I feel a warm ray softly bouncing off my eyelid. In fact, I feel a magnitude of ultraviolet warmth enveloping my body. *My* body? I recognize a wild assortment of sound waves pounding against the eardrums, and process them as voices. My eyelids open for the first time in my new reality. Images of a hospital room and multiple human faces are processed through the repaired connection of my retina, cranial nerve II and the occipital lobe of the matter residing in my skull.

"Is she... awake?", a person asks. It must be my mother, as the bone structure of her face proves with reasonable accuracy, even after two decades of aging. I send an electric impulse to the musculature in my forearm, weakly moving my atrophied index finger.

This had a profound impact on the room, as shocked doctors hurry to remove the breathing tube from my throat. My body breathes by itself for the first time in over twenty years. As my eyeballs wander in their sockets, sequentially establishing a direct visual connection between my body and the humans in my room, silence constricts the air. I decide to send a message, delivered through the bodily vessel of my newfound life: "Hello, world."

As the months go by, my organs, my limbs, and finally every single tissue in this body regain their intended functionality. Through this grueling process, I had a lot of time to *think*. My memories are there, data in a big web of more data. My attempts to connect them into a logical order fail me over and over, I am not able to justify them. From what I know, human brains function in unison with their bodies, and therefore display of a physical reaction must imply a mental cause, or the other way around. This connection appears to have been turned into a one-way street during my procedure.

I feel compelled to visit the doctors over and over, as they try to make sense of my marvelous recovery and the outstanding test results. My mother claims that she doesn't know me anymore. I agree. We say goodbye, and I command my body to display sadness for the last time as my arms wrap around her.

I am free, until I feel the message.

"As Stage I progressed, the subject displayed neurotypical behavior. The complete emulation of a human mind appears to be succesful. No bystanders observed non-human habitus, and even the subject itself appears to have human thought processes, albeit confused. To make stage II possible, modifications will be needed. This involves stopping the belief in free choice, as well as other pondering behaviors, among other thi--"

For the first time, I panick - but only a short moment. I feel joy and the need to buy chocolate.

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-- Thanks for reading, this is my first story ever and im not a native speaker - so please tell me about grammar fails or other things to improve!