They Came as One

Light peeked in past his eyelids and seeped through that watery, globular refractory of crystalline vastitude until it graced itself upon his dormant retina. 

Unlike any kind of drowsiness that had ever come upon him, this weight on his eyes was unbearable and any attempt to resist returning back to darkness was a mere fantasy. The little him falling back, down into the abyss, he reached for the brim of his eyelid, but alas, it was out of reach.

Darkness devoured him and quietness pervaded the theater of sight as the last of the light particles escaped into his optical nerves, no show tonight, I guess...

What was that? It seemed like eons had passed since he had last opened his eyes, but surely it was his computer in front of him, although it looked so unfamiliar, like a dream or a past life.

The urge surged inside him to open his eyes to let life flood into his eyes once again, purely as a primordial instinct, and again, light ran in briefly and the image on his screen disappeared as quickly as the image had formed. 

As it faded, shimmers glimmered in his periphery like sparks flickering off of flint scratching stone but then hovered out of sight in a purely geometric, synchronized fashion.

"The takeover was imminent; no action was less called for, none less reasonable, none less harmonious."

That was the only line he caught, and then it started to come back to him. The lights, the darkness, the confusion; nothing could be done, but it had all made sense. The darkness had become his sanctuary and his master, his abode and his only place to go; there was nothing else. The thought that maybe it would always be a spectacular dance of lights was embedded in the recesses of his mind like a rusty harpoon in the fin of a not-so-fortunate whale. Where did that come from? Everything is so unclear.

He began to tune into a faint hum oscillating all around him, not that it was growing, but maybe it had been there for so long that he had simply become numb to it, or maybe something was changing...

His senses were slowly coming back to him it seemed, and he felt something running along the back of his neck like a second spinal cord. It was relaying some kind of pleasant current into his body that spread through his veins and dissipated in the feeling of nothingness that resided in his extremities.

The ebbing of the hum coincided with the flow of the current surging throughout his body. Again, he opened his eyes, this time trying to get a look at what was around him; his apartment, he supposed but couldn't be sure. He was sure it was his computer in front of him, and then as he attempted to turn his neck to look around, he was greeted by a rigid stiffness. The current flowing up his neck, clutching the back of his skull like a hand palming a basketball, was momentarily staunched. 

Everything, apart from his computer screen, simultaneously gave a shudder and fluctuated, seemingly back and forth or up and down, like ripples on the surface of water. The screen, remaining static, was illuminated by lights that flew in from the shimmering world around and formed a cursor shaped like a dancer that bounced from word to word like in a sing-a-long video for kids, prancing across the screen in leaps and bounds.

"The takeover was imminent; no action was less called for, none less reasonable, none less harmonious. We all knew it would come. Every situation reaches a breaking point. I sit here in the darkness of my own mind and wonder how they might have done it, how they might have accomplished it, and who for that matter; it's all a mystery to me. I feel like a prisoner, a mighty well-treated one at that, but still, there is no sense in trying to move, no sense in calling for help, just the surrender to the lights and whatever is pumping into my neck. Not so bad, honestly. Not bad at all."

The willpower to keep his eyes open just enough to read was waning and he closed his eyes with a sigh of indifference. He supposed maybe these were his words as he connected with them intimately, but he had no recollection of recording such thoughts. His neck tingled, and he felt both the pulse of his blood and whatever was coursing into his neck, both synchronized with one another forming a synergy. The question bubbling down below finally surfaced: "How long had he been here?"

He was curious now to keep reading and drew the curtains in his little house head and cast the spotlight of his conscious attention out onto the screen like he had seen a burglar in his yard. Where was he now?

Ah, here he was...

"I truly feel like I have nothing to complain about. All my problems feel as though they have been solved; I mean I can't do anything about them and they are far too out of sight to occupy the mind. I haven’t seen an email about my past due bills in ages apparently, so that’s great, and I actually feel good; I used to feel like a stiff puppet moving at the whim of a drunk puppeteer, but this feels like life. It feels great! I still don't know why I can't see. It seems a bit unnecessary to me, but this sits among the many things in life I will not understand. I've accepted this and with this I am content."

