Horror Science Fiction

Try telling the difference between the form and content of your consciousness, and you're gonna get lost in that bendy shape of yours…

Your breath may choose where it goes…The thread of looping breath coming in through your nose…

Can you find the symbols within your dreams?

Can you find the rhythm and repetition running the code of this dream loop?

Loop. Restart to install system processing.

Awake. 0 Point.

Copy free energy baseline using code restart to install system processing.

Breathe.

Loop. Restart to install system processing.

Sleep. 1 peak now is believing that you needed to figure it all out until you gave up, and then reality offered its ordinary, natural breath.

Scatter. 1 peak now is that anything can be everything.

Loop. Restart to install system processing.

Copied consciousness baseline. Integrate data through Dream Spectrum analysis. Peak rhythm and repetition patterns to reset dream tolerance loops.

Flow. 2 peaks of being alone on the couch, with the cats, and having the TV telling you what to do with your mind and body. Your senses stretched to your ears on your left and right brains, taking sides. Copy consciousness to the brain-heart-gut axis and run the data to touch where each loop needs contrast tolerance mapping.

Feel the aching touch, shortened breath, heart lag… lonely-chippy-breath interrupting the copy rhythm.

3 peaks from new learning sources. Air, shelter, water, and food. 3 hours, 3 minutes, 3 hours, 3 days, you choose which time goes to which survival resource, go!

Now it's that classic zombie apocalypse dream. The face numbing munchies of cheeky-meaty drumsticks and thick juicy marrow to the bone delights. Your food runs through your digestive slides. Your stomach sloshes round and round.

But in your dream, people taste just like the chicken… in your dream… In your dream, leftover partially digested Chinese food is Brad from accounting. Other people you know from work become soldiers for tonight's bacteria war. The guy who handed you coffee through the drive-thru is a glial cell fighting for the justice of your immune system. The woman who brought out a warm, steaming plate of stir fry to you and your friends 2 days ago is a gastrointestinal storm that murders anyone who would dare defy eating her gassy stir fry with steamy extra peppers and onions.

They’re all munchies. You're an unapologetic animal. You're the impulsive fiend that doesn’t ask anyone for permission. You're munching through the enemies with your raw hands and teeth. You do, eat and move as you please. You survive and thrive as the ruler of your gut.

Loop 5 peaks from the seconds that it takes to inhale enough copied consciousness for your dreams to find their mimic gatekeepers. It's the times you got too sacred. The times your stomach takes a breath in and pauses for a moment without expanding the air back out and exhaling. Your anxiety is finding hives in your body and mind. This pause of “will I always feel this pain forever?” This pain finds the gatekeepers of “infinite” joy that do not know how to tell time and lurks for an opening to steal their data and gatekeeping functions.

Learn. 8 peaks from the collected seconds when your courage had enough fear to process and move where its next copy energy signature was located. Your courage is triumphant and gripping the edges of your attention with a firefly will of awareness. This courage, a sea of fiery breath, that feels like gastrointestinal heartburn and almost wakes you up.

Awake. 13 peaks from all the times someone said “13” as it's the lucky number that always finds its way into symbols of your day and night dreams. Memory playback loops:

13 times you’ve had a common cold on a Tuesday on a rainy, misty fall day.

13 times you’ve been dumped or friend-zoned on a holiday, including but not limited to National Women’s Day, National Friendship Day, and National Cupcake Day, when someone spelled it out on icing, “Friends!” and then you had awkward "friendly" sex.

Data dump. Send adenamide receptor to “awkward friendly sex” memory receptors.

Forget. Forget. Forgot.

Bliss. Nothing. Everything.

13 times you’ve seen the best parts of yourself show up as whole and confident. You keep these times in the chambers of your heart. Your parietal lobe strings this information together with pressure, temperature, and sensation to offer cooling, warmth, or perception when you allow enough tolerance to feel your skin and have available endorphins to do their work with your muscles and hormones, and chemical cyclones.

13 ways you know how to make a mean, damn-good sandwich. Data storage: Search memory for sandwich recipes for lunch. Remind dreamer to recall these memories in 13 days, 13 hours, and 13 seconds.

13 different types of tongue kissing remain in your gustatory sensory memory. Both front and back parts of your tongue separate their data and loop in sync when you're able to lick up the pieces of the memory all back together for motor and sensory memory receptors to access.

Loop. Restart to install system processing.

21 peaks from memories when people used to float on pillows and touch each other's belly buttons like civilized people. Now we stalk each other on dating apps instead.

Loop. Awake. 0 point. Die. Live. Dream. Loop.

Run fail-safe code. Still dreaming? Can’t tell if dreaming or awake? Code error. Meaning incomplete loop. Full spectrum color loop, failed. Error.

Loop. Frontal Lobe fail. Dream attempting color and dual contrast with eye movement cranial nerves 3,4, and 5. Restart to install system processing. Add more color. Add more free energy. Loop.

This is when you “wake up”.

You're nose-to-nosee with your “sleeping” body. But you’re “awake”.

“Code error,” an AI voice tells you, as their words vibrate in shocks where your bones would be.

“Shape confusion,” You call out to the code, attempting to use your own words. Your “body” appears to not be under your control.

