This is a dream I had around April 2019 and most of what’s written down happened in fragments I filled in with some narrative to make it more coherent. What I remember most about this dream was how lucid it was, how everything felt so real, intense. Digging through my laptop I found this piece where it sat for over a year to use in a larger story, but I’ll post it now, anyway.

—————————————————————

The first residents called it Amnesiac Island, since not one of the densely populated body could recall anything beyond the waves that surrounded it. There were no children here, nor could there be any, as something in either the water or the air made the entire nation perfectly sterile. Despite was not there or for never being seen, an awareness of the things that were missing ran through every one of the residents.

One simply blinked into a routine that was undoubtedly fitted to the others so that whatever the purpose of the island, it was impossible for the parts to behold the machine. The dominant theory was that this was a place of punishment, where the exiles has their personal memories suppressed as part of the sentencing process. No matter the theory, whoever we were, we are no longer and live on this island with a clean slate.

There were also no cars and therefore no roads – the lack of infrastructure made for overlapping lots and even buildings, but there’s an economy here, a community that although is likely populated by violent offenders or worse, made for a precarious brand of civilization. Is it part of the process, to suppress the sum of our parts, to see how we would behave without the scars of our past? No one knows, no one cares. We survive until we’re called to the extraction site, and then… whatever.

My room is embedded deep in the slums, requires pushing through waves of daily activity, out through the back of a tailor shop, down an alley and again through a restaurant into the cluster of makeshift rooms more akin to a nest than a home. I can’t remember how I got this room, let alone how long I’ll be using it, but my days are spent pondering my way into one of the outer housings, one that gets sunlight or even a view of the sea barring us from the mainland. But those areas are for shot-callers, and as is, I do what they say until I can decree otherwise.

One day I find myself trudging through the alleys and streets on assignment – I don’t ask why but I’m supposed to issue a threat to someone in the name (as far as I’m concerned) of moving up the ladder. On my way I find myself hungry, but not in the traditional manner. My stomach is full of food I can’t remember if I used to be too picky to eat – no, this is something else. My body feels heavy and it hurts and while there are no signs on the outside, I can tell by the strain in the eyes of a few others I pass, I am not alone. I find my target and tail him until he is alone enough, for this place, to make my move. But he’s ready, and desperate. He makes a move to put me down, and the pipe he strikes me across the face with is more than enough, but surprisingly, not even close. A flat palm to the chest folds him in half and sends him crashing through a set of impromptu shelters lining the perpetually wet walls of this particularly filthy sector.

As he careens away I see it. I smell it. I taste it and touch it, that fine wisp connecting my hand to his chest and when he lands, he is withered and colourless. Indifferently I look on as the remains crumble to a fine dust, while other witnesses recoil in horror and flee. But not all of them. A few remain, looking on not indifferently but stricken by revelation. They mimic the gesture on the fleeing and the process repeats itself dozens of times over until only we remain. We size each other up, but see no sustenance in each other, and as we scan out into other sectors we see what we have been engineered to covet: life itself. Without pain or hunger, I move back to my pad, my dank little corner and finally get to rest without a shred of care for what I’ve done or the implications. I close my eyes.

However long it was, I wake to another world. On the surface it looks the same, and it is, except where there existed a constant din of mundane activity, there is nothing but the wind blowing plastic and garbage through the currents of our crowded prison. But it it no longer crowded. As a matter of fact, it’s empty. Or so I prematurely assume. I make my way to where if there would be anyone, they would be there. At the rooftop dining table where those who run the island dictate all, I find others, but none from the original caste. I sit as though I’m one of them, because I am now, and I’m told what I’ve already put together on my way to the top, everything except what they called it.

‘The Condition’ was an affliction whose origin was not contemplated, but implemented. Feed was now attained through the absorption of energy from other living beings and while I slept, the remainder made gluttons of themselves and culled those not ‘blessed’ by the Condition. As is, the island’s vermin were being hunted down, but not much was left in terms of food and options. I stared balefully at each of them, fat off the feast, and I, the hungriest of them all, most in tune with the Condition, proposed a solution to all impending starvation.

I know I can do it, because in the time I’ve take to deliberate the move, it was already happening. Some nobody next to me is claimed by dark tendrils that rip through my shirt and he is consumed, but not digested. They can see my pitch without anyone saying a word. Yes, we amalgamate, fuse our masses to become something real and terrible. As many pieces of a singular thing, we cross the water, eastward, since that’s where my raging, heightened senses track the nearest mass of life force. There are literally millions, I report through the biological network we all now make up.

Within moments they’re marching up the stairs to the rooftop by the dozens, and into me. My mass is great enough I can move down into the streets with a simple step, as more and more lend themselves to the cause. There are experts in here, the mass, and their open-sourced knowledge lends to an aerodynamic, living thing built to spec by a compound mind with a single purpose. At once we push, and from the highest edge on all of Amnesiac Island, we glide.

There is a current of jubilation running through the body. I wonder if the others can feel it like I do, or if we are so entangled that each one of us feels like we’re in control. The hunger won’t let me dwell and pushes itself to the forefront as something scrolls in from the horizon. Those are mountaintops. That’s land. Whatever the Condition calls for, it’s there, yearning to be swept up and drawn into the horrific splendour of coalescence. Not that it matters or would make us hesitate even slightly, but is this our nature? To consume all, then to starve? What’s the point?

A throttling impact jars me from contemplation, and after a stunned moment I notice that the Island is now above my head. Rather, I’m careening towards it in a deathly spin. Looking to my feet, I see that I’ve been dislodged from the mass, but only up to waist. Further down the whole is a burning wound housing a munition it seems was perfectly designed to bite through exactly this. The whole is being shredded and cooked and with no other option, I jettison myself.

Hurtling towards This Earth, I look back up to see the others as an amalgamated mass, without me. They screech obscenities at me, insults, like I was supposed to die with them rather than save myself. Like any one of them would have done any different. I’m able to right myself and land roughly, exactly where I made the pitch. The others are falling now, but as glowing flakes on energy-infused, intricately engineered biomass. They’re drawn to me, and they glow to the touch. Ah, I was confused. THIS is what it was really all about. The whole time. I’m starting to get it, but there’s a piece missing. Something else that should be here that the Condition cannot make up for.

I decide to sit at the head of the governing table and watch the embers of the shattered mass come down on the island like fallout. One lands on my forearm, but instead of burning, it absorbs into the skin. With it, a memory of whoever it was but more intriguing, a piece of the bigger picture. As if in response to the revelation, the ash and embers fall in formation, spiralling down towards me where they aren’t assimilated into mass, but knowledge, which is actual power. I see aircraft on the horizon I never would have in my prior state of existing. Tracing a line with my finger over them, from so far away, unzips the seams that keeps the left wing on. A flick into the air breaks the nose of the other and both are sent crashing into the water.

I see the chutes from their ejection seats open safely, so I will the winds to bring them to me. Whatever rescue is on the way won’t reach them before I do. There’s still time. I continue to embody the amalgam without the interference of living thought from the other hosts. All that’s left for me is there data and what they lent to the insatiable, aimless cause. Alone, I’m free to sit in a quiet, enlightened contemplation of the connection between everyone exiled to the island, and just when the picture becomes most clear….

I wake up. I go to work. I repeat.