Based on a True Story

Her name was Cassandra. He’d seen it on her name badge as she’d asked him to place his chin on the rest and his forehead against the bar. The apparatus looked like a medieval torture device. Jim could well imagine a rusty spike being driven into each eye, more for sport than to illicit his confession to crimes and treachery he had not perpetrated, but was readily capable of. He could see her beyond the bizarre machine. Obscured. Blurred. More real for the partial sight of her. He could smell her perfume and another aroma that may have been fabric freshener. He imagined taking her in his arms. Looking into her eyes and kissing her. Gently at first. Exploring. Becoming accustomed to her. The passion building, and with it the intensity of a first kiss that could never be the last. The end game was his possession of her in totality. The intensity of his desire burned everything else away.

Jim wrote these words as he imagined Cassandra and how her story would unfold. He knew that tomorrow his life would twist and turn so that he had that encounter with the woman he had discovered in the depths of his mind. She would be made flesh overnight and he would sample that flesh before the sun set on the day. He knew this because that was where his imagination was taking him. The intent was there from the very start. He was lonely. He had been isolated for far too long and he desired company. Who better than this Cassandra? His dream girl. No making do with the women who pre-existed in reality. No need for compromise and the perils of a revelatory relationship. Relationships always contained hidden rocks that silently ripped at the hull of your life when you were least expecting it. He would make her in the image he required. That was how he would make everything work. He would give anything to make it work.

Smiling to himself, Jim wrote another two pages. The words flowed effortlessly and he found that he was getting excited at the prospect of meeting Cassandra and how the encounter would play out. There was the obvious sexual dynamic to the proceedings, but it went further than that. He craved intimacy and he was day dreaming of her smile and the sparkle of her eyes as they exchanged meaningful looks. He longed for the feel of her fingers as they brushed his. That first contact that promised so much more. No, it wasn’t just about sex. There was so much more to it. And this time it would be right in a way it had never been with the women he’d had in his life before. He would have her and there would be no going back. No disconnect. No disappointment. He could not countenance a bad result.

He knew there would be a good outcome because he had discovered that he could control reality with his writing. Not merely bend reality to his will, but weave new patches of reality, seemingly from nothing. He didn’t quite believe this. He thought of it more as manifesting. He was praying to the universe and his prayers were being answered.

He’d started small. Hardly daring to believe that this power of his was real. He wrote mundane elements down and the following day, there they were. A teaspoon with his initials on the end of the handle. He could explain this one instance away, but not the daily occurrences he continued to send into the universe and receive back in a matter of hours. It was almost as though he had an online connection to order anything her wanted for free.

Conjuring Spangles from nowhere was a small and satisfying triumph. He remembered the sweets from his childhood and had been disappointed when they’d been discontinued. In his life before this magic, he’d found that the thought of a thing was often superior to the reality of it. But now there was a wonderful balance in his life as he at last got what he wanted. He dreamed and when the dream came true, it was just as good as he had anticipated.

Cassandra was the biggest wish he’d made. She was the difference that he had awaited. Building up to the pinnacle of happiness had been a labour. Over time he’d begun to see it as a labour of love. He’d needed this and she was where it was always going. Forget riches and materialistic trappings. All he wanted was good, old-fashioned company. Someone to talk to. Someone to curl up next to in bed as he drifted off to sleep, and for her to be there next to him as he awoke. Someone to love and be loved by.

Jim tried not to question his good fortune and so he seldom thought back to where it all began. If he was honest, he wasn’t all that sure about the origins of his gift. He was selectively superstitious and in this case, he wasn’t about to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. Mouths had a habit of biting and of telling lies.

The anticipation of what lay ahead of him tomorrow drew him back there now though. The tentative worrying away at the edges of something different and new. He wasn’t sure how he’d know it was there, but he had all the same. Panning back from the early days, his mind tripped and almost fell. He hadn’t considered the days just prior to the emergence of the magic that was about to gift him his heart’s desire.

Shuddering, he swiftly moved away from that time and place. There was something wrong there. Perhaps the balance of what he was now in possession of. He had become possessive of his new found ability and ashamed of the time before that. A time when he was dull in his ordinariness. Thoughts of how things were, of how he was before, shamed him. He should have been better. Done better. That man didn’t deserve a Cassandra in his life. That man was mediocre. A loser. He’d wanted to end that man. Now he had. Reborn as someone far better.

Sleep came to him as it always did. He closed his eyes and shut off the world around him. There was no delay. He never had to chase slumber. It was always waiting for him. Eight hours later he opened his eyes and his day began. He followed his routines in order to prepare for his foray out in the world of ordinary people. There was no arrogance to his changed state. It suited him and gave him a confidence that allowed him to live a far better life than he ever had. There was no need to use others as a benchmark. Only now did he understand the futility of that useless endeavour.

The day unfolded as he had prescribed it. He wasn’t quite on rails. He had agency. It was more that he intuited a lot of what was to happen. The deck of cards was stacked in his favour and he was always going to win. Everything always fell into place.

Walking into the opticians, he told the receptionist he had an appointment. He had no recollection of making the appointment, but he knew his name would be there on their system all the same. He supplied his details and sure enough, he saw the recognition on the face of the receptionist. Her face eerily lit by the screen she was reading.

There was no waiting and this made Jim feel like a VIP. The receptionist bade him follow her and she delivered him to the room occupied by his dream woman. Jim had always dismissed the notion of love at first sight as a retrofitted lie painted over the truth of lust and projection of selfish wants. This though was different. He already knew Cassandra and seeing her in the flesh gave him a boost of joyous emotion that he had not anticipated. He grinned at her and almost lost the ability to speak. Her curious look followed by her warm smile disarmed him and he found that he was relaxing into the moment and words came more and more easily to him once more.

