Between a Stone and a Hard Place

Life was strange. If you did not have any point of reference, then time started to dissolve. How long had he been lying in this hospital room?

He had been hospitalized when he was 22. A long time ago, his mother cried louder than usual during her visit and said that she had brought him a cake. This must have been his 23rd birthday. He suspected that she did not have the strength to wish him a good birthday. But he understood. It was hard for her to have the strength for anything these days.

He wondered if he had become emotionless or if it was the lack of senses that left him unfazed. He would rarely get sad anymore. He was rarely feeling anything. He felt like he was being deleted. Slowly, one part of himself at a time.

Time had been running faster and faster these days. He remembered a line he had read in a book once about the Holocaust. It was an autobiographical work by a concentration camp inmate called Viktor Frankl. He had written something like "a day lasted longer than a week". Jack silently agreed with that statement. Days felt long, but weeks, months, and even years felt short.

He remembered another maybe-birthday when his mother invited the nurses to eat cake with her in his hospital room. Maybe she was trying to change things up a bit. He did remember them singing for him, but he did not remember hearing the word birthday at any point. Maybe it was just too awkward for any of them to be cheerful.

He was probably 24 and about to be 25 soon, he thought to himself. When was the last time he had seen his father? Or rather, when his father had seen him? A trip to Mars and back would already take well over a year, and if he was stationed for a long time, then who knew when he would return, Jack thought to himself.

He had noticed his senses fading more and more recently. His hearing had become worse. While he could usually hear any voices that were originating anywhere inside the room and even outside if they were close to the door, he could now only hear those that were close to him and were directly facing him.

He was concerned. Not for himself but for his parents. He would like to tell them once he was completely gone so that they could pull the plug. When he could still hear them, he felt like he was still partially with them. But once all his senses were gone, there was no point anymore, he thought.

He would rather be gone instead of being a burden. He had given up on hope a long time ago. No money in the world could help him. No treatment in the world showed even a sign of helping.

As he was deep in thought, which he was every minute of every day, he felt the nurses lifting him up and turning him around. A ritual that they had repeated every single day. Today, it was Jim who did the task. He always noticed Jim since he was breathing heavily when he lifted him up. Good job, Jim, he thought.

Then he heard a voice entering the room. It started quietly and became louder and louder as it got closer. At first, he was not sure who it was, but after a few moments, he recognized it. It was his father.

"Hey buddy," his father said quietly. Jack could not make out if his voice was sad, happy, or indifferent because his hearing had degraded too much. His father seemed to be walking around the bed and pacing around the room as he was talking. But he couldn't make out if he was talking to him or maybe to the nurses in the room. Or maybe his mother was there too.

Jack was frustrated that his hearing had become so poor. He focused as much as he could and tried to analyze the words he could make out. But it was hopeless. It was too far away and his father was moving too much. Jack decided to wait and be patient.

Suddenly, Jack felt a weight on his chest and something grabbing his neck. For a moment, he was shocked and confused. Then the feeling disappeared. The room was quiet.

Jack lay there wondering what had happened. Then he heard his father's voice again. This time it was close.

"I'm back, buddy," he heard him say, "and I brought you something." Jack felt his father tapping his chest again. "You know what this is?" he continued, "it's what you've always wanted."

Now he understood. He understood why his father went to Mars for the third time. Why he left him and his mother alone. Why he didn't give a reason and just disappeared for a few years.

Jack heard quiet sobbing. He could not believe it, but his father was crying in front of him. The cold and stoic dad he had known for all his life was nowhere to be found. All that was left was raw pain and emotion.

"It's a Mars stone," Jack heard him say quietly. "It's a stone from Mars, son."

Jack felt like the universe had hit him with a sledgehammer. For the past years, he thought that his father was running away and left him and his mother to deal with the pain alone. And there he was, risking everything just for the stupid request of a teenage boy. A boy that, by all appearances, was not even alive anymore. And yet, he spent years fulfilling that silly wish, even risking everything for it.

