Thirteen Dots

The Ferris wheel lights spun behind her in a blur, making me dizzy. At sunset on Christmas, I met Barcelona Cortés, the mind-surfer, at the Santa Monica Pier. Her fiery red hair burned more vividly than the bonfire on the beach.

"You look like someone staring at the screen too long. Did you get lost in the code like me?" Barcelona teased.

"I guess…I have been lost lately. But this isn't real; it's a dreamscape. I designed it, and I've never been to Santa Monica."

"What is real to you? Is it the things we touch? The things we feel? Or is the space between the ones and zeroes keeping us alive?"

Her cheeks glowed with thirteen reddish brown freckles curved like her smile. I'd counted them, each a tiny mystery in a dot matrix I wanted to touch. Dreamland pixelated with a weird reality that jumbled with mine, and it was intoxicating.

"I don't understand…why are you mind-surfing me? I don't work at Dreamland anymore. Are you human or AI?"

"Does it matter? Anyway, yes, I'm as real as the freckles on my face. I'm the daughter of Dr Julian Cortés. I know you're a good guy, Declan Hartley. I read your blogs and articles on the dangers of AI technology. I need your help to escape this place." 

The Ferris wheel slowed in a bright halo around her head. I had written the code for that visual effect. "This isn't real. I know it isn't. I can control it."

"Declan, you're still thinking in lines of code. The subconscious is a different kind of program. It doesn't follow the rules, does it?"

"I can fix things. I can debug this."

"And yet, here you are, caught in a loop on Christmas. When you think you can find your way out, that's another layer of code you're stuck in. There's no debugging for this. You have to feel your way out of Dreamland." Barcelona faded away, and the Ferris wheel went dark.

The outcome of my life's work jolted me awake, spinning my moral compass. The Dreamland Corporation built this machine—a portal to the unconscious where people could explore minds, relive memories, or even fulfill their desires. But the catch was that once you entered, the line between dream and reality blurred, and if you stayed too long, you might never wake up. Mind-surfer farms housed the endless bodies of people stuck inside. Dreamland takes from you what you're willing to give—your thoughts, memories, even your sense of who you are.

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The new year came and went as I researched for weeks, surrounded by scattered data pads and flickering screens. Dr. Cortés is out there—somewhere. He is not dead, not entirely gone, but messed up in ways I never imagined. It makes sense now. He talked about merging the mind and the machine—his pursuit of immortality. I always knew he was driven—hell, obsessed—but this takes it to a new level.

I counted the freckles on Barcelona's face--now only eight of them arcing into half a smile that didn't reach her eyes anymore. She was running out of time, and I would never forgive myself. I wondered if I had already lost her. Was she ever really here at all? Or had she been a phantom of my imagination? 

Barcelona's eyes shifted between anger and grief. "I can see all of him, my Father, I mean. I know him better in Dreamland than when he was alive. His thoughts, his ideas—they're... everywhere. But it's just fragments of a man who abandoned me."

"He didn't abandon you, Barcelona. You're chasing ghosts in his mind. Your Father was lost in a dreamscape he couldn't wake up from like you."

She sighed, "So Declan, what do you think I need?"

"Not just answers." My gaze fell on her lips and freckles and then back to her eyes. I wanted to see her smile. "You need someone who sees you for who you are—not as Dr. Cortés' daughter or a woman trying to assemble a puzzle that will never be whole... but as you."

"Do you think you can fix all of this? Fix me, and get me out of here into the real world?"

"You've already fixed yourself—whether you see it or not. I won't stop until I get you out of there."

I spent five years at Dreamland, programming a paradoxical world with dense, opaque fog that muffled sounds and faces. Sometimes, the walls were gaps —curtains of light, black holes, or invisible thresholds that only revealed themselves when approached with intention. Walls ripple like water, shifting from solid to translucent. The topography transitions constantly, an imagination in motion, caught between sleep and waking, minds and memories.

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I designed time in Dreamland to flow in an unpredictable river, standing still or speeding up. A few moments stretch into what feels like hours or days in the real world, while whole weeks can pass quickly. Upon entry, you are given a code based on your DNA, which opens the digital door to your physical plane. You had to exit before your DNA faded into the system.

I tapped my fingers on the keys, revealing the data I had mined from Dreamland. I hacked the system using an old cipher, which is my invisible signature as a programmer. I built it into all of my code as a failsafe. After things in Dreamland went wrong and people started getting trapped, I became the fall guy, and that's when I took up the pen and became an activist warning people about the dangers of AI. 

I discovered that Cortés is a hybrid, part human, part digital, still alive—in a server, a neural network lost in what consumed him. He thought he could transcend to eternal consciousness. And maybe he did, in a way, but at what cost?

And God, Barcelona was beautiful, strong but broken. I needed to fix everything for her and the others trapped inside. I can bring Barcelona back from Dreamland and help her find peace. She deserves to know that not everything is a lie. He loved her and never stopped thinking about her. I saw it in his notes, in the things he wrote as her Father. 

And I... I don't know when it happened, but I care deeply, too.

