"That's ridiculous! I have to stay all night here just to wait for the results tomorrow! Are they afraid I might run away or something? Where? We are in the middle of the literally f*cking sky!!"
John was fuming in rage at this moment! He tried to speak sense into the nurse who came to take samples for the tests. He tried to ask to go back, sleep in his room, but he got a definite no as an answer.
He hadn't got to see the doctor since last time. He tried to meet her, even tried to get out of his room to find her. Yet his door was locked, and all he could do now was lay down on the medical bed and wait for the light of the morning.
He accepted this fate at last, sat on the bed while looking at the world outside through the wide window. The window was like a balcony that was made out of glass! It was covered with a thick curtain before he pushed it away to enjoy the scenery.
"I need to organise the facts I know of so far…" John started to gather all the facts he knew since he opened his eyes and found himself in such a weird world.
"I have a different name, different identity, even a different body in this world… Which is… Insane!" John sighed, trying to organise the information he acquired so far in his mind.
"I was a software engineer, now I'm a soldier. I'm sure these big machines weren't there on Earth, which means either I'm not on Earth anymore, or perhaps I went into the future like what happens in Sci-fi movies and novels…"
His mind started to do what he excelled at, processing the data and finding patterns, without losing control of his emotions or getting nervous!
"I need to find a way to learn more about this world… There must be a computer or something similar in this world, right?" He looked around, and everything he saw told him this world was more advanced in technology than Earth he came from.
He started to slowly accept the reality of being here, being in a world he never saw or heard of before. Even if by logic he would find this crazy, he had to adapt and accept this fast, he had to survive at all costs!
"Those who don't adapt perish," he muttered these wise words that he read once before, but didn't recall who said them, "I'll leave the issue of finding a computer for when I'm out. I also need to learn how to operate that thing, as it seems that John Mirage knew how to operate one…"
He knew he couldn't go to ask the sergeant or else he would face a much crueler fate than what he was already suffering right now. He also needed to avoid arousing much suspicion about him, something he had to pay extra care to.
"There was that dude… The one who called my name before, and he was here with the sergeant… He must have been close to John, right?"
He didn't know the name of that soldier, but he was sure he would help him if he asked, without raising many doubts on top of that.
"Now comes the biggest problems…" John took a deep breath, tried to clear his mind, before starting to recall what happened to make him enter this infirmary in the first place!
When he recalled what he lived through, he couldn't help but feel more confused and lost. "The more I think about it, the more I feel like I was dreaming… Was I dying or something? Nothing makes any sense at all in what happened!"
John tried to think as a spectator about what happened in that bizarre experience, yet he couldn't even grasp the meaning of what happened.
"Thinking that I was dying and these were my final moments aren't helping… I'm alive, and I don't have any serious wounds or issues that could have threatened my life! I experienced all this when…"
He was in the middle of his words when he suddenly recalled something he missed. It was a tiny detail, yet when he thought deeply about it, it wasn't simple at all.
"I heard that melody… That music was the trigger… I'm sure of it!" If not for the extreme pain he suffered from, he would have tried to relisten to this melody again to confirm his theory, "but why this melody in particular? It's not that alien to me, but… I can't get my hands on where I heard it before…"
After some time, he gave up recalling where he listened to it. "I have a trigger, for something that made me enter into such weird… State! I'll call it a weird state till I find out what's really going on… Then what about that weird world I went into? Is it real or hallucinations?"
This was something he couldn't tell even after spending most of the night recalling and analysing what he experienced. But he found other things that looked interesting to him.
"I may be overstretching it, but I believe time works backwards in that place… The white blank space seems like a transition place for my consciousness? It's more like the state of mind one is in before waking up… And that water I fell into? It's like the deep sleep state I heard about?"
He knew he was really going too far in his guesses, yet the entire situation required that. He knew going by sane reasons and depicted logic, he wouldn't make any progress at all, wouldn't know why he was here, what he was supposed to do to return back home!
"I still have my beloved little daughter… I'm not dead, I seem to have gotten into that accident and in critical care right now…"
He was positive he saw scenes on Earth that he never lived before! He wasn't the type to take good care of his health, but not to the extent of getting hospitalized. He even didn't recall undergoing any procedure as he always feared needles and injections!
"My little Bethany was there… She was confused and didn't know what happened to her papa…" At this moment, he couldn't tolerate it anymore. His eyes turned cherry red and tears exploded out of his eyes.
After some time, he managed to control his emotions once more. "I need to find a way to get back, I'm still alive and didn't die!" He strengthened his resolve to break down what was happening to him and find a way to get back to Earth.
To get back, he first needed to properly and fully understand the entire situation he was in, get to know everything he could about this world, its history, its progress, and try to find a link between it and Earth.
"I don't know lots of information for now, so it's not the time to become serious about cracking this mystery…" He was the type that would turn fanatic when faced by a hard mystery to solve. Yet this was the first time to face a mystery he was involved in, a mystery that was related to his life, and his daughter!
"And now, it comes down to the last puzzle I found… Doctor Sophie…"
He said her name as if he was a lover. He recalled every single detail of her, how she stood, how she spoke, how she walked, and even how she reprimanded him and slammed the door when exiting his room.
"No matter how I look at it, she is my Elly Green… The thing is… My Elly has been dead for five years now!"