Nightmare

The machines are coming.

It's 4:00AM and I have woken groggily and slowly from a certain shrieking Hell. This begins, not without a certain beauty. I am running from them, though it is you, I am sure, they are after. They are programs only and I doubt they will make a distinction. This is a video game, and I am trapped inside it. I am spider man, or a spider man as, in this version of things, there seem to be many. My leaps off of odd angles of wall and ledge from the height of the tower I have been inside are with power and grace. I have a plan to fool the machines, who are just as powerful as I in their movements, but you are afraid. You are slowing me down. You despair, and I can not bolster your hope, nor will I abandon you. The machines are going to kill us. This, in and of itself, is not so bad.

The real problem is, as if in some insane twist on Bill Murry's GROUNDHOG DAY, I will die from their pursuit again and again. They have turned the tables on us. They have bred us to play and die for them. Suddenly, it's no fun anymore. I want out, but it's not my fun, not human fun, for which the game was designed. It will continue, so long as it amuses them, the designers, and there's no telling what gets off the machines.

I'm in a van now, this makes sense, in that dream transition sort of way. I am surrounded by an indie rock back that picked me up on the road from their show. I am surrounded by corduroy. The game was just a bad trip. I try to explain this, but the words won't come out right. The corduroy, it seems, is malevolent (I know this, in the dream way, that you know, but can not explain). This time, I am not going to die, but suffer silently beside the soft, textured folds of the band member's pants and coat.

I do not awake with a start, but drift slowly in and out, thinking that the music from my computer which I left on repeat to lull me to sleep somehow wishes me harm. It takes a few moments, after waking fully, to realize that it does not. I leave it on while I write.