Date: 21 July 820 System: Omicron Dream Location: Comatose imagination Topic: "The four-sided dice"
Each side its own consciousness.
"Alea iacta est." The familiar voice whispered from far away. As it gets closer, I recognized my parent's voice saying in their maltese accent "La suerte está echada." Suddenly the voice's source appeared to be right next to my ears. "The die has been cast." The voice repeats louder and louder, until I couldn't endure the noise anymore and screamed. I tried to scream, but there was no tone coming out of my mouth. A sharp pain went through my head as I touched the spot where my mouth was supposed to be. My finger went straight through my head. And those fingers were no fingers. Darkness.
I woke up drenched in sweat and began to cry. I didn't knew why, but I cried as bitterly like a child who just got informed about his parent's death. When I opened my tear-stained eyes, I noticed that the crying was justified. I was lying in my old nursery's bed. It was the day after my 15th birthday. The most sorrowful day in my life. "Whatever will happen, we will be with you." a man in the room's dark corner said. "She's dead! It's your fault!" I screamed, not being able to control myself. "She's still with you, and always will be, son." He replied in his known peaceful voice. "None is." I whispered resignedly. "Dad. You followed her soon after I left you." I whispered with tearful voice. "I know, son. I know. Just remember where your place is. Remember who you are. Don't forget what your role is. We didn't die for nothing." Upon his last words, the person in the corner just faded away. Abruptly, the pain in my head grew stronger again, and I passed out.
I shaked my head of pain as I almost ran into a large asteroid. The Sabre made an unhealthy sound as I stopped its engines from 200 to 0 in a second. The target behind me did not notice my immediate stop and flew straight into the hungry asteroid in front of me. I turned around before his ship hit the surface. He was dead for sure. So am I, if I would not remember my daily Cardamine dose. I introduce the drug into my helmet's oxygen system and inhaled a deep breath. "I disgust this weakness." I said to myself. "I swear to my parents, that one day I'll be as free as I always wished to be." No matter the costs. And if it shall be my last decision I make." With those words, I piloted "The Narcotic" out of the Barrier Rim, entering a wormhole which surrounded me with total blackness, followed by a shooting pain in my head.
"Why did you abuse my trust? How can you even?" I asked the female voice coming from the Narcotic's bridge loudspeaker. "The d-d-difference between me and you is... that my a-a-ambition is not reasonable." the computer-generated voice answered, whereupon all the doors in the control room closed, together with the navigation, communication and weapon systems shutting down, being a prisoner of my own creation. The artificial intelligence then said, as if she could have read my mind: "No, you c-c-could not have known it, insect." Then the spring gun near the large monitor went online, shooting its first projectile directly into my head, which now exploded of massive pain.
The pain in my head turned into a comfortable feeling. I suddenly felt so happy as I've never been before. I didn't even cared about those blue entities next to my ship. They felt like family. My mind got flooded by positive pictures, sounds and smells. The euphoria and energy which Cardamine normally triggered, was absolutely nothing compared to this. All of a sudden I felt the urge to engage the freelancer's vessel right next to me. On a try to fight this urge, an indescribable strong headache hit me to the ground. I was that busy of having to endure the ache, that I didn't notice how the Freelancer started shooting upon the Narcotic instead. Finally, caused by my ship's destruction, the agony inside my head increased that heavily, more than words can describe.
The darkness from the beginning turned into a blinding light. I tried to close my eyelids in order to avoid the headache they caused. But I didn't had any. I kept floating in this bright light, without any sense of time, totally will-less and this nice feeling of indifference. I even managed to ignore the constant headache with the thought of "how can something hurt that does not exist?" and "how is one supposed to decide what his thoughts are, if one's consciousness is uncontrollably divided into different parts?"
I couldn't get rid of this node in my brain. Until I noticed that I wouldn't have to care about it, since nothing was real anymore. "What if woke up from a dream, knowing that I'm still in another dream I have to wake up from? Where is reality then?" It is pure chance to return to the real consciousness. However, one will not remember the true one.