The first thing she could remember was warmth and liquid. Distorted and muffled voices in her ears; the incessant buzzing of thoughts as they flitted in and out of her mind, some her own, some not. She could not, for instance, comprehend why she would worry about what she would eat that night. Why should she worry about eating, when she had never felt hunger?

The next thing she became aware of was the mask over her face, and from inside it, the tube through her right nostril that extended into her lungs. She squirmed, the tube now strangely irritating. It had never caused her pain before. She coughed for the first time. Outside the muffled voices became more excited and she opened her eyes to observe her new world.

The liquid surrounding her was tinted with some form of rust coloration. It was warm. It had always been warm. She relaxed. The warmth was her comfort; the warmth was there for her. Her tongue explored a second tube in her throat, this extending through her mouth, and suddenly she was aware that she was fed via this strange plastic thing. She left it alone.

Beyond the dim warmth there were strange objects, blurs of color. They moved. She watched until she felt tired. Then she slept.

When she next awoke, the outside—she decided to call it that, for it was beyond her warmth—was brighter. The blobs of color moved about regularly, touching things, speaking to one another in strange tongues. It was interesting, but her perception was detached at best. After all, why should she truly concern herself with them when she was safe and warm? She moved an arm slightly, and the motion brought on an intense need to stretch. As she uncurled her legs she felt pain for the first time.

Looking down through the blurry warm brought her little information. A long thin streak of gray went into a darker gray blob that was spattered with white. She felt it, faintly, an outline. The larger blob, she concluded, was attached to her and must have been a limb. She touched the line that went up, and up, and up, and past the top of the warm.

It hurt to touch it, it hurt her leg and it hurt her arms. The words came to her from one of the outside things. The line pulled on the flesh and made red mix with the rust warm. The red was hot, it wasn’t like the warm. She decided to associate red with pain. She curled her legs back to her body and frowned.

It was then that the warm began to seep away. Distressed as she came closer to the bottom, she thrashed at the sides of the warm. Her fists collided with a clearness through which she had seen the outside things. She kicked at the back of the warm, and her feet hit a firm grayness. Then she stopped. The warm was almost gone and the lines had come out, leaving red streaks. Red, pain.

She gagged as the mask retracted the tubes, and she felt pain again, but saw no more red. She found that pain did not always bring red with it. She curled up on the cold and hard where there had once been warm and liquid and whimpered piteously. She wanted the warm back; this cold unmoving thing frightened her.

Then the front of the once-was-warm opened and blurry shapes reached in and pulled her out. The shapes were warm. She clung to them. It was bright outside the once-was-warm. Her delicate eyes narrowed to block out the lights and she shivered violently. The shapes withdrew and she was set onto more cold, though this was lower than before. She squinted up at the shapes and got onto her feet, desperate to have as little of herself as possible touching the cold. She held up her hands, begging them to hold her to their warm bodies.

“Waaarrrm…” she croaked.

“Speaking already! Very advanced…” the nearest shape said.

“We’ll talk advanced later, she’s cold,” a second said. It had a pleasant voice and she immediately felt it was good. It knelt and held out its arms, to which she gratefully stumbled. Warm. Good. The figure held her in one arm and wrapped white around her.

“Tag her quick, before she moves,” said the first figure. She felt a brilliant pain in her left ear and gripped the one holding her tight. A tiny mewl escaped her throat, a noise of protest. “There,” it said, satisfied.

“Gentlemen, meet G8-12C.”