What's Out There? Part 2

Chapter 15

"I can't believe how stupid you are, Johnson," Maxwell growled.

"You must be confused... Probably by the suit, blue is not my color," Johnson joked. Maxwell was confused and unamused. "I fund everything here. Which probably means I shouldn't be talking to you just yet... I'll let somebody with a degree talk with you first. I'll be right back," he said before walking away.

"Huh, must be an alternate version of him," Maxwell muttered. After a couple of moments, the door opened back up and Johnson returned with Midnight. But there was something off about her: her hair was pulled back, her eyes looked dull and dead, and she had a lab coat.

"Hello, It's nice to see you're finally up." Her voice was the same, apart from the visible tiredness that lingered. She even still had the cuff he had given her.

"Did something to do with time travel happen?" Maxwell asked.

"What? No, we haven't figured out time travel, but I'm working on it."

"You're already working on so much stuff," Johnson mumbled worriedly.

"Yes, and so are you. Go work on your stuff." Midnight gave Johnson a death glare. He sighed and left the two alone. "So, how are you?"

"Very confused."

"Figures, one minute you're saving Midnight from danger and then the next thing you know I'm asking you questions," she said nonchalantly as if there was nothing wrong.

"Please explain what's going on."

"Well, about six months ago, we put you in a deep sleep and watched your dreams." She wrote something down on her clipboard. "By the way, you have some very strange, and rather confusing, dreams."

"That's because only the part of my brain that used to be human dreams, so you're getting incomplete fragments of stuff, even more fragmented than regular dreams."

"I knew that. Anyway, my daughter found your dreams interesting and began recording them like a novel. If you have any questions, let me know."

"What exactly was that whole thing where you and Johnson faded away?"

"That was you waking up. Dream Johnson became self-aware and woke you up, thus having himself and Midnight fade away."

"...So, everything that I thought just happened was a dream?" Maxwell asked.

"Yes... I'm surprised you didn't figure it out in the dream, that Midnight was way too nice."

"So, exactly how much of that was a dream?"

"All of it. Have any other questions? Because I've got to do something, but you can always ask my assistant," Midnight gestured towards the door. A woman with dark brown hair and glasses ran in after a moment; she looked exactly like the nurse that had been taking care of 'Dream' Midnight. Maxwell was almost certain she called herself 'Erin'.

"You called, Ma'am?" Erin asked nervously.

"Yeah, answer his questions, and if he doesn't have any, help him around and take care of him." Midnight gestured to Maxwell.

"Yes ma'am," Erin nodded. Midnight walked out of the room and Erin made eye contact, became visibly nervous, and then cleared her throat. "An-any questions?"

"About how long, in real-time, was I out?"

"You were out for six months. I helped watch over the whole thing, it was one of the first real experiments the Professor let me help with."