Hans' screams were echoing through the jungle, followed by this scene:


Seconds later, he had thrown the still smoking remnants of his computer against a tree, just to sit down on a stump right afterwards, holding his face in his hands; sighing and sobbing:

Such a harsh reaction is not typical for this guy...usually, he stays calm and thinks about a problem rather than trying to solve one with violence...though, this time, he threw the problem away like a baby throws his toys in a corner when being angry...only with the small difference of destroying an income of one year.

"Stay calm, Hansie, stay calm"...
he forced himself to breath controlled a couple of times.
"You have gone through a lot worse."

Through his fingers, he was leering at the reason for his anger: On the table, there was a small, pink glowing gem, fixed into a metallic attachment. It looked like it was shining right towards him now; like it was laughing at him for the show he had put up before and the attempts of trying to understand it.

He looked away from the artifact, on the ground again. Staring at something non-existant, he was asking himself how the heck something like that insignificantly looking object could drive him close to insanity.

Having recieved this communication device from a Nomad as a better opportunity to stay in touch with his special clients for the next mission on Gaia, he was told that it will activate itself and show its true might after a week...and with that, Hans was sent off again.

All the memories of the last fourteen days were coming back thinking about that meeting...he has not even been aware of the fact that Nomads were capable of joking and screwing around with humans like humans do amongst themselve...he felt mucked.

At the beginning, he was actually pretty nervous about this artifact...something Nomadic for communication...it could even be a connection between him and the hive mind! A scientifical breakthrough! Again!

Carrying it around all the time close to him (in his lab coat) like he was told, he was waiting three days...five days....six days....
Even after the eighth day, nothing had happened so far. A bit disappointed, he took it the first time out of his lab coat.

Holding it into the Gaian sky; flooding the gem with sun beams, he did not see anything unusual...only the normal small rainbow caused by the light fraction...
well, it looked like it was made of

...Iridium...

He got curios.

Maybe the Nomad was telling him something else by "keeping it close to him"...a Nomadic saying or metaphor again. Maybe he had to trigger it! Maybe...

Many maybes and another week later, on the fifteenth day after arrival, he had already tried out everything...

Chemical analyses....nothing.
All kinds of scans...nothing.
Acustical stimuli...nothing.
Molecular analyses...nothing.

Seriously, he did not even know what this junk was made of exactly! Completly bugged, he was playing his last ace which has never let him down before, not even when cheating on the best poker evenings: A hyper-modern, portable Quantum Computer. With this fine piece of technology, he was sure to detect at least SOMETHING.

Connecting the artifact to the computer...well, he certainly did recieve something:

And therefore...we are at the beginning of this whole dilemma again...a defeated scientist, sobbing in his tent about a piece of compressed mineral given by a sarcastic Nomad.

"Bei Gott",
he whispered. Still on his knees and hands; half inside the tent, he rubbed his right eye with one hand.

The air he was breathing now outside here had nothing in common with the warm, humid air in the sunny jungle...it was a dry, cold air, like taking a first breath stepping outside your house in an early, snowy January morning.

Hans instantly shivered a bit. Crawling back in his tent and grabbing his cagoule, he stepped outside, stood up and closed the jacket with the zipper...just to see that he stands ankle-deep in some slippery, somehow blue-brown mud.

Silently cursing something in Rheinlandish, he was looking around...

"Impossible",
he muttered. He squints his eyes and breathed in deeply and listened...no animals...no waves hitting the beach...not even the wind could be heared anymore.

He pinched himself to check he is not daydreaming somehow.
"Ow!"
The echo could be heared dozens of times.

"Okay, stay calm, Hansie"
he gulps,
"This HAS to be a dream...the jungle can NOT change that drastically in just five minutes...this is scientifically impossible."

He noticed his right eye was twitching again.
"Dreams...are illusions...",
he whispered and saw his own exhalation in the air,
"...and therefore can not be touched, ja."

Walking to the next big flower a couple of meters, he touched it...


"...I can feel it."
He stuttered. And suddenly, he also felt an enormous shiver running down his spine.

Standing up and holding his back in pain; he cursed loudly, only to get another strike. He fell down on his knees. His spinal cord and brain felt like they were on fire.

Next thing Hans was able to remember was finding himself in the mud. Without pain.
"Unconscious", he thought. Thinking it would be a bad idea to curse now while removing some of the blue-brown mud (which even had something of an oily consistence), he was looking around again. Still the same, cold scenery. And silence.

"O-Okay", he whispered to check if he can still hear himself, "I can see this, I can smell this, I can hear this, I can taste the mud, I can feel everything...unfortunatly."

Standing there and staring, he started to think in logical steps like he used to do on instinct in such clueless situation. Still scared as hell, he assembled the capacity to think straight..."Okay, panic is not gut now. Neither is walking around headless. So..."

Having the idea of getting in the comfy tent again and wait until this madness is over seemed nice...though he felt a tiny pinch in his back again and forgot about that idea.

Still having a thousand thoughts in his mind, he suddenly cought himself walking.
Walking down a path. To that darn big, glowing, scary building at the end of the path.

He forced himself to stop instantly, but suddenly felt that tiny mean pinch again...well known by now.

Now he rememberd something...something which was similiar to this...but it was not that uncomfy and dark...

Using the short moment of not walking, he formed a cone with both hands, holding it in front of his mouth and screamed:

The voice came all out of sudden, catching him in the midst of a thousand thoughts.
Totally off guard, he fell down in the mud again like a baby who could not hold itself on his feet yet.

Still sitting in dirt, he was looking around in every possible direction to localize the source of this cold voice. He was barely able to hear something over the heavy breathing; sweat was running down his face.

Closing his eyes, he breathed three times very slowly. This way, he forced himself to calm down at least a bit so he was able to sort his mind again. Remembering vaguely what the voice had told him, he took another three full lungs and the courage to stutter an answer:

"I...I...did not *short exhaling* know...just thought *short inhalation* somebody out z-zere.
D-D-Daniel? I-Is zat you?"

Nothing.

"Calm down, calm down, calm down, this is just another of those visions. You have already been in a couple of those...", he was repeating all the time in his terrorized mind. "Only this time, there are no soft, green grass, ocean and fish tanks."

He gulped. He was shivering. He bit his lips. He was waiting for a reaction.

Waiting for the cruel voice's answer seemed to take a period close to eternity for Hans now...

Still sitting in the mud he had fell in, Hans was trying to form an answer, but the voice's strange statement left him breathing there with an open mouth.

His mind was running; what the hell did this shadow mean by "Fear" and "Today, it is a weakness."? Was he in trouble? Even danger?

He coughed a couple of times after he made sure the entity had left. While trying to remove the dirt from his arms, he noticed that he was walking again...without thinking about it. Testing if his own body was still following his brains' orders, he stopped. And was standing still.

The building caught Hans' attention again: It could not be denied; this castle-like domicil was attracting him passively...it felt like sleep walking...only being awake. A very strange, uncomftable feeling.

Accepting this fact, he did not resist it anymore...appearently, whoever made the vision wanted him to go to the building...the sooner he will get there, the sooner will this be over.

Hans closed his eyes while walking down the path to concentrate again and analyse his situation...cold, logical thinking is essential for him as a scientist and has already helped him countless times to solve even the most difficult situations and problems:

And so, a melody, though horribly crooked, could be heared in the dark woods. Hans concentrated on the song he was whisteling and was imaging something nice....something which was able to distract him from even the worst nightmare....something like...yes, that's it.