing back up. Her headache was instantly gone. She tested her neck muscles by rolling her head around a little, the most movement she was allowed in her current situation. The aching in her chest ceased, and she greedily inhaled, filling her lungs to their capacity, a task that her plight previously disallowed. The short man dropped the empty syringe into his pocket, and disappeared back into the wall, as it closed behind him.

With the burden of exhaustion and pain lifted away, she almost felt normal again.

"My apologies," Doug said. His flat monotone voice made if difficult to trust that any sincerity was behind his reparation. "That should have been done before your arousal." He beckoned with one hand at the hovering camera. "For legal purposes, it is important that we document your take on the events that have led you up to here. I will have you know, what you have been through will not lift your sentence or help you in any accord of the law."

An abundance of confusion swelled in her mind. How had she managed to get here? Where even was here? What in the hell was that black thing, and how did it turn into a camera?

Kari opened her mouth to ask all or even one of those questions, as she knew the answer to none, but the man raised up a hand to silence her.

"You will not be verbally attesting your statement. It is far to simple for one to lie in such a situation."

As Doug spoke, the mysteriously floating device grew one more attachment. The black substance that it expelled reached down to the table. Once it touched the clean white surface, the reflective convulsing material extended its way across towards Kari, in an unsettling slithering fashion.

Why was she not afraid?