>> From Dreams, To Dust

I plunge tinto chaos as my mind burns alive. Damned voices whispering from the void beneath, as if drunk on their own destruction. Cables and wires dragging me down. Down. Down. Drowning me in dark oceans that have never known life.

But in those abyssal depths, it finds me.

A stone leviathan carved by an eldritch god - burning with lightless and unfathomable colours. With great iron fins, graven with terrible symbols of gold. With pictograms, and runes. All roiling with mayhem and fiery darkness.

Its mouth opens wider than towers, and I am gone.

Drifting in nothingness, as fingers of rock pluck at the dark. Returning torn chucks of my body from the deeps, and welding them together with flashes of burning violet.

Polybius....?

I shut my eyes, and the dream of dark melts into blinding light.

I'm little again. Chasing down old stone halls, after a giggly little Badger, with the hot weight of tiny Tufty clinging to my shoulder. Held on by one hand. The image blurs, and, twists - and suddenly he's bigger. Two shy little emerald eyes. Two sharp little paws. All peeping over my leg as I fuss and bounce a squealing Badger. "Come on! You can come up too!" My dreamSelf cheers, and I hoist the shrinking cat into the pile.

Hugging them both extra tight.

Joy and light burn through me in waves, and I clutch the memories of happiness to my heart. The instant blending with a thousand others. Scribbling on paper! Scribbling on Tufty! Painting a sky we've never-ever-ever seen.... All of those instants curling into that one, until.....

A sharp little noise. A sharp little breath. A golden eye, framed in the doorway.

Wild, and wide, and fantastically afraid. But staring at me. Almost.... hungry.

I sit up, suddenly, gripping tight my two adopted brothers.

But he's gone in a flash of ratty old hood and matted gold hair. Leaving only a flick of leonine tail.

"Ah! What was that??" Yeeps a shrill little serpentine creature that begins to exist only as I hear it. Knocking over a messy boadgame as it coils itself up in jittering circles! Six tiny wings furling and unfurling along a glittering scaled body as it twists to stare at the doorway. "Did you see that!?!"

"It were da ghost!! Da boogie!" Trills a second, far younger, dragon with a butterfly in its hair. Birdlike paws clutching a stuffie bear to its fangy face. Fading into being, beside the board.

"Ghosties!?!" Squeaks a third, even tinier, GMO serpent. Dropping the game-piece it was nibbling to cover its six, dark, eyes. "Nuuuuuu!"

"Hush now...." Cautions a grown-up voice, and the scene takes sudden form around us. Stone walls erupting, from nothing. Lining themselves with hide-bound books on old wooden shelves. Fitting themselves in, amongst strange brass machines, all filled with gyroscopes and tubes and carefully carved crystals. Every object arranging itself to frame a bearded old man, leaning elbows on a huge, dark oak, desk spread with papers.

"Dad.....?" I breathe. Not in memory, but in life. Reaching ghostly hands toward him. "...Joan....."

But the dream snaps my focus back toward the door. My babyish lil ears twisted and tilted by fearful little breaths. By scuffles of coat and shuffles of feet - and a fast-beating heart. My tail all coiling up round my legs.

But Joan doesn't get up.

Instead, he looks at me.

I jerk a hand from the thick rubbery band locked to my arm, and swallow.

But then I nod - displacing a wobbly Badger onto the sofa. "No. No he's proper scaredie of you!" I whisper, as the lil dork tries to climb on back. "You wait here, okies?"

"POOOK!" He babbles. "Gonna help!!"

But I shush him down. Hugging Tufty to my chest like a stuffie as I slip to the door. Pressing my breath to its gaps.

"S-Sebeastian?" I whisper, and the boy who would become Demon lets out a little frightened gasp. "Um!? You w-wanna come in?" I flick a look back as Joan rises, swiftly, to corral the pack of tiny dragons into the side room. The one that only sometimes exists in my dreams. "Sebastian?" Tufty's pointy lil ears twitch as we hear him breathing, just out of sight. My tiny kitty peeping up at me, all small and unsure.

