Dreamland

I slept well. Long and deep. I woke up only at about nine o'clock in the morning. I stretched my limbs, and with a huge yawn, I greeted my alter ego:

“Good morning!”

I half hoped that I would not hear any answer in my mind, but I was ashamed to ask again: 'are you still there?'

My other half was feeling chatty:

“Good morning Dolores! Did you sleep well? I slept wonderfully here. It's been a long time since I felt so safe. I only worry about the Lynx and our friends. What do you think happened to them?”

She worries about game characters...

“They should be OK. If there is a way to login into the game, the gamers will find it, and then we will check. OK?”

“OK!”

Once the computers no longer support it, that world must crumble into nothingness. Probably that world no longer exists, but I simply could not bring it over my heart to tell her that. She seemed to genuinely care. I do care and am sad, but that's the fate of game characters...

She was not enthusiastic about it. She wanted to try something actively. It does not make any sense; if there is a way, the gamers will find it faster than I would.

I went to the toilet, washed, dressed summarily and went to the kitchen.

No morning without a coffee! Our coffee machine broke a couple of weeks ago, but I can survive with greek coffee. I brew a nice double portion. Lola will probably come here soon.

Ha, I knew it! I heard Lola getting out of her room.

“Hey, Lola!”

“Mmmm. Morning! Mmmm. You made coffee!”

“Sure, come and drink and have breakfast!”

She entered the kitchen and took her cup, then looked at me. She pointed with her finger at my neck:

“What's that?”

“A tattoo.”

OK, now I have to explain my situation to her. Gently. Piece by piece.

“What? We agreed that if we were to get tattooed, we would do it together! And you did it without me!!”

OK, not quite the conversation I wanted to have. I should have thought about it. She was getting excited about my tattoo.

“Well, I got it last night. Let me explain!”

I wanted to come clean; please, just give me the time to do it, lady!

She was not impressed:

“Yeah. You went to a party the whole day and did not even think to invite me. That was not nice!”

Party! OK, she thinks that I am as much a party girl as she is. She loves parties, and a week without two parties would be a terrible week. My parties are of a bit of a different nature: gaming parties and the kind. She would not like to be there.

I tried to explain my problem:

“Look, hold your horses; this shit happened when I used the dream interface. I got a tattoo inside the game, and I saw it on me when I woke up. That's the fucking problem, and there is more to it!”

Her reaction was more dramatic than I thought it would be. Instead of making fun of me or not believing me, she panicked.

“Is this real? Honest? Let me see it!" - she came closer to look at my skin and concluded - "It looks so perfectly integrated with your skin? We need to go to see a doctor! Urgently!”

“No, no, no! Wait! Calm down!”

"No, no. Waiting in such a case is bad! You should calm down and visit a doctor. This is no joke!"

I am calm. I did not expect this reaction. She was not in panic but adamant. I know she does not like... OK, that she hates the dream interface industry, but I don't want to start a protest campaign now.

I tried to backpedal as my other half told me again that she could make it disappear. Maybe I should have listened to her and done that.

There is no reason for panic.

“But, but, wait. I'd like to wait for a couple of days before going to a doctor... It's not this problem that bothers me most..."

I wanted to have a chat with my best friend, to let her know my problems and see what she thought about them. Confidentially. I wanted to talk with her about my double personality issue, but I did not want to go to a doctor. Not yet. Once you get there diagnosed with a split personality, you have it hanging above your head forever. I don't want to think about the consequences now. Maybe I'll talk first with my parents, but I don't want to go directly to a doctor.

Try to convince Lola! No way. We should go now immediately. My other half did not help as the fairy did not trust Lola: 'she is mean! She is not honest to you!' and other comments on her side just helped confuse me.

“Oh, stop it! Both of you, stop with the nonsense!”

“Both of us? I am alone here; Clara has left early in the morning! You imagine things! It's even worse than I feared! Come on; I know a good doctor!”

My heart was beating irregularly in my chest. Fuck, I almost gave my game away. My hands started trembling, and she convinced me to follow her. Soon we were in her small car on the way to a hospital.

Do I do the right thing? What do I tell the doctor?

“What doctor do you mean?”

“They must have some competent psychiatrist at the main hospital!”

What? I want back! I looked at myself. Fuck I was dressed in my house pyjama. Should I get out of the car like this?

The more time passed, the more conflicted I was. On one side, she was right; I should probably get an examination. But not now, not like this!

If she makes such a drama for the tattoo, what will she do after hearing about my split personality? What will the doctors say?

What about healing myself? Or did I just dream that? Could it be that I only imagined that?

No, that guy bandaged me, and once home, I did fucking heal myself, and everything was gone.

If this healing was real if this worked for me, would I not be the lab rat for a new generation of healing methods?

If I imagined that, then I am crazy; if not, I am fucked as a lab rat. So no way I would talk with anybody about that.

If I don't talk about that, what do I talk about? I started to think feverishly about my situation.

Why did I decide to show her the tattoo? I tried another way to ditch the story:

“Maybe somebody did a prank on me? Clara could do such!”

Adding Clara was an error. It was my everyday villain, but also her sister.

“What? Are you crazy? Don't bring Clara into this!”

Please don't call me crazy!

I didn't want to go! Period. I unlocked my seatbelt. I decided to step out at the first stop if I could not convince her to go back, house pyjama or not; I definitively did not want to go to the hospital.

She will then have to drive back home and calm down. A red lamp started to blink furiously, warning her of my seatbelt removal.

“Stop; I want out.”

“No way! We are going to the hospital!”

“Stop!!”

“No!”

