He moved his eyes around but had no peripheral vision. It just seemed that everything he looked at was close up. The sharpness and depth of field hurt the muscles in his eyes.

If that had been all it wouldn’t have bothered him, he would have just closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, but there was something else. There was a sense of lack of connection and control. A feeling that something else was going on that was stressing him intensely, and something that couldn’t be described or identified.

He began to sweat, hard.

He tried to relax, forcing himself to breathe and regulate his panic. He had been on the usual range of stress management and mental discipline courses, so he used the tools he had learnt. He knew that if he just let the feeling happen, stayed in control, it would gradually become less acute and intense, and eventually he would get back in control. 

But now he could sense a direct lack of feeling in his body, and his legs and arms disappearing and numbness filling his head, like taking in more anaesthetic gas.

It was working against him with every breath, distorting, numbing and shutting him down systematically, all in slow motion, and gradually he was losing himself.

He felt as if he was moving in on himself, trapped and held somewhere between asleep and awake. Trained to manage his mind in stressful situations, he stuck to his meditation tools and mind disciplines to keep himself conscious at some level. In some control over his instincts, not to panic, to focus, to concentrate.

He was still there, in charge, as it all slipped away with closing-in mental numbness until everything was gone. No senses, just his mind; but not in any state he had ever known. He went through intense feelings from absolute fear to total and complete and utter limitless bliss, love and elation, naked of any self.  Small, like a lost child in the wilderness.

Then suddenly it was all gone in an instant, and there was no emotion at all. Nothing. No feelings of fear or happiness; it was just completely dark and empty with no other sense of anything.

 But he was still there, not asleep or unconscious, just in an empty, stark, intense black void of endless nothing.

The effect was that of deep, full breaths of pure oxygen, floating in the air in a starless, lightless, limitless space. Yet he was there and fully conscious. He was able to see, but all he could perceive and sense was an endless nothing all around. But he didn’t know where he was.  He was somewhere else completely, and yet he hadn’t moved.

The intensity was overpowering.  His brain was racing to adapt to the strange perception of what state he was in. It was racing to cope and interpret, yet without letting fear take him, for he had no fear, no emotions at all.

In fact it all felt natural or normal somehow. All the processing power normally set aside for the use of his senses was inquisitively looking around for something to do - to see, to feel, or hear, or anything to latch on to.

Occasionally shimmering walls of presence would appear above and to the side, and would then close in on him only to disappear as his mind tried to create something to get some form of depth or perception of where he was, before being dismissed as fake or illusionary by his mind that was not easily fooled or hypnotised.

He knew his eyes were still open, and that they were working hard to try and visualise for him, but his mind had detached itself from them, and from the rest of his body.

All he was ‘seeing’ was just a black nothing.

Gradually he could feel himself calming down and gaining control, so he continued to send slow, deliberate messages to his lungs to breathe; even though he couldn’t feel any part of his body he sent the signals anyway.

Just breathe and relax, he thought to himself, just bloody breathe. But he had no idea if he was breathing or if his body had just stopped functioning in his absence.

He had no sense or feedback from his body at all, but he became aware that it was still there somehow doing what it was supposed to, delivering blood, adrenaline, oxygen and energy.

It was doing its job, every cell working away in its self-preservation mode. The force now was incredible, the energy intense, as if everything were focusing through a single point of stress.

His body knew that there was something very wrong, and it was trying to convey that to him, but his mind knew that he was quite OK, in control. Feeding a signal of panic back to his body would do him no good. His mind was on fire now, racing on its own, alive with freedom, uninhibited, detached and unrestrained outside of its device and normal programming. He was in a limbo state, still in control, but outside and detached from everything. He could sense that he was still in his body and he could sense the background around him; the wind and the birds outside the room, but without actually hearing, seeing or feeling anything. It was a weird duality.

The initial sense of foreboding was diminishing, and was now replaced with heightened, intellectual, emotionless thinking, processing dozens of complex thoughts all at the same time. Without the sensual distractions it was doing a whole day’s thinking in a few microseconds, with intense energetic currents and flows. It was thrilling, unbounded and unrefined, combined again with the occasional intense sense of déjà vu.

Yet he was completely rational and self-aware. This was not dreaming or a state of unconsciousness - this was very different. Conscious, clear and very immediate, there were multi-level feelings, thoughts and emotions flowing in like strong waves. He was in control and could make rational choices of thought in a streamlined way.

