"Wha?" Ray Vallia's voice echoed through an empty, white void. With heavy eyes, he turned his head to look around. What he saw as he took a gander at his surroundings was not something he could say was normal. Not even close.
From what he could tell, he was floating through a void that sparkled as if it was filled with nothing but invisible clouds of glitter. Outside of that though, there truly was nothing. It was empty.
"Where am I?" He silently thought.
He felt as his mind attempted to order his limbs to move. However, it didn't take him long to realize that he couldn't. Or rather, he couldn't in the way he wanted. He felt as if he was in a strange dream. There was a delay to his actions and while still somewhat fluid, he felt as if he was trying to move through something thicker than air.
Was he dreaming? No. His mind and thought process was too clear to be a dream. He was certain that whatever this was had to be real.
But then, what was this? Could he be dead? Was this some sort of afterlife? He couldn't tell.
He attempted to think back to what he was doing prior to awakening. An action that under normal circumstances would have been simple. However, this was not a normal situation. It took some effort on Ray's part before he fully remembered.
Before waking up here, he was on a military training ground practicing his aim. A necessary action for a would-be soldier like him. But, then…
Bang! The sound of a fully loaded gun mistakenly firing echoed through Ray's mind. This followed by the distinct memory of a searing pain on the left side of his temple. He reeled forward at this memory as he moved into a fetal position.
That memory. Was he actually dead? Logically that was the only conclusion left. Then…this was the afterlife. Was this some sort of purgatory?
"DREAM." What sounded like his own voice echoed through his mind. "What was that?"
As he tried to think about his situation a bit more, he started to feel as his thinking began to slip. It was slow at first, then all at once. It was just in time to miss what was coming next as a giant, glowing, blue figure appeared above him.
"Dreamer Ray Vallia, your narrative shall begin now." The being declared before its glow began to overtake Ray's body, the void and itself.
"Ack!" The sound of Ray's pained grunt echoed throughout an empty room as he jumped up from bed. With little focus as to what was going on around him, this short lived panic was soon interrupted as his body began to shake.
From what? Fear? He couldn't tell for some reason. It didn't feel like he was afraid, but at the same time it also did. The strange feeling confused him. It wasn't something that he ever felt before.
"Ah!" Ray reeled forward a bit, holding his palm in front of his forehead. A sharp pain had hit him. Fortunately, it went away quickly after.
Ray sighed. Although he could immediately tell even that took some effort. He silently turned to look at his right arm resting at his side.
It would be best to test his physical condition. He held his hand out and silently watched as he closed it over and over. Outside the shaking, it seemed everything was normal. Good. Although…
He stopped to look at his hand more closely. No doubt. Whatever the experience he had was, it could not have been a strange dream.
Dreams wouldn't match the sensation of moving your actual body as accurately as this. Even the most vivid would lack the tactile sensation he felt as his shaking hand opened and closed.
He muttered, "No doubt." He could also feel these sensations perfectly in the strange void.
He sighed once again as he let himself relax, hoping it would stop some of the shaking. Taking a few deep breaths to calm down more, within the next minute his shaking had almost entirely gone away. "This is probably as far as it'll go."
The rest of his shaking would have to go away naturally. "Hnghk!" Another, this time searing, pain rushed over his head. This time accompanied by a white flash of light. He leaned down and held his head with his hand again. Like before, it went away after a few seconds of relatively mild agony.
He grunted. "That was awful."
He stopped as his eyes caught something. Something red. "Red…hair?"
He reached for the red filaments he could see hanging down from above. Was this his hair?
His hair was supposed to be black before. Not to mention he had just cut it a few days before. It would have taken months for his hair to grow to the length he was seeing now. Even assuming he had been in some sort of coma, why on earth would anyone dye his hair? Something was wrong.
Ray carefully looked around the room.
His bed seemed to be up against the back left corner of the room with a small office table to his right. Lying on top of the table he saw what he assumed to be some sort of lamp given the light it was emitting. Further to his right, he looked at a large open window allowing him to look at the city off in the distance. It seemed normal even though he noticed that he didn't recognize where exactly he was off of the buildings he could see. Looking in front of himself, he locked his eyes on the wooden door with a single window to the outside. It was too small to make out anything detailed but he could tell the door opened to a white hallway.
Littered around the room he saw various medical instruments of unknown purpose. All of them appeared strange to him with glowing blue lines running across the surface of all of them. Further scrutiny of the lines revealed they were most likely tubes moving around a shimmering blue liquid within. A power source perhaps? Maybe something to do with cooling? No. He figured it wasn't worth thinking about that at this point.
Looking further along the wall to his right, he saw a table connected to the wall. On top of it he noticed medical supplies from gloves to needles housed within sterile containers. He looked at the labels but noticed something weird. The writing on them wasn't something he recognized.
"That's…weird." He silently said.
Whatever language he was looking at definitely wasn't one he had encountered. For frankly stupid reasons he didn't like to speak about, Ray was fluent in 7 languages. The language he was looking at looked like none, although he doubted many could have been able to tell. The language appeared to be one based around some sort of alphabet, he could tell just based on repeating symbols, but they weren't anything like the roman alphabet in structure.
That confirmed one thing. Wherever he was, it didn't use the alphabet which was…concerning. It crossed off a lot of the Earth if not Earth altogether if that void experience was anything to go by.
