>> This Is A Dream. Except It Isn’t.

## Polybius neuroNode [44-B] :: [CORE PROCESS] was [TERMINATED] by [ERROR], [UNKNOWN], [ANOMALY]

## Polybius neuroNode [44-B] :: [EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED]

The Falling Dream begins the same way, every time. First, there is darkness, thick as smoke. Whiling up from beneath me. As if my bed were on fire. As if I were on fire. As if I were burning. Burning in neon and scalding-hot pain. Pain so real it burns through the dark. Burns through me. Yet my mind is a haze, and I am drifting. Drifting.

As if with some terrible weight.

In cacophony, and mayhem, I spin in that ink. Torn by its terrible light. By unknowable words, and billions of voices. A swarm of noise and chaos and hammering metal, that spirals the universe around me. I struggle. I scream.

And then.... the world, cracks.

The world, sunders.

And I fall toward a monster. The Monster. The greatest of monsters - in all of its spender, and glory.

The City.

A thing of terrible colour and shadow, build of endless dreams and nightmares.

But glittering with promise.

Gleaming with light, and hope.

And blood.

And fury.

As neon carves it from the pure, and utter, dark of the Deeps in which it dwells.

Giving shape to things of ink you could call people.

Things that watch me, from their glowing yellow windows.

In the dream, I have wings - and they burn as I try to fly.

They sear me.

They hurt.

They tear from my body, and rend the shadows that hide me.

Leaving me naked. Broken, already.

And yet I fall.

I fall.

Back first.

Shrinking into a ball, as the titanic pillars of our underground world go skinning past.

Past things with hearts of metal, beating the raw power of fusion.

They could be gods - the way they stand.

They could be titans of old - waiting in the dark to crack the surface of the world above.

To grow like vast and hideous trees.

To retake the world from which they were cast.

They reach for me, as I tumble - those monstrous gods.

The clutch at me, and snarl.

And I know that any one of them could take me.

To eat me in but a single, tiny, bite.

But I fall through their embrace.

Their rusted hands.

Blurring past infinite floors.

Screaming.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Terrified.

As they roar at me in the dark, with mouths full of fire and eyes.

With teeth made of towers, and sins made of ink.

And shadow things, with long stringy limbs, watching with hunger from great silent windows.

Billions of them.

Trillions.

I hit the cloud-layer, and it blasts its raw and biting acid across my skin.

A storm to scour away all tears, and dirt, and hope.

Hollowing your soul. Burning its edges, like a flame.

And washing scraps of ash from barren, broken, skin.

And still I fall.

And fall.

And fall.

Naked, and cold, and burning in the rain.

I am unseen, and yet every eye fixates upon me.

I am nobody. I am alone.

Yet all the world will see me die.

I am lost. I am afraid.

Tumbling toward jagged rooftops, and gaunt walkways.

Spinning as I fly between their daggers, and their strands.

Toward caverns of jagged fire, and rot-soaked metal.

Toward vast and monstrous things of rust and dirty glass.

And I am a but child of bone and flesh to break upon them, nothing more.

Lesser nightmares send their dark-thing hands of iron to grip at me.

To cut. To cleave.

And I am torn. I am broken anew.

The pain is like nothing in a dream.

The pain is sharp.

Vile, and vital.

Cold, and aware.

Part of my very self is taken, and devoured.

And then another.

Another.

Another....

Yet something falls through their grip.

Something....

Me.

I turn as I tumble. Still naked and torn.

I drop my eyes from Heaven, and look upon Hell.

And beneath me, is everything that Heaven is not.

The footsteps of shining skyscrapers that touch no sky.

That hold up the roof of a cavern, instead.

No.

Beneath that.

Beneath.

Beneath the sea of roiling smoke, rising from their feet.

Beneath the storm.

And metal.

And dark.

And violence.

To a hungering void - built deep beneath the tread of mere mortal, metal, gods.

And still.

Still.

Still, I fall.

Past the twisted hulks of shanty tenements.

All crooked angles and rusty metal.

Past windows no human would make, twisted into scowls and snarls and sneers - directed at me.

I see nothing inside them, yet they stare.

Yet they howl.

Yet they bite.

Yet they reach to devour me, with hunger tenfold.

The whole City does.

Every bit of it.

Every part, eager to devour me.

With not a single ledge to grab, that will not bite my hand.

But I never need to reach for them.

For they grab my wrists ankles with things made of lampposts.

My ankles with great iron bars.

My neck with snaking rat-runs, that helter and skelter.

Each of them gripping, and tearing.

Needing me.

Ripping me.

Eating me away, with a thousand starved arms - desperate for flesh.

With hands, and with fingers.

With terrible eyes.

Clawing through skin.

Tangling me down.

Dragging me.

Plunging me.

Carrying me away, into their vast and senseless maze.

Choking my throat with treacherous ladders.

Binding my heart, with great crushing roads.

As roaring Hell-winds give demon voices to the limp-hanging cables

Setting them to sing.

To moan, and to rattle.

To curse, and to chant.

To spark, and to wither.

As the water sips power from hacked-up junctions.

Flickering the lights of The Above.

And The City crows its vast and hateful joy.

Sealing my exits, with fingers of rebar and lead.

With cables and nightmares.

With wires that wrap me.

Dragging me down.

Down.

And Down.

And Down.

Forever, without end.

Binding me up in those billions of threads.

Twisting me up, into knots and convulsions.

Sawing my flesh with razors strung on wires.

As I fall.

And fall.

Crushing me tighter.

Breaking my bones.

Smashing my arms upon clifftops and gantries.

Hammering my head upon rust and on spite.

Binding me.

Blinding me.

Breaking me.

Filling up my throat.

Choking.

Choking.

Choking me, still.

But in the deep.

In the dark.

In the utter, utter, void.

The black beyond any black.

Beyond any sense of light.

I see.....

I see....

I see..... a hand.....

And I reach out.

Fingers, slipping across fingers.

Fingers tearing at fingers.

Slick from the rain.

Slick from the blood.

The blood without end.

And still I fall.

But the hand is still there.

The hand, and-

Somehow.

Somehow.

It grips me.

It slows me.

Filling me with life.

Burning through me.

But then.

Right at the very last second.

Right when I think I've been saved.

There's no hand at all.

No hand to save me.

And I fall.

I fall.

Fall.

Fa-

....

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