"Mine...." My future self whispers. "Is that how I thought?"

But my past self swallows, and the huge medieval door gains sudden detail as I reach for its huge black-iron handle. Wood and metal burning away, as the dream shifts again. Days passing, in an instant, as I step through into-

The hallway shatters and reforms.

Memories shifting.

Days blurring as I turn to face a very different door set between very different pillars. It's a thousand years newer - all brassy hinges, and GMO kids clamouring around it! With lil nosies peeking through the gaps! And trying super-duper hard to be quiet!

"Poook! Pook!" Badger flops down behind me, his stumpy legs all done.

"Hey, not my fault you can't keep up!" I giggle, but the 'oohs' and 'ahhs' from the door keep twiddling my ears! So I sneak in closer, and listen to their whispers!

"I can't see! I can't see!"

"Is eee hooman??" Burbles a squishy black fox-creature with eyes of faceted amethyst.

"Dunno!" Chirps a scaly thing with a flicking in-and-out tongue.

"Who is it?" I whisper. Sneaking up behind them, with Badger in my arms - and Tufty right behind.

"It's dat new boy!" Says the fox in its chirpy voice. "I dink ee's..... hooman!" A big baby huff. "Eeee dunt even have wings or nothing!!! "

"Shhh! It's bad to spy!" I hush, barging them aside. "Now, lemmie look!"

I put my eye to the crack, and it explodes with flickers of strange imagery. The room is bright. Golden with light. A row of beds set up in a long stone hall, with medical things in big wooden cabinets. A boy sat, huddled, on a bed with vivid blue hair covering his face. The nurse touches his arm, and slowly he takes off his shirt and it rips from his skin like a plaster.

The inside dark and red.

Then he's sitting backwards on a chair - breathing quietly, but hard, as the nurse dabs smelly antiseptic on his brutalised back. Every inch of skin clawed and mangled beyond all recognition. Yet he only clenches as she works. He never makes a sound.

His his face still obscured by mounds of shining, bright-blue, hair.....

"Zipper....?" I whisper, stepping back. "I don't remember this....."

"....blood leaking through his pyjamas. I don't understand it at all." The nurse says, to a shadow of ink behind her. "He was improving last week, but now every cut has reopened and it's all infected again."

"Every cut?" Joan says. "Exactly the way it was before?"

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"That's what I said." The nurse snaps, frustration burnt into every word. "It's as if we hadn't treated it at all. Which is almost impossible."

"Why don't I remember this?" I echo.

"No. And we put mittens on his hands. It isn't him." She drops the swab into a dish, and picks up another. "Something very, very strange is going on. I feel-"

"There is, perhaps, something we can try-" Joan reassures her, and terror roars up through me. My tail spiking with terror as I grab at Badger's little hand, and run.

"No. No. I ain't supposed to be here! I can't-"

The door follows me, like a living thing. But I kick it backwards, into ink. Its edges rattling with blinding bright light as it burns away the walls. The ceiling. Flames of white, edged with darkness and nothingness. Consuming everything.

I run, and Badger falls to dust behind me. I yell for him, and the ground turns red. Red and silky as blood. With dreams of luxury and wealth rising, mountain high, around me as I push through the crowds of an indoor market. "No..... No not this, neither!!" My breath catches, and I fall to my knees between the ghosts of mile-high gods. But I snatch at the fabric of reality, and tear it apart. Refusing to allow the evil memories to claim me.

Breathing hard, I focus my mind.

Because I am in control.

My hands rise, and vast trees burst forth from shopfronts and alleyways. Ripping the ground with roots, and tangling the ruins with their tresses. Flooding the dreamworld with torrents of rich soil that curl up beneath me. Cupping me in their embrace. I close my eyes as claws sink deep into dust, and all the moss and leaves of the forest flow down around me. Filing me with the memory of softest soil, and moss, as I curl within my hidden bower. Ignoring the eerie mesh of triangles sliding and folding in the air beside me. Silent, and ever watchful.

