The Machines

Never had such an insane dream before. It felt like being inside a full movie.

I was part of a human enclave, one of the last left on Earth in some post-apocalyptic science fiction story. Very Twelve Monkeys / Terminator in its feel. I got the impression that the movie had begun some time ago, and I’d only just tuned in.

There were people out there manning ridiculously large guns against these oncoming SIs, but you might as well try and stop the tide. The dream began with me staring down the barrels of one of those advanced guns. The gun was complex, reconfigurable, beautiful to watch, the barrels changing around like spirals, the ammo chains like a thick umbilicus stretching all the way back to the enclave proper.

Apparently, I could channel spirits and even machine spirits. I could channel spirits at will, and I had but to concentrate on any slip of paper bearing the name of a person to channel their thoughts.

I felt myself getting possessed by a machine spirit, and apparently a friendly one; but the link was severed unexpectedly and I woke up lying on the floor.

Another time, I was channelling the ghost of the inventor of the machines, called SIs, which were coming for humans - the reason why we were living in these enclaves, because they'd already wiped most of the rest of humanity out. All the major cities were gone.

The next human spirit I was channelling told me that her enclave was being run over by two Sis, one babbling about purity, another one about heritage. Then the voice fell silent.

In every case, I felt myself channelling those voices, like someone in a trance.

I never saw the SIs, but I just woke up wondering where the hell I was and found myself hearing that little voice I’d heard before, one of the machine voices, saying “Where else? You’re at the start.”



Picture from Forbes