Written in 365 Parts: 48: In Another Mind

At the centre of the spiral there was, rather predictably Drick thought, a door. It was a blank steel portal similar to the airlock design used on high security craft. Drick knew that the construct program was again imposing its own understanding of semiotics to correspond to how Drick imagined the world. So this door was a security door, a lock with a secure way of ensuring single direction passage. Which is what Drick had envisaged when they built the connection to the security guard’s mind.

Drick took a mental pause to collect and marshall thoughts and the avatar representing them, that looked almost exactly as Drick did in the visceral realm, took a deep breath. Then Drick opened the airlock and passed through into the other mind.

It wasn’t really a doorway. It was a link, a gateway, a portal. Drick didn’t really step through it so much as open the link and join with the consciousness on the other side. To the construct program which simulated existence there needed to be some action though, something to build. A phenomena that was triggered by the desire to do. Then there was the oscillation of waves, the passing of neurons along dendril pathways, the synchronous activation of separate parts of the brain that created an experience from a metaphor. 

On the other side the Avatar that was Drick took a deep breath as a miasma of images burned themselves into neural clusters of retinal pathways. They wondered how much computational power would be needed to amplify so much stimulus. There was no clean order instead images and scenes from a life flashed by with apparent random. In every direction there were images swirling around each other. As Drick watched an organic walked out of one image and grew to tremendous proportions to squeeze into another floating nearby and discolour it with their presence. It went from a scene showing two organics laughing at a smaller one, a child, rolling on the grass to an adult kicking the child along a path. It was the same adult who had been laughing before. The colours darkened and the sky boiled with the laughing face that had torn from the organics head and grown to fill the world. 

Drick spun away from it and saw the guard sitting at the centre of the storm of images, they were smiling, their eyes were angry and they laughed suddenly at Drick. “Is this what you wanted,” they called in malicious glee.

Drick raised a jewelled brow, “yes. I suppose it is.” 

Drick looked around and spotted an image of themselves, it was moments before the guard with the third arm had fired the poison darts. Drick was paused with a look of surprise etched on their face, which was exaggerated, how fickle was memory and perception. As Drick grew closer the image filled the world and Drick was now wrapped inside it. There was a tag, a voice over that spoke “this is when that…” Drick silenced the image and the playback of a memory with a dismissive wave of their hand.

“Do you have to be so crude? That was quite a string of profanities to describe me with.”

“My mind, my rules,” the guard leapt to their feet and strode at Drick.

Drick laughed hard which stopped the guard dead in their tracks, “really,” Drick laughed again, even louder, “it’s been a while since I heard anything so funny. Did you actually think this was inside your mind? It is a construct program you idiot. You are inside the construct and I have higher privileges.” 

The guard ran and leapt at Drick making themselves taller with every step, Drick watched as they grew to the height of a ten storey building in a few steps and towered above reaching down with a fist to pummel Drick into dust.

There was a slap that made the ground shake and sent all the images rocking back into a spinning warp of colour that gradually settled to a coarse pink. The world was ridges of pink and flushing red. The guard lifted a mighty fist expecting to see a smear on their fingers of a dead organic with a loud mouth and a bad attitude but there was nothing there.

“Look up,” the whole world seemed to shake at the voice. The guard looked up into a pair of eyes that were as large as the world. Twin worlds hanging above their face and a moment later the realisation came of where they were. The ridges were the textures of skin on a palm, they were stood on a hand that stretched for miles and above them was a face that was the whole of the sky. “I told you I have privileges. Your mind is in the construct. But in this realm, I am a god.”

Drick’s laughter echoed throughout the universe that was the guards existence. They could not escape they did not know how to get in or out of here, they thought it was their mind but it was not. Their mind was connected to this one, not in control. The guard covered their face and cried out, “I’m sorry.”

The world spun back to images floating around and Drick was stood in front of the guard once again. “So you should be. Now we have an agreement. So stop pissing about and show me what I want to know.”