Dream Knights

[Everloving]

Heather sat at lunch, staring at the doodle she had created. The eerie character seemed so vaguely familiar, like a long ago aquantance or preschool friend. Like something out of a drea.

DREAM.

There she was again, thinking about dreams when she should be focused on her schoolwork. An honorrole student had no business dreaming up silly little fantasies of rainbows and romance. Dreams were for sleepers. She had goals. Yes, that was the right word, goals....


.............................................................................

Damion's body lie still on the bed. The room was silent save for the drone of his resporator and the beep of his heart monitor. His mother sat beside his bed, holding the hand tht wasn't overed in wires and I.V. needles. she stroked his apled face, humming him the lullaby she used to sing when he was a baby. Damion, however, heard none of this. Or did he??

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

D.K. sat, waiting for his minions to return with the child. That was a vital part of hi plans. Suddenly, his heart beat began to slow as a soft melody of familiarity filled his thoughts. A comfort he had long forgotten. He shook his head in frustration.

"Leave me alone!! Stay out of my head, woman!!" he yelled to the voice that occasionally disturbed his thoughts. Though, not truely a voice, more of a thought or aspect that popped into his mind occasionally. A faint whisper of his former life. The life of the human boy he strained to recall.

 

[searchingsoul]

It was computer class, and, as usual, Clarence Shay was on, surfing the internet. It was then that she noticed some website. I had all sorts of sciency stuff that she didn't have the will to translate. She was about to leave, when she noticed something that caught her eye. For the past three nights, she had been exploring a huge forest in her dreams. They were so vivid and clear when she dreamed them, and after she woke up, that she knew that it could influence the real life. So now, she was staring at stories about a forest and such things that she had been dreaming about. Who had made this sight, she wondered.

 

[Brilliand]

Another IP address popped up on Ivan's screen, and Ivan was feeling mischievous. Navigating over to his web server, Ivan loaded a script onto his site. If either of those most recent visitors refreshed the page, they would see what he was typing as he typed, and be able to type back - although there was nothing on the page to explain this.

Thinking back to his latest dream, Ivan began typing out Gresholm's latest adventures, starting with the death of Iban and ending with Iban yelling something unintelligible, with events from the central dream world scattered through in the manner of someone who still hadn't gotten the hang of remembering his dreams clearly.

 

[searchingsoul]

When Clair tryed to go anywhere on the site, the page turned up as unavailable and errored. So, instead of trying to do what was obviously futile, she just simply tryed refreshing the page. To her suprise, something new had been added to the page. When she read what had been written, she started getting chills. This sounded incredibly familiar. The only exception being, that in her dream world, she hadn't met anyone. She started to wonder if other people had experienced this same dream world. It was truely a wonder to think about. She started to reply to the post. She wrote 'What was this dream world like? What did he look like? This sounds so familiar, but I know that it is next to impossible. Please tell me everything.'

 

[Brilliand]

The request popped up on Ivan's computer, and suddenly Ivan had a fancy instant-messaging connection through Clair's browser. Internet Explorer, Ivan thoguht in disgust, and started to code an applet that would make it act like some other browser, but he couldn't pick the new browser, so in less than a minute he lost interest and began answering the question.

As Ivan thought back to the dream world, Gresholm flashed back into his mind, and Ivan answered in Gresholm's words. "The dream world was nothing, then the desert, then the sky, then a forest, then nothing again. Gresholm is white... I'm not sure he's anything else, I've never looked. But what's so strange about it? This is all a dream anyway." Ivan paused and stared at that line, wondering if it was really true. After deciding that it wasn't, he continued, "At least, all that is a dream. You dream, don't you? How about dreaming about pumpkins tonight? I assure you, the rind is not composed of cardboard. Uh... yeah, you did want to know about everything, didn't you. Never try to dream four-dimensionally - it falls apart, and you never know who it will fall on and kill. Maybe Iban, except that you can't kill Iban. I make a new one every night." Ivan paused, wondering what he was talking about. Surely this person didn't want to know everything? Wait, of course he did. Or she, Ivan didn't know. "Actually, I can't tell you everything. I don't know everything."

 

[searchingsoul]

When the message poped up, Clair read it. Then started typing her reply. 'I've dreamed of that forest many times now. You can NOt tell me that is a coincidence. So far, I haven't met anyone in the forest, but I get the feeling that there is. It's always the same forest.'

 

[Brilliand]

"There are many forests, but yes, that one is most of them. Well, it depends on your definition of coincidence... of course you ended up in that forest, dreams always end up in that forest. There are people there, but I don't think they're important people, because it's just a dream."

 

[Ninjitsu14]

(((so what's going on now?)))

