The alien, yet vaguely familiar scene before Zeke began to flutter a little bit, like some faraway lightning flickering everywhere at once. It almost felt like his eyes were beginning to short out.
He looked down at his extremities and the cork vessel. The glittery goo that coated everything seemed to be also consuming all of the lines that serve to define one object from another. It was a slow progression at first and then sped up drastically.
Zeke's perception of time speed distorted and warped until he wasn't sure if it was even progressing anymore. The omnisciently consuming glittery goo became all there was. Whatever Zeke now was, it was clear he still was aware of consciousness. But, how long would it last? He wasn't even sure if this is how it'd always been, and those memories of his life were simply some fanciful dream born of cosmic mind. How long would this state last? Or, is this actually the only state there's ever been or will ever be?
The old man in the hover-round uttered words that sounded profane, but were not of this world. He was cursing the tangled light circuits inside an exposed recess of the airstream's skin. "Damn it! Why isn't this working? He should have returned by now. There must be some stratoplasmic interference somewhere. Oh wait! What's this doing in there?" The old man had forgotten he'd jammed his stogie into the board earlier when pretended to be asleep. He dug into the sloppy photon circuits with titanium surgical chopsticks to fish out the still burning, red-stained stogie. "What a dope! Come back to papa little guy."
As the old man yanked the strange red stogie butt from the circuit apparatus and jammed it back into his mostly broken teeth, the entire forest began to flicker the same as it had for Zeke. It was a slow pulse at first, and then strobed in rapid succession until everything momentarily morphed into the sizzling goo, and then snapped back to full materialization. Only now, Zeke was standing bewildered before the old man.
Zeke was shocked by the now unfamiliar sensation of gravity and struggled to maintain his balance. He looked around the camp site, and focussed on the airstream's metal door. His memory was starting to come back, but he still felt a little unbalanced and woozy.
The old man took the now lit wet stogie from his teeth and thrust it toward Zeke.
"Hey buddy... You alright? Hellooo... You with me pal? Snap out it... Here, smoke some of this."