Beware the artificials. Beware. It sounds like a freaking videogame or some cliche sign in a fantasy or sci-fi book that has a cliche plot and a cliche main character that acts based only on emotion and a cliche enemy that hates the world because of some cliche thing that happened in the past.

Artificials? The artificial intelligence? What does that have to do with anything? Or maybe it has to do with everything, because everyone might be in the same predicament as me, trapped in this world in which only fragments of things remain. Or maybe they’re all in the same world but aren’t able to respawn, throwing away the responsibility that comes with sex. Maybe people are less careful about sex now. Or maybe it comes with the responsibility of an artificial baby, one created through a computer generated genetic code. CGGC. It’s a palindrome. CGGC. I laugh at my tangent, that I would even laugh at my tangent, that I would even laugh about laughing at my tangent… Inception. Inception into inception. God, I feel like I’m becoming mental.

And then there’s another thought to hang on to. Vie. The name appears in my mind like big flashing letters on the streets of a big city, asking to be read but too poppy to read. Someone is there that I need to connect to. Someone that I know, someone on the outside, someone who can help me.

I need to get to the control center, but I don’t know why. I feel like I’m being pursued. I run into the house, grab my keys, and open the garage door. The beamer sits still, lights glaring at me. Why are they on?

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I open the garage door and get into the car. It’s silver, I realize. Silver, and red on the inside. It’s different. It doesn’t matter. Yet.

I start the car and drive it out, heading to the parallel of the building that I think that my real body is in. Where Vie is. Where the answers to my questions might be. Then it’s snowing and my car hits a patch of ice. It spins out of control and rams straight into a ditch. I change gears to reverse and the car whines, but it doesn’t pull free.

Why did it have to start snowing? I stare at the gloomy skies. Great. Make my mood worse.

Then I see something in the distance move. I turn off my car and open the door until it gets stuck against the snow bank. Easing myself out, I glare at the unhelpful thing of a different color. I thought it would be cool having my own BMW, but no. It’s not, because it changes colors to something worse and I’m in a world that seems to hate me.

I trudge toward the thing in the distance. It’s a guy, tuckered down in a trench coat, a russian wool cap and leather combat boots. Mr. Peterson. I never knew he had any style, that old neighbor of mine. Wait, he’s alive? When I walked into his house all I saw was his foot cut off at the ankle.

He comes closer and I take an involuntary step back. He stops, waves, smiles. Comes closer. He seems so harmless, and I don’t know what it is I’m so afraid of. My heart beats deafeningly in my ears and suddenly I’m running away from him. Back on the road from whence I came. And I eventually pass out.