Interface

Horrific!
The word echoed within Andy's mind
as smothering panic overcame him.
He remembered an impression,
from some way station along
the course of his
mental meandering.

He'd returned to the nightmare
flame consuming all within,
the crumpled mass of steel;
inverted he had dangled,
unable to escape the burning.

Rescued at some point,
all he could do was surmise.
Him mind was elsewhere,
and else when
He wish to be anywhere else.

Awakening he was immersed
within oxygenated, healing
gelatinous goop.
His life depended upon it
but his instinctual response
was revulsion and gagging.

Lung scarred
from breaths of flame
He fought the fear
of suffocation;
the fear of drowning
while starving for air.

When he could not
hold his breath
any longer
he gave up,
fully expecting
that his heart
would lud-thump
and thud-lump until
the oxygen expired
and then thud-thump
and lud-lump harder
and at an accelerated pace in panic
until vital conduits burst
and his heart ruptured
as his lungs finally exploded,
contained only by his rib cage.

Amazingly, that did not happen.

He realized that he could breathe the goop.
There was air dissolved in it
that filled his lungs; he drew oxygen from it
and by it he survived.

With that revelation,
that he had always survived,
the ocean of madness
compelled him
toward the source,
the unifying identity
that was still tied into
the Ethosphere.

There was something
he needed to do and
he needed the resources
of the interface.