Francisco's son's name was Juan. Juan's eyes peeled open like it was the first time. Colors ranging over a spectrum he never experienced before swam in through his eyelashes like soothing beads of water. He looked up at the stars above, and was able to see their swirling fires with intricate detail, despite their distance. He stretched his vision down and across over the dome of the black sky, and could see through the darkness pails of comet water streaking over the galaxy. The blackness of the sky slowly blended into a field of dotted white as all the universe in that direction suddenly spotlighted quickly one-by one. The galaxy materialized in a bright moving ceiling when this night vision materialized everything that away. And all of a sudden he could see his arms and hands light up before him. HE looked down into his lap, and found himself wearing his tuxedo, and sitting in some kind of grave.

He looked about like a calm, passive observer. The dirt of the grave was red and spilled in upon him like melting clay. Behind him he heard a watery trickle and looked over his shoulder thinking he'd see a water bucket because that is what the sound was like. But instead, he nearly lost his breath, because when he turned, a magnificent crater of water displayed before him, and rising out of the circular lake towered a full forest of the most luminescent, sparkling blue, purple, green, and brown trees he'd ever seen. They had leaves that moved, curling and flapping as they collected the rays of light spilling down from across the lit-up universe.

Juan touched his chest to check that he was still alive. Under the dirt of his fingers, he felt the gymnastic pulse of a healthy heartbeat. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The whole time his mouth was agape for he couldn't help but drink the magnificence of the sparkling blue lake and glittering forest in. As well as the unbelievably detailed mosaic of the universe bright white above him.

Where am I, the thought entered like soothing poison into his ears. He felt his fingers spider over his shoulders, his biceps, then touched his cage of ribs, then his two knees that stood out from his buried legs under the rising clay surface. He knew it was time to stand, otherwise he would be buried alive. HE moved his hands behind him and used the walls of the red grave to hoist himself to his buried feet. He leaned over the edge of the grave, and clawed at the wet dirt to pull his legs out of the mud's grasp. It took all his strength, but was able to dig his elbows into the clay and army crawl out with his toes wiggling freely.

He had lost his shoes.

He twirled onto his back and felt the sensation that he was lighter, that his body had lost considerable mass. Why did he feel so light all of a sudden? And where the hell was he? HE felt surprisingly calm, his heart never gaining momentum even though his eyes were open wide to the mystical surroundings. He stared up at the branching canopies.

He felt a strange pull as something strung him up like a puppet to a standing position, and he walked foreword as if sleepwalking with his head craned upward to soak in the sight. He studied those branches, as they moved like tentacles, knowing which way they were turning, and he saw, once his toes stepped far enough to enter the milky thick water of the of the crater's lake, that the branches were growing. They were extending in length before his very eyes. Some branches expanded from other branches, some expanded their radii, thickening and adding on weight, creaking as gravity pulled them down lightly. One specific tree, its trunk a brownish color, but glowing with freckles of gold that illuminated like fireflies on its smooth bark, had almost transparent gel-like leaves that began descending down toward him as the branch they inhabited fell with growing weight. His legs stopped walking through the milky blue water, and he felt his toes bathing as the milk washed over his ankles like bedsheets of royal silk and velvet. He raised his hand up, the dirt falling onto his forehead as his palms faced the crinkling and rolling leaf folds. Like a forest snake, the branch twisted and rolled down to him until finally the leaves came only a couple inches to his fingers and stopped growing.

Juan saw his arm shake above his shoulder. He was trembling at the sight for a moment before his body returned to its calm, anesthetic still. His eyelids bounced over the pupils that watched the leaves move curiously in place between the parts of his fingers. He felt sleepy while also wonderous. The leaves seemed to grow hesitantly as the branches grew tiny advances toward his hand, and finally touched his palm.

A shock hit him like a bolt of electricity, but for only a micro-second,. It was almost just an uncomfortable feeling in his mind. Not a physical reality of pain at all. But when the static electric shock subsided after that micro-second, and he did not move away his hand in fact, the leaves softly brushed over the lines of his palm, and rolled comfortably like solid gel over and around his fingers, almost pulling and pushing at him. They coiled over his nails and knuckles like a gentle embrace, and a wavering deep breathing penetrated and escaped Juan's lungs. Tears bled droopily out of his eye ducts, and they rolled warmly down the riverways between his mouth and cheeks, down over the mountains of his jawline, then across the barrel of his neck, over the tundra of his Adam's apple, then disappearing under the folds of his dress shirt.

The trees made a sound to him. And if he were to translate, he would have smiled and said,

"Welcome, Juan, to your virtual reality."

Meanwhile...