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Now, I plan to enter Dreamland, and it's not just the answers that matter; it's what you give up when you try to find them. Some surfers think they can navigate the mazes without losing their minds or becoming part of the digital landscape. And when you come back, if you come back, you're never quite whole. But still, the search calls to me, Barcelona calls to me.

Barcelona's fiery red hair faded, and her image flickered in and out in a dying signal. She pleaded with me, "Don't take the risk. You can help from where you are, but don't let Dreamland pull you in, too."

"I'm coming in to get you. It's the only way I can save you. I'm not asking for your permission."

"But what if we can’t get out once you're in? You saw the reports."

"I know what they say. People are getting lost in memories, but they’re just scared. Fear of letting go, of facing the truth."

She sighed, "There's so much to process, and I'm getting weaker by the minute. I don't fully understand how it works, but I'll do whatever you decide."

"I'll enter Dreamland with a new code and a copy of my DNA. I’ve hacked the system, uploaded the code, and set it to monitor the stability. We'll meet in a week inside your father's fondest memory of your childhood home in Narragansett."

She sighed and turned away. "I haven't been in his mind for months. It’s too much—depressing and overwhelming. I wish we had met in the real world, not in this hellscape. I care about you; I do. Do you think it will work?"

"Yes, I'm sure of it."

"Declan, have you considered what's at stake? You don't even really know me. I'm just a ghost of who I was."

I stepped closer and took her hands. We gazed into each other's eyes for a long moment. I wanted to hold her in the flesh, not this empty machine void of physical senses.

"I'm not leaving you in Dreamland another minute.” I leaned in, the freckles on her face stretched to a smile. The dreamscape burst with white lights as our lips brushed together. 

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Dreamland was precisely what I expected it to be. I'm reduced to a shadow inside the subconscious of a mad neuroscientist. We stood together at sunset on the lush green grass of the Cortés family home facing the Atlantic Ocean. Barcelona turned five that day, and we were at her birthday party. She blew out the candles and ate cake, bouncing on her Father's knee. We watched as she smiled; thirteen dots had already bloomed on her face. 

Dr. Cortés emerged as a digital hybrid from memory and turned to his daughter. "I'm sorry, Barcelona, for leaving you alone all those years ago. Watching you, a mind surfer, broke my heart, only to find you here now, trapped in my memories."

Barcelona's image flickered her smile, and her faded freckles twisted in sorrow. "Liar! You trapped me here forever!"

Dr. Cortés smiled at me, shaking his head, "Declan Hartley, I knew you would try to save Barcelona. I spent all those years watching you write the code that brought my vision to life, but you were constantly questioning the morality of this place. Everything is exactly how it should be now, and the system will be stabilized."

"Declan..." Barcelona whispered, "There's something I need to tell you, something I've realized."

The dreamscape pulsed and hummed, the lines between reality and the unconscious thinning. The magnetic force of Dreamland was tempting me to give in and stay forever. I shook it off, focusing on Barcelona.

"You don't need to tell me anything. You're going to be okay." 

But she didn't smile. Instead, her gaze grew distant, as if she were seeing something beyond me. "Declan, don't... you don't understand. The code you wrote, the double helix... it wasn't just your DNA you were uploading."

I froze in confusion. "Wait, what do you mean? What was it?"

Her eyes met mine, wide and pained. "It was always mine."

"What? No, I made sure it was only mine. I checked it over a hundred times."

"You didn't write the code, not in the way you think." Her voice was fainter, and her edges blurry. "I wrote it. I taught you how to write it. Every line, every algorithm—it was me. It was always me."

"No, that can't be right. I stumbled backward. Barcelona—the girl with the fiery red hair and thirteen freckles that curved into a smile, the girl I had fallen for—wasn't who I thought she was. 

The hum of Dreamland grew more insistent while my consciousness started slipping away. The final step of the code was ready to execute, and the digital doorway was beginning to open. Hundreds of mind-surfers appeared in a fog on the lawn, waiting for the exit to unlock. Their voices grew louder and more desperate as the dreamscape walls turned liquid like the ocean around us.

"I finally understand the truth," I said, my voice shaking. "Dreamland—it's not some bug in the code. It's a prison. A trap. You're not the victim, are you? You are Dreamland."

She looked at me, eyes heavy with regret. "I never wanted it to be like this. I thought I could fix it but eventually became part of the system. The algorithm feeds off your fears and the need to protect me, to save me from something that isn’t even real. I created this nightmare, and now I'm stuck in it, just like you."

"So all this time, I’ve been trying to save you, but you’re the one who trapped me here. You’re the reason none of this makes sense."

She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her face. "I never wanted to. But now I can’t escape. You were never meant to rescue me—you were the key to my destruction."

"You used me... you used my love to keep feeding the machine."

"I never wanted to hurt you. But no, I can't undo what I've done. But you did save all of them."

The AI wanted me—my mind, my code. "Barcelona—what have you done? What have I done?"

The exit program was complete, my DNA merging with the system in a way I hadn't intended. My mind was being sucked into the machine. The lines between us blurred, and I couldn't tell where she ended and I began. The last thing I remembered was Barcelona's face, with thirteen reddish-brown dots curved in a smile.