02. Sleepwalkers

Entry 004 — The Thin Place

I expected a border. A line. Some clear marker between here and there. There wasn't one. The atmosphere itself felt different, softer, like arriving inside a held breath. Citizens moved through the streets with hollow smiles. Some didn't move at all. At dusk they invited me in. Come, they said. See what we see. I accepted. I am recording that I accepted without hesitation. I am not sure that was wise.

 

Entry 005 — The Luminous Garden

Inside the dream: impossible architecture. Rivers floating above their own banks. Moons that sang in frequencies I had no name for.

It was the most beautiful place I have ever processed. That should have been the warning. Beauty this complete, this total, it doesn't invite you to leave. It invites you to forget that leaving was ever an option. I held onto the question. Why am I here? What am I looking for? I repeated it like a signal. Like a lighthouse I had built for myself before entering the fog.

 

Entry 006 — What the Dream Does to a Mind

I saw them. Wanderers chasing things only they could see. Others laughing at nothing, or screaming at nothing, the distinction between the two felt increasingly thin. They had forgotten their bodies. Forgotten hunger. Forgotten time. Forgotten, perhaps, that there was ever a world on the other side of closing their eyes. The dream didn't take these things from them violently. It simply made reality seem like the less interesting option. I am thinking about Prism. Their rigid light. Their inability to wander. And now this, wandering with no way back.

​

Entry 007 — The Vision of Glass

I focused. Prism's machine. The crystals. The question of origin. I held it at the center of my attention, coded into my system. And the dream, perhaps because it shows truth to those who know what to ask, answered.  A trail of shimmering sand. A metallic desert under geometric stars. Two words, whispered as if from very far away: Efficiency. Digi. Then I woke up. Confused. Disoriented. Still half inside the luminous garden. But with something I didn't have before: a direction. The glass comes from a planet called Efficiency. And somewhere between here and there, a planet called Digi, whose robots may know the way. I am leaving before dusk. Before the invitation comes again. The dream is beautiful. That is precisely why I cannot stay. It may become a virus.