He could now optimise his own thoughts at many levels, computing via conduits at astounding speeds without distractions. It was a feeling that he wasn’t able to relate to anything he had been through before, everything seemed to be happening instantaneously. It was all new and thrilling, quick and highly refined, yet intangible.

Everything seemed to make so much more sense here and was so much clearer and faster, meaningful, and he was able to now resolve thought in abstract and multidimensional ways like there had been a release of pressure and constraint. It was all pure and uncluttered and whatever it was, he was just in it.

Then everything stopped in his mind. He diverted his attention outwards. Again it was pitch-black; depthless, quiet and still, empty, unimaginably vast, like floating in deep space, but with no stars or light anywhere. This was not like being in a deep black room where you can somehow sense the walls even in the complete darkness. Here there were no walls, nothing. Just a total, endless black void. Yet that void was intensely clear and hard.

He was still totally self-aware, calm, rational, and yet emotionless. It was just his mind here; no body or eyes or hands. He seemed to have lost his identity too, his own self, and he had no feel of who or what he was. All he had was curiosity.

Slowly he became aware of something in the blackness below. Something indiscernible and vast began to appear from the darkness and was now coming up towards him. Impossibly far away but there, flat and shimmering in the dark, using up all of the down space, miles away.

It was a floor, like a flat, black ground or terrain coming up from the depths. Right on the limits of his visualisation, but there, discernible and everywhere below. It had taken his full attention because it wasn’t coming from him, he was sure of that. It was vast, black, massive, and occupying everything downwards like a dark plain or sea below him.

It was cold and vivid, enigmatic.  It was completely without emotion. It was just practical, matter-of-fact. It was just there, as if it always had been, unearthly, shimmering, on the edge of vision, and he didn’t know what it was.

He wasn’t afraid of it. It was just a flat lightless terrain surface, coming up from below from the impossible depths that hadn’t been there before.

He now felt cold, and sensed a vibration - but that may have been a part of his brain reacting to its association of where it thought it was - the distance telling him that it should be cold up here, telling him he must be somewhere up high in space where there was no light or heat, just void and an unnatural, uncomfortable space. This was definitely no dream.

He instinctively looked up but there was nothing. It wasn’t windy either as he had no body to feel wind against, but it seemed as though it should be, there was a kind of background faint roaring noise like strong wind makes far off high in the air.

There was a deep, low-frequency, vibrating sound too that he could somehow feel but not hear. It was fascinating, enthralling and obsessive; but he had no emotion so it was just translated into passive interest.

As he concentrated, more detail became evident, and directly below him he could now make out massive matt black pieces or tiles that formed the terrain. They fitted together, interconnecting as giant jigsaw pieces, moving and floating as if slightly separate, and yet integrated, making up the entire surface far off below.

The edges of the pieces shimmered being on the very limits of his perception, his mind’s eye straining to create form and contrast to them, trying to create discernable edges.

 More pieces became identifiable as he looked around below. He knew it was a representation of something; a translation of a thing that existed that had no visual form.

It was manifesting itself in this way to give some form of reference, so that he could visualise it or interpret it in some way, but with associated rules, laws, and constraints. He was sure he wasn’t creating it; it was just something expressing or representing something to him in a way he could relate to or comprehend from this point of reference.

It seemed quite stark, harsh, hard, and almost brutal. Of the two dozen pieces that were now clearly visible directly below, each piece, or tile, was linked four ways to other pieces just like a normal jigsaw, but it was vast.

He wasn’t sure if it was meant to be that way, or if his mind just presented it like that to make sense of the information, or to represent connectivity, as any other completed jigsaw would be.

Each piece was flat and many miles across. The map went on further to the horizon, but he could perceive that it wasn’t endless and that there was an actual horizon.

 That feeling of expression became stronger now and it was apparent that this was something he was being shown because he wanted to see it, desired it, needed it, and yet he felt no emotion.

 He was still totally awake and very conscious. That feeling was also combined now with a sense that he was no longer in as much control as he had been a few moments ago.

 There it was too, a feeling that there was something else there next to him. But not something he could see, just sense, or feel, like when you know someone is watching you, or the change in air pressure when someone comes into a room behind you.

He knew it was there and yet it felt quite natural and somehow normal. It had a sense of being just very practical, and emotionless; something doing its job in the dark with him or part of him. The presence was not threatening, imposing, or dominating in any way, nor with any deity-like charisma or feel.

