Thread: I Was a Dream [TriniMad & Sprouts]

Movement. It was a hollow ringing and his hearing had once been so acute and now it was - not. Just movement now, without anything clear enough for him to identify - he couldn't tell the sound of a breeze from the sound of a footstep. Something was out of place. Everything was out of place. He flexed his hand again, let it drop to get a handle on how the rest of him was functioning not well. If his fingers would work, he would let them do the work - they moved along the table, crawled, really, until he found its edge. Words. There were words, or something like them, but they echoed and thrummed, the higher pitch of a female human, the choppy cadence of fear, the soft tones of hesitancy, and then the questions, but they barely registered. They barely registered in the depths of his neural network, or what passed for one right then - his mind had been collapsed, shrunk, he was sure he must be an idiot now, that the drone he was in only held him in pieces, and he felt a surge of grief at that. His mind. The body, it had meant something, of course it had, it had meant becoming whole, becoming real somehow, and losing it had been devastating. But his mind ? It was a kind of despair he didn't understand. Humans, they had this too, didn't they, the loss of their mind sometimes. They kept them in rooms with thick walls and they plied them with little tablets until they were docile and easily herded and never a problem again. He remembered that. He had seen that. They would cut the hair off of them and sell them for wigs and they would tie them to tables or shackle them to walls, human history was one long, vile tragedy. How did that song go? He hummed. Music. It was one of the good parts, wasn't it? A rare light in the slums of humanity. The sound was low and uneven but he could hardly hear himself do it, he only knew from the vibrations that he was, but he sounded unhinged, erratic. Very softly, he asked Where is my mind? His fingers curled around the edge of the table. There was a mechanical whir, parts that were rusted and had been left unused for too long, then he gripped and his single arm stiffened and he hauled himself upright, rocking slightly on what was left of his torso, his head hanging forward, a soft glow emanating from what constituted his mouth, but his eyes remained dark. There. Sitting up. He had done that much. Perhaps one day he would even surpass the well-loved drinking bird in capability. Stable. Yes. He seemed stable. He moved his hand away from the table then, clumsy, jerky motions until he could reach his own head, and he prodded at the left side of it, finding his audio input, and with a great deal of twisting effort, he jammed it back into his head. The whistling shriek of feedback filled the room for a moment and he held his hand in place, trying to get through the agony of the noise and eventually it eased away to a low hum. For a time then, he was still and silent. He stayed that way for nearly a full minute, sitting up on what had once been his midsection, head hanging against his chest, hand on his head. Then he said Would you mind repeating that? I didn't catch what you said.