I can feel the madness slowly creeping in...

[cityship]

It is that time again, meatship.

Once again, the King of Nightmares has deigned to spread his touch to all of your dreams.

This time, however, he has decided to give them a much more personal touch, sending his very own children to visit each and every one of you, slowly sowing the seeds of madness within all of you.

Such a kind and loving king he is, isn't he?

[ooc: Alright folks, Nightmare King is ramping things up a bit. These nightmares are a good bit more dangerous now, and he's sending in his minions to make things a little more real. The nightmares will be of a much more serious nature this time, designed to start driving the crew slowly insane. Characters are more likely to run into nightmare minions in the guise of someone or something that will tug at the edges of their sanity. Also, this time, the characters can have joint dreams, as these nightmares are of a more mystical nature this time. Once again, tagging in isn't mandatory, but if you want to, go crazy (literally)!]

[Additional Note: Any injuries won't be carrying over to real life at this point in the plot but don't worry, we'll get there eventually!]

Comments

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

This is the SleepNet. Millions of mental voices offering up the harvest of the day's knowledge to share with the rest of the world. For most of the years of his young life, Brainiac 5 had been forced to sleep linked to the SleepNet just as every other Coluan was--his knowledge was of particular potency, after all, with his being a Brainiac.

But then he had been sent away, he had been informally exiled by Colugov because of the danger he presented to the Coluan populace-- and it had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. Working for Brande, studying on Talus, and then being drafted into the Legion. More than that, he could finally just sleep again, alone in his own mind. Sometimes he dreamed, sometimes he didn't, but at least they were his dreams, his thoughts, at least he was allowed actual peace while resting.

Except now he is a young child again, and his mind is floating through the transcendental construct of consciousness that all Coluans see in the SleepNet. He hears the fleeting voices, and the hissing whispers as he passes, idly looking at the day's thoughts and discoveries. Almost all are discarded as useless--often they are things he already intuitively understands about mathematics or quantum physics.

As usual, he ignores his title, spoken in hushed whispers. He ignores the jealous comments that are juuust loud enough for him to hear. He ignores the hisses and quiet proclamations that he's too dangerous to be allowed access to the collective consciousness of Colu--as if there's anything they can provide him that he doesn't already know.

And then it is time to open up his mind, for him to be absorbed into the collective consciousness, to let them rip out anything of use so that they might profit from the fruit of his labors. It's as it always is; nothing is his own, not even his knowledge. It all belongs to the Coluan people, to Colugov, just as he does. That is his role in their society, after all, to provide for his people, who are, as usual, ever so grateful.



While none of those thoughts are directed directly at him, he can hear them. They know he can hear them, of course. They always have the good grace to at least be open with their disdain. And it's not like he can pinpoint exactly who each of the thoughts is coming from. There are millions of them thinking it, after all, millions that fear and despise him.

The seven-year-old simply rests, his mental self trapped in the massive wall of other mental selves, like something out of some anatomical Lovecraftian horror of merged forms, and lets them take what they will of him, lets them take everything he is--since as far as he's concerned, his mind is everything he is.

It is his duty, after all, and he is a Brainiac. What else can he expect?



It's a familiar nightmare to Brainiac 5, but not familiar in that it's one he's had before--he's never had a dream like this. It's familiar in that it's simply drawing from memory, and what's happening in this dream has already happened over and over and over and over...

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

Failing spectacularly, the pure innocent mediator grew dejected at the base nature of the social system and he turned mute.

That was not a Coluan voice, nor familiar. Motoko rarely slept and even more rarely dreamed. Never had she been so foolish as tp sleep while actively connected to the Net, but that she should dream of it in this place was no surprise. OF all the things she missed, it was this, the cacophany of voices, the thousand, thousand thoughts and opinions and idiotic rantings. The pulse of that living organism, the human race. Or, in this case, the Coluan race. It hardly mattered, they were only voices in a vague, dreamy version of themselves. Only one intelligence stood out in sharp relief, and if Brainiac 5 was not someone she knew personally, it was enough that he was someone she knew of in this familiar, unfamiliar landscape.

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

How intriguing.

Society is a lift-train from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity. The social system is neither social nor a system--it is a hierarchy of incompetence, each imbecile trying to out-bungle the next.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

'Individually, bits are neither sophisticated nor useful. It is when taken as a whole that they become useful and capable of being more than themselves. Self-organization is at best, imprecise.'

Were the background cacophony of voices growing dimmer as a backdrop? Perhaps, if only slightly. The woman's voice, Motoko's voice, was confident and assured, her voice strident among those murmuring dissenters. If ever it could be said that she were in her element, that time would be now.

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

There is the mental equivalent of a frown.

I am a singularity. Homogeneity and uniformity is necessary for coherency. Disparate parts are only to be used for viable resources for the collective and then disposed of. This is logical.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

And in reply, an impression of a smirk.

'If we all reacted the same way, we'd be predictable. There's always more than one way to view a situation. What's true for the group is also true for the individual.

It's simple: overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death, just as surely as any bullet.'

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

There is a smile. Then it's as if a switch is flicked. There is lucidity.

It had taken me years to truly understand that.

And the voice she hears is older now, not a child's high voice. He is aware it's a dream now.

But it's easy to fall back into the past while dreaming, and forget how it's changed.

Had it ever changed.

My species was stagnant.

Of course, he is responsible for that, at least partly, with his time travel hijinks, but they had always stagnated. They were paralyzed by fear of the very unknown that they had devoted themselves as a species to exploring.

They feared change. I was change.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

'People always fear change. That's not something specific to one group. However, it is those that adapt to new circumstances that ultimately benefit most from them. A self-destructive state.'

Lazy philosophy, she knows, but Motoko is hardly more than idle now that she's achieved her goal. Her voice is calm and smooth, like examining light tinted through a glass of wine.

'Dreams have their uses, but dreams are meaningful when you work toward them in the real world. If you merely live within the dreams of other people it's no different from being dead.'

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

It's a living death.

Something he hasn't ever admitted once to the Legion, but he is here, dreaming, buried deep in his true thoughts. He's honest here.

It was a nightmare.

He struggles to get free, but the grasp of his people is unflinching.

Perhaps it's still a nightmare."

They won't let him go.

[standaloneshell.livejournal.com]

'Calm down. 'Twelfth-level' or not, you're still not very accomplished at thinking on your feet, are you?'

As with a fly trapped in a spider web, thrashing randomly would only get him more caught. How many fish had died the same, blind death? They couldn't free themselves, and it was only when another hand disentangled them or cut the lines, one by one, that they could be loosed.

'Here, let me.'

[worm-dancer.livejournal.com]

Sheeana comes tumbling in to something familiar as breathing

Other Memory. The collective unconscious...No, consciousness of a species, the web connecting mind to mind. In humans it was as ancient as the seas.

But then, she realized, this was not a human dream. This was the Other Memory of another species.

And it was greedy. There was a mind floating through it (she saw it as if from a long way off, a small green blob), beset on all sides by attackers that clawed and bit at it with vicious words. She got the impression of a great herbivore being worried at by jackals. And there appeared to be no mohalata, no benign ally to help this floating consciousness.

She remembered that sensation of being adrift from when she went through the Spice Agony. Great shapes had seemed to hover beneath her, malevolant jaws filled with teeth to take her under.

She floated down and closer. She would be this person's mohalata if she needed to.