I nodded, with what was probably an anxious smile. They closed the hatch. And I was alone. In the void. Or, technically, the void simulation, but the two are not dissimilar. It was darkness. Wide-eyed, eyeball rolling blackness. My hand in front of my face, on my face, in my face, and I sensed nothing. Did I have a hand, or a face?
I'd been taught a few simple techniques, which the boffins theorized would help.
Cogito ergo sum. I thought.
It helped a little? I was supposed to note what did and did not ease the... strain. I remembered that my friends were right outside, feet away. It was patently untrue. I could see deep, all around me, a sort of spherical panorama of emptiness. And trust me, there were no friends. And yet, moments before... How long has it been? I'd been in their company. I'd seen their faces.
Memories might help, vivid ones. He cast his mind back, in the void it seemed like almost a physical casting.
That restaurant. That stupid restaurant.
It was a spur of the moment sort of thing, just going out to eat with his coworkers after a hard day of training. But he'd put the wrong address into his GPS, another restaurant with the same name, and gone to the wrong place, too far away.
And that's where I am now. The wrong place, far too far away.
The fourteen minutes stretched on, irrelevant.
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