He looked at the table and noticed a computer with an expected foreign keyboard he had never seen before. At least he confirmed humanity's presence. Alien lifeforms coincidentally matching human biology to the point of using identical looking technology was a possibility so astronomically close to zero that he didn't even consider it.
Ray silently caught his breath again before lifting the white sheets covering his legs off of himself. His eyes noticed one last thing. A mirror on the left wall. He needed to confirm something to himself before he made any big decisions. Simply put, what did he actually look like now?
There was no way to confirm if the only thing that changed was his hair color without looking at himself. That was something he was certain of. So, as the sound of his bed creaking echoed through the room, Ray prepared himself to stand up.
As his feet touched the ground, he noted how he had no issues standing up. That ruled out the possibility that he was in a coma. No atrophy. He shuddered at something else though.
"No socks, eh?" He chuckled. He pushed himself off the bed and stood up. "That already confirms something." He was taller than before. By a noticeable amount as well. A height of 5'11" (180 cm) wasn't exactly short for his previous height but he could tell he was likely well past the 6-foot mark now. He looked around, then down. Stopping to think, he looked back up. I'm 6'3" (190 cm) now.
The sound of his feet moving across the tile floor sped up ever so slightly as his anticipation for checking his appearance grew a bit. He had already confirmed he was taller and had red hair. He needed to make sure nothing else was off.
He looked down to get a better look at his clothing. He was wearing light blue robes with white underclothing made up of a white shirt and white pants. On his left side he also saw what appeared to be a logo of some kind. Likely the logo of whatever hospital he had found himself in. He moved on from that and looked up at himself.
What he saw both shocked him and let him down. Right off the bat, it appeared that his overall appearance remained the same with the same face and body type as before. However, as expected, it was clear he had wider shoulders and was physically taller. Outside of that distinct change though, he kept most of his original overall body shape from what he could tell. As he finished looking at himself, he coughed awkwardly before moving on with a slight blush. This definitely felt weird to do.
Choosing to move on to his face rather than general body shape, Ray took a gander at the small details one wouldn't notice very quickly. As a man of Eastern European descent, he looked as such with light skin, noticeable cheekbones and a smaller but more defined forehead. Reaching for his hair, he combed through it with his hand as he leaned forwards into the mirror. He had thick and abundant hair that had unfortunately tied itself into knots now with the increased length.
That would be annoying to deal with.
He looked at his eyes. Like his hair they were also changed from blue to red. However, that wasn't the only change. As he looked at his eyes he noticed that they almost seemed to sparkle and shine with brilliant swirls and star-like sparks. They were mesmerizing. What was going on?
He moved away to avoid getting lost in his own eyes. Instead he chose to focus on something much more boring. His facial hair. It seemed that his once clean shaven face had grown out a bit with the thin beginnings of a beard having already appeared. The color of his facial hair was interesting to look at. It seemed that it was darker than the hair on his scalp. It was a very dark crimson compared to the red the rest of his hair showed. Interesting.
Feeling out his beard, he stopped once again as he noticed something else. His skin was now entirely clear and smooth. It was like he had gotten some sort of cosmetic surgery while he was asleep. There wasn't a single blemish in sight. No wrinkles, scars, pimples. Even the oil on his skin was at the perfect level. Not too much, not too little.
He felt as his face went from confused to a small smirk. "Hehe." It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he was very handsome now. "Not bad."
What he was looking at was truly unreal. It was as if God himself took a look at his old appearance and used it as a base to construct a sculpture. The best part of it was that it wasn't even like he changed very much. Some of it was already natural. All that really happened was the downsides were removed.
With renewed self-confidence in hand, he took a few steps back to get one final look at himself. Outside of the long hair, he couldn't say he was complaining. And even then, he only didn't like the hair because it was a bit inconvenient. Aesthetically, his hair flowed down his body like waves.
He muttered, "A haircut should fix it." Nodding to himself, he was immediately cut off as pain returned to his head. "Ack!" This time worse than before, he couldn't help but reach out and hold his forehead. There he silently waited out the pain, feeling as it dulled over the course of a few seconds.
Turning away from the mirror, he took another look at the room. Usually modern hospitals have a way to contact a doctor. "Maybe a button or something?" He walked over to his bed. It would be stupid to put the contact method far away from the bed. It would be annoying at best and impossible to use at worst if that was the case.
"Bingo." Next to his bed sat a remote with a few buttons on it. He of course couldn't actually read the labels but the symbols were self-explanatory. Pressing the button with a doctor and phone symbol, he walked over to the window.
Earlier he said that the buildings outside seemed normal but now, on second glance, there was something off about them. First of all, like the medical instruments, they had giant glowing tubes running along them. They were hidden by being placed on the sides of the buildings for the most part but they were there. Furthermore, the architecture was a bit off. The general shape was the same but the style of the buildings was definitely different. He didn't recognize that style from any country on Earth.
But of course, that wasn't what actually confirmed his suspicions. The people he could see down below were plenty enough for that. When he previously said that he likely wasn't on Earth, he was half sure. Not so now. As he looked at a brown-haired woman with animal ears belonging to some kind of dog walking into what he could tell was some kind of convenience store, he could only think about how right he was…again. He chuckled to himself.
This definitely wasn't Earth. The clicking of the door behind him caught his attention as he muttered. "Here goes." He locked eyes with the short, green haired doctor now standing before him. Giving her the kindest smile he could, he said, "Hello, there. My name is Ray Vallia."