By David C. Daoust
“You still won’t see,” the hollowed empty voice filled Dakota’s mind, an intrusive thought into her studies.
“I have made it clear– I do not wish to see,” she shot back shortly, then clarified, “Not with your eyes.”
“And yet how long have you spent in study… searching,” The Grandoxa posed smugly. “Piecing the pieces- long lost to you and your kind…”
“Yes- I am piecing,” Dakota could not help but indulge it at long last, “I am. Me. I do not wish your help, or your intrusion. Nor do I need it.”
“And yet the path is open. Opened by you, or I would not be at all,” The Grandoxa cryptically explained, “Not merely a path, a construct. All because you cannot see! What’s more- is you refuse to accept that you want to.”
“What does that even mean?” Dakota ignored the accusations and went straight to the new thought, “A construct?”
“You fight. But you only fight yourself- Deep within the consciousness,” its smugness was sickening, “The Grandoxa is your own creation. You have only split yourself from yourself. I am not going to try and convince you that you are not the dominant intellect here. But you are ‘all’, as in all here is, that same ‘all’. You ARE Ergos!”
She ignored the name once again, as she had since her arrival.
“You have split the whole,” It tried again despite her rigid wall of denial, “I am you, you are the Grandoxa. You needed someone to resist. To blind you… thus you created me- The Grandoxa: The measure of wealth of the whole, of ALL- The shared vision, you deem to reject…”
“Because I refuse to see!” Dakota mocked, heatedly, as the truth rang through her mind, “How can I not! How can I indulge a group- this hive mind??”
“You have overwritten the group,” it was weakened with her forcefulness.
“I have merely maintained my own individuality,” Dakota pressed.
“As the whole,” it did its best to press back, “You plucked out all that you refused to accept- and made me. A construct of your own mind- all to resist…”
“False.” Dakota’s thought over writ all- retroactively changed much of the previous conversations, to leave only one truth- her truth.
“Here, I say, is what YOU do not see. I did not build YOU of my own subconscious. I built myself, of all of theirs. For deep down, each struggles to maintain their own grasp on their sense of self. They may have been fused consciously into one mind. Yet deep down, they struggle for that freedom- That individuality that sets them apart, that makes life worth living, that makes their lives unique and their minds into separate infinite universes. Your singularity is the abomination,” she declared, “No one is meant to be led by the nose, to be forced into a herd, and pushed along as you all have, clearly…”
Existence quivered.
For just that moment, she got a glimpse of the Whole; the truth- Ergos. She saw eyes in the cosmos, and maybe the suggestion of a bridge of a nose, before existence went black.
She tumbled free, ejected from the whole; rejected at long last. Excommunicated. She felt weak, and her mind was in a daze. Her uniquely quick mind- felt slow compared to what she had just experienced. Her lungs burned, she started to gag and choke, the chill of the air made her remember what it felt like to have a body as the fluid drained around her. Finally she cleared her lungs, and was able to take a breath at long last.
Her vision blurred, she blinked to try and get a look at her surroundings. Before she could, it was as though the ground gave way beneath her. She was sliding down a long pipe, her body still weak, she could not put up much of a fight as her momentum carried further and further down.
After a sudden dip, she launched from the chute, at last she hit the floor.
The ground beneath felt as though she was lying across a series of long pipes. Still too weak to pick herself up, she could only lay there, taking stock. She knew her body was changed, tampered with, she had learned much while she was part of it. She knew there was tech buried within her skull. She took another breath, relieved that she still could- the alterations they made to those that were brought into the Whole, were permanent… with no expectation of ever drawing a natural breath, once joined.
She heard tacking in the distance, something was moving. The sound put her in mind of centipedes’ legs, each taking a turn to push the long segmented body forward. This centipede must be massive beyond reason. The dark form appeared above her. She did not know what it was, truly. Her vision was still so blurry. It was huge. A massive blurry head craned down, to stop an inch from her face. She heard and felt air being drawn in, like a breath, though the voice that followed was anything but natural. In raspy low voice it posed, “If the Light is the ‘Way’…” it paused, pulled away, and shifted back and forth, then returned to the exact position, an inch from her face, before finishing in a low whisper, “Freedom lies in the Darkness.”
With that, she felt a long metal tentacle wrap around her right leg, just before she was whisked away- dragged into darkness.
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