When Dreams Collide (The Dreamland Chronicles Book 2) by William Mark Simmons

Author:William Mark Simmons [Simmons, William Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Venture Press
Published: 2016-06-04T23:00:00+00:00

\RIPLEY\PATH\SIGMA (Σ)

The eastern sky had been blushing furiously for some time but it wasn’t until the rising sun actually peeked over the rim of the horizon that Misty Dawn vanished. The young couple with the “Cheshire” dog then offered their goodbyes and prepared to depart as well.

“We really must bring Cosmo here sometime,” the woman said.

“He’s a banker, Marion,” her husband replied. “I don’t think they’re the sword-and-sorcery type.”

“Oh, piffle, George! Cosmo wasn’t one to believe in ghosts, either, and look how far we’ve brought him…”

They faded away in mid-discussion, leaving their shaggy mutt behind. The dog wuffed resignedly and favored Riplakish with a mournful look. He stretched out on the ground and, as he laid his head on his paws, it disappeared.

Riplakish looked at the headless canine and shook his own head. “It spooks me when he does that.”

A bit more evaporated and both of them stared at what was left of the dog’s hindquarters. “As you should know by now, it takes a bit of concentration,” Morpheus observed, “keeping track of all your ectoplasm. Dogs just don’t have the concentration that you and I do.”

“Oscar!” sang a musical voice. It was Marion. “C’mon boy!”

A shaggy tail was all that remained now and it was wagging merrily. A moment later it had faded, too.

“Nice people,” Ripley observed as he felt himself become solid.

Morpheus nodded. “They’re are among the more pleasant denizens of the disembodied planes. Although Marion can be an outrageous flirt…”

“Speaking of outrageous flirts,” Ripley mused, “what happens to Misty Dawn every time the sun comes up?”

His non-corporeal companion shrugged. “Most ghosts tend to fade at the first cockcrow.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. It only raises the next question: why you can come and go as you please, daylight notwithstanding.”

“I am one of the exceptions.”

“Yeah,” the former Half Elf observed, “you’re the Id of The Machine.”

“I am not!”

“Not?”

“Not the Id! And I do wish you would stop referring to us as ‘The Machine.’ It’s dreadfully dehumanizing, you know.”

Ripley pondered. It had been Dr. Cooper’s hypothesis that Morpheus, Pallas, and Cerberus were manifestations of the Computer’s psyche: Id, Ego, and Superego, schismed and set free by the strain of inversion when Daggoth the Dark had summoned the Computer to materialize within the framework of its own Program Matrix. The theory had seemed reasonable, fitting the timetable and the various aspects of the Anomaly in spite of the fact that Freud and his three Archetypal aspects of personality had been considered passé for the past century or so.

“Then, if you are not the Id of the Computer’s cybernetic consciousness, what are you?”

“I am…Morpheus.”

“Then why did you conform so closely to the operating parameters — ”

“Of the Id?” Morpheus Finished for him. “And why does Cerberus match the profile of the Superego archetype?”

Ripley nodded.

“Do you recall the circumstances of your own birth, Robert Ripley?”

Ripley shook his head.

“Then you’ll forgive me if I use theory and supposition more than memory-based information.” He sighed and stared at the rising sun.

“When we passed from

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