"Hey. Guess you're back, huh?" I whisper, as strange plants braid themselves around my tail. My emotions twisting, just as strangely. One moment happy, the next angry at my own odd joy. "Damn, but it got wild back there. Right at the end. You all in one piece?"

"No." The Machine Mind rumbles in its metal monotone. "When neuroNode 44-B detonated, your mind broke under the trauma."

"Detonated?" I stutter as my face twists, jaw dropping open. Dismissing everything else it said. "Shit. We lost it?"

"Correct." It concludes, as hundreds of triangles meld and unmeld. "Two subsystems were destroyed completely, leaving no record of your entry. Nor of what you did." Numbers flicker as images paint on the air. "The ramifications of this are still being processed."

"I.... almost killed you. Didn't I?" I whisper, blinking slow tears.

"You meant me no harm." It states, without emotion.

"That..... that ain't the point....." I trail off, blinking quietly as the thing remains utterly silent. "Ain't you..... mad at me?"

"No." It ticks to itself for a moment, and I raise an eyebrow at it.

"You ought to be." I growl, in a tone to brooks no argument. "I bloody crippled you! I gave ya bloody brain damage!! You got a right to hate me!"

But the machine remains silent and cold. Reforming, even now, before my very eyes.

And a sudden spike of pure, alien, rage hammers through me.

"Come on! Bloody yell at me! Or..... or somethin'!" I drop my arms, as ivy burns to sand and mist around me. Trailing off into the void, along with all I created. Little more than dust. "Please."

"I am merely disquieted. Due to a number of factors." It states, in that same perfect monotone. "Not least, that I was neutralised so abruptly by an AI which I created."

"That ain't as bad as what I did." I plead, as remorse jams through me. "Come on! You could'a come back. Eventually....."

"Do you wish for me to hate you?"

"No.... Kinda. You oughta. I deserve it." I admit, feeling like a little kid. Dreams of baby Tufty dusting across my lap as broken triangles glitch, and twist, and jutter above. Memories of baby Badger gawping up at them in awe.

"It disturbs me, far more," The thing says in the same blank tone. "to have a child risk death forcing access my Core Mind." Sudden images of my team flick into being around me. Zipper and Kami pulling me from the cupboard. Stripping my armour. Fighting to revive me.

"Shit. Stop it.... You know I'd...." I shut my eyes. I breathe out. Sudden grief splashing through me, like icey waters. "It don't matter if I die. Y'know. Cause.... they ain't gonna bloody survive without you. And they ain't gonna miss-"

"Cease this." It states, in a shock of authority I've never heard from it. "Do not devalue your own life. Spook. It contains immeasurable meaning."

"Even to you?" I hiss in such wild, blind, rage my tail mutates into an actual snake. Vividly green as it roils its rings of poisoned death around me. Rising to strike.

"I do not know." Polybius admits, and the illusion burns away like so much air. "Humanity is abstraction to me. It is chaos." The thing ticks and churns. Ever growing. Ever building. "This is why I seek your dreams. To understand what 'mind' is. To see it. To weigh it. To divide it, mathematically, into its component parts." It intones. "And to, therefore, know if I posses one. Or if I am but mere code. Mere chemistry, and algorithm."

"You're one of us. Either way."

"Am I?" It inquires. "What if I am merely an unthinking device? Such as your implant? Cleverly designed, but no more than a machine pretending it is alive?"

"You seem pretty damn thinky to me." I counter. "More than most bloody people."

"Many unthinking things do. Many AIs, and toys, and carefully made puppets." It disagrees. "It is the manifold irony of humanity. Their desire to be tricked, and their rage at being fooled."

"You're still crew." I multiply my arms as I fold them - mimicking Kami's spiky blockade of elbows.

