Tori could feel warm fluid running from her nose. She dabbed her fingers at it. It was blood. She smiled without humour. Her brain was haemorrhaging back there, in the Real. She closed her eyes and saw the scene. The receptionist coming into Dr Tate’s office, finding him seemingly dead, and Tori sprawled on the floor, going into shock. A telephone call in the background with the tone and texture of a protracted scream, which blended into the howl of the ambulance she was strapped into. All fading out to blackness, and death.
In Tori’s dreams, there was a long, dark corridor and it was carpeted with a layer of something that shimmered. She was walking down the corridor, feeling a slight vertigo turn her stomach as she could feel descent even though she could not see clearly. Shadows were the decoration here; grown like mould in the corners and the broken heights of the ceiling. The wedding dress she wore did not belong to her; it was yellowed in places and stinking wretchedly of antique mothballs. Dead insects scattered from its sleeves, and the folds of its train, as she walked. Her feet were bare and the floor was a carpet of broken glass. She felt no pain but could feel cuts and punctures being made in her soles by cruel fragments underfoot. The doors were open on either side of the corridor into rooms where people and machines were one and the same; blended together. Hearts were replaced by glistening, compact heart-monitors. Eye sockets were inset with micro-circuit jewels. Lungs were plasticised white and limbs were grey mechanical extensions.
At the end of the corridor, Dr Tate was waiting. He was not as she remembered him. He’d grown impossibly old with ice crystals set into ossified flesh and the folds of his suit. When he moved, she heard the sound of electronic motors. He opened his mouth, revealing stainless steel teeth and a slug-black tongue. “And how is my blushing bride today?” Tate hissed.
He leaned in to kiss her.
Tori woke up in a hospital bed. There was no sign of Tate.
The sun was out overhead, no, more than that – there were three suns. One was pink and oblate, the second was an angry red, and the third was a jewel-hued azure. Despite the three suns, the air was a cool, even temperature.
She wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
There was no hospital. No sign of human habitation. There were miles upon miles of white, white sand disappearing off into a bleached horizon. She drew back the starched bedsheets and found herself wearing a plain hospital gown, which was tied in the back.
So, I was in hospital then? Am I still there? How’d I get here?
There was a clipboard hanging from the bedframe. These usually showed details of a patient so it might tell her something. She could see there was some writing on it. Tori unhooked it and read what was there.
I knew it would be you.
Six words scrawled in dark red smears, still wet. Tate’s blood?
Tori dropped the clipboard into the softly-moving sand and watched it become buried by the planet’s surface as a breeze picked up. She could feel gooseflesh spreading across her skin – but the hospital gown was all she had to protect herself and keep her body warm.
“I’m gonna die here, aren’t I?”
Nothing answered her question.
Tori began to walk and, as she did, she felt something – a sensation remembered from Crawl dreams. Elasticity. Stretching. Bending. It was as if the world around her didn’t work the same as the one she was born into. After walking for a long time, long enough to realise there was no such thing as nightfall on this world and that the three suns were fixed in their positions, she decided to try something. Tori lifted one hand, palm upwards, closing her fist in the direction of a sand dune not too far away. She drew her fist back towards her chest and, as she did, the sand of the dune began to move, flowing towards her as a near-invisible river. The only sounds to be heard were her own breathing and the quiet rushing of disturbed sand. Smiling a little, she undid the fist and thrust her arm out, splaying the fingers of her hand wide. Several dunes exploded and thundered off into the distance as a sandstorm.
She laughed.
Practice makes perfect.
So, Tori practiced and practiced. Time passed. So much time that it couldn’t be measured as you or I understand it. She learned this temperate white world was a place in no universe at all, real or imagined, but the void-space in between. Tate had sent her here to keep her out of the way. He couldn’t kill her as she was the true creator of the Crawl and, without her, the universe she’d fashioned would collapse. So, she was preserved her indefinitely, outside of time and space.
What could she do from here?
It took long centuries to realise a plan while Tate enacted his own, by weaving a false history for the Crawl and its people, ruling them from his demesne on the moon. In that time, Tori grew stronger. Strong enough to reach out to the Crawl, to touch it, embrace it once more as her creation – and leave a small piece of herself behind.
She gave the piece a name. Celeste – for when the stars aligned and the time was right, Tate might fall from his smooth, black Tower of Babel. What happens when a God is consumed by its own creation? And the Devil rises victorious to lord over all?
The future alone can answer this, nothing and no-one else.
Until then, Tori Walker waits – trudging through the white sands of a lost, forgotten world beneath illusory alien suns – hoping, one day, to find a way home.
Dedicated to Nightfall Games and SLA Industries,
without which there would be no Crawl.
Praise for the Author
“Neuroseed is like the hyperactive lovechild of a cyber-augmented threesome between The Matrix, Neuromancer, and Disney’s Tower of Terror. The book deals with traditional sci-fi themes of dystopia, virtual reality, the Internet, underground rebellions, and resource disparity, but puts them all in a speed-ball package of hyperdrive hyperreality. We never quite know what’s real and what’s not, but the book never relies on a single-handed reveal to surprise the readers. Reality exists in transformative layers, peeling back and shuttling forward until I’d lost all sense of direction and could only hang on for the ride. To call Neuroseed a roller-coaster wouldn’t do it justice, it’s more like an acid-trip on an alien dimension. There wasn’t a wasted page in Neuroseed, and it’s definitely made me a fan of Greg James.”
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Neuroseed. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a moment, I would also greatly appreciate it if you left a review on the site where you purchased this ebook. No matter how big or small it is, every review counts and matters to a writer because without you, the readers, we are nothing.
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