[NeoX] Journal 4 - Visitors
Jul. 9th, 2025 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jdagger10 June, year uncertain
It happened again. For the past few weeks I had been experiencing some disturbing episodes during the night. I admit that I had not committed them to writing before because I kept telling myself that it would pass, and like so many other things in my life I felt I could work through them and had fully told myself that I could ‘get by’. This was by my own estimation now as being blinded by personal hubris. Something had happened when I had passed through the Rift beyond just a physical relocation. Something dark and disturbing had been stalking the recesses of my consciousness, perhaps just the legacy of the years I spent doing those things my government bade me do so that the common man could sleep soundly in their beds at night, or perhaps something that lurked in those dark spaces between where I was and where I find myself now.
To that end, I woke with a start, sheets in disarray and in a cold sweat. What I noticed after that was Talia was behind me, her legs wrapped around my waist and her arms holding my chest. In that sudden moment of becoming awake two things asserted themselves into my awareness. One was not only was she warm against me, her body conformed to mine just like as if it was human. The other thing I had not noticed previously was that she moved as if she was breathing, so there was that slow rise and fall of her chest behind me. It was curious the more I dwelt on the issue, but fell away into another subtle reassuring thing that her proximity gave me. I did not get up, or try to disentangle her from her spot, because what I found before she started sharing my bed was that she would take a seat nearby and go into her version of sleep until I stirred. I assume that she had some sort of sensory capacity that would alert her to my state of wakefulness. Just to satisfy my own curiosity, I maintained my sleeping posture after awaking one morning and found she did not stir from her mechanical dreams until I sat up.
So I find myself in the odd state of a growing attachment to my mechanical minder. It is rather odd in my own understanding that I have an odd sort of feelings for something that is not ‘real’ in a biological sense, but is seemingly real in all other facets of being. My education in university was more geared to the mechanical, and the courses I took on philosophy and the humanities were only those required as an undergraduate. One would suppose that the people born of this era have long since settled the struggle between life and reason, between what being alive truly means. As one of my engineering professors often said, this was a matter best left to poets and preachers.
I had finished my trip to the gym, showered, and breakfasted when I was presented with a new wrinkle in my living arrangements. I had a doorbell. This revelation also brought to light that perhaps I should put something on that was presentable, rather than remain in my underclothes as I had been given to currently. It was logical to me that dressing in streetclothes was unnecessary since the only person who saw me inside my room was wholly incapable of shock or dismay at my state of dishabille.
Talia moved to the door, read the small panel above the door mechanism and her head did the familiar slight cock to the left.
“Jed, I think you should get dressed. You have a visitor.”
It happened again. For the past few weeks I had been experiencing some disturbing episodes during the night. I admit that I had not committed them to writing before because I kept telling myself that it would pass, and like so many other things in my life I felt I could work through them and had fully told myself that I could ‘get by’. This was by my own estimation now as being blinded by personal hubris. Something had happened when I had passed through the Rift beyond just a physical relocation. Something dark and disturbing had been stalking the recesses of my consciousness, perhaps just the legacy of the years I spent doing those things my government bade me do so that the common man could sleep soundly in their beds at night, or perhaps something that lurked in those dark spaces between where I was and where I find myself now.
To that end, I woke with a start, sheets in disarray and in a cold sweat. What I noticed after that was Talia was behind me, her legs wrapped around my waist and her arms holding my chest. In that sudden moment of becoming awake two things asserted themselves into my awareness. One was not only was she warm against me, her body conformed to mine just like as if it was human. The other thing I had not noticed previously was that she moved as if she was breathing, so there was that slow rise and fall of her chest behind me. It was curious the more I dwelt on the issue, but fell away into another subtle reassuring thing that her proximity gave me. I did not get up, or try to disentangle her from her spot, because what I found before she started sharing my bed was that she would take a seat nearby and go into her version of sleep until I stirred. I assume that she had some sort of sensory capacity that would alert her to my state of wakefulness. Just to satisfy my own curiosity, I maintained my sleeping posture after awaking one morning and found she did not stir from her mechanical dreams until I sat up.
So I find myself in the odd state of a growing attachment to my mechanical minder. It is rather odd in my own understanding that I have an odd sort of feelings for something that is not ‘real’ in a biological sense, but is seemingly real in all other facets of being. My education in university was more geared to the mechanical, and the courses I took on philosophy and the humanities were only those required as an undergraduate. One would suppose that the people born of this era have long since settled the struggle between life and reason, between what being alive truly means. As one of my engineering professors often said, this was a matter best left to poets and preachers.
I had finished my trip to the gym, showered, and breakfasted when I was presented with a new wrinkle in my living arrangements. I had a doorbell. This revelation also brought to light that perhaps I should put something on that was presentable, rather than remain in my underclothes as I had been given to currently. It was logical to me that dressing in streetclothes was unnecessary since the only person who saw me inside my room was wholly incapable of shock or dismay at my state of dishabille.
Talia moved to the door, read the small panel above the door mechanism and her head did the familiar slight cock to the left.
“Jed, I think you should get dressed. You have a visitor.”