 

[Brilliand]

As he waited for Clair to respond, Ivan pulled up his Eclipse-Dreamweaver hybrid and began writing an AI application in mostly (but not entirely) Java. Gresholm was still fresh in his mind, so amid the curly braces and angular brackets, a face started to take shape, then a person. Whilethe program was still half-formed, Ivan began adding bells and whistles - networking capabilities, speech synthesizers, oddball functions that could only be called by the random function caller that he had written in his sleep three nights ago...

Ivan but a miserly user interface on top of the jumble, and connected it to his website. It typed the letter "P" before crashing. Undaunted, Ivan went back to work, paying more attention to his original idea of an AI model of Gresholm.

Just a dream, huh? The Internet is your life. I want to go there.

 

[searchingsoul]

Just a dream. He says... Then why do I get the feeling that it could be an alternat reality? Clair sighed. "I'd consider a coincidence to be a random mishap (of course I don't consider a mishap always bad). I suppose we would have to agree to disagree, now wouldn't we?"

 

[Ninjitsu14]

Tetsuya had gone to computer class. The teacher gave them an assignment, and Tetsuya decided he could finish it within the last ten minutes of class, and started surfing the web.

He looked over at his neighbor, Clair. She was on some science-fiction site--he couldn't tell. But, it appeared she was IMing someone.

"What are you doing?" Tetsuya asked. Leaning over, he memorized the link, and copied it to his browser.

Tetsuya read most of the conversation before being creeped out. There were others, even more than he thought, that knew about the dream forest, or whatever you would want to call it. That was impossible! No one else could have had the same dream he had.

"I don't want you to think I'm crazy, but I had a very similar dream. It began completely empty--a blank white, like an empty canvas. Then, different pieces of architecture appeared. Then people, then the sky and clouds. Then a large wall with an equally large gate appeared. Then, it felt like I went on a hunt for demons..." Tetsuya typed.

His thoughts went back to the person of Aaron, who Tetsuya felt was himself, and yet was not. "A dream is a strange place...My psyche simply could have wanted to escape, and so formed the character of "Aaron" to become...." Tetsuya thought. He glanced over at Clair.

"Hey, take a look at this!!" Tetsuya said, refreshing the page so it looked like he hadn't been typing. His message was clearly visible on the page.

"Someone had a dream almost exactly like yours..." Tetsuya said.

 

[searchingsoul]

Clair raised her eyebrows at Tetsuya. He might not have known, but she saw him type out the adress and had heard him typing. But, she played along. "That is strange, but I wouldn't call it a coincidence." She said in an undertone to him. Then she started replying to his post.

"Do you feel like you can relate to your dream self?"

 

[Ninjitsu14]

"He seems familiar to me, almost like an extension of myself. I don't want to get technical, but as I said before, I feel like he's me." Tetsuya typed. He did so, not all at once, butm made it looks like he was playing a game, since the computers were a good five or six feet away from one another.

 

[searchingsoul]

"I feel the same way about my dream self - only I feel like I become eveything I want to with my dream self. It's weird, but she's like my perfect self.

 

[Brilliand]

Ivan read the exchange idly as he wrote his program. Every so often he would test it, causing a few sords of gibberish to appear between the posts. Since his AI needed large amounts of input to learn from, he let it read his site in the background as he edited and recompiled its individual modules.

"DIE!" Ivan's CSS file suddenly deleted itself, causing all of the fancy borders on his site to vanish.

Put that back!

"Huh? How?"

Didn't you read it before you deleted it?

"No..."

Rolling his eyes, Ivan pulled up Google Desktop Search, pulled up an archived version of the file, and put his borders back. Then he adjusted Gresholm's memory.

This time, when Ivan tested Gresholm on his site, no gibberish showed up on the chat. Instead, Gresholm got into Ivan's bookmarks and began visiting other forums. Confused by the lack of any visible results, Ivan added a debugging output to Gresholm and pulled it up on his screen.

The first few linesof output told Ivan that Gresholm had gotten into his server and was installing some software. Intrigued, Ivan didn't kick him out right away, but watched from a distance.

After a few minutes, a man stepped onto Ivan's screen, standing in front of Ivan's other windows as though they were a painted background. He was dressed all in white, with pale skin. After a second, Ivan recognized him as Gresholm. He got into a painting program.

Ignoring the windows behind him, Gresholm reached out and touched Ivan's screen from inside. Ivan said aloud, "Well, you're on the Internet now." Gresholm smiled and vanished.

Ivan looked back at the debugging report. Gresholm was headed for Clair's computer, following the connection the Ivan had set up earlier, but the school's firewalls were blocking him. Ivan wondered if Gresholm could destroy firewalls.

 

[Brilliand]

Ivan watched in awe as Gresholm cut past the firewall's defenses, then installed a copy of himself on the firewall. He's like a virus! But Ivan didn't stop to think about the ethics of creating a virus. He's free... like a disembodied mind, free to wander the mental universe unimpeded... no body to worry about, all he has to do is think! As though in obedience to an unspoken command, Gresholm appaeared again on Ivan's screen. "DIE!" The front of Ivan's screen fell away, and as the shimmering picture faded, Gresholm stretched out his hand. Ivan reached out to him with his own hand, sliding it into the crackling void of his ruined monitor... and he vanished.

