Sometimes things happen beyond your control. Taking a left instead of a right can lead you to riches or a hospital stay. Taking a right might not lead to anything at all, except other choices leading to outcomes beyond your control. In the end control never matters. You still made your choices. You chose one thing over another and it led to this point in your life. Your hurt someone. You got hurt. You bear the marks that will always remind you that choices have consequences. Choices, like trusting someone you shouldn't. Making yourself vulnerable in order to let in something you hope will be good but might a well be a knife aimed at your heart.
You're not in control, but take some fucking responsibility for your life, yeah?
Penumbra, part One: Awakening
A few months ago.There's a trick to waking up after having been knocked unconscious, whatever the means they used. Gas, blunt trauma, drugs or whatever. It takes a lot of practice but it can be invaluable. Well, if you live a life where such things might happen to you. I realize this may not apply to a lot of people, but not a lot of people carry labels of terrorist, traitor, freedom fighter, slaver, capsuleer, slave, hunter and prey all at once. Fewer still have most of them tattoo'd on their face for anyone in the know to read clear as a book. The trick is deceptively simple.
Stay conscious even when unconscious.
I lost you there, didn't I? Listen, there is so much most people don't know about the human mind, not to mention the minds of capsuleers. By necessity, a capsuleer learns more than most due to the neurology involved in our craft. By choice, I've learned even more. I'll try to make this simple. If you meditate sufficiently, sooner or later you'll attain a state of mind called mindfulness by some, second thoughts by others. It's simply a state of mind where you are consciously aware of your thoughts, emotions, senses and more. Imagine your mind as a planet where the atmosphere is your day to day mind. Your thoughts, sensations and emotions flowing free and you're not really aware of them. Behind that atmosphere is the crust of the planet, where your second thoughts reside. Awaken that and you become mindful of yourself. You feel the same things, you sense the same things and you think the same things but you are for once consciously aware of it all. You can examine every thought and every reaction to stimuli can be reviewed and halted if necessary. You can act upon things instead of reacting to them.
And when you've reached this beginner's level of meditative states, keep going for a while until you go a few more levels deep and you'll start to become ready for being consciously unconscious. If you're a dirtsider, we'll talk again somewhere near the end of your lifespan. If you're a capsuleer, it might just take a few months.
While it sounds weird, I can assure you that it really is. Somewhere in the depths of your mind you sit and watch the darkness. The various autonomous functions of your body being tended to by the brainstem and a few other bits and pieces of your skullmeats, alongside truly alien technology occasionally overriding or complicating matters. Suddenly jumbled senses start firing up. Sounds appear as imagery, scents sound like marching bands and you don't even want to know what weird shit from your subconscious is being mixed with your visual senses as your eyes remain closed. This is where the trick comes in. As consciousness is returning, you need to reign it in. It'll start flailing and jerking, trying to regain control over your breath, your limbs and your senses. The usual thundering headache doesn't help as the survival instinct kicks in, wanting to flood you with adrenaline, raising your heart rate and trying to get you back on your feet and dangerous as soon as possible.
You don't want any of these things. Not yet. If you're still alive, chances are you won't get killed in the next minute or two anyway. Reign in all those little things that happen as you move from unconscious to conscious and let your vitals remain exactly the same. It's not easy, but it's worth it, because now your senses are starting to work right again.
Without any external hint to whoever or whatever took you out, you can take stock of yourself. You can determine you're not wounded, does not appear to be bound and you're seated in a slightly declined metal chair. The taste in your mouth and the way your first and second thoughts squirm slightly confirms the output from your implants. One day, four hours and thirty-nine minutes since you were gassed in a corridor and then you were sedated, likely for transport. Your ears, nose and skin confirms you're no longer on a station as the scents of your surroundings coupled with the complete lack of electronic hums and noises join together with that slight itch on your skin that says the atmosphere isn't as tightly controlled as in space. Not that the fairly significant change in gravity wasn't a tip-off as well. You can also hear and smell at least two other people in the room, their breaths echoing the way they tend to do in completely open and uncluttered concrete buildings. Probably underground, by the slight scent of moisture and mildew.
Minmatar. Sebiestor to be exact. The unmistakable scents of a diet belonging to those living in the traditional ways of the north. That is consistent with your previous experience with the gravity down here. Not to mention the pervasive scents of your adoptive homeland as a door opens and closes as a third person, a woman you know by her footsteps, enters the room and speaks.
"She should wake up in a few minutes. Keep your stunners ready, she might not be too friendly when she does."
Stunners. That explains that tickle in one of your implants. A familiar old model they haven't properly shielded yet, if you needed any more confirmation of where you were, who these people were and how they could have gotten past your security measures. See what you can learn about your surroundings before your captors know you're awake if you know this little trick? Very useful, for a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population out there and since they think you're still out of it, you could probably take them by surprise. Bundle up all those little things your brain wanted to do before you even woke up and unleash them all at once in a torrent of adrenaline, augmented fury and violence. For the fun of it, you can play through that scenario in your head. How you slip sideways to break the arm of one captor, keeping him between you and the other stunner as you break the ancient bulb you can feel above your head. Hello darkness my old friend.
Not that it'd achieve anything. The one who just entered the room already knows what you're capable of, so there'd be no lesson in it. Instead you simply raise your head and remove the hood in one deliberate motion to the accompanying gasps of the less prepared hooded guards. This is when you go for style points and simply ignore both of them and let your gaze bore into the shadows of the hood of the woman in front of you.
"You could have just called, Volur."
A hint of a smile is visible to you as she seems to approve.
"Would you really have come if I did? Welcome home, Penumbra. It's been a while."
Author
Topic: Penumbra, part One: Awakening (Read 736 times)