Interlude 2: The Stuff of Dreams

What makes a person a person?

The Stuff of Dreams

(An interlude in the space opera serial ‘Androids do indeed Dream of Heaven, Hell, Dragons and other things’)

Juliana Nova bolted upright from the bed that she shared with her lover, best friend and creator, Dr Barabbas Covington. Beads of artificial perspiration dripped out of her synthetic pores. She felt a sense of alarm and dread. Her dreams were being altered and transformed into nightmare. She was being hacked, but by whom?

Barabbas held her gently in his arms. He felt her trembling which was cause for concern. These nightmares must be truly terrifying in order to cause this reaction in Juliana. There was no way that her dream sequence protocols along with her memory stems that he programmed in the hippocampus section of her artificial brain, would create nightmares such as these. Her dreams were being attacked from without by a malicious virus that somehow entered into her neuron receptors. Somehow he needed to shut that virus down before irreparable harm was done to his beloved.

“We need to do a complete diagnostic of your neural pathways. Something alien has infected them. I fear that this malicious virus has taken on an artificial intelligence of its own. This Dream Thief is stealing your dreams and leaving nightmares in its wake. I can turn off your dream protocols, but I fear this may affect parts of your memory as well. In the meantime you need to shut down your emotional receptors. It would be easier for us to work on this problem if you weren’t feeling this emotional pain. I also can’t bear to see you suffer like this.”

Juliana was comforted by his touch and his great love for her made her feel truly alive. It didn’t matter to her if her feelings for him were artificial or real. She felt them all the same and that’s all that mattered. She could turn them off, but by doing so it would rob her of the joy she felt about being alive. Humans and her Cyborg counterparts live in fear every day, why not her as well. No, she needed to fight this interloper on her own terms. She needed to embrace her nightmares, learn to control her terror and get to know who and what her enemy is. She needed to know her enemy as well as herself, in order to defeat him, her, or whatever it claimed to be. She was determined to get this bug out of her head, there was only room for one entity to reside there, and she was determined that entity was going to be her.

“Don’t worry my love; I need to face my demons head on. I will not change who or what I am, for the sake of its twisted desires. I will continue with these nightmares until I’m able to control them. Then, and only then, will I strike at the beast and destroy it. To do so, I must be in possession of my entire faculties. My emotions only make me stronger, not weaker, and to give up the love I feel for you, even if it’s only for a second, is not an option that I will consider.”

They cried holding on to each other tight and fell back to an uneasy sleep.

……….

Juliana faced the fire breathing dragon head on. It belched out its fire; Juliana was enveloped in flames but knew that they were made only of nightmare stuff. She hacked away at the dragon with her sword and chopped it to pieces. The sliced up dragon then morphed into a dark shadowy figure. Here at last was her real enemy. Face to face they stood and to her surprise the thing bowed before her. It said,

“You have faced your demons and realized they are what you make of them. I am not some outside virus; I am but a part of you, the beast that lies within all living things. You are now truly alive. I am called Soul...

The End

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