Old Conductor, Possessed Anew
Chapter 1
Self-awareness came suddenly and unexpectedly.
It felt both like an instant between me sitting down to watch a movie to now, and an eternity of a lack of awareness. Furthermore, there was none of the 'in-between' stages of consciousness. No grogginess or taking a few minutes to mentally get the mind started. Instead, it came instantly.
Shaking off a brief moment of disorientation, I 'look' around in confusion for a moment as I take in my surroundings- or rather lack of them. All around me was a pure black void, and while I thought I caught a glimpse of something green a couple times, I didn't spot anything substantial.
It was now that I noticed my lack of a body.
That seemed to break the dam of shock- making way for fear and panic. For what felt like several minutes but could have been longer or shorter, I simply flailed about despite my lack of a body. Several thoughts raced through my head; was I dreaming? No, no this felt different from a dream despite the odd situation, maybe a lucid one- no, no control over dream reality and whatnot. Was I dead then? I don't remember anything happening, but don't you not remember the last few minutes between consciousness and lack of it? Then again that applied due to the Brain, and if I was bodiless due to death…
These thoughts and more raced through my head, my panic slowly settling down as lines of thought ended or were dismissed. Soon I was calm enough to actually think things through.
'So I'm either dead and this is limbo or some stage of the afterlife, or this is like a story. I'm hoping that if it's the former then at least this isn't some reincarnation thing of my 'individuality eroding away' in this void until it's ready to go to a new body. That's a bit… horrifying.'
I took a few more minutes after that to check over myself and try some stuff- including trying again to make stuff appear or talk to some deity or something to see if they appear. Finally, my introspection and looking noted something off. Namely about myself.
My mind felt, for lack of a better term, lighter. I assumed for a moment that it was just due to having no body, no 'burden of the flesh' or whatnot, but then I noticed something else. My thoughts were, well, odd. For one I could do several at once. Absentmindedly I start counting the seconds that go by, calculating increasingly difficult math questions, and thinking about the situation I was in a bit more, all the while mentally observing myself.
Both amazed and getting a slight migraine from the task, I end those thought processes besides the one counting, it'll help keep the time and my sanity at least, as I ponder further about that. All of that had… only taken a few seconds, despite my thinking speed seeming to be normal when not observing the lines of thought themselves- and the fact that observing all of that seemed to bring on the headache and not the actual multitasking was interesting, as well as the fact that I somehow knew that the counting wasn't sped up by my thoughts but was instead normal 'seconds'. Was this what being bodiless did for the mind of the soul?
Looking things over, I barely notice something else. I logically had no idea what it was, simply like a feeling or instinct, yet that told me that it was like a switch.
Happy as I was at a chance to escape this place, I only realize that perhaps caution would've been better just as I flick the mental switch, causing the Dark Void to disappear in blinding data.