Nth Life - Chapter 4

Zeke gave a start as he found himself locked in darkness without any senses available to him. His very first thought was that he had died. His next was almost as disturbing, he remembered every moment of his experience a moment before. He could now remember living two full lives and found himself getting confused. He knew, without question, that his life as Ezekiel Rose was his real life. The life he'd just experienced seemed to filter into his mind more as a vivid lucid dream.

Looking through the memories of his 'second life,' he found lots of information he could use... Provided he wasn't dead and in some form of afterlife. If he returned to his reality he knew he could use the skills in his memory to make himself stronger and bulk up his body a lot. He also knew how to train with swords, knives, and spears now as well as good nutrition and physical training. He never liked how skinny he was and, like most teenage males, wanted a nice muscular body to attract women and boost his ego a bit.

As he was pondering over what was happening and wondering if he would ever return to his normal life, his eyes suddenly opened. Zeke found himself wanting to gasp in shock but was once more simply 'there' as a passenger for whatever was happening. The sight filtering in through his new eyes was completely alien and he wasn't entirely sure how to process what he was seeing.

From the new feelings emerging from his new body, he quickly realized a couple of things. First, he had just woken up and was looking at a ceiling... if what he was looking at could be called a ceiling. Second, he was seeing colors he didn't even know the names for and was sure he'd never seen or even heard of in his life. He had no words to describe them in his vocabulary.

The problem he had with the ceiling was that there didn't appear to be a ceiling at all. Now, that wouldn't normally bother him if he was looking out into a familiar sky, but he wasn't. He was looking out into the black depths of space! Now, seeing the blackness of night with stars speckling the sky was completely different from what he was currently seeing. He knew this because he could see a large planet hanging out near the bottom of his vision. It was terrifying because he was one hundred percent sure he was in space and was further certain that there was no glass of any kind between himself and the vacuum. That terrified him!

Once more he found himself the passenger in this new body and couldn't actually do anything to affect the world or actions he was forced to witness. He felt his new body move as he sat up and examined the room around him. It looked nothing like any bedroom he'd ever seen before. The different shapes and blatantly obvious differences made everything feel so much more alien than he expected. Nothing he could see was square, it was all curves and sweeping lines. Then there were all those unknown colors covering everything that just added to the weirdness around him just making it even more alien to him.

He felt himself stand up and move through the room toward what he expected to be a bathroom. He didn't have much time to ponder the awkwardness of going to the bathroom while in someone else's body before he was distracted by something new. The 'door' he approached opened automatically for him. Automatic doors were nothing new at all. In fact, almost all the doors he used on a daily basis were automatic. What was new was the WAY the door opened. Instead of just swinging or sliding open like he would be used to, the door seemed to... melt open.

When he approached it, the door seemed to turn into a liquid and quickly flow down into the floor until it disappeared completely. Even more disturbing to him was that as soon as he entered, he glanced back and watched as the door flowed back up and reformed as it had been originally. As he watched, information on what he was witnessing came to him just as fighting techniques had previously. The knowledge scared and intrigued him. It was nano-technology! Everything around him was made of innumerable tiny robots. EVERYTHING!

Even with all their technology and new discoveries due to awakened individuals with mental enhancing abilities, nano-technology hadn't progressed much at all in the last century. To see an entire bedroom and bathroom made entirely of microscopic machines was truly awe-inspiring and horrifying. It frightened him as much as the alien monsters he had been fighting previously. The roman or greek-ish looks of the men he'd fought with was at least familiar to him. Even the alien dogs and giants could be something like the monsters that lived through the doorways he was familiar with and could be explained. Technology that couldn't possibly exist in his own world made no sense to him at all! Where the fuck was he and why was he in some kind of spaceship in a room made entirely of nano-machines?!

All his questions came to a grinding halt the moment he turned to face the mirror in the bathroom. Well, mirror was a misnomer. It wasn't a glass mirror like he was used to seeing, it was a digital display projected by the nano-machines that showed his current appearance. That wasn't what made his mind grind to a halt though, it was his appearance in the mirror device.

Looking back at him was NOT a human. Not by any stretch of the imagination was what he saw human. First and foremost, humans were not blue! His skin was very clearly blue with small white spots here and there similar to freckles. The next big shock was the mouth... or more specifically the complete lack of a mouth. Where he would expect a mouth to be there was just smooth skin and a strong square jaw. Just above that, he could see that his nose wasn't there either, instead, he just had two small flat slits that allowed him to breathe. 

Next came his eyes. They were... strange. At first glance, they appeared insect-like with multiple hexagonal facets. Yet as his eyes roved over the part of his body he could see, there was a light behind his eyes that was circular in shape and seemed to move to where he was focusing. It was strange, but if he remembered his biology it might explain why he could see colors he didn't know the names of. For all he knew, he was seeing the world in a whole new spectrum.

