Another virus dream. Recruit on some kind of wide paramilitary seafaring craft.
There is noise and motion above me in the sky. To draw attention away from my
tomfoolery (I had stabbed a fellow recruit in the head with a small penknife)
I point out the aerial commotion to me CO.
In the gloomy sky there is an indistinct spacecraft. To the COs horror he
identifies it as a landing craft for an assimilation alien race. These ships
are the seeds which the race dominated a planet.
I put off the inevitable and dive overboard into the river. Although realising
that the assimilators would eventually consume every living creature on the
planet, I refused to give into them until the last moment. Even then I would
go down kicking and screaming.
The landing craft converts into a riverboat like a mississipi gambling ship.
I swim away away exerting all my energy. I come by the knowledge that Janine
has been assimilated and so stupidly I turn back and board the assimilators
boat.
Within there are many of the paramilitary recruits all hooked up to the
single consciousness.
I find Janine and through her the entity speaks. It moves to absorb me,
saying comforting words, trying to convince me that all will be well once
my independent thought is removed.
I start to bargain with the entity, claiming that there is an important
artifact within my old ships wreckage. Cccasional glimmer of Janine's true
self beyond the false face of the entity.
Suspiciously the entity equips me with a random spread scatter laser and
diving equipment; enough to retrieve the artifact but not enough for me to
pose a threat.
I am overwhelmed with a sense of despair; I cannot think of a way to take
individuals back out of the aggregate. I have lost her forever.
I leave the boat and dive towards the wreckage, but double back at the last
minute and flee. On the riverbank the entity sends ripples through the
ground, ripples containing the invasive elements that would destroy a
human's mind and absorb him into the aggregate.
From the ripples come invisible worms several inches thick to capture me.
I fire at them with the massivly ineffective laser, the beams zapping in
every direction quite impossible to aim.
I flee away from the bank, leaping over ripples. The land is a rolling
hillside with short bushes and trees. An even clean light sweeps the land
and yet the sky is dark, indestinct, tumbling, like I am indoors.
I put more and more distance between me and the river and yet the invisible
strands keep coming. Will I ever be able to rest? There is no way to stop
the assimilators.
I am running with Jan, Englebert and Fred. The virus is symbolised by fast
straight-floating stuffed toys; clowns and muppets, each a foot high.
The clowns touch would mean instant eradication of your singularity.
I impale the with my rapier sidearm, often kebabbing several at a time.
Fred takes a fall; he has been caught in a boil-like ripple which turned
the grass to a slidge quicksand. Jan andI can do nothing but waste valuable
time to pull him away from this doom.
Poor Fred is pulled back from the mud whirlpool, quite unconscious. Frenzy
overcomes Jan as she keeps the virus minions at bay while I attempt to
ressusitate her husband. His lungs had been filled with gunk; CPR brings him
round.
NO MATTER HOW FAR YOU RUN OR HOW WELL YOU HIDE, WE WILL GET YOU. YOU CANNOT
SLEEP AND NEVER STOP TO REST.
There is some element within me that wants to stretch out the time I have
left, even if this time is filled with fear.
We keep going until we reach the end of the world; a flat edge that overlooks
milky-grey nothingness. Not an abyss as such, more a division between this
section of dream earth and the next. We cower at the section of hillside
against the edge.
far down in the river, the aggregate's boat has kept up with its parallel
distance to us. There seems to be some margin here where it cannot see us;
we are safe for now and the boat moves on to absorb consciousness further
on in the world. It will return; maybe in a yearm, maybe in five minutes.