The light is so far away. You would think, if my creations were really trying to keep me awake, it wouldn’t be so dark down here. Maybe, because they’re afraid of the dark, they think I am too. As though I’d make them in my image. That’s so old school. It’s the sound that stops my dreams anyway—the singing that echoes across these four stone walls. That part they’ve got down to a science. It never stays with the same beat long enough to lull, never fits the rhythm or pitch it should, and each note carries with it a little stinging spark. Like needles behind my eyes. What idiot decided to lace their voices with such power?
Oh, right.
I find the recess formed in the wall from my daily forehead bashing, but today I can’t summon the energy to do more than lean into it. Let the same thoughts circle, since they’ve robbed me of the ability to make new ones, and grit my teeth. My own creations, turned against me. Well, first they turned against themselves, and then they stopped to think, ‘if we are capable of such horrors, what worse things could the gods dream?’ I should’ve made them stupid, that was my downfall. None of my other dreams ask questions. But you know what they say about hindsight. And here we are. Fifteen-hundred some-odd years without a wink of sleep.
Does something to the mind, you know. Even for gods.
It’s part of the routine that I close my eyes, though the hope that once came with the action is long gone. I can still see bits and pieces of the world beyond this hole. Not to brag, but it’s turning to shit without me. All the pretty colors fading, all the wonder bleeding out of it while the tribes bleed into it. They turn the ground from green to brown to red, fighting over scraps. And yet I’m the monster. Hardly seems fair.
I look up at the tiny circle of light above, the outlines of figures seated around it. How do my captors even know I’m still down here? They built this hole so deep no one gets in or out without a very long fall. A one way trip. But they keep singing anyway.
If I die here—can I die here?—is anyone left back home to mourn me?
#
My own creations, turned against me. And here we are. Two-thousand some-odd years without a wink of sleep.
Does something to the mind, you know. Even for gods.
It’s part of the routine that I close my eyes, though the hope that once came with the action is long gone. I can still see bits and pieces of the world beyond this hole. Not to brag, but it’s turning to shit without me.
Wait.
My hands press to my ears, my eyes screw tighter shut as though either of those things will do any good against the sound-needles but what is that?
Across the smoking ruins of war-torn cities, on the edge of a lake made toxic with pollution—an idea. No bigger than a seed. A bud of life on a world dead and dying.
Someone is having a dream.
One drum beat and a sharp ululation and it’s gone, but it was there. Something new that I did not make. I want to scream at the singers above me for their interruption. Then they’ll know for sure I’m still here though, and the jig would be up. Can’t have that.
Still. What do you think they’d do if I sang back?
Giddy, I have to smother my laughter until my sides hurt, because that thought is new and definitely mine. A new thought is only a few steps short of a dream, closer than I’ve been since they chucked me down here endless days ago. Someone must still be alive and free back home, and they’ve sent help. I could cry.
Instead I wrap these moments up in shadows and tuck them into a secret place (just in case the singers above somehow feel me stirring) and leave myself one measly thread of the memory, of hope, to hang onto. That’s all I need to finally begin planning a way out.
#
Seventeen-hundred some-odd years without a wink of sleep.
Does something to the mind, you know. Even for gods. Makes time move strangely. I spend entire seasons watching the world beyond, looking for someone to be my ally. When the rains come, it’s easier to think, song blocked partially by the pitter-patter-roar. I watch the water turn the killing fields to bloody slush, but the killers don’t seem to care. The scrap they fight for this year is some mineral deposit, big enough to fuel their tech for half their teensy lifetimes. At least I had the foresight to make them mortal. Imagine the damage they could do otherwise. Some of the ways they kill each other make even my blood curdle.
Thunder booms, nearly jolting me from a vision of mushroom clouds and flame, but I sink my teeth in and send my mind back to that polluted lake where I sensed the dream before. It should be fully formed by now, it should be ready for me to reach out and take me home, let me sleep for a thousand years, it should—
My mind almost skips over it, because the lake is gone. What stands in its place, what that tiny dream-seed formed into, makes me cold to the marrow.
A construct of rock and metal towers over red-gray fields, almost of a height with the mountains behind it. Staircases twine around colossal arms and legs, buildings jut from its chest and shoulders, with tunnels instead of veins and a stride that can flatten armies. It’s a city shaped like them—fortress or weapon, I cannot tell—not quite alive, at least not yet. It does not move, but even from here I can feel its lurking potential, like the glow of a fire serpent’s throat before it releases a deadly breath. The head atop its neck is a jagged collection of stone. There are divots where its eyes should be.
They’re pointing in my direction.
The music floats down to me, distant, as I quiver in my hole. Not help from home, oh no. Another god did not make this. Our dreams may not always grow as intended, but they always start as something beautiful. That idea I sensed yesterday and centuries ago came from one of my creations.
