Harold awoke with a sharp gasp, his chest heaving as though he had surfaced from deep water.
For a long moment, he lay still, his ears straining for the frantic hospital noises he expected—shouts, alarms, hurried footsteps.
But none came.
The silence here was vast, oppressive in its stillness.
Slowly, he pushed himself upright.
His hands trembled as they pressed against something solid—not the polished linoleum of St. Mary's, but rough stone, cool beneath his palms.
He blinked hard, trying to clear his vision, and the world sharpened into focus.
He was lying on a bed, if it could be called that: a slab of stone no higher than his waist, its surface softened only by a thin layer of woven material.
To his right stood a crude stool, uneven legs wobbling slightly when he nudged it.
Beside it, a floating desk jutting out from the wall.
The slab of dark stone the only form of furniture in the room besides the stool and bed.
His breath quickened.
This was no hospital.
This was not even Earth, unless they had taken him from St. Mary's and due to lack of proper health insurance dropped him off in some slumlord chopshop.
Harold swung his legs over the side of the bed, every movement stiff and deliberate, half-expecting pain from his wounds.
But his forearm was unmarked—no gash, no blood, only smooth, unbroken skin where the scalpel had cut deep.
He stared at it, his stomach twisting.
"This… isn't real," he muttered, his voice hoarse.
As he stared down at his pristine flesh... no more than pristine flesh the sagging skin of his arms from decades of life lived was gone in place, his skin was taut, and free of any blemishes at all.
The room itself offered no comfort.
Its walls were made of the same stone, fitted together without mortar, the seams impossibly perfect, if any existed in the first place.
The air smelled faintly of damp earth, tinged with something acrid he couldn't identify.
The ceiling arched higher than it first appeared, the stone curving overhead like the inside of a shell.
He needed air.
He needed light.
Rising unsteadily, Harold crossed the room toward the far wall where a narrow slit suggested a window.
His bare feet scuffed against the stone floor, the sound strangely loud in the silence.
When he reached the opening, he gripped the sides and leaned forward.
What he saw stopped his breath.
Outside stretched a landscape unlike anything he had ever imagined.
Towering in the distance were colossal structures—like mushrooms, but impossibly vast, their caps wide enough to blot out parts of the sky.
Their stalks reached high, some vanishing into mist, their surfaces glowing faintly with veins of bioluminescence.
Closer to the window, smaller fungal growths dotted the uneven terrain, their caps shimmering with pale green light.
The ground itself seemed alive, pulsing faintly with hidden luminescence that spread in rivers beneath the soil.
And above it all, dominating the horizon, was a moon.
Enormous, impossibly close, its pale surface pocked with shadows.
It hung so low and so vast that it seemed to press down upon the world, bathing the fungal expanse in silver light.
Harold gripped the stone tighter, his knuckles whitening.
"This… this isn't Earth," he whispered, though the words felt absurd the moment they left his mouth.
He pulled back from the window, his heart pounding.
His mind raced through possibilities, each more implausible than the last.
A dream?
Hallucination from blood loss?
Or was this what the message had meant—transferring to the required world for optimum growth?
The phrase replayed in his mind, chilling in its precision.
He was no longer on Earth.
That much was undeniable.
But why here?
Why him?
He sat heavily on the stool, running a hand through his hair.
For fifty-two years, his life had been a straight, narrow line—work, sleep, repeat.
A janitor in a hospital, nothing more.
Now, in death—or whatever this was—that line had snapped.
He had been thrust into something entirely alien, as if the universe had finally noticed him only after he had ceased to exist on his own world.
The silence pressed in again, heavy and watchful.
He found himself speaking aloud, as if to anchor himself.
"I just wanted to be a doctor," he said softly.
His voice cracked.
"That's all. Not this."
But even as he said it, part of him stirred with something he hadn't felt in years.
Curiosity.
Wonder.
A spark of life, fragile but insistent, flickered in his chest.
If this was real, if this was a second chance—then perhaps, just perhaps, there was something waiting for him here.
He stood again, unable to remain still.
He circled the room, touching the stone walls, testing the floating desk with hesitant fingers.
It was solid beneath his touch, cold to the touch but sturdy enough to support his entire body weight if he chose to site upon it.
No seams, or signs of it being mounted, almost as if the entire room was carved from the stone to appear as it did now.
He rapped his knuckles against it, the sound dull and resonant.
Nothing responded.
At length, he returned to the bed and sat heavily, his body still trembling.
He closed his eyes, trying to steady his breathing.
And then—
Ding.
The sound was unmistakable: the same clear chime he had heard as the life drained from him on the hospital floor.
His eyes snapped open, heart racing.
This time, the words did not hover faintly in the dark. They blazed across the air above the floating desk, brilliant white against the dim stone chamber.
"Initialization complete. Host system activating."
Harold stared, his mouth dry, every fiber of his being screaming with disbelief and anticipation.
The silence shattered.
His new life—whatever it was—had just begun.
"Implementation in progress... 10%...20%... ... ... 90%... 100% Implementation complete."
"Congratulations, host you've been granted to Unlearned Medical System"
A system?
Wait! A Medical system, does that mean its capable of helping me fufill my wish to become a doctor?