Blast Protocol

Chapter 3

AFTER [the light]

Bubbles. The gurgle of air moving up inside a water cooler. It echoes, as if I'm inside the five gallon drum of water.

I'm weightless. Floating.

I can't feel my surroundings. No breeze. No cold. No heat. It's an environment without an atmosphere. A planet without gravity.

It's also dark. Pitch dark. Which is pretty unsettling, on top of everything else.

Then, I see it. Not here, in the darkness, but in my mind. Windshield of my dad's car being shattered as it slammed into the asphalt.

My heart rate jumps, throbbing painfully in my ribcage, a muted tump, tump, tump joining that eerie bubbling sound.

I was thrust into a strange kind of terror, back there in the car. The terror of unknown things, things I hadn't understood. Things I still didn't. And on top of that, I now have to deal with the horror of this sensory void I find myself trapped in.

I open my mouth to call out. But instead of words, there's just gurgling sounds. I can feel the bubbles this time, brushing against my nose and forehead on the way up. There's more of them, because I'm actively using my lungs rather than absently breathing out through my nose.

Mystery solved, I guess. But only in a vague way that just introduces more mysteries.

I've been breathing in through my mouth and out through my nose this whole time, I realize. This makes me self-conscious of my breathing apparatus. I can feel it, now, in a way I couldn't before, because it was just there, and had been for some time, in the same way that you might use a word all the time without ever actually hearing it, until one day you are drawn to the strangeness of it, the way your lips have to move as it travels off the tongue.

There's a pipe. Inside my throat. I'm pretty sure it goes all the way down into my lungs, or something. It's slim as it enters my mouth, through a rubber mouth-guard thing, clenched between my teeth. But then it widens out into something like a vacuum tube, pressed hard against the walls of my throat.

An image pops up on the projector screen of my mind. That scene in The Matrix, when Neo wakes up in the vat.

I'd prefer a more lighthearted example, like Luke in the Bacta Tank, or the Saiyans in their healing pods in Dragonball Z, but my heart's not in it at the moment. Right now, I'm feeling 'Neo'.

The good news is that this is probably just a weird dream, or a bad trip brought on by hallucinogens, or something. I don't like the implication that my senses are disconnected from reality, and that I don't have any bearings or control, but the upside is, I can just ride it out, and eventually it will end, and things can go back to being normal.

Semi-normal.

The point is, reality will eventually re-assert itself. I have to believe that.

In the meantime, the pipe in my throat, now that I'm aware of it, is becoming markedly uncomfortable, and the complete darkness is starting to get to me.

I get the idea to swim around in this fluid I'm encased in, see if there's anything I can grab onto, interact with.

I tilt forward, stretching my legs behind me and reaching out with my arms.

Before I can get my body horizontal, both my feet and hands press against something. My feet are covered, maybe in some kind of shoe. But my bare hands are dealing with a smooth, hard, concave surface. The inside of a glass cylinder.

So it is more like a Bacta Tank than a Matrix submersion vat. Though, I'm having trouble finding much encouragement in the thought.

Braced against the glass, I maneuver in a circle, feeling for...something. A button? A handle or lever?