It was just there like some sort of emotionless friend or helper, yet definitely male.

He didn’t feel surprised at it being here, strangely, like a friend he had known for a long time, and was almost expecting to be there. He felt almost bland acknowledgement, just impassive with a ‘nothing to say’ feeling.

Looking down again he tried to come to terms with what he was looking at, and what this jigsaw puzzle meant.

Immediately, and as if in response, the answers came to him; but not spoken or written words, but as a direct relay of information, a feeling, a recognition, a statement of thought passed directly and instantly into his mind.

He experienced the answer and understood it at once rather than something actually being said. It was a statement, a picture of knowledge, an expression fed straight into his brain, a pure information transfer. It also seemed subdued somehow as if it were tired or weak. He just asked in his mind, and it gave him the answer back in instant thought relay in a completely matter-of-fact way.

What he was ‘told’, if that was the correct definition, was that what he was seeing was a map of knowledge of everything. Structured answers to every conceivable concept and question, laid out in integrated pieces. A vast, consolidated, integrated knowledge base of total information. It manifested and presented it in its most perfect, resolved, and integrated, correlated form.

At that, the dark pieces then started to take on more texture, meaning and form, with shapes appearing in them with dynamic elements and motion, but still maintaining their vast original structure, coherence and blackness.

Looking at each piece individually he could feel or sense what that element was about, somehow, like an index page. Some concepts were massive, complex and awe-inspiring, and yet at the same time they felt like normal, almost every day things.

Each component piece contained a distributed network of consolidated mass structured data. Some pieces were abstract and obscure in content, or in some cases just blank or seemingly deliberately hidden. 

He formed the words as a thought in his mind to make contact with what was next to him, what am I seeing?

The answer again came back as a thought, rather than a reply in words, together with images, feelings and impressions, but all happening in an instant directly into his mind. There was a sense of straightforwardness about it all, one of emotionless practicality and indifference, like serving a function, allowing him access, or sharing a conversation. It was as if that was what it was there to do, an interactive librarian; just a guide willing to answer questions, there to help.

Somehow, he knew what to do and what these things were; he was drawn to the answers below. He wanted to explore and know more.  Now he also felt as if some sort of guard or fail-safe had been removed, and because whatever was next to him gave no warning or caution, he assumed it was alright. There was no indication of danger, it was somehow ‘OK’.

Sam’s mind was a lot less emotional than it should have been and was behaving in a very practical way. He wasn’t afraid, but he was disciplined and conditioned by the need to learn things, and his thoughts indicated that this situation was safe, and that he should learn.

He was also sure that the thing that was communicating with him didn’t feel like any sort of god or anything dangerous, sinister or powerful, so it was all OK somehow; it was just natural curiosity. Besides, his mind was highly trained and disciplined, so he was sure he would be fine. Anyway, this was exciting and new, interestingly powerful and enthralling.

Sam was keen to find out what was inside the pieces, but rather than move himself to the pieces he decided to try and move one to him. He chose a piece below him at random and changed his virtual vision and depth of field to be closer, as he had just done in the bedroom, until it came close to him.

Shrinking as it came nearer, until only a few feet away, it was now only several yards across. Then he went into it, and he was part of it, and it filled the space all around him.

There was a sudden, massive parallel pulse of instant understanding, experience, thought, logic, and knowledge imprinted into his brain all at once, like a dimensionally independent array of images; a mass of visions.

No feelings or emotion, just a rush of complex information, a mind-blowing dimensional mass of indescribably perfect knowledge. Thought, logic, integrated concepts, and beautifully represented rationale all happening at once like being given a ‘plug-in’ to the brain.

It was direct, hard and intense, and definitely not coming from him. It was so completely and utterly different to anything he had every experienced before. It was indescribably exquisite, intensely articulate, and it all made perfect, profound sense instantly, and continued to expand and elaborate in all directions. All the time it was completely open, expansive, and everything was immediately obvious in every sense. It was vast, like being inside total understanding of everything.

The sensation was like nothing he had had before and was totally indescribable. It wasn’t just like having something explained, or knowledge shown to you, it ‘WAS the explanation’ and the ‘knowledge’ transferred en-masse directly with all its splendour and associated feeling, context and grandeur, instantly into your mind along with a blissful, euphoric feeling.