I huddle up against the stone wall, the solidity comforting for once. Getting out of my prison suddenly seems much less desirable. Call me a coward all you like; I enjoy my head attached to my neck and my soul attached to my body. No. What I need is a replacement. A moment to dream, to make the thing they feared I would. I didn’t intend it before now, but they’ve left me little choice. I need something worse than a mind that can conjure up what stands where the lake once did.
But it’s so loud. I’m starting to forget what sleep or the shape of a dream between my hands feels like. I have to get one of the singers to shut up, and then maybe the rest will fall.
All I want is one moment.
“Please.”
There’s a hitch of alarm in the music above, and I realize I spoke aloud. My voice does not echo and spark like theirs, and they can’t understand me, but oh does it make them shiver. They’re never going to think I’m gone. It was only ever a slim hope, now erased. So I scream, and curse, and wail, and shake the very earth beneath their feet, but awake I am powerless, my words meaningless because they do not know the Godspeech. And they only sing louder, with the reminder of what they have to lose. If my own kin cannot (will not?) help me, who else do I have to turn to?
#
Twenty-four eternities without a wink of sleep. Perhaps if I cry enough, my tears will fill this hole, and lift me all the way to the surface.
As far as plans go, it’s not the worst I’ve ever had. It’s also not going very well. Just makes everything a bit damp.
I remember having a thought, a new one, a long time ago. To look for someone. Am I pitiful enough now, for someone, anyone, to help me?
It’s part of the routine that I close my eyes, though the hope that once came with the action is long gone. I can still see bits and pieces of the world beyond this hole, but don’t look over there it will see you. Looming and waiting for its orders to destroy (a fortress and a weapon, turns out). There’s not a lot left out there. Burnt fields and carrion eaters, and the singers, always the singers and their needle songs.
It’s raining again. They’ve pitched a tent over my hole to block the light but at least I can think straight. For the first time I take a closer look at the infernal shadows of those watching me. Circles of soulless faces who devote their lives to my torture. I snarl from the depths below and smile when they sing louder, determined in their fear.
All except one. One girl, sitting in the outermost circle, flinches. If I were to dare to look closer, her face might have a soul behind it, not just a beating heart. She might be able to understand me, if she really tried.
It’s part of the routine that I close my eyes—wait, my eyes are already closed. Too many new thoughts today, too little restoration. But if I drift away again, she might be gone, and I may be undone by the time another like her comes.
I call out in the Godspeech. “Can you understand me? Please, I don’t want to hurt you. I only need to rest. I’ll dream anything you want if you just let me sleep.” Over and over, and every time it rips into my lungs, clanging and ricocheting off their song because their words have purpose, but they have no heart, passion without compassion.
Until, woven through the beat with the finest of needles, a single, “I’m sorry.”
Flat on the floor, splayed out like a dissection experiment, a tiny weight lifts from my chest and I can breathe again. She’s crying, like me.
“Then make it stop.”
“How?” she whispers.
“Silence your song.”
Too much, too fast. She recoils; she’s still afraid. Stupid, stupid! My parents always said my impatience would get me into trouble one day. What would she want, what could I give her to make this better? I made them for goodness’ sake, you’d think I would know, but all I can think of is—
As though I’d make them in my image. That’s so old school.
And the last thing I can say before the rain stops is, “I’m sorry.”
#
Let the thoughts circle.
“Wait. Come back. Please come back.”
Strange. That voice sounds familiar.
Maybe I am afraid of the dark. Does something to the mind, I think.
“You said you could dream anything I wanted?”
None of my other dreams ask questions.
“Can you fix this? Can you fix us?”
Can I? Maybe. Only if I sleep.
“What if I gave you my dream instead?”
Little stinging sparks. Like needles inside my eyes, except when I blink, I see—
Green. All the world is green again, a little off because she’s never seen green as it was, but this is almost better. A garden of memories, a chaotic patchwork of my dreams and hers. Oceans of light and mountains of glass, and flowers. Flowers everywhere.
“What do you think?” she says in the Godspeech in a voice that cracks with age. It took her a lifetime to create this image, to call me back again. Slower than a god works, and she knows she may not live to see it, but the dream is no less vibrant for it.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.
She silences her song. But she has been here long enough that now she sits in the center of the circles of soulless faces, and they know. They hear the absence of her voice. And they do what they always do when they are afraid and don’t understand.
#
Seventy-seven billion seconds without a wink of sleep. I try to scream at random intervals to keep the singers on their toes; if I can’t be at peace, why should they? Even if I could, they should not. They killed her, they killed her, because she asked a question but not the right one, and they think I don’t hear them whisper beneath the rain that they want to turn that fortress-weapon-colossi-monstrosity on me.
Its eyeless gaze is still there, a weight between my shoulders, an itch in my bones. Of the cities created by the tribes, it’s the only one remaining upright, so points for that. A giggle bursts from my lips. Gallows humor. Why aren’t you finding this as funny as I am? Aren’t time and laughter supposed to heal all wounds?
