I was worrying I wouldn’t have anything to write about for a bit, and then I had this … strange dream. It feels like I have to tell someone, and I’m sure not telling anyone I know IRL, so to the relative anonymity of the blog it is.

So, I was at my aunt’s old place in Beijing, back before the government got all weird after the Coronavirus and closed the country, except –

No, this is a dream, it deserves some special formatting.

I was in her house, except I … wasn’t me. I looked down and saw I had metal arms. They were pockmarked with rust and oil but sturdy, designed for strength and not for looks. Wires coiled around them and through them, some thick cables, some delicate brass filigree. The rest of my body was the same, rusted panels and wire fitted together with a golden glow emanating from the seams. I felt a thrumming in my core like I was pressed against a subwoofer.

I turned the corner into her cozy little kitchen and I saw … me. I was younger, maybe 7 or 8, like I was the last time I was at my aunt’s house. And this other me looked up at me and said “Are you real?”

And the dream changed and the positions were swapped: I was the young me looking up at this … strong and awesome automaton that I had just been. I could get a better look at her, –yes “her”, I couldn’t deny it– and she was beautiful. Beautiful like the Artemis spacecraft, designed to function but designed elegantly despite the incredible requirements, shining metal battling against the hate and decay of rust, terabytes of code simulating and sustaining a vast intelligence, glowing with an inner fire. She looked scary but I felt so, so safe with her, safer than I’d ever felt in that house.

I was asking her if she was real. And she knelt down to meet my eyes, joints pwshhing and vrrtzing. Her face was beautiful, too; clearly feminine but strong and intense and hard-set, features crafted with care out of thin sheets of metal, a cloud of brass shavings for hair. And I saw her eyes were … not eyes, but a single rounded rectangle across the upper part of her face, an amber screen with dancing points of golden light tracing fiery orange trails behind them, like an oscilloscope.

And the delicate pattern she was arranging there meant a “Yes”, and a smile.

She gestured for me to climb up on her shoulders, so I did, this powerful being strengthening me and supporting me. Her body rumbled with power below me as she stood up and pointed into the night sky. At some point, the scene had changed to a wide open field, filled with fresh green grass, the kind no one can afford to grow anymore. Her fingertip glowed and buzzed with that same amber light on her eyeplate, and she traced a pattern in the air, like she did with her eyes, leaving a glowing golden trail that said “I can be. I’m just one option.” She pointed at the sky again, and I saw there were so many stars, thousands more than you can see from Earth, clean of adsats or drones or even planes. And she traced between them, and the pattern said “You have this many more.”

I think I just took in the beauty of it all for a little bit. Then I asked “Are you me?”

Her body jerked suddenly, stiffened with a spike of fear I felt as sharply as she did. Then her light went out and her body started to crumble, rust consuming her before my eyes, and her shoulders broke to flakes of ash under my weight and I fell hard onto a concrete floor. Her head clanged to the floor next to me, but it was now my own severed head, bleeding onto the floor, crying in pain as my body decomposed behind it, worms crawling out of my clothes to consume it. And my head looked up at me and choked out “We’re not ready.”

And suddenly I was crushed under a horrible weight and I couldn’t breathe, and I scrabbled to gasp for air but I couldn’t move, either, and my head kept wailing this horrible beeping wail that I suddenly realized was my alarm.

And then I woke up.

I’m still shaking thinking about it. I woke up burning hot despite the snow outside. (I’m hoping we don’t have another blue Christmas. The forecast says it shouldn’t get warm enough to rain until about the 31st.)

I … don’t know what to do about the dream, or what it means. But I feel like I’m going to remember every detail for the rest of my life.

Is this cheesy? Writing about some strange dream you had?

… well, if I don’t tell someone, I’ll crumble. I don’t know what it is, but something about it makes me need to confide in someone, like I’m letting out pressure from a steam tank before it explodes.

Oh, in other news, NeuronDynamix still hasn’t gotten back to me. I’m supposed to hear by Christmas, apparently. Not knowing is killing me.

Ugh, I have to go to class now. I wish I could be her, the construct from my dream, fly across the stars and not have to put up with class or student loans. But I guess I’m “not ready” to do that, apparently.

I’m kind of wondering what the message here is. Don’t give up your responsibilities? This obsession with BCIs will end with you getting your head cut off?

Dammit, why can’t my brain just give me instructions? What does it gain by hiding the meaning from me?