Sharp beeps, every thirteen seconds, fire through my head. A static whirring sound fills the empty space as I count down the seconds in preparation for the next, a sound I cannot place. The method would be easier if I opened my eyes, filled my vision with the sources of the predictable sounds, but they refuse to cooperate, and I do not know why. I am lying down in a room, the echoes that resonate at the two second mark tell me as much. I feel my fingers and my toes, something is lightly pressing down upon them. I could slide a leg out from under….under what? I assign my fingers the task of finding out.
I press my hands down upon something soft, pliable, and smooth, ‘a bed?’ I can talk! At least I said that I may have just thought it, but I cannot be sure. My fingers find freedom from under the light weight of stiff, starched bed clothing and a soft, thin blanket, ‘now I know I can free my legs.’ I need to pick a direction. I reach out my right hand, probing for obstacles and obstructions and, to my relief, find nothing as I wave my arm about. It is stiff but no pain to speak of, ‘how long have I been here?’ I am certain the question is warranted as I feel a light tug on the fore of my arm just below my elbow. ‘I need to find out why.’ And I do, it is my nature. A slim tube of sorts is temporarily affixed to my flesh.
With the path clear to my satisfaction, I swivel my back side toward my path of freedom and extend my right leg out and finally down to press my foot onto a flat cold surface. It is remarkably smooth but not slippery. I flex my toes to test for balance and strength, spreading them out as wide as I can muster before placing each digit back onto the cold surface, assuring myself that I am whole. I mirror the action with my left leg but struggle initially as it seems much heavier than the right, the sensations I had experienced, the light pressure of the bed clothing over my right toes, is missing.
A certain measure of panic threatens to work its way into my thoughts, but I quietly dispel any notion of control outside my own as I continue my intention and place my left foot on the floor…. ‘wait, what was that sound?’ Tiny echoes of a metallic tink register, followed by a more intense version of the whirring sound I heard earlier. Something is not right.
I flex the toes on my left foot as I search for the same temperatures I had gaged with my right, the whirring grows louder, but only for a second. I feel them spread wide in response to my thoughts, but I do not feel the cold, or the smoothness, of the surface upon which it rests. I decide, then, to test my own reality as I hop my foot a few centimeters from the floor, feeling each spring from the appendage but hearing only the clack and ting of metal on metal. Something is definitely not right.
I reach my right hand up to my head, a shocking pain wracking its way across my shoulders and down my spine in response. I fight through the intense agony as I grit my teeth hard in effect, ‘damned if I’m screaming out this torment no matter where I am!’ I feel something thick wrapped tight around my head and wires attached to pads which are pressed against the flesh of my skull, ‘where is my hair?’ Again, I resist the temptations of panic and calm myself down. ‘I need to know where I am.’ Yes, that is paramount. My location will determine my actions. I sit quietly for a moment as I listen intently, pushing what senses I could beyond what I had.
I know I cannot see so I forget that I should. I can hear but the sense is dulled, the wrappings are tight and pressed over my ears. ‘What can I smell?’ I focus intently on the smells…. ‘clean, fresh...sterile’ the words are accurate, of that I am certain. I spread my hands wide on the bed I know I am consigned to, crumpling the bed clothing tightly in my palms before releasing them outright. I bring my fingertips to my nose and inhale deeply, imbibing the same descriptions but there is something different within them. ‘a palpable tang that is far too subtle to be considered a major source of anything.’ The thought makes sense, but I should investigate further.
I push myself closer to the edge of the bed, again pressing my feet into the solid surface of the floor, my right foot sensing the cold, my left sensing…. nothing.. but the pressure of the surface below it. I push myself on to my feet outright and lose complete control of the tenuous balance I had established. I prepare myself for the impending fall with outstretched hands, ready to prevent my head from slamming into the floor. Light tugs become tethered encumbrance from several locations on my body. My right forearm yanks back slightly before a loud pop frees it altogether and it hurtles down, swinging itself right into my left. My body does not yield completely as the wires attached to my skull pull taught and yank my head back sharply. The pain arcs yet again, but I am helpless to audibly display it. I know I am screaming but I hear nothing in return.
My weight performs the actions my hands were brave enough for earlier as the entire wrapping covering my head pulls off, allowing my skull to continue its freefall into the floor unimpeded. Gravity yanks my right hand back and I know I have a fraction of a second to fire it out. I underestimate my available strength as my right-hand slams into the ground and slides toward my left with an audible pop of its own. ‘This is not going well,’ I couldn’t agree more, even if it is with myself. My right hand dislodges my left as my momentum carries me into a right-side roll. I am relieved that fortune has at least spared my head from one hell of a headache, but my left foot draws my attention from the short-lived victory as it twists at odd angles then falls off… ‘Wait….What!’
Panic begins to win its battle over my resolve as my own realization sends my brain into another gear. ‘My foot fell off….’ I know, the thought alone is enough to make you wonder why I would even think it again, but I do. ‘Why can’t I scream?’ Because I should be. I should be calling attention to myself louder than I could ever crank the volume on the Photon Trio. That is true, although I can get the volume up pretty high on… ‘my ship.’ My ship is gone. What in the hell is happening?
