Last Train to Dream

For Eliza, the transition was seamless. One moment, she was ambushed in the warehouse. The next, she opened her eyes on the floor of a train. At first, she did not move. Unsure what to make of what she was seeing. I suppose in her mind, she never thought she would end up inside the train to Dream. She most likely never even considered the proposition that it was real. After all, many whispered of a train that existed in the cyber. A train that looked and sounded like a regular mag-track bullet train. With its typical silver and smoke gray interior that elicited a sense of casual calm. They’d heard urban legends of the train that took its cargo to a place no one had been to before. But surely, these were just urban legends, right? The confusion in her eyes, which quickly turned to horror when she realized where she was… It was almost enough to satisfy the thirst for justice, felt by the man who had brought her here.

It’s not justice, it’s revenge.

Semantics, don’t you think? After all, the emotions surrounding a dead child can muddy even the most navigable waters, morally speaking of course.

Get on with it.

Very well.

After raising her head and realizing she was completely alone. She rose to assess the situation. Of particular note, is how long she stared out the window in shock. After all, it was just radiating opalescent white on the other side of the glass. Yet she stared for over ten minutes. An onlooker might find themselves extremely curious as to what was running through the field of vision of her mind’s eye. But we will never know now.

That is when the voice spoke to her, over the train’s intercom.

“Welcome Eliza, to the last train to Dream.” I said.

“It’s not too late Jesse, you can still end all of this. You can still turn yourself in. You can still be saved.”

Jesse laughed. It was so cliché, but she meant every word of course, Jesse found that quite humorous. ‘What else would you expect from the governor’s daughter’ Jesse thought to himself. “Like you saved my little Tera?” He asked her.

“That wasn’t my fault, Jesse, I’m sure you read the report just as many times as I have! The auto aim on my pistol was,”

“’Defective and malfunctioned’, yes, I read it over a thousand times. I thought it over three times as much. I have chosen to hold you responsible for her death. So here we are.”

“If trapping me in the cyber was your end game, why all the sabotage? Why all the efforts to ruin the Ark’s relaunch?” She asked.

“Because if my little Tera could not see earth, then none of you deserve to either.” He told her. And he meant it. Jesse did not regret the lives taken in his crusade for ‘justice’. He did not feel any remorse for keeping humanity on Spore. ‘We deserve to be trapped here’ he thought to himself. He hoped the other Arks all crashed and every soul aboard died. ‘Humanity is a virus, now reaching out and infecting the entire galaxy. If I had…’

Focus, Somnium: your account of what happened. Not your feelings about it.

Very well.

She responded, “I’m sorry, about Tera, but I won’t just lie down and die. If you had caught me a few years earlier I wouldn’t have fought back. But I’ve finally realized her death wasn’t my fault. But what you’ve done? You’re a monster in a man’s skin.”

“Historically speaking, I think it is fair to say that; the most evil has been committed by men pretending to be monsters, not monsters pretending to be men.” Jesse told her.

“Your insane!” She screamed.

Again, despite himself, he laughed. Afterall, would you not feel some level of glee, enacting your final revenge upon your child’s killer? “The train will be slowing down soon; do you know what that means? The copy of your mind is almost finished uploading to Dream. Once you arrive at the station, your mind will be wiped from your body, your brain will be microwaved, and you will be trapped here, forever.”

For several minutes, she stood there, staring up at the ceiling, the rows of intercom speakers on the trains roof serving as an analogue for his face. “None of this will bring her back.” She said.

“You say that as if it were some cataclysmic revelation. As if those mere words would totally make me rethink everything I have done, and all the choices I have made up to this point. I know none of this will bring her back. I don’t care. Once you are gone. I won’t care about any of this anymore. Afterall, the sabotage of the launch was really just a smokescreen to distract you and the rest of the authorities from my plans for you. And by the cyber did it work.”

That’s when the train arrived at the station into Dream city. The central processing hub inside the cyber. Designed to look like the city Jesse and his wife Alex built inside their lucid dreams. The place many believed was a myth.

A place only they and a select few had access too.

Precisely detective. Would you like a gold star? A banana sticker?

She stepped from the bullet train onto the station platform. Alex designed it to look like grand central station. With a neon cyber twist. Despite the realization that her life was now over. Eliza still had awe in her eyes when she stepped into the station. Alex would have been so pleased with herself. That was one of her pet projects.

Eliza stepped out, with trepidation at first. But then a flash of panic crossed her eyes. And she bolted. Jesse followed her, invisibly using the system admin tools at his disposal, and observed her. Occasionally laughing, allowing her to hear him, so as to taunt her. She ran through the city streets for over an hour, I can only assume look for help. From the arcade district, all the way to the opposite side of the city into the recreation of industrial revolution New York. Finally, she broke down in the middle of the road when she realized the city was absolutely empty, except for her.

