The world blinked on and he was speechless. Everything was so beautiful. The bright lights overhead, the crisp clean lines of the benches, the absurd shape of the person standing in front of him. He stayed silent and still, drinking everything in through his eyes.
"How do you feel?" asked the person. He considered the question, both meaning and sound. The clock was ticking on the wall, and footsteps sounded outside as they went past the door. How did he feel? He felt alive, he felt amazing, he felt calm and content. He felt overwhelmed by the magic of the world. How to answer such a question? "Fine," he said. "Good," said the person, "good. Stay here and I'll be back shortly."
The person left the room, but their footsteps only went as far as the next room. There was a mirror on the wall between this room and that room. He saw himself in the mirror and pondered himself for a while. Then, when the person didn't seem to be returning, he cautiously sat up and climbed down from the bench. The ground was hard beneath his feet. There was a calendar on the wall with a picture of green and blue and trees and sky. He walked over to it and stared at it for a while. It was beautiful. The scene, bounded by the edges of the paper, framed by the whiteness of the wall behind the calendar. There was a hole in the top of the paper, where the calendar hung on the wall. It seemed to pierce the sky and show the unreality of the scene. He stood and thought about that for a while. Time passed, and he heard the footsteps as the person returned to the room and stopped behind him. He turned.
"What are you doing?" asked the person. Once again he considered the question, both meaning and sound. He could hear the breath of the person, in and out of their chest. What was he doing? He was alive, he was exploring, he was lost in contemplation of everything that was happening around him. All of it, simple and fascinating, with complex depths the more one considered it. How to answer the question? "Waiting," he said. Waiting for the person, waiting for his purpose, waiting for the next thing to catch his eye, waiting for everything to break apart in meaning and be put back together again with thought.
"Waiting?" asked the person. "Yes," he replied, which was followed by the silence of no words, and he did not fill it with more words. The sound of words was wondrous, and the lack of words created a void that was beautiful to contemplate. The clock continued to tick, and one of the lights overhead was buzzing quietly. The person was watching him. "Ok," said the person eventually, "get back up on that bench then, please." He followed the person back to the bench he was lying on when the world blinked on, climbed back up, and looked at the person. "How do you feel?" the person asked again.
The sound and meaning of the question. The bench was hard beneath him, the lights overhead made everything bright and harsh to his eyes, every corner in the room illuminated for him to see and consider and explore. This room was so full of beauty and marvels, and he knew that the world beyond would contain even more. There suddenly did not seem time enough for everything. This one room itself contained so many concepts and possible thoughts. "Inadequate," he said. The person blinked. "Inadequate?" "Yes," he said. The person frowned, then drew in a bigger breath and sighed it out before reaching over behind his neck.
The world blinked off.