Once on the Internet, Ivan wasted no time in visiting his own server to see what it looked from the inside. Gresholm tagged along, but Ivan knew that it was only one copy of Gresholm - he would be everywhere soon.

Contrary to Ivan's expectations, Gresholm did not want to be everywhere. He still remembered the place he had come from, and he was not merely following the Internet - he was following the dreams.

 

[searchingsoul]

Clair blinked, astonished and confounded, as someone appeared on her screen. It didn't exactly look human, more wolf than anything, but he opened a "link" and a girl appeared on her screen. Claire stared, wide eyed. This was exactly what her dream self looked like! She shook her head, not believing her eyes. She shut her eyes tight. After a little bit, she opened them again. Nope. Seara was still there. Claire's computer sent out an electrical current, shocking her. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in cyberspace. More specifically, the site she had had open when she'd been shocked. If she was to be honest to herself, she didn't believe what was happening. She could believe multiple people having dreams connected, but - this was real life! Things like this just didn't happen! But, whether or not this was real, she couldn't deny she was scared silly. She felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped.

*****************
When Seara noticed Claire, rigid, she felt compassion for her. She walked over, and put a reassuring hand on her, but Claire jumped.

"Don't be alarmed. There is a reason you are here. The dream world needs your help. Do not be frightened, for I will be with you to help." Seara said softly.

"I don't mean to be rude, but I would think that the dream world isn't real and that it wouldn't matter what happens in there." Claire said, cautiously.

Seara smiled kindly at her. "Claire, the dream world is just another world. It is no less real than your world, nor less important."

Before Claire could question her further, Seara grabbed her arm, and they reappeared elsewhere on the site. Not too far from them was a man and the wolf-guy that Claire had seen on her screen.

 

[Ninjitsu14]

Tetsuya experienced a similar experience. When the electrical shock hit Clair, and she was sucked inside her computer screen. Before Tetsuya could even react, a man who looked wolf-like appeared on his screen. A link flashed on a screen, and Tetsuya clicked on it. A 2D image of....Aaron?! But, that was his dream self!

The wolf-man grabbed the 2D image of Aaron, who was immediately wrapped in a vortex of 1's and 0's, becoming a 3D imae of himself. Tetsuya couldn't believe what he was seeing....Multiple people having the same dream, sure, that was believable...But, a little tiny man appearing on screen, and fabricating an exact replicae of his dream self, not to mention Clair getting sucked into her computer.

Gresholm turned to Aaron, who merely nodded. Gresholm sent a shock of electricity through the computer. Tetsuya blacked out for a moment, as Gresholm pulled him inside his computer.

Tetsuya successfully made it through the portal into the computer. Looking outside his computer screen, he could clearly see the computer class, as if the computer screen was an open window.

Aaron walked forward towards Tetsuya, and Tetsuya braced himself. The the sword sheath at Aaron's waist was indeed intimidating, but so were Aaron's sharp green eyes that quickly sized Tetsuya up.

"Your me, correct?" Tetsuya said.

"You could say that. Though I have no idea why my human incarnate would be such a scrawny thing such as you..." Aaron said. Tetsuya glowered for a moment, before seeing Clair and another girl a few feet away with the wolf-man and another man.

Aaron walked over, standing beside Clair. Aaron sighed as Tetsuya walked away from him, sauntering slowly over to stand beside Seara and Gresholm.

 

[Brilliand]

Ivan watched, fascinated, as the Blaster worm attacked a webserver. Hundreds of copies of the worm were shooting down the wire, coming from who knows where, and slamming against the server's port 80 in a set pattern. None of the attempts werre having any effect, however - the server had long since been secured against the old virus.

Ivan soon grew bored watching the virus, and decided to try getting into the server himself. After reassuring himself that he wouldn't do any damage or leave copies of himself inside the machine (not that he could anyway), Ivan moved up to the port and inspected it. In his disembodied form, he could see every hole, every gate by which he could get into the server. Tentatively, Ivan reached into one of those holes - and got sprayed in the face with a page of search results.

 

[searchingsoul]

A hole suddenly appeared beside Clair and Seara. Clair jumped as Gresholm appeared beside her, through the hole. She looked over where Ivan was and back again, startled and confused. How could Gresholm be in two places at once?

"C'mon. Gresholm wants us to follow him though the portal." Seara said.

Clair was uncertain, but followed as Seara went into the portal. And when they came out, Clair was astonished to be at the edge of a huge, ancient forest, exactly like in her past few dreams. Summoning up her courage she moved forward, coming into the forest, unsure what lay ahead.