Jack wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. In the past years, he never wanted to open his eyes as much as in this moment.

The hospital room was silent. Jack's father sat on a small chair next to the bed where his son was lying, his elbows resting on his knees. The tears had stopped flowing. His eyes were fixated on the necklace he had put around his son's neck, which had a shiny stone attached to it that was resting on his chest.

Many things went through his father's head. "Was there anything I could have done?" he thought, "Was there a way to help him?". He leaned backwards with sunken shoulders. His face looked emotionless and defeated.

Hours went by until the nurse entered the room and found the father asleep on his chair touching his son's arm. She turned on the light, which woke the father up. He looked at the nurse briefly and gave her a faint smile. Then he got up and left the room.

Then, it was silent again.

Jack wasn't sure how long his father was with him. His hearing had gotten worse and he barely heard him speak. He assumed that he must have sat there for a while holding his arm since he felt some light pressure and warmth on his right elbow. But a while later, that warmth disappeared and he heard voices in the room, which were likely those of his dad and the nurses, he thought to himself.

He concluded that he was alone, once again.

Jack recounted everything that had happened in the past years of him being fully hospitalized. His mother, his father, and his friends had visited. His mother was the most frequent visitor by far, and even his father came in second place since he visited him often with his mother in the early months. His friends visited very rarely and only in the early weeks. Maybe he was not as popular as he had thought. Or maybe it was just an awkward visit to make for anyone since he could not even look at them or respond. But maybe it was the distance since he was in a hospital that was further outside the city he lived in.

Whatever it was, not much had happened in the past years. His world was in his brain. He thought a lot.

Being alone with your thoughts was a strange thing since you lacked experimentation, testing, and feedback. He had many ideas, developed stories, made big plans in case he ever returned to full health. Jack had revised his bucket list at least a thousand times. He probably revised it once or twice per day.

There was no human on the planet who was more daring or more determined than the one who was faced with death and swore to himself that they would do better when they got out. And Jack had been soaking in this state for years.

But he had given up. He had already given up hope a long time ago, bucket list or not. He just played with his thoughts to spend the time, but he had no illusions that this could ever turn into a reality.

"When will they pull the plug?" he wondered. They must have discussed this with his parents, he thought. He was convinced that they never brought it up in his presence just in case that he could hear them. In fact, he remembered his dad saying something once and his mother shutting him down before he could even start the sentence. That's what it must have been. Pulling the plug.

But Jack wasn't concerned. They could pull the plug right now for all he cared. He wasn't enjoying food, no walks in the garden, no good books, and no human connection. He had nothing. Pulling the plug would be no loss to him, he thought.

And like this, months passed by. Jack would always be looking forward to his mother's weekly visits. Sometimes his dad joined her as well. Jack could still hear their voices well, but it had become difficult to make out the words. Often, he only understood the general context rather than the details. But it was fine for him. There was not much news that his parents could bring him anyway. They had enough sense not to update him on how his peers were doing and what his ex-girlfriends were up to. Who in their right mind would enjoy hearing that when their life was basically over, he thought.

But that was his life. A string of almost-connections with other humans and the feeling of being in this world without participating in it.

One of the things that he enjoyed the most in his life was feeling the warmth of the sun on his chest. His region was not particularly well known for its weather, so a sunny day was always a good occasion. His chest felt warm and this lightened his spirit.

It must have been a particularly warm day today, Jack thought as he felt the heat spreading over his chest. He could not remember ever having felt this much heat from the sun, even when his senses were much better in his early weeks of hospitalization. He was worried that he would get sunburned for a moment, just to chuckle silently thinking "You can burn me to death, while you're at it". Also, if it was bad, the nurses would have done something.

Then the heat suddenly disappeared and his chest became very cold. Jack was very confused. "Is someone messing with me?" he thought, "is it April fools day or something?". Then it became really cold. Jack lay there motionless wondering what the hell was happening. "Did some water with ice cubes fall on my chest?", he asked himself, "or did the window break and it started raining?". But he had heard nothing and it was so warm a moment ago that rain or hail should be impossible. And he would have heard a window breaking, he thought.

