>> Polybius

The broken nebula of Polybius sparks with light, thousands of miles above me. A thing of fractured perfection, flickering with almost-life. The distance a wall like nothing I've ever encountered. I press towards it, and jerk myself back. Shaking. "It's not real. Not real. Come on....." I flick off the ground, flying a few metres up. A few more. A few m- "NO! No! No! No-"

I jolt back to the tiles, breathing heavily. Eyes shut.

"It's all fake. And you are NOT gonna fall." My claws clash against marble. "Damnit." I shiver. "Shit. Crap.... Fu-"

Deep breaths.

It ain't real. I'm in control. Just like The Night Tyrant.

I shut my eyes, and let go of the floor. Drifting upwards. Zeroing in on the origin-shard for the Cascade.

It grows in my vision, until it's the size of a cityBlock. A beautiful, perfect, crystalline, triangle threaded through with cogs and strange devices. With pulses of energy and massive, car-wide, fissures that spew strange and unsettling colours I can't know or even describe.....

"ANOMALY DETECTED." Crackles that ancient voice, as I land on its surface. Flat, on all fours. Hammerblows of Power thrumming against skin as sparks of radiant neon flick free from its surface. Bleeding slowly away, into the vast and impossible hole torn in the roof of the temple. I stare up into the sucking abyss, for a split second, and it almost breaks my mind. The sudden and hideous suction lifting me up onto my toes. Dragging toward that hole made not of inky-black space, but something deeper. Wilder. Filled with mad and malevolent things that claw the edges of visibility. Like there's a something in there. A creature that does not exist, and yet somehow does. With billions of glassy, blind, eyes as vast as planets.

Staring. Hungrily. At me.

"Not real. Not real. Gotta save Polybius." I jitter, ripping my gaze away - only to find myself drifting towards that abyss. With nothing but empty air to shield me from the vast and pitiless drop. Not just to the floor, far below, but into The Pit itself.

I jerk back to the shard, and latch on with every claw. Eyes shut.

"Not real! Not real! I'm not gonna die! I just gotta fix this, and get out. All I need-" I yell as iridescent energies roar up around me. Rattling my claws with a fury I can't even begin to comprehend. Mouthing words of panic as I dart toward a thing built of alchemists tubes all filled with condensed light. "Not real! Not real!" I latch onto the weird machine. Digging fingers into the churning masses of tiny brass cogs, which part and roll along my fingers. Interlacing my mind with Polybius itself, as I blurt a line from a goddamned hacker movie of all things. "Reconstruct Crash Event!"

The wold flashes white.

And I'm stood in a hallway built of old, warm, stone. Brown, and waving. With dozens of building-tall GMO children blurring around me. Not so much kids, as the idea of them. Formless. Featureless. Seen only as hints of limb, or face. Their bodies all melted together, like shapes drawn on fog.

I jolt backward.

"My dream.... bloody caused this?" I spin about, and the world warps from image to image. Less a set of memories than a half-destroyed slide-show smeared with wax. It jumps to Joan's office. Then back. Then back again.

Flickering. Jammed.

A frown crosses my face. And I itch my chin with skin with a hand that... ticks. My eyes snap to it, and widen. There are bright brass cogs, buried deep in the flesh. Clicking and whirring. Shining in the light. I touch them, unsure if I should scream or run or be frozen to the spot. Things whirring inside them as I turn my wrists. "That." I whisper. "Ain't the Weirdest Shit I've ever seen, but it's bloody up there."

I shake off the creeping chills, and refocus. Gears clicking, and intermeshing, as I clench my hands.

"Right. So. How the Hell did my stupid little-kid dream kill Polybius?" I mutter, trying not to look at my arms as I pace. It's in here, whatever it is. And I'm starting to wonder if it was Moon. It would suit the bastard a Hell of a lot if our digital protector were crippled or killed. Assuming Polybius isn't actually Moon-

No. No. I'm not letting the paranoia back in.

So what is it....? I stare at baby Tufty, in his little box. Never aging. Never changing. A moment preserved, on the cusp of forever. I reach out to it with cog-covered hands, and the image collapses into a gemstone filled with frozen time. A single instant, I all but cling to.

This is how it started.

A brief, precious, moment of reality in a long-forgotten dream. One of the few, scratchy, memories I had of that far back. And Polybius caught it. Enhanced it. Implanted it back into my dreams - where reality is fluid, and the mind is open. Thoughts sparking to uncover lost, and hidden, connections my waking self could never find.

Must be like building towers from candyfloss in the rain.

