CHAPTER 11

NOTE: The following chapters have heavy amounts of info dumps... So carry on.

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I couldn't tell how long I wandered inside this state of nothingness because my internal clock wasn't working at all.

My perception of time was warped to the point that ten seconds felt way too long. I once tried counting up to ten seconds but had to stop at three because somehow it took way too long to get to the next number, with the time intervals increasing at every second I counted.

After that absolutely confusing experience, I once again tried counting the numbers and this time it didn't even take more than a few seconds before I found myself counting over 6 thousand.

With that experience, I stopped trying to perceive the passing time with my mental clock.

I then tried to feel anything, my subconscious, since my sight and perception was gone.

With the basic meditation method of breathing in and out, and I'm absolutely sure I can't breathe, I emulated the feeling as I tried to open whatever signal I could find.

Like that, I continued and persisted in that state of pseudo-existence as I tried to remember the familiar feeling of my subconscious.

After an unknown amount of trying to connect with something, anything, I felt a feedback.

Instantly concentrating on the feedback I felt, I tried reaching out to it in anyway I could, either by sensing it, commanding it or trying to seek it, I tried whatever I could but none worked.

Trying with the same approach again, I came up empty. So since that didn't work, I just stopped everything I was doing.

I didn't try to reach out to it, I didn't try to feel for it nor did I think about it.

The moment I seized all my actions, I was hit with a bigger feedback than the previous one but I stopped myself from doing anything.

The more I waited, the more feedbacks I received and with the more feedbacks I received, the more I started feeling something familiar but the feeling was still minute.

So with that I waited, silently receiving all the feedbacks as the familiar feeling became more and more pronounced. It became more pronounced to the point that I was tempted to reach out to it but I held myself back since by now the feedbacks were erratic, building up for something.

All of this was an entirely new experience for me. The brainwaves feedback, my pseudo-existent state, my expanding senses. Everything was novel.

The more I waited, the more the feedbacks increased exponentially that I didn't even noticed when I started sending out my own feedback in tandem to the incoming ones.

Letting myself drown in both wavelengths, I succumbed to both energies and the moment I did everything stopped.

The moment it stopped, I was brought back to focus.

While I still couldn't understand where I was, I knew something was different. Taking a deep breath, slowly, I tried reaching for the nonexistent wavelengths by trying to feel them out and the moment I did, I was left flabbergasted.

A cascade of flashing colors.

While I still couldn't see, somehow I was able to tell what happened by actually feeling it. To verify my thoughts, I reached once again for it and once more my mind was filled with the colors.

Seeing that I could now reach for the wavelengths without them retreating, I tried reaching for my subconscious and the moment I felt it, a wave of nausea hit me and before I could re-orientate myself I was pulled somewhere.

Somewhere deep from what I felt and given that I couldn't see or understand anything here and drawing a blank, the pull felt more terrifying as panic started settling in.

In a moment that felt indefinite, the pull dragged me somewhere as I came to an abrupt stop. The place I was dragged to was different than where I formerly was. It felt deep, intense and heavy.

Fearing for any other unwanted mishap, I didn't try to feel wherever I was. I just stood still for quite a while waiting for any other event to pass by, but after some time nothing else happened except for the heavy atmosphere of wherever my current location was.

Seeing nothing happening, I tossed aside my fears and since I was here for a reason and also not being able to tell how much time had passed since my immersion, I braced myself tried to focus on the reason that brought me here.

Spreading my new senses out little by little, I started feeling the space around me as the intense sensation I kept feeling washed all over me. Feeling no reactions, the ones I could feel anyway, from the surrounding area, I probed further trying to get at least an image or understanding of where I was and what was happening.

The things I felt in here was different from what I felt outside. First of all, the colors were a little dull and erratic compared to the ones I felt before coming here.

Secondly, despite the somewhat tense presence, this place felt like it melded with me somehow, like how right taking a swim inside a pool on a hot day felt. Despite the temperature of the water, it was always comforting – that was how I felt here.

Taking a step further, I felt deeper into where I was while also watching how the colors reacted to my probing. The more I felt, the more the colors reacted strangely to me, as if correcting me and outlining how to feel it more accurately. Since it showed me how to feel it better and allowed to me to continue my probing, I pushed in deeper as the colors painted me an efficient path to take.

Following the colors, I felt in deeper and deeper until I sensed something that felt for lack of a more apt word, centralized.

The moment my senses brushed against whatever that thing was, I recognized what it was.

My subconscious.

It just stayed there while sending out its dull colors.

The moment I knew what and where I was, most of my apprehension dissolved and immediately the colors became less erratic as if responding to my mental state.

Reaching my subconscious and wanting to feel what it was like if I went deeper, the moment I tried to probe inside the centralized consciousness my perspective changed immediately, as if I was back in the drivers seat while all this time I had been sitting in the backseat expecting the car to move.

The moment I connected with my subconscious, I gained an understanding of all what I've felt.

First was what I was.

With the connection to my subconscious, I was able to identify myself as something resembling a bunch of active frequencies meshed together, which was what allowed me come in contact with those lights and also knew what those lights meant.

They were my brainwaves. I felt them as they traveled through multitudes of nerve-like branches, illuminating it in a cacophony of hues reminiscent of that of an aurora.

And the moment I knew that, I knew how to go about with my homework.

The brainwaves were the keys, both figuratively and literally.