I cannot find an answer without my voice, and I need to keep myself occupied so panic doesn’t win. I give up on the foot for a moment as I feel the floor’s pressure on the back of my head and will my eyes to open. ‘Why won’t anything work!’ I sent the message; I feel the lids pulled back so why is it dark? Not even space is this dark. I lift my right arm tentatively, pulling it from something wet at the floor as a slight sucking noise fills my right ear, ‘I’ll worry about that in a minute.’ I mirror the action with my left hand, relieved to feel the movement unencumbered by any outside force. I brush my fingertips over my eye lids… ‘they are open?’ Yes, they most certainly are open as I feel the solid pressure of my eyeballs in direct contact with my probing fingertips. ‘criffing great, blind now too.’
At what point do I just allow the panic free reign? I think rationalizing it has already driven the thought to ground, so the question is only a matter of prioritizing sanity. ‘That sounded like something Ahsoka would say.’ Wait, she’s gone too. Yes, I watched her sink into the...stone. ‘I’m going insane.’ Rex. Nara. R3’s head… who was left? I take the opportunity to explore the rest of my face, because, well, my fingers are already there and how much worse could it be? I feel my ears, my forehead, my nose...at least they are still...mine. Something wet drips onto my right cheek and I remember the puddle I had pulled my right arm from. I run my left fingers over the right forearm and quickly find the path my own blood was stemming from, ‘the tube must have yanked out when I fell.’ I grip the area tightly as I hold the arm over my heart, I remember learning the technique through some of the earliest classes on Keno. It doesn’t take long to staunch the flow, but I keep the arm aloft anyway and continue exploring with my left hand exclusively.
My chin hurts but it is intact as my path is ever downward. My hand runs into something cold and metallic. I press the very tips of my fingers close to the edges of it and my skin and run them parallel along the tangent. Tiny raised surfaces at measured intervals reveal that whatever it is, it is permanent. I continue probing its surface to find a hole in the center of a metal rectangle, three fingers wide….the rectangle, not the hole.
‘I can’t not probe the hole,’ makes sense to me anyway. I press my smallest digit into the thing, it’s the only one that fits, and feel a tingling in my throat, one I cannot describe. I exhale my frustration and feel an odd sensation on the very tip of my finger, followed immediately by a strangled mewling resembling an injured Lothcat. ‘That was my voice,’ I mean, it was obvious to me, but if I sound like that going forward, I am really going to have to start rethinking my life decisions.
I am uncertain if I should even proceed as the prognosis so far was hardly in my favor, but some measure of resistance was still tugging at my chest. ‘Only a few more centimeters,’ I tell myself. That is as far as I need to travel with my explorations to complete the journey. ‘To hell with intrigue,’ I tell myself and drop my hand where the resistance is strongest. A flexible metallic tube extends from my chest to an unknown source, and I finally let my left-hand drop to the ground. I let all barriers I had either intentionally or unintentionally erected drop to the panic that I know is ready to consume me fully. Nothing happens. The beeps still come every thirteen seconds, but the whirring has stopped, ‘my foot.’ I assume. A new sound invades my cadence at second nine, footsteps. ‘Light frame, heel to toe, soft soled boots mid-calf in height. There is a gentle sway in the gait, compensating for something….so, near human if I had to guess, Lek’ku most likely. I think immediately of Ahsoka. ‘It can’t be, Ahsoka fell into the stone. She is dead.’ Yes, it sounds absurd, but that is what I saw.
I hear an activator slide a door into a walled panel with a quick whoosh of servos and gadgetry, “Ani, how in the holy stars did you manage this in under a minute!” Says the unmistakable voice of Hera, ‘she would have been my next guess.’ “By the stars, what a mess!” ‘hey now...let’s not get personal.’ “Are you ok?” Hera asks me…. ‘oh yeah...doing well...just another day, you know.’ How the hell was I supposed to respond to that...I mean, even if I could? ‘How’s the baby? Can I see...is it a girl or boy, by the stars, I don’t even know…’ Yep, can’t do either…lovely.
It would be amazing if someone would at least tell me why there is a hole in my throat...or a tube attached to my chest...or, hell, why my foot fell off. “I was only away for a minute Ani, I swear. We have been working on getting your voice synchronized properly with your vocater.” Hera explained to me as she began wrapping my right arm tightly with a fresh bandage. “Bren, if you have a minute can you come in and give me a hand, please?” I hear Hera say after she had shifted me slightly and keyed in quickly on her comm device…. ‘Bren...the name is familiar...’
“I’m on it General.” Comes the quick reply. ‘Heavy accent. Ahsoka had mentioned Halrun Kal. The female stormtrooper!’ That felt like so long ago….
“Ani, give us a second, we need to get you back in your bed.” Hera continues as she slides her arms under my back, and I hear the stupid door again. “Ani, ya foot fell off again.” Bren’s accent was certainly entertaining, but yeah… ‘what do mean again?.’
This is common practice? My question of course goes unanswered as it remains unasked but neither points matter as I feel them shifting around both myself and the mess I must have made. My body is weightless for a moment before they lower me softly back onto the bed. Hera, beside my head, is fumbling with something, “This may feel a little strange…” She doesn’t waste time at least as she inserts something into the device on my throat. I feel a very mild electric shock as the components within activate and whir loudly for a full three seconds. The device chirps once audibly and pings with a pressurizing seal. “Say something.” Hera demands. ‘Where do I start?…..’