“Stop, it's red!!!!”

I think Lola saw it at the last moment, or she saw the bus coming from the left as she hit the brakes, but it was too late. With a yowl, like a giant swimming whale, leaning on the right, the bus hit us at full speed; pieces of glass flew like a myriad of angry bees through the cabin, and the door on my side flew away like pushed by a tornado, then our car tumbled over the right side.

I found myself on all four on the asphalt in a kind of absurd situation as if I were in the eye of the storm: everything moved around, but I was left untouched.

My nose was bleeding vigorously from a hit that I hadn't registered blood dripping on the asphalt.

The car's door broke from its hinges and flew away as the car rolled over.

I saw the bus drifting in front of my eyes, half a meter from me, hitting the car again and pressing it against a pole, which broke under the terrible push.

As the pole broke, the electric cables were cut, sparks flew through the air, and the car ignited like a torch.

“Lola!!!!”

I jumped to my feet and ran to the car. I saw her in the middle of a fire ring. Was she shocked? Stunned? She did not move. I wrapped my jacket against my hand, opened the door and pushed my head inside between the flames, now gnawing at my clothes.

Our eyes met. I saw her desperate eyes imploring, and I managed to unlock her belt, took her in my arms and dragged her away, just in time before my clothes started to burn, running with her head lolling over my shoulder.

Somebody, I believe it was the bus driver, used a fire extinguisher over us, and then he tried in vain to extinguish the burning car.

I slipped on my ass, still holding her in my arms, blood from my nose dripping over her blouse.

I heard my other half in my head again:

“Heal her! Her neck is broken! Heal her!”

I hesitated, looking at her immobile body in my arms and the strange pattern the blood formed on her blouse.

Am I crazy?

This is fucking real. I know that I am crazy; I know I am fucking nuts. I looked at the tattoo on my arm. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

It is clear that the internet stories about the dream interface are true. The dream interface can drive you insane.

My brain was drifting into nothingness. That was too much for me to take.

“Heal her, you idiot! If you care for her, heal her! Is it so difficult to think I want to heal you? She might die if you do not heal her! Just think it if you do not say it!”

If I could heal myself yesterday… Maybe I did not dream that? I slowly raised my head to look at her hanging head, her beautiful blonde hair partly burnt.

”I want to heal you! I want to heal you; I want to heal you!”

I repeated it in my thoughts, starting to cry at the same time.

I am crazy. A repeated flow of light passed through my hands, enveloping her for short moments, almost synchronous with the rebuffing fire from the intensively burning car.

Lola started to hit the air with her hands and screamed.

She broke from my arms, managed to stand, ran a couple of steps, then fell to her knees and started to cry.

I watched her mesmerized as other people went to help her. Did I heal her? Did I do that? I was already starting to doubt it.

At the next moment, I saw a police car manoeuvring between people, blue light flashing, and soon an ambulance arrived. A crowd gathered around the accident area, and a doctor appeared.

“Who is injured? Are you all right?”

Some people on that bus had suffered contusions; the bus driver had a finger maimed, and a person had a bloody nose. We two only nodded that we were ok, but they did not believe us; the doctor only rolled her eyes when she saw my nose, so after they checked if we had any open wounds, we were both taken to the ambulance and brought to a hospital.

Well… it happened as Lola had said; we went to a hospital, even if not for my tattoo.

To their surprise, and mine too, Lola had only some small scratches on her knees, probably as she kneed on the asphalt in the end. No burning, no other wounds, even if her clothes and even hair were partially burned, and her skin was covered with dark particles from the fire. I had some burnings, mostly on my hands and face, painful, but no big drama. Well, besides my nose, that now had two cotton roles in it.

That was all. Oh yes, my eyebrows were gone, and my hair was partially burnt too. I was in need of a new haircut.

I said nothing of my tattoo, and nobody asked about it. Why would they? I said nothing about the voice in my head. I was too confused and too shocked after Lola's healing.

What did really happen? Could she have escaped unscratched from that accident? Or did I really heal her? But I escaped almost unscratched from it without magical healing?

I needed time to be able to digest it.

When we could finally leave the hospital, we met the same police officer who was first at the accident. He recognized us, asked how we felt and was so kind as to offer to bring us home, which we gladly accepted. I think Lola made a strong impression on him with her blond hair and long legs, and this might be the reason for his offer.

On the way home, I was mostly absent-minded; I could not really concentrate on what they were talking about. I was all the time thinking about the implications of what had just happened.

They put it on the accident and the shock, but my shock was for some time with me. Is it possible? Was it really me? Did I heal her?

If this was not clear, then what would be clear for me?

Did Lola not talk about cases when people had wounds in Dreamland, and those became real in reality? Only through their minds?

Did I not get a tattoo in Dreamland, and it became real? If that was no practical joke, then that was done only through my mind!

Did I not get a voice in my head in Dreamland, and suddenly I got that voice in my head in reality? How could that happen? Only through my mind, isn't it? The dream interface might have facilitated these, but my mind did it in the end. There is no way that the dream interface can directly create a tattoo on your body.

And now the even more weird part starts. Did I not get a new faculty to heal in Dreamland, and did I not get it now in reality? The fact that I healed Lola changed the situation for me.

I lost a whole day yesterday running around in circles.

I did this thing. I created my fairy in my brain. I did it all through my mind.

In other words, again, the same conclusion I was running away from: I am what is called a witch or whatever you call it.

Only this can be the simple, stupid, weird answer.

It is no prank; it is no mysterious AI over wi-fi.

I am a witch. Fucking fuck, I need to accept this and try to live with it and stop making a fool of myself.