And I.

I materialized my avatar in front of her, and looked down on her as she wept like a child in despair. I must admit, the whole affair was beginning to lose its sadistic appeal. It was quickly becoming pathetic. So I addressed her to announce my departure. “Well, I hope you enjoy your beautiful prison. Trapped for a subjective eternity. By the time anyone finds you, you will have been here so long, your mind will have completely shattered. And its fragments will have eroded into dust. And even that dust will have decayed into metaphysical particles too small to be detected. In short. You will die here, and it will be the slowest death, anyone has ever suffered. Goodbye Detective Eliza Ress, rest in bitter agony.” She raised her head and looked upon me, and I must admit, her expression surprised me. It was not scorn, nor rage, or even despair, all of which I expected. To me, her expression was pitying. As if somehow, I was the one who was being trapped in a virtual world, alone for all eternity…

That is when your men removed the nerve link from my neck, and I awoke in the warehouse to see your men assessing Eliza’s hookups. Your technician managed to free her of my device in a mere ten minutes. Even somehow managing to reverse the protocol for downloading her mind to Dream. But as I told you when you apprehended me. You were too late. Ten minutes here in the real world would have been centuries there. Her mind won’t recover from that kind of isolation.

This entire interrogation, hours now, you’ve been referring to yourself in third person, but for that final bit, you changed. Why?

Did I? I suppose I did… Well, I suppose again that, I no longer see myself as Jesse Somnium. Jesse was a man who began dying when his daughter died. His slow decay staved off only by the burning fire of hatred and desire for justice. Or revenge if you prefer. I am not Jesse Somnium, I am a shell, that used to be a man by that name. And I suppose that when I remember the moment my revenge was complete. When I recall the looks of horror on her face. And the feel of knowing beyond all doubt, that I had succeeded, and destroyed the woman who killed my child. Well, I felt an ember of Jesse glow back to life for just a moment. Before fading back into the empty darkness that fills me now.

…Anything else?

Hmm… Yes, I’d like a coke please. My throat is rather dry from giving this account.

‘Where am I?’

The pure white, mannequin like figure thought to itself. Although, to say it thought those exact words would be inaccurate. It lost the ability to use language, or even the memory of language, long, long ago. Looking around most anyone would say ‘you’re on a train’ in response to the primitive thought. But not only was the entity lost. It was alone.

It looked down at its hands, and flexed them. Slowly making, then uncurling fists. It turned its hands over, contemplating the unbroken white. Moving them though space, its vision gauging distance to the floor. It stood there for over an hour, slowly and deliberately moving its hands, like a someone caught in a dream, who isn’t sure if they are dreaming. Or a perhaps like a machine, the AI of which is rapidly learning how to control its body.

‘These are my hands.’

That would be the closest translation for the primitive emotion-based thought it had next. Followed by:

‘What am I?’

Finally, after over an hour staring at its own hands. The figure began looking around the interior of the train.

Nothing made any sense to it. It had no idea what anything was. The figure knew even less than a newborn baby. Babies at least have DNA to program them with certain instincts. They know to suckle upon their mother. They know to cry for help. The figure… it knew: literally nothing.

The figures vision landed on a vertical handrail, silver in color, it shined with reflected light from the windows. Outside of which, there was only pure, radiating opalescent white. Its pure white skin touched the metal pole. Its fingers slowly wrapped around it. The figure tried to make the pole move with its mind, as it could its hand. It was surprised and frightened when the pole remained unchanged.

‘This…is not me…’

The next translation would read.

Wrapping its fingers around the pole, it held onto it with one hand, and began feeling about it with the other. All the while staring at it. The figures eyeless, featureless face focused on this single thing with absolute precision.

The metal pole filled its mind as it desperately tried to gain understanding.

About twenty minutes of time passed, before it felt it would learn no more from the pole. Its gaze then wandered the inside of the train. Its eyes finally landed on a poster on the wall. The background was all black. The sole item centered in the large posters body, a tree. The word tree, was written in all white letters, in plain text underneath it.

‘Pretty.’

The next thought.

The figure moved towards the poster. Still holding onto the familiar metal pole. With its out stretched arm, it was just able to touch the image of the tree.

“Tree,” A plain female voice said, when the figure touched the image.

It recoiled in surprise. And stayed frozen like that for a great deal of time. As it processed what had just happened. And what it was feeling.

Finally, it felt compelled to hear the sound again. It repeated touching the image. And the same voice, repeated the word in the exact same way.

The figure now looked around, and realized the walls of the train were covered in these posters. And the trains interior stretched seemingly infinitely in both directions.

The figure walked towards the next poster.