It was the needles pressing painfully into his cheeks that woke him.

Terran slowly regained consciousness.

His mind began humming, sensing, and scanning.

His first realization was that his head was pressed firmly against the ground, mashed up

hard against what felt like some kind of dense debris on the forest ground.

He could smell the unmistakable scent of evergreen, and knew the sharp pinpricks against his

face were pine needles.

His second realization was that his legs were incredibly stiff and felt bruised, as though

he'd fallen from a great height to land where he lay motionless on the ground.

And finally, he realized that everything was dark, very, very dark.

Terran's first thought was that he must be inside the dark shed.

He knew that normally when a human steps outside from the light into the darkness, such

as one might do on a winter's evening when venturing away from a well-lit home to go

on an evening walk, eyes gradually become accustomed to the darkness.

In his science book, he'd read about carrots and night vision, along with night vision

photo receptors in the eyes called rods.

These rods act as light detectors, even in the presence of extremely low levels of illumination

and are able to respond to a tiny, single, visible photon of light.

In a dim environment, through a process known as dark adaptation, these rods slowly increase

their sensitivity to light.

But if a human has a shortage of beta-carotene, then in orange foods like squash, yams, and

carrots, this mechanism that allows for dark adaptation is inhibited.

...