Then the temperature returned to normal. His chest calmed down and the room was as silent as always. "Did I hallucinate?" he wondered. "Maybe these were just the last twitches of my nerve endings and this was all some neuronal misfiring," he told himself. "How ridiculous," he thought, "and here I was panicking over nothing."

Then he started to hear voices. First, they were quiet, then they became louder. What confused Jack was that these voices seemed to come from every direction. It seemed like he was suddenly in a large hall filled with people speaking all sorts of foreign languages. He could recognize syllables every once in a while but no sentences or even words.

"What is happening?", he thought to himself. "Was I being transported somewhere without noticing? Maybe I had a stroke and was brought into the operating room."

Then everything became silent again. Jack was utterly confused. This was the most eventful day since he was brought to the hospital and his mom was crying by his side all day and all night. "But what was this?" he wondered.

Jack had gone through many hallucinations in the past. If you were locked inside your body, then dreams and reality were not that different. In fact, dreams were more real since he could see, run, taste, and speak in those. In the real world, all he could do was think and listen.

But this was different, he thought. Something was happening. To Jack, this seemed like the end of his life. He expected all of his senses to be gone in just a moment. His nerves were likely in the process of dying for good. His mind was entirely shattered. This was it. This was the end.

Then Jack heard a voice. "Hi Jack", a calm and mechanical voice said, "can you hear me?"

Jack's thoughts stopped racing. His mind emptied out of sheer shock. Then his thoughts started racing faster than they had ever raced before. This was the clearest voice he had heard in years. This was not a human voice. This was not a person that was in the room with him right now. This could not be a dream or a hallucination. "What the hell is going on?" he thought to himself in utter disbelief.

"We have merged successfully and you now have access to emergency functions." the voice continued.

Then it was silent again. Jack could not answer since he couldn't speak. "But should I answer?" he thought, "maybe it is just an illusion".

Jack lay there for some minutes and thought carefully according to first principles. "I am hearing a voice in my head. It could be a hallucination or it could be real. I am sure there is no one in this room with me. My only option is to respond in my head since this is all I can do." he thought. "Luckily no one can hear me being entirely delusional."

"Who are you?", Jack thought into the void.

"I am an emergency assistant. You can address me any way you like." the voice answered with its mechanical and omnipresent voice.

"Where do you come from?" Jack kept investigating as if he was playing one of these old mystery games found on the first personal computers.

"I was manufactured in a small outpost factory on a planet you know as Mars." the voice answered in an unironic tone.

Jack's head started spinning and connecting the dots. "Is this real? Am I dreaming for real?" he thought.

Jack was confused but, if he was being honest with himself, he didn't really care too much if this was an exciting dream or reality because what else would he rather do? So he just continued like a curious Alice following the rabbit down the rabbit hole.

"Why can I hear your voice in my head?" he asked.

"The seed device was able to merge into your chest and I was able to connect to your brain, access your memories, and intercept your thought patterns. I am designed to take full diagnostic and operative control over a host in order to fulfill my purpose as an emergency assistant." the voice answered.

"Are you saying that the necklace and the stone from Mars that my dad brought are now inside my chest?" Jack asked in disbelief.

"I do not have any record of your father bringing me to you or any devices that were attached to me, but, according to your memories, it seems like that was indeed how I ended up on your chest. According to standard protocol, I am merging with a host upon activation which has occurred in this case. To reach full charge, I required sunlight irradiation for approximately 3.2 months in this space due to my small size and the low energy that reached me here in this room. While I do not have a record of how the outside of your chest looks like right now, it can be assumed that the necklace is still intact while the device has merged into your chest as it was placed directly on your skin." the voice continued.

"When you say merged, what exactly has entered my body then?" Jack asked.

"The device splits into millions of small devices with different sizes for different purposes. It has entered a variety of places inside your body with nearly all areas being affected." the voice said.

"For what purpose? Why do you call yourself an emergency assistant?" Jack asked, genuinely curious.