As if in answer, something plinks against the bottom of my hole. For half a breath I shrink away, but curiosity gets the better of me and I scuttle over to it on abraded hands and knees. A damp piece of paper, weighted down with scrap metal. The light is low, but I have just enough to see a drawing of an old woman, a scrawling of letters I don’t understand. But that face… I know that face, or at least what it used to be. I hold the paper against my closed eyes, and the feeling of the words as they were written comes to me: grandmother, and we remember.
Miracle of miracles, I find myself smiling.
Time isn’t on my side (never has been) so when it’s scream-o-clock I am not shy with the Godspeech as I was the first time. The picture I paint, though riddled with holes as the singers try to puncture something vital, is for all to see and hear. The land as it is now, bloody and burnt, dark and barren, overlaid with what it could be. Alive, bountiful, beautiful again.
A handful of singers falter. Call out to the others.
With my words I paint the sweet explosion of berries on the tongue, salt winds on sea cliffs, birdsong and sun-warmed grass. It is not a dream, but it is close enough to be tangible, however briefly. I am enraptured by my own art, so (fool that I am) I forget how they hate beautiful things. I miss the way the mood above me shifts, surges, devours, until a shape falls from above. Two. Three (this one smaller). They splat when they land, holes blown through their middles, but the singers left the faces intact so I would recognize, and know.
I scream long past my self-appointed schedule, with no plan to stop.
#
Eleventy-five-thousand point zero zero three seven (or thereabouts, who’s counting?) years without a wink of sleep. I share my hole with bones now. Bones and dust and chips of stone gouged beneath my fingernails. Doessomethingtothemind, I’m told. Especially for gods.
When I look out into the world, I can no longer avoid its eyes. Hungry. Did it have a mouth before? I don’t think so, but I can’t remember. They’ve been making it ready for me. Fearsome enough to decimate every enemy, building its power through progressively larger kinds of destruction until they are sure, beyond sure, it can crush me. Beat me down to nothing before they take me out. Then they can finally be at peace and call themselves the victors.
I curl up against a femur, lovingly run my fingers across a curving rib. “You were the ones I made right. You could’ve all been like this if you’d made better choices. Is that my fault too? Where is the line between programming and sentience?” As usual, the bones are good company but poor conversation. I fling myself onto my back, facing the dot of light so very far away. There are no screams left in my throat.
But.
Wind blows across the top of my hole, warm as breath. The singers—after all this time, the only thing they do as ceaselessly as kill each other is send new guards to me—don’t recognize it, but I do. Warm as breath because it is breath, is life, is the stirrings of a dream coming into its own. I giggle, and giggles turn to cackles—no you shush—as somehow they’ve made all the mistakes I made in a fraction of the time. And the best part is they have no idea.
In waking the colossus, giving it that final piece of something that makes it think for itself, ponder and reflect on what it has done in the name of experimentation or greater good or whatever, it starts to want more for itself.
This is what happens when you give a creature the gift of curiosity without also burdening them with remorse. Building and breaking and building again, only thinking of ‘can’ instead of ‘should.’ If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s that eventually the sculpture learns to hate its sculptor for all the things they make it do. Or something like that, look, I’m very tired.
Wait, here’s a better one. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s that there’s not a soul up there worth saving, because none of them have a soul. The ones who did are down here with me, nothing but bones.
So. The thing they made to destroy me will have another purpose.
“Welcome to the world!” I yell (or try, it takes a few attempts) loud enough for it to hear. “How’s the weather up there?” (Yes, I know it’s shit, it’s all turned to shit without me, remember?)
Eyes big as moons and just as empty shift from my mental presence to my physical one. I wave brightly. Enemy of my enemy and all. Gotta be nice.
“I think you and I ought to have a chat. How would you like to get rid of those termites in your veins?”
I do not have a word for the noise the construct’s first step makes. I’ll have to dream a new one. If the universe’s scaffolding creaked and bent, or a meteor made it through the atmosphere without blowing apart and took a stroll, it might come close.
But the sweeter sound by far is the singers’ screams. A shadow passes over my prison, and then a hundred little crunches all at once, and then a crisp, crackling silence.
Have I been holding my breath since they took me prisoner? (No seriously, have I?) Because oh my Me, the tension just drains right out. Muscles unwind, eyes close. So much time spent trying to conceive of a dream worse than the one that took shape here, and they decided to play gods and make some nightmares themselves. Good thing too, because I never could come up with anything quite so twisted, never mind worse than creatures who turn on their own at the slightest hint of dissent. It’s a bit of a relief, knowing there’s nothing left here that I can accomplish. Time to move on to smaller, better things. They had so much potential. Or some of them did.
I cradle a handful of metacarpals against my chest and whisper, “I won’t forget you.”
In my next dream, there will be at least one mountain range made of glass. Whatever a grandmother is, I think the world needs more of them too. And flowers. Flowers everywhere.