Arriving home, Zachary ate dinner, had a shower, finished reading a small book on the Church of Aeros, then went to bed. After he drifted off to sleep, he began dreaming. But he felt too aware for it to be a dream. In the dream he looked down on a body and could see all its inner workings. The background was black, so the body appeared to be floating there. It was as if he was using his powers of machine reading, but he'd never seen a human body with this much clarity before. The body was sleeping, breathing in and out slowly, the heart pumping at a relaxed pace. Then realisation hit him like a wave- the body was himself.

[b][i]Don't think too hard. We can only get this resolution when you're sleeping. Conscious thought gets in the way,[/i][/b] came the disembodied voice of Kaa'is, which sounded closer than usual.

So Zachary remained quiet yet riveted as he looked on his own body. The view then gently swept down to inspect parts closer. First he saw the heart, pumping along, right side before left, pushing blood towards the lungs and then towards the rest of the body. He looked closer at the blood and was able to see the individual cells. Red blood cells, platelets and various white blood cells, all being washed through the vessels. The view then shifted to his digestive tracts, watching the ground-up military rations he had eaten for dinner be digested in the stomach and passed through to the intestines, where a concoction of enzymes from the pancreas and bile from the gall bladder further digested the food so the nutrients could be absorbed through the wall of the small intestine. Then the view looked to the spine, still ablaze with nerve impulses despite being asleep, and followed the very long axons up to the brain. Looking at the brain as a whole, noting the nerve impulses, was not too dissimilar to an MRI, although Zachary had no qualification to interpret what activity in particular locations means. The view swooped in through the web on nerves, interestingly aligned mostly in a grid, and settled around the centre of the brain, where the hypothalamus was. Looking up close, Zachary could see individual nerve cells, watching ions and electricity rush through the axons, trigger the release of bubbles of neurotransmitter which is received by the dendrites which carry on the signal. In the hypothalamus he could also see nerves which instead of transmitting electrical impulses secreted chemicals into the blood and a gland. This incredible and awe-inspiring look into his own body was a bit of a biology refresher course for him, as he tried remembering all he had learnt in biology back in high school.

[b][i]It's a shame we don't know more about those hormones,[/i][/b] Kaa'is said. Zachary mentally agreed. [b][i]Such knowledge may come in handy. We should pick up a book on it.[/i][/b] Zachary didn't argue.

Finished, the splendid picture turned to black and thought faded away as Zachary fell into a deeper sleep.