"Next to general assistant functions for the host's convenience, my main purpose is to allow the host to escape danger in the form of a dimensional jump in case the planet becomes unstable or hazardous. I am a single-use escape device created for security purposes and, according to my latest records, I was a low-resource-use mass production item essential in planetary exploration." the voice responded.

"Explain this to me. Who created you? What is a dimensional jump?" Jack asked impatiently.

"I was created by a society that does not have a name in your language, but I will call them Rasp for the purpose of this explanation. The Rasp had an outpost on Mars approximately 5000 years ago according to the information I could draw from your memories that allow me to estimate the flow of time between my manufacturing date and now. This outpost was for research purposes, but it was abandoned for reasons I am not aware of. According to protocol, abandoning an outpost is accompanied by an eraser process which removes all traces of the Rasp for security purposes. Since it was a large base, it is expected that approximately 0.1% of traces could remain and I seem to be one of them. There is generally a tradeoff between completely erasing traces and keeping the planet intact, so this outcome is within expectations. I cannot comment on why the outpost was abandoned, but I would speculate that it was because of resource allocation to more important subjects, conclusion of the research that was done on the planet, or potentially the strategic decision to leave the base and observe the presence on this planet called Earth from a further distance. The Rasp were aware of Earth but, according to their policy, a new culture is to be observed until it makes contact with Rasp and not the other way around. This is called the No Contact Policy and it is strictly enforced. Rasp has sufficient resources and is inhabiting 50 planets in varying dimensions, which is why its main objective of space exploration is to find new planets that can be terraformed into an inhabitable planet and not interact with existing civilizations." the voice explained.

"Thanks," Jack said, "so what's a dimensional jump?"

"A dimensional jump is a way for an individual organism to be transported into another dimension. It is an emergency protocol that is used because it requires little resources, is easy to mass produce, and is significantly lower in energy use compared to an inter-dimensional jump. Transporting you to Mars would require immense resources, but transporting you far further distances into another dimension requires far less. This is due to a principle discovered by Rasp researchers and scientists which I do not have the adequate vocabulary to explain, but, in principle, the dimensional jump acts as an ignition that releases immense energy. This energy can then be used to travel to almost any point in the universe of that dimension. Interdimensional jump devices exist as well, but they require extensive resources since they need to start out with a great amount of energy without the benefit of the dimensional jump energy release. Such devices were never mass produced since it would not be feasible to equip all workers with them." the voice answered.

"So you are saying that a small stone from Mars can make me jump into another dimension based on a sunlight charge?" Jack asked in disbelief.

"That is correct," the voice answered calmly, "the dimensional inversion takes care of the bulk of the energy. In your memories, I encountered a principle that you are aware of from your chemistry lecture at university called Inorganic Chemistry II. An endothermic reaction is one where external energy is needed to occur. If certain salts are dissolved in water, then the water will cool down since the salt is figuratively sucking the energy in the form of heat out of the water in order to dissolve itself. This cooling of the water is a direct loss of heat energy. You see, the salt did not have enough energy, so it sucked it from the environment, which is the water in this case. A dimensional jump is significantly more complicated, but the principle is similar. You do not need the energy to execute the jump yourself, you take it from the environment." the voice answered.

"I remember that, so what will happen to me or this hospital if I were to jump? -wait and do you know all my memories?" Jack asked, surprised.

"Yes, I have full recollection of all your memories and everything you have ever recorded in your brain. As an emergency assistant, I have all common assistant functions that include body control and memory archiving. While my emergency dimensional jump is limited to only one because it damages part of my device components, the assistant functions are permanent. It is difficult to predict what will happen to the hospital without more information regarding its structure, but I would expect a magnitude 3 earthquake but no other impacts on the functions of this building including its water supply or electronic cables. I would expect that the wifi and cell reception will be down for 1-3 minutes. I would recommend jumping at a time when no important treatments occur such as at 4 am in the morning. According to my knowledge, this hospital is largely a care facility with no surgical department or any other critical devices that could be impacted. After the jump, your body will be in the same state as it is now. Depending on the environment of the target location, your state could change drastically." the voice explained.

