Coming back to your senses is like coming through a fog into a clear area. Your view of the science lab clears and clears until you can actually see people again. You feel a throbbing ache in your head.
You see a janitor from the school leaning over you. "You okay, kid? You sucked in an awful lot of that stuff."
Behind him, the instructor says, "Paramedics are on the way. You're breathing, but do you have any eye or throat pain? I can't see any chemical burns or anything like it on your skin."
The paramedics arrive and give you a good going over, but other than a little bump where you fell and hit your head, they say that you are uninjured. If you start seeing things or the headache doesn't go away, they say, go check in to the Medical Center on the campus.
Your instructor sends you home to get some rest. "We'll talk about what happened tomorrow. Go get some rest." He's pretty calm about the whole thing.
You leave the Chemistry building and start towards your dorm, when you notice that you're seeing some sort of things floating around in your vision. At first you think that they are "Floaters" of some sort--dust and other things on the surface of your eyes. But then you notice that they seem to be related to the people around you. As time passes, you find you can focus on the things and they become clear. They actually have structure! They look like little symbols--each person has about thirty or so hovering around them. Some people have several symbols in common, and some have none in common with anyone around them. You remember the paramedic's words about seeing things, but these symbols seem real, not imagined!
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