⌠đ . âI don't sleep. I just dream.â @zr0th: e-noch.
Theyâve heard the net sometimes looks different for different people, the way it might recreate a place, walls, a floor, the human brain attempting to catch up to a reality it wasnât designed to inhabit. Obsolete hardware trying to decode new technology. Sometimes things get lost in the data transfer, the incomprehensible vastness of the net shrinked into the unfocused image of what almost seems like a beach. Waves of data washing their feet, brushing their memory with hints of information they cannot graspâ it feels like they should. It feels like there is something vital there. Something both precious and terrifying that their brain either canât or wonât accept. Every time their curiosity pulls their attention somewhere, the image seems to glitch violently.Â
Donât look. Get out of here. Every alarm in their brain warns them to get out. Theyâll get burned, this is a demon. Theyâve seen it happen, theyâve seen netrunners get their brain fried in an instant. Butâ they canât remember plugging in, they canâtâ get out.Â
âAre we in your dream?â their eyes turn around, useless really. There are no eyes in a place like this, no body, just their mind. And their mind is too scared to scan this place looking for the origin of that voice. That voiceâ Why does it feel familiar? What is that strange pull that tugs at them despite their apprehension, despite the terror of knowing themselves in dangerous territory. More than thatâ danger is a gun, danger is physical violence. This isâ something else. Donât talk to it. âAre you a runner?â a stupid, helplessly hopeful question. âWhoâ are you?â
