Awake

"What's happened?" the doctor on site yelled, as he bustled down the hospital corridors. His white coat flared as he paced alongside the nurse, who was furiously scribbling notes on a large brown clipboard.

"I don't know. It's... it's like nothing we've ever seen before," the nurse replied, pulling his surgical mask to his face. In a nervous shiver, he continued. "Prognosis is pretty much... well, you'll see..."

As the doctor approached the emergency room, he could hear shrill screams emanating from the doorway. The air was filled with the cried of a woman sobbing, and a man's deep coughing, but the shrieks weren't from either of them. The nurse glanced at him, accurately gauging his expression. "It's the... patient. He's, uh, he was affected by the trip."

The bright doorway sat at the end of the hallway, illuminated from within by halogen surgical lights. Turning the corner sharply, the doctor suddenly reeled back, almost knocking the nurse to the ground, as a darkly dressed figure burst from the room screeching unintelligibly. An orderly jumped out of the room, tackling the shadow to the floor.

"Sorry doc," the orderly panted. "Patient is a little unstable." He touched a syringe to the man's arm, depressing the plunger. The sharp tang of Propofol filled the air as the patient sagged, anesthetic coursing through his bloodstream. He rolled his eyes up towards the doctor as if in supplication.

At first, the shock of white hair and thin frame suggested to the doctor that the patient was an elderly man. But as the patient passed out, the doctor realized that he wasn't a man at all. Instead, a young boy, not even in his teenage years, lay on the cold, linoleum floor. His short cropped hair had gone completely white, and even though he was sedated, his blue eyes stared as though he could see into another world.

"What happened?" the doctor asked quietly, as the nurse and orderly hoisted the boy onto the gurney. A man and woman sat in the corner, both weeping loudly - the boy's parents, he presumed. The nurse shook his head subtly, indicating the hallway was a more appropriate place to discuss the situation.

As they stepped out, the nurse took a breath. "You know the standard procedures for Transporter technology, right?"

"Of course. It's medical procedure - subjects are sedated heavily, to the point of an induced coma. Then the quantum junctions are activated... I don't know exactly how it works, but it has something to do with dimensional jumping. The subjects are revived upon arrival."

"Yeah. Initial animal tests showed erratic behavior after 'porting, including massive brain damage, that was only prevented by the injection of pentobarbital." The nurse took another breath. "The kid was faking it. He pretended to be in a coma after a single dose. It wasn't enough to actually knock him out."

The doctor stared blankly. Then: "Are you telling me... he was awake?"

"That's exactly what I mean. Massive brain damage - his cerebellum is literally lined with scar tissue - and his brain stem looks like it's been cauterized with a soldering iron. We have no idea what happened; we reported the incident to the TPS, but they haven't responded yet."

"I'm going to try and talk to him." The doctor reentered the room, the smell of alcohol immediately assaulting his senses. The steady whine of the medical equipment was only outmatched by the choking sobs of the parents, who now sat in a corner, the man holding his wife as she cried. The patient was restrained in a bed, foam dental dam plugged in his mouth to stop him from biting off his tongue, while leather straps pinned him to the metal framework.

"Pull the IV," the doctor ordered. The orderly quickly unclipped the drip from the boy's arm. Within minutes, the child began to stir, and suddenly screamed, the sound muffled by the block of foam in his mouth. Saliva drooled from the corner of his lips as he struggled against the straps, his movements rattling the bed in an eerie clattering. The boy's parents began to cry anew.

"Get them out of here," the doctor yelled, as the nurse escorted the two adults out of the room. "Give him a shot of sedative, twice the standard dose!"

After a minute, the boy's movements became less pronounced, until his head drooped so his chin touched his chest. The doctor waited, then slowly removed the block of foam from his mouth.

"Can you hear me?" the doctor whispered. The boy slowly looked up, a laborious effort. "I'm a doctor, at a hospital. Can you tell me what happened? What happened to you?"

There was no response. Again, the doctor repeated himself. "What happened? Can you tell me what happened?"

The child stared.

The orderly handed the doctor a thin sheaf of notes, with a muttered explanation that the TPS had just faxed it over. He skimmed the pages quickly. Teleportation was a new technology, just invented within the last decade. Like any new technology, it was poorly understood - all scientists had discovered was that a person was literally deconstructed into component particles, which were then whisked away at faster-than-light speeds to the destination, where they were reconstructed. For some reason, patients had to be sedated beforehand - when awake, all animal test subjects had gone insane.

The TPS report, while vague, suggested that travel at such great speed seemed to slow down time, stretching it out almost to an eternity. With dawning comprehension, the doctor nearly buckled as the full, staggering gravity of the situation hit him. This boy - this child - hadn't been sedated through the trip. He had been aware, as his atoms were torn apart, as they were sent screaming across the void at speeds faster than anything ever experienced, as time stretched out to an endless torment.

The doctor turned back to the patient, urgently, as if his understanding had incited in him a sense of panic. He repeated himself, softly at first, but then louder. "What happened? What happened to you?"

The boy's mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged. Then, he spoke, in a low, gutteral voice lined with saliva, harsh and croaking, as if he hadn't spoke for centuries.

"Awake," he said, very slowly.

"You were awake during the procedure? The Transporter procedure?" The boy didn't respond, and the doctor gripped his shoulders. "What did you see? You were awake, what happened?"

Slowly, the boy's head lolled to one side. His eyes focused, then unfocused. The orderly stepped in with the IV, but the doctor waved him off. He needed an answer. "Look here. Follow my finger. What did you see?"

Still no response. Drool dribbled out of the child's mouth as he tried to speak. The doctor leaned closer, until they were nearly touching noses. Then the boy's mouth moved. He looked up.

The boy's wide, blue eyes met the doctor's. "I... saw... ...Everything..."

Then he fell back with an explosive gasp, the ECG emitting a steady whine.