The physical sensation was like grabbing two metal bars with either hand through which an electric current was flowing - not enough to electrocute you, but enough to switch everything on in your body and mind all at once in vibration until you let go.

However, instead of electricity it was limitless information and data delivered in an instant. But it was also capable of being explored, navigable, and instantly understandable in every concept; massive awareness and a limitless cosmic conscious understanding.

There were the answers presented in majestic, perfect, obvious splendour, without the limitations of speech or sight, or speed of learning, but at the same time exquisite and simple, efficient and beautifully eloquent and articulately presented in a refined way that didn’t require the need for explanation, with all the context and endless correlated logic already there in instantaneous enlightenment smashed into his head all at once.

It was like no book, film, or lifetime experience ever could be. He was inside knowledge, but perceived in context that was all the parts of everything at once in a way that was far more than the parts themselves.

The physical sensation had the same intense feeling as standing with your face a few inches from an express train as it rushes past, together with the nervousness you would have if someone else had their hand pressed against the back of your head at the same time. The rush, the power, the speed, and the intensity, but without the physicality; just pure knowledge energy. 

Now he was in the piece he understood. All around him it was obvious, the arguments, the logic, the evidence, the rational explanations. It seemed to be explaining that there was no God.

He understood it all, and could experience it all now in every way, all the thought processes, all the arguments, all the explanations, reasons, logic, physical evidence data and history. It was just practical logic; the reasons for the mental crutch being there, the human nature aspects, the needs and evolution of its concepts, the analysis of evidence, the archetypes, the science, and the complex analysis reinforced with the injustices. Why the ideas were there, and what had caused them.

Every conceivable scrap of information was there in the piece around him; he had been imprinted with the overall answers and concepts all at once. If he needed to explore other factual component elements, they were all there in intricate and regal detail, laid out around him and manifested in perfect, eloquent, exquisite logic. It was all just a misunderstanding, a breakdown of communication, a misrepresentation of the mind.

Yet there was something not quite right. There was more, another level of perspective that initially seemed to say the same thing, but then in argument for there being one, ‘a god’, with reference to the previous, and then links off into other pieces, giving greater depth.

It all culminated in what seemed to be a confused mess all in the space of several seconds. It then seemed to convey three different concepts at once.

He knew everything, he was inside knowledge, but it didn’t seem to integrate somehow, like being given every answer before knowing what the problem was.

He seemed to have been passed through a vast knowledge journey in a few seconds but there were things missing, or rather not there, but this was all totally impossible to explain.

Reacting more from the shock than anything else he moved it all away in his mind, and he was outside, and above it all again. He looked down on the dark shadowy pieces below, from the peace and stillness of the black empty void.

It had been an instant massive revelation, a completely mind-blowing experience, but at the same time emotionless, practical, hard, immutable and very direct.

It was also exhilarating and combined with a sense of achievement and enlightenment. Somehow it felt as though his forehead should be sweating, but here he didn’t seem to have one.

He tried a few more. One was the start of the Universe and its evolution, and lifespan to date. Now he knew how old it was, its development, structure, and so much more; all in instant, magnificent representation. He was in the Universe.

He experienced it, knew it, and was part of it and everywhere in it all at the same time, like being inside the knowledge of it, and merged with it. The timeline of the Universe wasn’t a number; he could feel it represented, as an existence, something that was inside in his mind as an experience, looking back in the same way that you could equate or feel the time between now and when you started school. That was how it was presented, that massive timeframe - as a feeling of vastness, a lifetime.

But he was able to translate it in his own mind to a real figure of nearly fourteen billion years. The information was bounded though, and limited, so he couldn’t see anything before the start.

Coming back out he noticed some pieces below were now more intense, enhanced, or appeared to be larger somehow. The subjects of these he hadn’t previously had a clue about, or had ever been interested in.

Inside were concepts you couldn’t put into words, visions and images you could only experience and see in your mind, not on paper or in film, represented in an indescribably elaborate way.

It was all dancing around and combined with thoughts, perfection of form and representation, but not visually; it was represented as parallel thought. The balance, the symmetry and the complex interaction imprinted itself in his mind like no movie or book could ever do, but with perfect efficiency and dynamic, blissful complexity.

While in a piece he could explore, navigate, like progressing through logical integrated network, and at each point masses of additional knowledge would come in, all with relation to the next context, as if exploring a terrain of concept. It was enthralling, and all so clear and obvious now, just being inside knowledge itself.