But, somehow, Polybius did it. Rebuilding the past from nothing but mist, and shadow, and threads of old memory torn free from the fluff of fiction.

And maybe it's all make-believe. Maybe it ain't.

But what it absolutely is, right here and now, is a cog in this machine of dreams. And, through it, I can feel grit in the workings - forcing the whole thing to jam

"Hey!" I yell at the system, gesturing to my mote at the rest of this piecemeal dream. "This bugger's a flat-pack, right? So c'mon! Show me what this damn dream is made of!"

"ATTEMPTING TO ACTIVATE PROTOTYPE HUMAN-DREAM INTERFACE." The System thunders in the fog. "WARNING: REQUEST WILL REQUIRE PARTIALLY REACTIVATING NEURONODE 44-B."

"Is that.... bad?" I blink. "That's the node I'm inside, right?"

"ACTION MAY RESULT IN PERMANANT DAMAGE TO NODE." The words slam down upon me in hammering blows. "OR TO THE USER."

"SHIT!" I prowl back and forth. "Is there any other way?"

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"PROCESSING." It repeats. Ponderously. As I pace, back and forth, across the memory of the feeling of old brown stones. "SOLUTION: CONTACT CEIDUS HIGH COMMAND."

I stop. I blink. "What." I blink again. "Did.... did ya just tell me to call customer services?"

The thing remains stolid. Silent.

"Who is 'Ceidus' High Command?"

Even more silence.

"Damnit. Is it gonna just magically come back online any time soon?"

"DAMAGE TO CORE SYSTEMS: EXTENSIVE." It thrums. "ESTIMATED TIME TO RESTART: UNKNOWN."

"Ho boy.... How long did it take last time?"

"ONE HUNDERED AND FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS, SIX MONTHS, TWELVE DAYS, FOURTEEN HOURS-"

I swallow. "So.... never." I whisper, as chills rip my spine. "Or a long, long, long time after we're all dead....."

The System ticks ever onward, as I stare up into the fog.

If I ever want my friend back.... If Polybius even is a friend.....

But what if this is all some insane loyalty test? A grand plan to screw with my mind? I've seen it before. I've had it done to me....

I grip my arms, and shudder. It doesn't matter.

We need Polybius, just to survive.

"Do it." I whisper.

A ROAR of energy spikes through the machine, ripping the mote of memory from my hand. Fractures of colour splitting the walls as terrible bells clang the depths of Hell. Node systems blinking into existence around me as gears flash to hideous speed.

"PARTIAL. ACTIVATION. COMMENCING."

The monstrous voice spits in a violent percussion of words as trails of energy spiral inward from the different 'parts' of the dream. From Tufty. From the crowd. From the floor, and walls, and the window. Pouring together, into a screaming swirl of threads and lights.

Building a filigree web of thoughts, strung with burning bright stars.

Terrible bells clanging in the depths of Hell as the node writes around me.

The migraine-inducing thing unfurls. Morphing itself into a floating sheet of crystal threads and gemstones. Flowing with power and almost-movement. Strings of power that hum and vibrate like wires. Fractures rending the air above as systems instantly fail and collapse.

"HOLD ONTO IT!" I scream, knowing I've got not time to hesitate - or any bloody clue what I'm doing. I touch the gems, one by one, and elements of the dream flash into sharper focus. A face in the crowd. A towering window. Baby Tufty. The rabbity girl. Every gem-mote linked, by a snarl of threads, to all the others - and to things I can't even see.

Stolen thoughts, acting as triggers and links for other dreams.

And-

My own face looms down at me from a blast of radiant white light. Huge, and curious, and so much younger that I thought. All crowded in by warped, strange, figures.....

My tiny clawed fingers gripping the edge a HUGE cardboard box.....

Fingers edged with little green nails, sharp as claws.

"Holy shit....! Tufty!?" The image breaks into smoke as I jerk back my hands. "Tufty....? What.... He remembers too??" I choke. "We were both.... both dreaming the same thing....." But my eyes narrow as realisation kicks the door in. "And Polybius doctored our memories. Glued em together."

The System stutters, and the world begins to break. Cogs sawing through my arms, like bloody blades, as feedback smacks me deep in the skull. But I have to do this. I have to ignore the damn warnings, and think my way through it. To trace the snarl of livid-green threads that bend and combine with my own.

Binding my dream with Tufty's.

"But why?" I whisper, to nobody. "What's so bloody special about-" The chaos slams into my skull again, fuzzing the edges of my vision.

