There is light around her, it's bright enough to cause her head to throb, even as she closes her eyes to shield them from the blinding luminescence. The lights sing a buzzing song of their own, coupled by a soft humming. The doctor, no one new but apparently it's procedure to say this, reassures her again that it's normal for the machine to make noise.

Course Eden knows that, it's not her first time getting a picture of her brain taken, and at the rate things are progressing it's certainly not gonna be the last.

She takes a deep breath, keeping her eyes closed and waiting for the doctor to get on with it, for the table to pull her back out from inside the machine. Then she would be escorted back to her room to watch another episode of Days of Our Lives, because unfairly enough her TV is missing it's remote.

"Ms. Moore. We're beginning the process. Again, the machine is going to make some noises but it's perfectly normal." She hears the doctor remind, again.

Despite the warning, she still jerks a little when the machine comes to life and a series of shuttering thrums echo around her.

And just as it starts, it cuts off.

Well, that was faster than usual.

She hesitates to open her eyes because the light of the machine is likely to make her headache worse but as she slowly squints them open she realizes that there's nothing to worry about.

It's completely dark.

And completely quiet.

Was there a power outage? No, the hospital has generators. Why is it so dark?

She blinks, and when she tries to feel out in front of her confusion fills her.

She can't move. Then to her shock she realizes, she can't feel anything. The feeling only lasts a split second before relief fills her person because yes, while she can't feel anything, she also can't feel any pain. This is the first time in years she's not feeling any kind of pain. Wow, she's completely forgotten what that's like.

Pleasant numbness aside, it is dark and she can't move.

Well… guess she's stuck then.

The doctor should be in the next room over, looking at her through the plexiglass. Is he still there?

"Um, Doc?" And she frowns when silence escapes her lips, not a sound comes from her mouth.

So, not only is it dark, she can't move, can't feel, and apparently she can't talk either.

'Wait...am I dead?' The thought dawns on her and she feels a terrible sense of giddiness and relief fill her person.

But it is stomped by sense that if she's dead, shouldn't there be something? Where is the stairway to heaven? The portal to hell? Does she not get to see the pearly gates and hear angels in miraculous chorus? Does she not get to be ferried across the river Styx? To have her heart weighed compared to a feather?

Eden is not a religious person, contrary to her name. But shouldn't something be happening?

Or maybe this is it. Maybe this is the afterlife. Stuck in a life of limbo and nothing. That's disappointing.

'My god this is incredibly dull. Come on, is it too much to ask for some kind of heavenly light? I'll settle for hellfire too, I'm not picky. Just please, let something happen.'

And as if she had flipped a switch, the darkness opens up to a network of stars, billions of lights sparkling into existence. They shimmer and shrink, expand and glow.

'Okay. Well that's definitely something happening. Thank you, whoever is doing requests.' She stares in awe at the soft radiating cluster before her and hums.

The longer she stares at one in particular, the more brilliant it seems to get, never becoming too bright to hurt her eyes, if it could. Pain isn't a thing if you're dead, right?

A few seconds, or what could have been hours or days really, she gets the growing urge to go closer to one. Would the light swallow her? Is it like a star? Would she burn up? She stares at a soft, semi large cluster of glow.

'Can I just-?'

And a path opens, lanes and strings of light that suddenly interconnects everything. Some branch to others, some go nowhere, or maybe the light is simply too far away to see.

How does she follow the light when she can't move?

She focuses on it, the glittery shimmer of the road and then realizes that the closest light it's connected to, the one she was staring at, is getting closer. Oh, she's already moving to it. Is she walking? She doesn't feel like she's walking. Maybe floating?

As she gets closer to the light she sighs, a strange sensation flows through her.

'What is it though?' she thinks. She really wants to touch it.

She wants to poke it. How does she do that without being able to move or feel her hands? She imagines just nudging the light a bit, would her hand go through it? Would it burn? Is it tangible?

And at the thought, the light unfurls into information. Words upon words and numbers upon numbers of data and code and things that she didn't understand. At first sight it is nonsensical gibberish but as soon as she focuses it becomes clear. Binary translates to words. Code translates to image and actions. There is a single bar in front of her, a key-space blinking for input.

There is no keyboard. How does she type? Can she open Google? Some search engine?

As she asks herself the bar types itself, and the screen opens to a website she is unfamiliar with.

And a website comes up; U.M.N.

Eden stares in confusion and blinks as a white rabbit mascot appears to float on screen.

Something about this looked familiar but she can't put her finger on it.

'What's going on?' She asks it, and gets no answer. Everything seems to be happening as she thinks it, so maybe all she needs to do is think the right question.

'Okay then, show me something. I don't care what, just show me something interesting.'

The screen changes and she is looking at the picture of a hallway. It's not a particularly empty hallway, there are people passing by each other. One or two with a cup of coffee, another holding a tablet. They are all wearing the same golden outfit, with different colored accents. Blue, Green, Red.

Again. This looks familiar.

What is she looking at this from?

In the upper right hand corner of the screen, a number draws up.

'Security Camera #42 Woglinde. Hallway #14.'

She blinks, and watches the people staring at one in particular and hums as the feed zooms in on her. Is it because she's watching? She looks to another and the camera turns its head, following her eyes.

Interesting. She wants to see something else.

At the thought, the feed changes to something else. What looks to be a command station. Her eyes widen at the number of computers and people in the pit and she feels herself grinning in growing excitement. Then she sees out of the cockpit window and blinks at the expanse of stars that are slightly different then her own. She looks past the screen to the surrounding glowing points in front of her and hums. Minus, the glowing branching strands that are now connecting everything there does seem to be a difference. Her surrounding galaxy seems to be more...varied.

She looks back to the screen.

'Well, clearly this is a space station of some kind right? But why aren't people floating around? Did we master artificial gravity at some point in 2020?' She asks herself. She looks at the name in the upper right corner again.

'Woglinde?'

And the feed continues, another screen pulls up to the side.

It goes by in a manner of seconds. Blueprints. Parts. Crew member log. Travel Log. Cargo log. A jumble of information that presents itself in tabs. She sees a video pull up of a space station on Earth, or what looks like one anyways, and no...it's not a space station she's on, it's a spaceship, taking off for the first time.

'Okay. Neat.' She looks back to the video feed and stares at the man at the main control console. He looks to be important.

'What's his name?'

A circle of blue light appears around the back of the man's head. He turns to talk to someone beside him and as soon his face becomes visible, information is drawn up in a tab. A photo of the man's full face, as thought used in a license of some kind; Kazuichi Moriyama. His age. His address. His blood type. He's an organ donor. His family. His wife, her name, her age, her photo. A daughter, her name, her age, her photo. No, no. Focus on him. His certificates. Where he went to school. Doctors visits, website history.

Ick. Too much.

She can't close her eyes, but the system she's on seems to understand and shuts off. That's simply way too much personal information on the man that she truly has no business knowing. From the records she has just seen of him she may as well be his best friend now.

She sighs and pulls up the screen again. She has nothing better to do but to keep looking around for something that may explain to her what is going on. She's fishing through everyone emails before a name shows up that causes her to stop and stare in disbelief.

A name, that she quickly singles out. Information pulls up in an instant.

Shion Uzuki.

No way.

She stares at the name and a photo pulls up. A familiar face, a familiar character that can't be real. She searches for her on the ship, a camera feed pulls of a bedroom. Her person of interest sleeps on the bed from where she can see. Eden focuses, zooms in. Yeah, it's her.

No wonder some of this seems familiar.

She's died and been transported into the world of a video game.