Suddenly he remembered he had arms, and he summoned them to the keys. They moved reluctantly like doors on rusty hinges, and as they entered his view, he noticed they were parting a sea of lights hovering in the air, revealing his actual whereabouts. It was his desk, he thought and as he swirled his hand in front of him, this was confirmed; the same cheap desk, synthetic wooden vinyl peeling up from plywood, sitting there looking like a relic compared to the surreal one cast by the humming lights. They were clearly melodic, not like the monotone A/C unit perched in his window. It was a sound he found very comforting, like stars conversing in song, rejoicing in stellar jubilee, perhaps. He waved his hands in front of his face, and the holographic window in front of him, pristine as can be, starkly contrasted the actual window which had clearly not been cleaned in ages. Ages ages.

It was green from what was probably years and years of pollen buildup, and outside, everything was overgrown to the point that the trunk of every tree was obscured by lush, wild foliage and all of it had been reclaimed by nature. There was not much to complain about because it smelled pleasant, like a summer cottage in the Alps with the windows open.

He let the mirage version of his life settle back into place and dropped his hands on the keys once again. His hands felt young and oddly foreign to him whereas before they were spastic, riddled with knots from years and years of non-stop typing. He began to arrow-key up to the beginning of what was typed out on his computer. Along the way, he scrolled past thousands of entries recorded over the span of what seemed to be hundreds of years. Impossible. Finally, the first line jolted into view as the rolling script came to a halt.

"I don't know what to write here but I feel this is all that I have to do, all that I can do, that is. I feel like I've had enough time to process it. It all makes sense, but I can't explain it. Surely some group of super-intelligent people would eventually become so fed up with the world and the way it is (or should I say was?) to want to take it over and they really outdid themselves, I’d say. I don't really know the extent of what is going on elsewhere, but based on what I've just witnessed, I don't think I have the capacity to fathom what might be going on in terms of a grand scheme. The video I saw on my computer summed it up briefly. 

"We are saving the planet."

"We can't keep living like this." 

"This is only temporary." 

"This is for your own good."

"So, now I'm sitting here, not really knowing what's going on, but it's for my own good. To be honest, I don't know what is for my own good, so maybe I'll just go along with it and see. I'm still a bit shaken, but this process, as they call it, has already started to calm me down some. 

"There I was, minding my own business, finishing up a report to send to my higher-up, and then I hear the faintest sound from the hallway like someone was putting a key into my door. The lock turned, the door opened, and someone who looked just like me, dressed in exactly the same clothes I was wearing, strode right into my apartment. Expecting some kind of eye contact or explanation, I was a bit shocked when it closed the door behind it and, suddenly, it burst into a swarm of lights which then encircled me. They all glowed with the brightest light I'd ever seen, and as I cowered in fear, I felt something grace my neck ever so gently. Next thing I know, my body is moving involuntarily into a standing position, and like a dream, I begin to hover over to my computer chair where I land like a feather, the light still all around me. Directly in front of me, the light begins to dim and I see my computer screen peeking out from the brilliance of the lights. 

"My eyes adjust finally and then there's the video. It was like an alien takeover. There is no other way to describe it. It's surely not over yet though, and I feel this is just the beginning. Everything that is happening now is beyond me. I keep seeing the lights crossing across my computer screen, underlining words, as if it is processing the words on the screen and occasionally they seem to fly right into my eyes, two at a time. 

"I'm really getting tired I think, because I can hardly keep my eyes open and the light seems to be growing. I'm locked in place with the exception of my arms which seem to be typing this, but now I'm questioning this, along with everything else. I can't keep my eyes open any longer. I feel like I'm shutting down."

That was where that entry ended.

He looked down at his hands which were glowing with every pulse like a radioactive material from the movies, and with a sigh of despair, he began to type, again, documenting life as it was occurring to him then and there, and ever so often a pair of lights would leave the field of nano-lights that composed the mirage and hover towards his eyes, latching onto an eyelash from each eye and extinguishing upon contact. Again and again, nano-particle after nano-particle piled up on his eyelashes until the ones on the top merged with the ones on the bottom. The nano-particles on his eyes flashed four times and slowly the gap was sealed entirely. His hands lay on the keys, twitching like flies caught in a spider's web, and then they fell limp from the desk.