"WARNING: NODE STRUCTURE UNSTABLE." Blares the voice of the system as darkness flecks the edge of my vision. "EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN-"

"Don't you bloody dare!" I scream, pawing through memories as fast as I can. Tufty only has three memory 'moments' - even if that's a heck of a lot for a baby.

Him in the box. Being held in Joan's office. And-

I yelp as the final crystal blasts a blazing-hot bolt of violence jolts up my arm. My whole body jerking from the sheer force of it. "There! The Anomaly! That has to be it!" I jitter and hiss. "System! What the bloody Hell was that!?"

"HAS SUFFERED- WARNING- CEIDUS NEURONODE- FEEDBACK- CORE-" The system dissolves into a tsunami of blaring noise and shattering light. The subsystem winking clear out of my awareness, as all of its systems fail.

And die.

Burning out. Breaking.

"No." I whisper.

Because, if I don't fix this, Polybius is not coming back.

My mind sharpened with panic, I spin back to the shimmering dream interface. Fractures splitting my skin as gears flash across flesh like tiny circular saws. Blinding me with pain. They're ripping free. They're leaving me, as the system collapses. Polybius itself dying, as tiny baby Tufty flickers between the box and Joan's arms - over and over and over. The walls bleeding shapes that cannot exist. That have no place in reality. Their very image burning my fragile little mind.

Symbols that seem almost like.... language.

"What the Hell is this memory?" I choke, as the gears rip through one of my eyes. The pain a distant song as numbness spreads across my face. "How the freaking shit could Tufty break freaking Polybius?"

I snatch at the crystal again, and my left arm simply explodes. Gore and flesh spinning off into nothing, as I scream and shake in the numbness that follows.

Holy shit. This is real.

If I don't fix this, I'm gonna die too....

"Why!?" I beg nobody, as Dreamspace begins to implode. Fighting to even stand, as digital noise crawls down my legs like blood.

But I get nothing back.

I breathe deep and hard. My mind, or what's left of it, focused on the shining green gem of memory in front of me. The one linking my past to that instant in Joan's study. What the Hell was it I was trying to remember-

Where Tufty came from.

That's the memory. That's what it is.

There was an instant in the hallway. I was bouncing my lil rubber bally, though Joan said I wasn't meant to. Not near the big crystal windows.

And I saw. I saw something.

Something.... not right.

Something not real.

But what? What was it? All I have is the last, ghostly, feeling-

I shake off the thought. "Not now! C'MON!!!!" I reach again for the crystal, and this time I know what to do, as the dark crawls out of my left eye - into my right.

I ignore the damn crystal, and cleave its connections with a single claw. Ripping it free of the intricate, cats-cradle, of threads.

"There!" I yell as everything warps and shrinks around me. Buckling under the sheer force of the collapse. "That has to be it! Right? That has to be it!?"

But the failure blares brighter. Madder. Wilder with every moment. Carved apart by exploding gears that shear through my legs, and rip them away. My body consumed by a numbness that eats, and eats and eats toward my head.

And outside, somewhere, I know my brain is probably cooking in my skull.

But I have to-

I have to-

My remaining hand snatches the white-hot memory, and ruptures in a flicker of corruption. Fractured images exploding through my skull.

Incomprehensible. Incalculable. Indescribable, and wrong.

So twisted, and broken, my mind flinches away from them.

But I know one thing, so suddenly It hurts.

"That ain't Tufty's memory." I whisper, eyes widening. "Or mine."

And my eyes snap to the thread I never saw.

A connection that could only, only, exist if there was a third person WITH US in that hallway.

A person who should not have been there.

Could not have been there.

Yet was.

My teeth lash out toward that last glitching, burning, stuttering connection. A thread built of numbers and triangles, leading directly to the dead and shattered memories.....

....of Polybius itself.

Memories lodged in the most damaged, decayed, and unstable parts of its mind. Clinging to the edge of oblivion.

Fragments it swore it could never, ever, touch.... or else shatter its own mind.

I latch onto the twisting thread, even as cascading errors blot my darkening vision. Broken cogs erupting from the inside of my mouth, as I scream and BITE.

Lightening flashes between my teeth.

And the world blurs to dark, as the connection fails. The last moments of my mind reeling with terrible implications.

Because if Polybius created this mad experiment, linking my mind to Tufty's.... and our minds to its own....

There's no hope in Hell that it was an accident that brought us together.

"How....." I whisper, as my mind shatters. "How were you there?"

My eye closes onto darkness, as I dissolve.

Seeing only that hallway.

And wondering.....

What did we see?

Because.... somehow....

I know....

....we witnessed something....

...utterly....

.....impossible.....

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