Creatures Caves

I say fiddling with because I must have rewritten the book at least twice from different character point of views and I'm still not even sure I'll ever finish it, but I'm trying!

It's SUPER ROUGH. Like, I haven't edited it AT ALL yet. So, all comments, critiques, and criticism are welcome and totally necessary.

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“In me, I dream a thousand dreams,
Like points of light in a winter sky, they beckon me on.”
Ky Vehn (2033) The Worth of a Man

Sleep, for most people, is a wonderful thing. It’s a welcome period of respite after a long day. A much needed rest for the body and soul. A way to pass time. An escape. My dreams are none of these. My dreams are a noise, a baleful buzzing static that never ceases. It fills me up like dark water through a cloth, seeping into all the little gaps between the threads and making me heavy, sluggish, and weak. It blots out all thoughts in its inky depths and I drift helpless along the currents of the thrumming sea.

My dreams are a prison meant to keep me from remembering, and sometimes I don’t remember. Sometimes, the outside world feels like it never existed, like this buzzing black empty vortex is all that is true and real in this world. But sometimes the memories come back in little flashes. My little sister’s fifth birthday party. The smell of cold night air. I cling to these things like rocks in the riverbed until the dark water pushes me away again into the black.

You would think that time would seem endless, even anathema, in a place like this. With no night or day, no structure, no conscious thought, you would think that seconds and minutes and years would melt together like a chewed paper straw until all you had left was a sticky, soft mess of eternity. But I am keenly aware of the time that has passed. I know each second like I know my own breath. All I have here is time, and there is no way they’ll let me forget.

My name is Nalya Winter. I have been sleeping for three years, two-hundred and twenty days, fourteen hours, twenty five minutes, and thirteen seconds. Fourteen seconds. Fifteen.

You see, I made a big mistake four years ago. I was young, I was stupid, and I thought I was in love. Turns out “the vanity of youth” isn’t a valid legal defense. Now, the government lives in my brain, rent-free. I am just one of many computer processors in their vast network. I wonder how many of them are Dreamers, like me.