The Soul Continuum by Simon West-Bulford

beautiful as it widens. Aquamarine in color, ebbing and rolling gently like tidal ripples in a tropical pool. It sounds like a thousand tiny tongues lapping water as the lips of this window to another world relax, and as my surroundings fade into view, the walls of my prison are revealed, glistening and black with thick, leaflike veins pulsing gently on their surface. I am inside some sort of cocoon.
    The gap is wide enough for me to squeeze through now, but I am still immobilized. Beyond the widening oval aperture are more curved walls, but these are more precise, more streamlined, undoubtedly artificial; and I have the impression my cocoon is suspended at the heart of a giant sphere. Again I am awed by the light, but I see now that its source is myriad. Studding the distant walls are hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of glittering specks embedded in perfectly ordered lines. Oh, so beautiful! This place is blissful, and I wish I could free my hands and feet so that I could explore it all. The mystery of how I got here and why I am suddenly a man holds equal fascination for me. I hope there is someone here who can answer my questions.
    â€œHello?” I try again, calling through the gap.
    I giggle at the sound of my new voice, compounding my amusement further, and say it again, even deeper this time.
    I’m not sure whether it is a response to my call or not, but the hiss of hydraulics answers, and seconds later the clamps retract from my wrists and ankles. A cool sensation caresses my scalp as though a mountain stream is trickling out of my brain, and in the periphery, I glimpse delicate silver threads sliding away from me. I instinctively reach for my head and gasp when I find hair. Soft, fine, and long. I play with it in my fingers, laughing again, not caring as I fall to the sticky bottom of this bizarre chrysalis. It takes me a moment or two to regain my balance and crawl through the gap, but I have to grab hold of the wet sides before I fall again.
    I am right. The cocoon is suspended at the center of a vast sphere. I feel like an ant clinging to the withered stone of a peach that has been emptied of the pulp beneath its skin. My feet, which are missing shoes and considerably larger than they were a few minutes ago, are perched on the rim of the opening, and I wiggle my new toes so that the slippery edge tickles my skin—more sensory proof that what I am experiencing now is reality and not some peculiar dream. At least, I think it is real. It is not the sort of place my mind would invent.
    With no obvious way forward, I peer below. I see only a long drop, and craning my neck outward to look up, I see a similar distance to the domed ceiling. Again I am taken aback by the scale and beauty of this place: vast and exquisite, like being inside a perfectly ordered geode.
    â€œHello? Can anybody hear me? I seem to have arrived by mistake.”
    Only the sound of my own giggle greets my ears in response. There isn’t even an echo, which feels strange too.
    â€œI’m coming out,” I call to nobody but myself. “If I break my legs, it’s your fault, and Mother will be very cross if she finds out you let me get hurt.”
    Squatting to rest my backside on the bottom of the opening, I let my legs dangle as I grip the edge. Three . . . two . . . one . . . After a sharp intake of breath, I do the ridiculous thing and jump. I am flailing. There’s a twisty feeling in my stomach, and I can’t help but cry out in my man voice.
    Crack! Even gravity seems stronger than normal here. There is an instant of pain—or something like it, but more like a flash of acknowledgment inside my head that wants to be noticed, as if my brain cannot understand why the screaming agony of a broken bone is mysteriously absent.
    Pain has always been a confusing experience for me. It is like a different kind of pleasure—one that I want to stop. This time it is different, though. Both my legs are bent at