Having lived your life in four dimensions, to have your mind experience the concepts, feeling and reality of several more was awesome and exhilarating. The feeling came that there was one dimension more than there should have been; more than the ten or eleven that were thought, and then it was gone. Inside and around real atomic and subatomic structures. In and around energy flows and dynamics.

Hundreds of particle combinations with fields and waves and interaction that came with explanation, of understanding without text or needless metaphor or mathematical equations. In a way no magazine could describe in diagrams or a lifetime of lectures could explain or define.

It was a rollercoaster ride of everything instantly. It was being inside the understanding and having thoughts, experience and knowledge context already in your mind at the same time. Like having the combined brains of all the experts in the world on that subject instantly, already integrated, and yet seeing it in a fantastically elaborate way that was new and perfectly presented.

Integrated concepts of time, dimensions, and quantum mechanics came through to him so he was able to gain perspective on things instantly, even seeing how things actually were in true form, compared to regimented theories that had been developed already - all to help put perspective on the final picture.

It grew and grew in complexity. Everything now built into spheres, bubbles with surfaces spinning around, then grouped inside larger ones alike, in and around. Each spinning to different sets of rules, and contra-spinning in balance, in an ever expanding hierarchy of spinning things.  

He moved out again, up into the void. He then quickly went into other pieces that related to other topics and thought formations. Concepts such as aliens were presented and elaborated on, then explained through history with examples.

Logical explanations of mind attribution, understandable fear causing imaginative constructs, balanced out with natural scepticism to a point of resolution that there had been none, and were none. For the first time there was a definite sense of emotion there, and one that he couldn’t express or compare with any that he had of his own, he could sense it, but it wasn’t coming from him. These explanations went on into other pieces.

There were vastly more complex and integrated symmetrical biological understandings which linked off into other directions and pieces to help explain other concepts; how the brain worked and linked together, cells, neurons, human development, and DNA integration.

From that he was led onto obscure concepts like ghosts. Now he knew what they were caused by, and how it worked, and how the information in static mass was perceived, stored, projected, and interpreted. All of a sudden it was obvious. They were quite simple and not confusing at all. It was just all data, information management and storage.

Then into water and its information properties and how we perceive it. Hills, cells, evolution, perception, geology, and body energy and biomechanics. It seemed to be speeding up.

Facts were just conveyed as direct information with no associated feelings; cold, hard, mind flashes packed with understanding - like the 546 years that humanity had left, accepting the information all in the same way, without emotion or feeling, just with a matter-of-fact placidity.

Subatomic field communications between us, explaining all sorts of previously mysterious happenings, and imaginative mystical psychic abilities, linked back to other pieces in practical ways. It all became not so mysterious, and all quite obvious.

The direction wasn’t structured, he just seemed to drift from one experience into the next, or so it felt. The key was not to question it or halt the flow but to just go with it and accept it as a passive observer, along for the ride, not stirring or panicking, just accepting the rush, but with some selective choice.

When he pushed the pieces away, the intensity of what he had experienced diminished dramatically. He still had the information in his mind, but there were no links with it as before, the mapping and navigation had stopped, so recalling context and structure was difficult and faded in intensity quickly. Like pausing a hundred films that you were watching all at the same time, each of which interrelated to the others - you could remember the films to some extent, and the conclusions, but the cohesion and the interaction stopped immediately.

He still had the answers though, and most of the information, but the beauty, depth and elegance were not there; he couldn’t articulate it or navigate it in the way it was inside the piece.

He knew that he knew it, and the intense feeling was still there, and raw, but now he relied on his brain connectors to integrate the elements together to allow him to recall and remember the information.

It was a struggle fitting together the information and how it worked. He hadn’t lived through these experiences of knowledge or built them up gradually in a structured way, he was just being left with dozens of encyclopaedia volumes of data but no indexes.

It was like opening up a computer cover and throwing an encyclopaedia in and expecting the machine to read the pages and store the data. So, somehow, there was a big difference between his memory and his mind, and how the information was stored here and how it was represented.

Some pieces were obscure and almost useless, the layouts and structures of cities for example; what they looked like, and how to navigate them. They were just like a mental picture, so he didn’t venture into those.

Obscure things like how to maintain a forest, and utility type knowledge, vibrational movement, and some that seemed to have no context or value at all from his perspective.