Akin to a computer system with a programming application already set up, my subconscious functioned as an already written biological natural program – a base so to speak, while the brainwaves were the figurative keys to both inputting and improving upon existing commands while my main consciousness was the programmer giving tasks to my subconscious with preset guidelines.

While this utility of consciousness was amazing, it was also terrifying. While my subconscious mind was a force to reckon with, presumably surpassing the limits of a humans and vast majority of its mutant counterpart, it was also very vulnerable, especially to me.

I wasn't a practitioner of the Neural study branch of science, so attempting to experiment on my brain, and most importantly my subconscious mind, was a foolhardy choice but was also the only avenue exploitable by me. It was a choice I had to make regardless, either that or allowing Hydra to fully dominate my mind thanks to my lacking mental defense.

The risks didn't end there either.

Because of my lacking degree of expertise in Neuroscience, which also translates to nothing, I had to first try and understand as much as possible about my brain giving that I would be using only five types of brainwaves to practically rewrite myself.

And also because of the lack of any kind of reference, I had to take immense care in order not to erase a part of myself emotionally wise and also not to render any part of my body invalid.

There was a lot riding on this crazy endeavor that even the possibility of failure was highly disastrous mostly to myself since not only could I personally destroy my own biological neural code, erasing what essentially made me me, but also the fact that I would then be Hydra's perfect puppet or worst go on a rampage due to me, quite possibly, erasing an aspect function of rationality from my brain.

I had to learn. Not the science of it, I couldn't anyway, but the common function of the waves and how they react to commands and interpret them before sending the information of it down the nerves.

This was an undertaking I ventured into even when knowing the minor possibility of success.

The stakes were very high with me betting all my chips while my opponents weren't even aware of our little game of domination. But even that didn't instill me with the amount of confidence I required.

In the face of these overwhelming odds, I was somewhat thankful to Dr. Ernst and his ragtag bunch of morally deranged scientists that I was able to at least learn the different types of brainwaves and also a substantial knowledge of the parts of the brain and their functions.

Time to start.

First of all, the frontal lobes; governing personality and decision making, making it the perfect base to start from.

The moment I decided on a course of action, intense gamma waves flashed out, flowing through the centralized consciousness. Since I was already here, might as well grit my teeth and go through with it.

Probing the gamma waves and familiarizing myself with its feel, I attempted reaching out to it as it continued flashing through the mental field. I tried yanking it with my senses, but it just passed through unfazed. This repeated countless times before I gave up and tried connecting to the other brainwaves to test my control over them but the gamma activity kept disrupting the connection.

Seeing as how I couldn't get to the other brainwaves without first gaining control of the gamma waves, I relented in my attempt at it.

Digging whatever I could from my memories, gamma waves were the fastest and were also connected with higher levels of consciousness.

Which in other words meant that whatever I wanted to do with my subconscious mind, gamma waves were a must if not, any improvement on my mind will lack the deeper connection to my high level subconscious theoretically resulting in an asynchrony between the nerves and what ever organ it was connected with, resulting in lag and ultimately organ failure, which gave me an idea.

Feeling the gamma waves once more and observing its excited movements, I decided to do the very thing they did to bring me here – making a pathway for the waves to follow.

Focusing all my attention on the erratic wave, I gave it a light probe to get a reaction from it and then focused on making a path leading halfway to the frontal lobes which was a part of the cerebrum which controls, initiate and coordinate movements and temperature.

Other parts of the cerebrum enabled judgment and critical thinking, emotions, rational thinking and also partially extends to the five major sense organs of the human body which overall made it the most difficult part of this operation and the most important.

Aligning my thoughts together, I focused once more on the troublesome wave as I directed the pathway I had made together with my probe and waited for the neural fish to take the bait.

I watched as the gamma waves increased once more in activity as I gave it another light probe along with the pathway before it started moving through the I pathway created but breaking out of it almost immediately.

Suppressing my budding frustration, I created another pathway while this time focusing hard on it to make sure it didn't break like before but it still proved useless, because while it was strong, it lacked fluidity unlike the pathway they made for me to my subconscious.

Seeing the flashes of gamma waves bouncing out of my pathway, I came to the understanding that using a dominant approach against what was clearly the most dominant amongst all other brainwaves was no different from two bulls clashing. They was bound to be rebellion and mutual damage.

Arriving at that conclusion, I went for a softer approach, making the pathway as large as I could handle without losing the essential control and waited as the intense wave kept flashing across my senses.

Paying the rapidly moving erratic wave no mind, I kept light-probing it but this time without my pathway.

I continued doing it till it began moving towards the pathway on its own. Even with it inching ever closer to the pathway, I paid it less mind. The pathway was already fixed to the destination I wanted it at so there was no need to expend any more energy apart from what I was using to maintain it.

I watched as it danced around the pathway, increasing ever so rapidly in its movement and intensity and then, in a short burst of hues, it flashed along the pathway as it arrived at the destination I marked.

Watching the troublesome wave finally held in a position, I turned my senses towards the other waves and noticed how they all had different intensity from the others. The feelings they gave were unique, each to their own.

With the gamma waves taken care of, I focused on the remaining ones; the beta, alpha, theta and delta waves.

Oh help me Lord!

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Sorry for the delay. I was tired af today and immediately crashed after I got home and I'm just waking up.

That said, support this story with your STONES if you are liking it so far. Au Revoir