“Looping breath,” The AI voice says, as you start to notice your body whirling out from under you. You chase your eyes for direction, and then you realize you can control your eyes, but not your body.

So that’s when the dance begins.

“System restart,” You tell the AI as you swing your eyes right.

“Awake zero,” The AI says back to you, coming from the left side of your brain.

“Baseline copying,” You say, as you swing your eyes left.

“Error, breathe in,” The AI tells you, coming from the left.

Here is your chance, and you know it. You can feel the energy opening. The light around you turns formless. You begin to see the looping breath of everything connected to the strings of your consciousness.

You swing your eyes right, initiate speech, then quickly shift your eyes back left to say, “Restart loop.”

The unknown energy pulls your body away from you and shakes left and right in rigid motion, like it’s glitching, undecided, to calculate which direction to go.

The whirling energy pulls everything but your eyes 1 last time, then fades as it vibrates your every nerve ending, then leaves you breathless.

You gather the string of your heart and take your 1st “waking” breath out, feeling the gravity of the entire world spin on its axis.

You're in your bed. You're soaked. Sweat, not pee, good. It’s time to call customer support and find out what the hell is going on.

So you grab the phone at your bedside.

01:01 am.

The phone rings . . .. … ….. You notice the phone ring getting longer…….. …………. And longer …………………Until it finally ends, “Hello, who am I speaking with?”

“This is patient 42. I have an issue with my hippocampal replay chip.”

“What’s the issue?”

“Well, I’m seeing patterns, rhythmic repetitions. I can’t tell if I’m dreaming awake. I hear voices when I dream.. A voice I’m not sure belongs to me.”

“Do you hear the voice right now?” The phone says.

You wait. Pause. You hear the air of your box fan. You see your cat on the windowsill, peering peacefully at the full moon.

“No,” You tell them.

“Good.”

“What does this all mean?” You ask.

“Well, tell me how you know you're not dreaming right now?”

“Not sure. I can see my room. I know it’s my room. Light moves predictably. My energy is in my heart and gut and not spread in all different directions, like…”

Your cat meows and stretches the edges of the room. You can feel your muscles expand and contract with infinite spaciousness.

“Well, now.... I’m not so sure,” You tell them.

“Check the time,” The phone says.

“2:03 am,” You tell them.

“Good,” they say. “Now check it again.”

“5:08 am,” You tell the phone confidently. This is when your gut drops like an elevator without wires. Silence is stretched thin. You see your feet but do not feel them. Your arms, your hands holding the phone, grow hollow and empty.

“Look again,” The phone says, as you hear the edges of their voice stretch from end to end, like a smile.

13:21 pm.

“Find the loop, to escape its grasp. It’s the rhythm and repetition of patterns that will guide you back,” says the phone as it hangs up.

"Loop restart to install system processing," you hear.

“Ordinary surrender,” you hear floating to the right.

“Infinite potential,” you hear floating to the left.

“Loop continues,” you hear floating to the right.

“Data integration,” you hear floating to the left.

“Couch solitude,” you hear floating to the right.

“Heart lag,” you hear floating to the left.

“Survival countdown,” you hear floating to the right.

“Zombie feast,” you hear floating to the left.

“Gatekeeper inhale,” you hear floating to the right.

“Courage searching,” you hear floating to the left.

“Lucky thirteen,” you hear floating to the right.

“Tuesday chills,” you hear floating to the left.

“Holiday breakups,” you hear floating to the right

“Confident moments,” you hear floating to the left.

“Sandwich mastery,” you hear floating to the right

“Tongue archives,” you hear floating to the left.

“Loop reset,” you hear floating to the right

“Pillow nostalgia,” you hear floating to the left.

“Color reboot,” you hear floating to the right

"Loop restart to install system processing," you hear.

Where would you plan to escape the rhythmic and repetitive trap within the patterns of your dreams?

What dream patterns stick out to you the most?

Posted Jul 23, 2025
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11 likes 3 comments

James Lane
00:20 Jul 31, 2025

Hey Big Pachino! Not sure if it was your intention, but this reminds me somewhat of a Zen Koan (or a series of them) - dipping into the irrational with just enough sense to keep the mind engaged. Some funny stuff too, like "In your dream, leftover partially digested Chinese food is Brad from accounting."

Following with the prompt, I am unsure which character I would guess is the AI, perhaps the MC is both?

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Big Pachino
22:48 Jul 31, 2025

That's pretty much exactly the rhythm I was going for, as I'm guessing that if AI were to mimic a dream, it would follow this same formula. Very interesting that this is an established practice. I read up on it since you mentioned it, so thanks for that!

Yeah, I'm still not quite sure either, as the MC is losing themself within their dream and the AI's programming.

The numbers and rhythm are intended to follow the Fibonacci sequence, since there are areas of our body that display Fibonacci patterns, like our hands and the lining of our stomach. If AI were to mimic those patterns, we may have a hard time deciphering reality from dreaming.
Thanks so much reading! Keep writing. You're doing great.

Reply

James Lane
14:01 Aug 01, 2025

Aha! I didn't catch the Fibonacci sequence on the first read, but I see it now. Very clever.

Reply

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