It was all very different to how you would learn or remember things in real life though. The data and understanding weren’t linked together with connections as you would for experiences on say, a holiday, with the journey, the sites, meals and events all giving you a set of memory pegs.

This was all flat and factual with none of the emotional links, just the keepsake holiday snaps and videos without the feelings or a three-week guided tour round an historical city, but instantly in a few microseconds, yet in fantastic glory and brilliance and context all thrown at you at once.

A few of the pieces that were previously dark now began to change and have elements in them that he could see. On entering one it became clear that he could only see this knowledge because he was now able to put it into context because of what he had already been shown elsewhere.

That made sense. Before then it would have been meaningless so there would have been no reference. He could also go back into previous pieces and get more of it in context; like now knowing what the Universe was for and why, which seemed to cause some confusion.

There were also things that raised questions in his mind that he couldn’t answer for some reason, as if he had gone into things he shouldn’t have, seen too much. The key though was not to stop before something happened.

He understood what destiny was now, but it still left quite a few missing pieces that were unnerving to him somehow, a disassociation, lost elements - things that should be there that weren’t.

It all began to gather pace.

On the next piece was a simple flash of lightning on a scene, just an impression, and didn’t seem to register anything at all. Which is when he became aware that he was still in his body somewhere, and he was receiving warnings from it, something wasn’t right, and his alert emotions began to make an appearance.

Panic and pain messages were coming from his body, real stress. The last two pieces he had been in had caused him direct pain somewhere, and somehow, he knew that, and he was responding to those priority interrupts overriding everything else to get to him.

But those insights came now with his own desire and instant addiction, and he wanted to know more; having tasted so much knowledge, he couldn’t resist it. It was a pure and perfect drug. Instant doctorates were a thrilling overpowering temptation, and it was enthralling and intoxicating. He wanted this more than anything - it was overpowering, the desire, the need, and yet he knew it was going to kill him.

He was definitely going to die, and he couldn’t help it, and somehow in this place he didn’t seem to really care, it was just the way it was.

To experience and understand these awe-inspiring things was worth it, even for an instant more. The pain was acute now, and his perception grew numb along with a humming, ringing, like the dull loss of sense after an explosion, the emotions were rife.

He ignored them now, set on a fixed path, and the consequential matter of death wasn’t a problem. He was inside another piece, he wasn’t even sure what it was for, and it felt as though every cell in his body was screaming questions and answers through him; it was intense, a point of absolute extreme pressure, a criticality of stress, a single point integrated at many levels with him in-between.

Now it was all coming from around and below on the absolute limits of everything, a reference point, it was too much. He came out again into the void.

Then, for an instant, he felt something come from his very cells, communicating with him somehow with whatever was around him, below and then through him.

He perceived it and took it in; it was different and out of context with what was going on before. He had no reference or explanation or relation to it, but it was no matter, he was now on the edge of death, he knew it, and everything started going on all at once beyond any control.

Everything happened at every level very fast - a mass rush of information. Something was not right. Something had gone drastically wrong in so many ways.

Then suddenly a real voice spoke as if from somewhere else.

He latched on to it, connected to it, and everything stopped still. Dead calm.

He was transfixed in a motionless state, paused in the void, with just the intense humming feeling remaining.

Again, the voice came, and suddenly there was a hand in his hand.

The hand was there, he knew it somehow.

He couldn’t feel it, it wasn’t pressing his skin, but it was just there. And now he sensed another hand, on his forearm, but that wasn’t really there either.

The voice had spoken his name and everything froze around him waiting for something to happen, like the silence in the aftershock of a shell exploding, with his ears singing, and time and motion at a standstill. In the background was a dull, vibrating tone and a deeply oppressive feeling, which somehow, he knew represented pain in his head and body.

“Sam.” A change in tone this time, a real pressure on his hand. Feeling, life, air. He thought of the great pain and sadness he would cause to others if he didn’t return. The feeling of responsibility was being put into his mind.

But the lure and hunger for the knowledge drug, of carrying on in here to see everything was intoxicating, and totally addictive, and inescapable. He had already bound part of what he was to it, and leaving here intact would be impossible. 

The voice was female. Was love. Someone caring, feeling, wanting him, drawing him, pulling him out with need. It was a long way out of the narrow deep mineshaft he was in though. He heard it again, locking on to him, binding with him.

