A blaring alarm screeches from the intercom, the sound waves magnified and bouncing off the four invisible walls of the Black Box as the airlock decompresses, and I find it easier to breathe. Errt, errt, errt, errt. This, in combination with the bright green light pivoting about the room from a point in the ceiling, flashing in sequence, send me on the verge of a seizure. My labored breaths are like lung fulls of water as my diaphram crumbles within a drowing body beneath a heavy ocean. The five seconds seems like five hours until the blaring and flashing stop. The neuro-capacitor unstraps itself from my head and lifts with a deep hiss, and the cool, deep, monotone voice of the Agent comes over the intercom:

"I told you, Guinea Pig, stop moving."

I try to relax my breathing and remain as still as possible, my back as erect as the Washington Momument within which I currently reside. A thick bead of sweat slides down the bridge of my nose and falls over the tip; I feel it plop onto my left pant leg.

"Now we're going to try this again," the intercom crackles.

The neuro-capacitor, a rounded, hat-like web of interlinked neurotransmitters, compresses like velcro into my head and temples. My voice cracks in my throat as I let out a noise somewhere between a painful yelp and a gurgled groan of frustration, although my shriek does not travel far before the airlock activates again, and the soundproof, airtight, pitch black, cold, sensory-deprivation room silences it. At the same instant, my throat tightens as the breath I attempt to take catches from the pressure change in the room. I can hardly hear my heartbeat, let alone my exasperated cry of helplessness.

The voice of the Agent returns on the crackling intercom, "Alright, this is Neurologically-Induced Hyper-Absorption trial nine, absorption rate amped to 40,000 bytes per milisecond. Countdown beginning in ten...nine...eight...seven...six...five...four....

The voice fades into the back of my mind as I feel my heart racing. I think of how much more I can take before I die of brain injury overload when my head is jerked so hard I almost think it snpas over the back of the chair to which I am strapped, and my eyes roll back into my head.

                                                                  ***

I followed the lanky scientist garbed in a classic, white lab coat that fell down to the ankles and the shiny, black dress shoes that click-clacked down the bright-lit maze of twisting and turning corridors, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of the clipboard the scientist's hand raced across in blue pen. He kept his head down, not raising it once to see where he was going; his feet and body gracefully guiding him around the tight corners as if he had walked the path a thousand times. I was about to ask him what he was so vigorously scribbling when he turned to face me and pushed his back against a set of wide, double doors, his head still buried in the clipboard. He didn't look up to extend his right arm out along the empty, white corridor which then stared back at me.

"Down the hall and to the left," he directed, still reading the clipboard. "You'll see another set of double doors through which a heavy metal door will stand. Just knock, and the Agents will let you in."

"Agents?" I laughed nervously. "I thought this was just a test for some new kiddy science gadget or something."

"It is," the scientist retorted coldly, "and it is not 'some kiddy science gadget.' Good day."

Before I could further inquire, he walked off back down the corridor from which we came. I looked back at him before hesitantly advancing down the hall as indicated. Agents? I thought. As in the Secret Service or something? My breathing quickened and I felt the pulse in my arms, so hard I thought my veins were visibly bulging through my tan skin. I turned the corner and knocked on the metal door. Exhaling deeply, I tried to collect myself, fixing my collar and loosening my neck tie. Just as I continued to dust and straighten my suit, the door swung open and there stood a blonde-haired, clean-cut Agent in full Secret Service attire, sunglasses and all. A clear, curly earpiece wire peeked from his right ear and out over his cheek. The corner of his mouth quivered. It might have been a grin, but I mistook it for a grimace.

A cool, deep, monotone voice erupted from his throat. "Are you ready to receive the mysteries of the universe, Mister Jacques?"

A hard knot of spit caught in my throat, and I struggled to force it down; I could feel my Adam's Apple bob up and back down as it carried the ball of spit. I cleared my throat and mustered what I thought to be a cheery "Yes, sir," but what came out as a hoarse whisper.

                                                                  ***

My body shakes uncontrollably in the floored chair, and the foamy, white substance trickles out of the side of my mouth. It is as if I am watching the most terrifying film with my eyes clipped open, only it is playing in my mind.

Everything crashes into my brain at the speed of light it seems: Mathematical equations, formulas, every single word of every single novel ever written, faces of strangers and legends, historical events rewinding and fastforwarding, a jumble of voices and conversations and whispers speaking simultaneously in foreign tongues and dead languages, the prophecies of ancient civilizations and predictions of Nostradamus coming true. I am in a wormhole and then a parallel universe, a montage of membranes and inter-dimensional planes and I think I hear myself screaming in the distance, in the muffled background of all this white noise. And now the images and faces and words are coming faster, and I feel like I'm underwater and my body is on the surface of the Sun all at the same time, only I'm not in my body even though I know I am, or I think I am; even though I know everything and I undersand everything that I shouldn't, but I don't know how. And I can't discern anything outside of my mind because everything is moving too fast inside of it.

I think I feel my head become a little lighter, and a cool, deep, monotone, distorted voice sneaks in through the many, but I can't stop shaking and my heart can't stop racing. And now I feel myself being lifted, and suddenly I'm levitating, but then I feel my back on something flat and hard with coarse hands running all over me. I hear panicked yelling and I feel myself slipping away from the cold, wet mess of skin and organs convulsing on a marble floor in a dark room with black figures surrounding it. I know that I must be dying, but as I am slipping out of consciousness, I am only slightly comforted by the fact that I am the only human -even if only shortlived- in the history of mankind to be privy to the mysteries of the universe.