The problem with Adrian Shepard (and why it's mindboggling that he lasted so long in the Alliance military) is that he can be insufferable when it comes to being told what to do. You have to tell him the "why" of it or he will immediately go into "fucking around and finding out" mode. And sometimes he'll do what he wants regardless -- they absolutely did explain why humans (a couple of other species, too, but mainly humans) have to be unconscious for relay travel*, but he didn't like the explanation (it was infuriatingly vague and tantalising in its vagueness), so he casually "forgot" to double-check with the technician to make sure they knew he was resistant to most anaesthetics and sedatives, and he received the standard dose for his first relay jump.

He caught hell from his superiors on the other side of the jump, but it was worth it. ...No it wasn't. What he got for his troubles was a wonder most people would never come close to witnessing, sure, but the ocular searing and vertigo put him out of commission for longer than he'd liked. And the visions he saw in the void of timeless spacelessness... proto-Protheans in subthalassian halls; the mercurial grinning face of his father-killer-lover; a vessel shaped like a mollusc shell in which someone that felt strangely familiar** was trapped in a pod much like his stasis chamber, only more organic; a woman shrouded in red and black (and yellow) that pinned him with a severe and knowing gaze (surely not. surely she could not see him, passing through a galaxy parallel to hers. surely not? well, why not? he was seeing her, after all. the abyss gazes back.).

Too much, for young Adrian Shepard. Maybe not worth it. Why rush? He would know it all, eventually, anyway. But you could say the same of us too, and yet, we still look.

*in Adrian's Milky Way, relay travel works on Foundation rules. **a certain warlock who has a multiversal red-spidersilk-thread connection to Noah Kingfisher, an engineer whom Adrian will not meet until he is Commander of the Normandy -- but again, the construct of linear time did not operate in this space.