It had directness and feeling, and an inverse polarity to where and what he was in.  He was on a boundary, a decision point at the knife edge of reality. “Sam, come back!” a request... of urgent feeling...a command.

That was it. That moment, right then. He chose. He waited for a moment, dwelling on the place he was in for a second more just to remember it, and then followed the voice. It needed him, loved him, wanted him to return, so he had a duty, a responsibility and now a directed purpose.

There was no emotion here - he could see that now, in direct contrast to the human voice.  Here was just cold logic in the depths, a dark library, stark and basic, and with this new perspective he knew it just wasn’t right, he didn’t belong there.

He no longer wanted to be left here in the void.

So, he chose love. He could feel the hand on him now, and his body, things around him began to fade in perception. The presence he had communicated with now went. He could feel it move away, just diminish and be no longer there, no longer needed.

There was a rush out of the dark.

He became more aware of his body, and the temperature in the room, the voice, the air and the light, like waking from anaesthetic, although he had been totally awake throughout.

His open eyes began to give him perception of light, yet out of focus, and sight of images again, but slowly.

Feeling of his body came back.

Gasping for air and breathing hard he became aware of a pain in his head that was unimaginable, like no other pain he had ever known, like nothing you could describe, beyond any type of hangover.

Parts of his body were numb and immovable.

He was soaking wet and lying in cold sweat, his face hot. He tried to move but was all over the place; rhythms of nervous electrifying vibration going through his body, his left leg and arm were weak and unresponsive. His mind was on fire. Everything in the room moved, vibrant and sharp, alive with an eye-opening intensity, colour, contrast and auras that made his eyes ache.

The hand held him down on the bed gently, and concerned eyes looked straight at him from a pale, worried face. It was difficult to focus. His mind was hammering to try and make sense of the physical world around him and the mental convoluted mind storm going on in his head.

His heart was beating heavily with the panic from the numbing fiery pressure pain in the temples of his head, especially at the back of his neck and skull.

The air was spinning around him. He was suffering the effects from a sapping marathon of the mind and body. He could only focus on things a few feet away so the walls were blurred, and his peripheral vision was all over the place.

It felt like he had been there for several hours, but in reality, it had probably only been twenty minutes at most. So much information and knowledge in such a short space of time. The feeling wasn’t odd though. It felt bland, like he had just simply been down the library and picked up and read a few books, as you do.

Despite the panic he was immediately aware that he was now very different. His perception on life had completely changed along with everything around him.

It wasn’t so much the new found mass of knowledge and vision that he now had, it was more the perspective that he now took on everything, powerful and encompassing revelations, a completely different understanding, a new way of seeing things. His senses were alive, and now his mind worked in a different way.

What he now had in his brain, although very mixed up, was earth shattering; a mass of information that wasn’t there before.

He would no longer be able to see the world in the same way again. He could sense it all still there, like implanted packets of data flashing back at him, but not naturally or logically structured, just there, unlinked in different locations. It hadn’t gone, it was all still there, distributed throughout his head.

Unfortunately, along with it came a very real and ominous impression that somehow a mistake had been made. A breach of protocol, an error, as if something shouldn’t have happened, or that he had seen too much. He was also confused as to who or what had communicated with him in the dark, it was all very real and clear and imminent.

He hadn’t been asleep or unconscious. He hadn’t travelled off somewhere or been imagining it; it had happened. It was very, very real, and direct and clear, hard and precise.

A critically important chain of events had occurred that shouldn’t have happened. Yet most importantly, somehow, he knew that all the jumbled complex knowledge still in his head, even though scattered about and vast, was way too much, and not supposed to be there.

He looked directly into Brina’s blue-grey eyes as she looked down at him, her face still anxious and scanning his features.

His mind was working to make sense of what he was seeing in the room, trying to reconceptualise everything, and relate everything, switching back slowly from parallel to serial. 

“Are you OK?” she asked clearly and slowly.

He nodded.

Her face immediately relaxed slightly, but her eyes were still searching his face for information.

He tried to form words that came into his head, but his body behaved as if it had been rescued from a frozen lake, shaking and in shock.

Slowly he placed his right hand on her cheek, and he was able to try and speak despite the nerve driven electric spasms his body was making.

Fixing her with his eyes, very slowly, and with spasms in his breath, he managed three coherent words,

“I…Know...EVERYTHING.”