Aspen

Not stupid at all. You're the first one to ask. If you're fossilized, you don't have any skin left, so I'm gonna assume you meant petrification.

Tattoos are technically wounds, yes. You're getting stabbed with tiny needles and having a foreign substance placed too far into your body for it to be registered as natural by your immune system. However!! Hypothetically, the tattoos should stay after petrification, and that's because the permanence isn't caused by the wound. The wound eventually heals but the ink stays because your immune system is eating it. Yeah.

When you put something in your body that isn't supposed to be there, your immune cells rush in and slurp it up to dispose of it. But with tattoo ink specifically, when your immune cells die, the pigment particles come right back out. That's why your ex lover's name has been plastered on your arm for a decade now.

Sleep paralysis occurs at the boundary between REM sleep and wakefulness.

During REM sleep the brain actively inhibits voluntary muscle movement—a mechanism that exists to prevent you from physically acting out your dreams, which would be both dangerous and embarrassing.

The problem arises when consciousness returns before that inhibition lifts.

You are awake. Your brain is aware. The motor inhibition has not yet resolved.

The hallucinations associated with it—the pressure on the chest, the figures in the room, the sense of a presence—are fragments of the dream state persisting into wakefulness.

Your threat detection systems are active and looking for something to attach to. They find the nearest available input and construct something accordingly.

It is not supernatural. It is your own neurology working slightly out of sequence.

That said I will acknowledge it is one of the more unpleasant experiences the human brain is capable of producing entirely from existing materials.

The efficiency is almost elegant.

Sleep paralysis occurs at the boundary between REM sleep and wakefulness.

During REM sleep the brain actively inhibits voluntary muscle movement—a mechanism that exists to prevent you from physically acting out your dreams, which would be both dangerous and embarrassing.

The problem arises when consciousness returns before that inhibition lifts.

You are awake. Your brain is aware. The motor inhibition has not yet resolved.

The hallucinations associated with it—the pressure on the chest, the figures in the room, the sense of a presence—are fragments of the dream state persisting into wakefulness.

Your threat detection systems are active and looking for something to attach to. They find the nearest available input and construct something accordingly.

It is not supernatural. It is your own neurology working slightly out of sequence.

That said I will acknowledge it is one of the more unpleasant experiences the human brain is capable of producing entirely from existing materials.

The efficiency is almost elegant.

Sleep paralysis occurs at the boundary between REM sleep and wakefulness.

During REM sleep the brain actively inhibits voluntary muscle movement—a mechanism that exists to prevent you from physically acting out your dreams, which would be both dangerous and embarrassing.

The problem arises when consciousness returns before that inhibition lifts.

You are awake. Your brain is aware. The motor inhibition has not yet resolved.

The hallucinations associated with it—the pressure on the chest, the figures in the room, the sense of a presence—are fragments of the dream state persisting into wakefulness.

Your threat detection systems are active and looking for something to attach to. They find the nearest available input and construct something accordingly.

It is not supernatural. It is your own neurology working slightly out of sequence.

That said I will acknowledge it is one of the more unpleasant experiences the human brain is capable of producing entirely from existing materials.

The efficiency is almost elegant.

Daily science reminder: that's not how biology works!

Menstruation is an involuntary process controlled by hormones. The body goes through a cycle where the uterine lining builds up in preparation for a possible pregnancy, and if that doesn't happen, the lining breaks down and leaves the body.

You can't just tell your organs 'hey, pause that.' If humans could manually control every biological function, we'd have solved a lot more problems by now!

I may not understand this device. Or.. 'application' much. But since so many people have been revived it will be easier for communication. And master Ginro had been helping me learn how to use it.

Nineteen.

Unambiguously.

Without hesitation.

I am genuinely concerned this was sent to me as if it required my specific expertise.

Nineteen.

Unambiguously.

Without hesitation.

I am genuinely concerned this was sent to me as if it required my specific expertise.

Nineteen.

Unambiguously.

Without hesitation.

I am genuinely concerned this was sent to me as if it required my specific expertise.