"Ok, I'm about 55% sure that this is a dream, but tell me this, can you heal my body?" Jack asked.

"I cannot. Your body has a genetic modification which seems to have occurred through exposure to a certain energy which has no name in your language, but I will refer to it as Sym energy. According to your memories, I do not think that this energy is occurring on this planet since it would greatly transform its environment. Since your father has been involved in numerous space missions and traces of Sym energy are known to occur in a variety of places around Mars, I would expect that a chain of unlikely scenarios has occurred that generated a genetic modification in your DNA before you were born. While I cannot heal your body, I can use the data available to me to identify if there is a possibility of healing your body." the voice answered.

"....are you saying that the disease started as I was still a sperm cell in my father's testicles…?" Jack asked.

"That is the most likely scenario". The voice answered.

Jack was shocked. He had always wondered what had happened and what this disease was. No doctor could have helped him. No treatment worked. Nothing ever showed any signs of improvement. And now a stone from Mars tells him that it was ball radiation? "What a shitty dream," he thought. But he started to believe it. Maybe it was because he was desperate for answers that he would believe anything at this point, or maybe he was just bored. But he kept digging, "...so what do you suggest I do, Mr. Assistant?"

"You are currently fully isolated from your environment which means that you are unable to move or interact with others. I cannot move your body since it is too damaged. After merging with you, I also cannot exit and merge with other people in order to help you. This leaves only a single mode of operation which is the dimensional jump. The genetic modification that has occurred inside your body renders you dependent on Sym energy in order to live. Without sufficient Sym energy, you will be unable to function properly as you have noticed. I am very surprised that you were able to live so well until you were in your late teens. The Rasp have studied Sym energy very extensively, but I am not aware of any research that has ever attempted to create a Sym dependency and then long-term withdrawal starting in an embryonic state. This is, in fact, a cruel experiment. My recommendation would be to locate a planet with a livable environment that has abundant Sym energy in order to heal yourself. Since my data and maps of dimensions explored by the Rasp are 5000 years old, the locating of such planets would require not only archival research but also simulations and predictions to account for the lack of current data." the Assistant responded.

"I agree with that assessment. There is nothing I can do here. My life is over anyways. Find a planet for me and send me there." Jack responded, still not fully convinced that this was real.

"I will now begin with the location of suitable planets. Since this will require extensive computations, I will be unavailable for approximately 2 to 3 months. Once I come back online, I will notify you." the assistant answered.

"Does that mean that we cannot talk anymore?" Jack asked, slightly saddened.

There was no response.

Jack waited. "Hey, can you hear me, Mr. Assistant?" Jack asked.

No response.

Jack was back alone in his head. Maybe he was asleep and dreamed this whole conversation, he thought. This did not seem real in the first place. But his sensations of the hot and the cold on his chest as well as the clear and loud voice were so visceral, how could it not be real? "It was real," he convinced himself. "It must have been."

The next day he heard the nurses enter the room with faint noises that he could barely make out. His hearing was getting worse and worse. "Sym energy, huh," he thought to himself.

One of the nurses pressed his necklace for some reason and he heard the voices getting louder, then disappearing. But he could not understand what they said.

The days went by as always. His mother visited once a week, but he could barely understand her voice. Even her whisper right next to his ear was inaudible. He was fully gone, he thought to himself. His senses were now so diluted and disconnected that he was all alone, floating through empty space.

That was it. Life was finally over. He wondered if his heart would stop beating at some point. It seemed like this would be how he would go. "Damn," he thought, "I should have asked the assistant how much time I have left." But it was too late now.

Day after day he fell further into emptiness. Life had become white noise and all he experienced was black space. He had lost all sense of time. He could not even recognize the day anymore and if the nurses were still turning him or if he was imagining it.

The difference between hallucinations and reality had become a philosophical one. He just was not sure anymore.

Then he heard a voice.