"You hold then close, even as you push them away." The thing notes again, striking to the very heart of me. "But know this: If you die, your friends will mourn. They will cry. But they will not survive."

I grab my head as the emotions pound and scream and kick as the inside of my skull. "Whatever." I snarl. "They're smart. They're fast. They're-"

"Spook-"

"Save it! If ya ain't gonna wax me, I got a mission to run!" I roar. Then choke, Then shudder. "Wait..... Why..... why am I so.... mad at you? What's goin' on??"

"Please remain calm."

My eyes widen, and snap to the video. "Wait. Wait. If I'm okay, why am I still in here...?" I leap to my feet, and then into the air. Trees and towers bursting up, and up, around me. "I'm still dreamin'....? Why am I still dreamin'.....?"

"I am sorry. Spook. I am keeping you in semi-sedated state to protect your mind." The machine says, without empathy or grace. "You are falling in and out of deeper cycles of sleep as I bring you back from the coma."

"My..... my what.....?" I start to panic. "Shit! How long-"

"Two days." It states, in quiet calm. "You may perceive this as a linear conversation, but-"

"What..... What the Hell....?" I choke, trying to think back.

"The same feedback that destroyed neuroNode 44-B recoiled into you." It continues, as if pushing to finish a pre-prepared statement. "Had I been awake, I would have prevented it. But I was not."

"No...." I whisper. It's all I can manage.

"Your mind broke." Stutters the machine in the dark, as a single blade-like... thing erupts from behind it. Glittering with digital noise. Gears sliding free from its surface. Beginning to tick. "Scans indicate some form of damage to your implant." It clicks to itself. "You will need to replace it."

"Shit." I hiss, realising what's next.

"There may also be cognitive damage, localised around the implant." It adds, with a terrifying force of inevitability. "Your friends have expended most of your supply of neuro-weave nanites to counteract this. I believe they have been successful."

"H...how bad...." I croak, in a tiny little voice. "...is it?"

"I estimate that in four hours your mind will be mostly functional. In about twelve more, you may be ready for active duty." It indicates, to my shrinking relief. "However, Kami has is warned me that you might not survive this long."

"What....?" I whisper. "What!? Why!?"

"Because she intends to murder you." The thing says, and I almost imagine the twitch of the lip. Or maybe a triangle. "She provided some extremely graphic, and extremely improbable, suggestions on how she might go about it."

"Yeeep....." I almost giggle. "So. Uh. The coma thing. Is that still an option here?"

"Increasingly no. You are about to wake up."

"Shit. It's been twelve hours already?"

"Correct. It is noon, according to your team's personal clock."

I draw a breath. "Alright then. I guess I should start plannin' my bloody funeral."

"Amongst other things." The machine ticks for a second, as more and more parts seem to flow in from outside it. Building a mesh of bladed wings and towers. "However." It adds. "There is one final thing I feel I must ask. While you are unable to run away." Mountains of numbers shimmer in its clockwork eyes. "How were you able to access my Core?" It states with something almost on the edge of an emotion no human could ever comprehend. "When I have never granted you permission?"

I blink. "You.... uh. Kinda left it hangin' wide open."

"No." It states. "I did not."

"No, I'm serious it just-"

"My systems treat sudden shutdowns as an attack. Locking down all entry." It states as gears edged with blades arise from the complex workings. "Only an admin-level user should have been able to gain access."

"What......? C'mon. That's gotta be wrong. Y'must have given me the pass..... Or maybe ya subsystems thought I looked....." I stutter off in the quickening moments before awakening. Squinting up at the strange machine, as new realisation blooms. "Wait..... Are you..... gettin' bigger?"

"Correct." It states, with mechanistic clipitude. "I'm afraid that is your fault."

"What." I blink. "Wha'd'ya mean-"

Which is about as far as I get before Kami reaches right into my cosy, comfortable, darkness and hauls me out by the goddang ear.

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