Then there was the top of his head. He didn't have hair at all. Instead, it appeared that the top of his head was covered in strips of keratin that ended in triangular tips. Each strip was about an inch wide and around six inches long. It didn't take a genius to understand that he was very clearly in an actual honest to God extraterrestrial humanoid's body. It shocked him so much that he only had time to process the image of his face and head before the body turned from the digital mirror and entered a small cubicle.

His first thought was that it was a shower of some kind but there was no showerhead or knobs to turn for water. Once fully in the cubicle, he reached up to push an indent in the wall with a finger. That brought another shock to him. His hands! Instead of the usual four fingers and a thumb, he saw only three fingers and a thumb. Additionally, each digit had an extra knuckle making his fingers longer and far more flexible than he would have thought possible.

After pushing the indent in the wall, all four walls had various spots of light come on. There was an odd buzzing sound followed by a weird feeling over his skin. It almost felt like he was being vibrated lightly. A moment later he understood it was a sonic cleanser. The lights were spots where soundwaves were being emitted and bombarding his skin to remove any detritus from his body. It only lasted a minute before the lights faded and he stepped back out. He was so used to a real hot water shower that he didn't really feel all that clean.

The next few minutes were ones he wished he could wipe from his mind. He found out more about the anatomy of the being he was inhabiting than he was comfortable with. Thankfully the alien body was male... maybe... Honestly, it was hard to tell with the differences in anatomy from what he was used to from health classes.

With the more embarrassing parts of the morning ablutions over with, he left the bathroom and found himself standing on a small circular platform. From the platform, billions of nano-machines rose up and coated his body. Amazingly, they looked and felt like a supple and soft cloth. He knew from his still filling memories of the creature he was within that not only was he wearing the current height of fashion but it was also extremely durable armor with thousands of possible functions built into it.

Shockingly, the clothing he was wearing could transform into just about anything with a command. Weapons, armor, environmental protections, various looks, colors, and so much more. Not to mention it felt like it weighed nothing and could augment his physical strength by orders of magnitude. It could even form clear head protection if he accidentally ended up in space. Which just proved even further to him that he was in space!

He couldn't help thinking that with armor like this, he could quite easily become a top class Magus and live quite a luxurious life. Hell! It could even let him survive and unassisted re-entry into a planet's atmosphere. Even the landing would only leave him with slight bruising! That was insane.

Zeke watched in mute shock as he walked out of his bedroom and into a hallway to make his way to a small room, a transport room. All of the doors he came across melted as he approached and reformed after he passed through. So far, everything he'd seen was made entirely of nano-machines.

As for the transport room, it was about the size of a regular elevator. Once he was inside, the nano-machines on one wall reformed and displayed a map. It took a few seconds but once he found where he wanted to go, he touched it. A flash of bright blue light surrounded him for a moment. Once it faded he stepped forward and the doorway melted once more. Beyond it was a somewhat open area. Zeke was shocked when the knowledge of the transport room percolated into his mind. It was a molecular transporter. In other words, it was a goddamn teleporter!

If Zeke could talk, he'd be shouting at the top of his lungs and begging to know how anything he was seeing worked. Just one scrap of the technology he'd seen so far would make him one of, if not THE, richest people in his world. Unfortunately, spending more time in the body he was inhabiting wasn't giving him details on how the technology he could see worked. Just that it was all a part of everyday life and available to all members of society. Maybe he would get lucky and come across something he could use to his advantage, he really liked the idea of being filthy rich. A combination of filthy rich and buff would be the best!

He didn't get much time to his dreams... or were they delusions? It didn't matter. He found himself inside of a small complex with several doors and a kiosk standing prominently in the middle. He approached the kiosk and waved his hand over it. After he did, he got his first look at the alien language. It was an odd combination of straight lines, curves, dots, and dashes all mashed together in seemingly random order. Oddly, he perfectly understood what the display meant. The closest translation he could come up with was, "Welcome Doctor Frtzzrty. Your first appointment is due to arrive at Morach."

It was strange to him. Some words translated pretty easily but others were more like an approximation. Doctor could have translated as healer, fixer, physician, or medic. As for the name, it didn't really come off as a name like his, Zeke, but was more like a sound with a personal meaning behind it that identified him. Lastly, Morach was a specific time but didn't translate into a number at all. From what he could gather, they didn't use numbers to tell time. It was decidedly odd. Still, it was nifty that he was apparently in a doctor of some sort.

After he finished signing in for work and noting his first appointment, he moved to one of the doors that led into a short hallway. A brisk walk later and he was sitting at his desk and looking over the file for his first appointment. Zeke could translate what it said but the alien jargon meant nothing to him. He'd watched plenty of vids featuring doctors but none of the alien wording even remotely matched what he was even vaguely familiar with. Still, he was kind of looking forward to seeing what alien medicine would be like. The first appointment couldn't come soon enough.