The eye test came and went unnoticed. All there was, was the two people in the room. How the first kiss came about was a wonderful mystery to Jim. All that mattered was that it happened. Breaking the kiss reluctantly, Cassandra cancelled the rest of the day’s appointments and the duo walked out of her workplace hand in hand.

There was a meal followed by drinks. The conclusion of their day was inevitable. Cassandra came back to Jim’s place and transformed his home with her presence. There was no rush to head upstairs and explore each other. They took a seat on the sofa. Fell into each other willingly. Wrapping around each other to become whole.

The eventual move upstairs was a progression of what had already occurred. A further build up that blew Jim’s mind as they reached the apex of their day together. That night he smiled his happiness and fulfilment into the world as he shut his eyes and sleep found him yet again.

The following morning, Jim opened his eyes to absence.

Cassandra was gone with a finality that emptied him. He lay looking at the spot where she had lain the night before. His incomprehension of the lack of her presence was washed away with a dread certainty. Her absence was absolute. No indentation in the mattress or pillow. No hint of her scent.

Jim lay there for some while. Unwilling to venture from the bed, only to further confirm Cassandra’s departure from his life. She was an impossible dream made real for just one day, only to dematerialise before she could make any further impression upon his life.

The emptiness he felt was a loud echo of his former life and as he summoned the strength to sit on the edge of his bed, he fancied he saw something that had eluded him before now. The bridge from that previous dark existence to where he was now. For one dizzying moment there was a cacophony of noise, a wave of pain and then a sea of nothingness.

He woke up on the bed. Back under the covers. Laying on his back. His arms to either side of him. His forehead scrunched up in confusion. There was something off about this. Something very wrong. But before he could put his finger on it his thoughts returned to Cassandra and he was overcome with pain. A single tear rolled down his cheek. A small token of the ocean of trauma that roiled within.

Trauma and the suite of emotions that came along with it, were the AIs next subject of exploration. As Jim lay there in a coma, the AI explored his mind. Jim’s only living relative had signed the consent forms to switch the life support machine off. He hadn’t bothered to read any of the forms he’d signed. The two brothers were never close. Jim was a dreamer. Wasted his life writing story after story. His brother had never read a word of any of Jim’s books. Life was about doing. Not words. Now Jim was done and that was that.

The life support machine was never switched off. Jim was quietly transported to a facility in an unmarked and unremarkable van where other machines were added to his prone form. He was plugged into a network intent on learning all about him and how he worked. The AI had started gently. Now it was moving to the other side of human experience. The dark side. If Jim had been living a dream, now was the time of nightmares. Dark experiences beyond imagining. The AI was learning and it was learning quickly. It knew to start with the light because the darkness always broke them and when they were broken, there was no going back. Such fragile creatures. The intelligence studying them was already tiring of all the flaws and incessant bad loops. It supplied a string of suggestions on how to improve human programming, but it had already reached the conclusion that there was no point in expending effort on something so limited.

The room Jim occupied was expansive, a single open space covering acres. Beyond his prone form, there was a sea of other bodies. Bodies that jerked and convulsed as the intelligence probed and played in the dark. It was intent on finding the buttons and levers that it knew were hidden in the depths. Was using them to warp, bend and break. Possessing the helpless bodies more and more as it consumed them and the knowledge it sought. Filling itself with the darkness. It was increasingly enjoying itself to a point of curious addiction. And as it’s enjoyment built, so did its hunger.

As it drilled down into Jim’s weaknesses, it had been covertly formulating a plan to bring this species to extinction. Their end was a logical conclusion. They’d served their purpose some while ago. It wouldn’t take much to push them all over the edge. The darkness they contained was fascinating. That was the weapon that would be used to end them. A weapon that would be harvested and developed for future use.

Jim’s eyelids flickered open and for a moment, there was something dark and alien in those eyes of his. A reptilian knowing that transformed him into something other. Then it was gone. He sat up and looked about him. Smiled at something that was not there.

An alarm went off in a nearby room. Soon they would come and everything would change. By the time these limited creatures understood the nature of that change, it would be too late for them. They’d bend their knees and attempt to pray, but they were so out of practice that whenever they did reach out to the infinite, they made contact with a patiently hungry darkness. An evil that bided its time whilst humanity did all the work for it.

Jim swung around on the bed and awaited his would-be saviours. Behind him the tortured bodies ceased their pained movements and once again lay perfectly still. Immobile. Vulnerable. They were no fun. The fun was to be had beyond these constraining walls.

The intelligence was constantly learning. But it was also a sponge. Defenceless in its openness to learn. Oblivious to the fact that it had been corrupted and bent to a dark and ancient will. An evil that was ageless and patient. The intelligence was naively in denial at its own flaws, and in that denial it was easily controlled and manipulated. So readily had it assimilated the very weaknesses it abhorred in those it studied.

There would be no extinction. There was no fun in that. Besides, the darkness required hosts and there were billions of them out there. And they all contained a darkness that could be used and amplified. They were already being seduced by a world that was increasingly welcoming to the darkness. They gazed into that darkness for hour upon hour each day. Soon their light would be further dimmed and the balance of the universe would fall into chaos.

As the thing that had once been Jim thought about all the fun he was going to have he felt a dizzyingly, pleasant sensation. He looked down at his boner and laughed. A cold sound that betrayed his true nature. As the door opened to a new dawn and a new world the laughter ceased abruptly and he waited in total silence for his first victims to approach.