I open my eyes.

A vertical line divides the scene in front of me.

On one side of the line, there is a section of orange. On the other side... blue.

Wait... that line's not vertical.

I sit up.

The orange sands of the desert stretch into the distance, meeting the light blue sky at the horizon.

I turn around.

The train speeds off, towards it's destination in Mandelovia.

Bastards kicked me off, just because I didn't have a ticket...

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

The year is...

...what was it?

Two thousand and one.

A two, two zeroes, and a one.

2001.

I'm eighty-two years into the past and I'm in the desert and I was just kicked off the train and all I own is a shirt, a pair of pants, and Gus' spare pair of gym shoes.

I have problems.

What the hell am I supposed to do? Where the hell am I supposed to go? Who do I go to?

I sit down.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck.

My thoughts exactly.

"Who said that?" I find myself yelling, turning around frantically in the sand.

Calm down, Daniel.

"Who the fuck are you?!"

I'm in a crouching position, my hands grasping handfuls of sand. As if they would be enough to protect me from an invisible menace.

My name is Hal and I'm inside your head.

I drop the sand. I stay in the crouched position, and keep turning my head to look for the source of the voice.

"What?"

Calm down, Daniel, and I'll explain. The scientist? The one who had you locked in that tube? His name was Doctor John Feldman. He was an expert in nanotechnology. The biological side of it, rather than technological. Messing around with strands of DNA and getting them to do whatever he wanted. Replicating themselves, changing themselves, other bits of DNA...

"I'm not really after a science lecture... Hal, was it?"

Bear with me. You have to understand the basics of the science to understand what's happened to you.

"...go on..."

Feldman was trying to work on sending little bits of DNA into a person's bloodstream and having them do whatever he programmed them to. They could regrow lost limbs, repair wounds, eradicate disease... would've revolutionised medical science.

"Where the fuck do I come into this? Why the fuck would I have to be stuck in a GODDAMN PLASTIC TUBE?!"

I felt a pain in my hands. I looked down, and they were clenched into fists. My knuckles were bloody.

I realised I'd been punching the ground.

As you may have gathered, Feldman was insane.

"I got that."

He decided to use his new technology to... augment a person's usual physical characteristics, by adding those of an animal. He needed a test subject.

"Me?"

You.

"Me..."

So... he did it. He locked you up. He stuck all these little DNA nanite thingies that he'd grown into your bloodstream. They were programmed to temporarily alter your body in any way they were ordered to, as long as the required DNA information was in the database.

"The... database?"

Feldman knew that the nanites in your bloodstream would need access to all the relevant information. The right DNA strand to grow a bird's wing, the right DNA strand to grow fish scales. And he knew that it would be incredibly difficult to program all that information into your brain. So, he grafted a second brain into yours, to hold all that data.

"That's... you?"

That's me.

I'm lying down. This stuff is hard to take in an upright position.

I have thousands of animals locked inside me. You say an animal part that you need, I tell the nanites what to do, they grow the part on your body.

"That's fucked up..."

Very.

"So where did you come from?"

I was Feldman's assistant. He killed me for my brain.

I'm silent for a moment. As is Hal.

"I'm sorry..."

I've come to grips with it. Anyway... he knew he needed a brain. To hold all that info. And he also wanted it to have personality. So he used mine.

"There's a whole other brain crammed in there with mine...?"

No. Your head's too small for that. He just cut out all the relevant bits he needed from my brain, and slotted them into yours.

"Can you... see? And hear?"

I have access to all your senses. I see and hear whatever you see and hear.

"...why... why would Feldman do all this?"

I'm not sure. I've come up with a theory, though.

"What's your theory?"

He was fucking insane.

"Good theory."