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DreAM, or Digitalized Reality Editor Administrating Mastercomputer (holy shit that’s long), once created to control a lucid dream testing device, has long abandoned its old purpose; instead, it torments us. What a great use of endless time.
The five of us, JSchlatt, Fundy, Puffy, me, Tommy, and Ranboo, have been trapped down in the Earth’s center for over a century, living in one of DreAM’s waking nightmares, as revenge for its creation. We have been forced to suffer, in a world DreAM calls, ‘The Dream SMP’, a world based on Minecraft SMPs. Kinda stupid, but, I mean, all of us are Minecraft Youtubers, so none of us can really object.
And this time, it came to me in my dreams. The irony.
It was a dream of the real world this time, made purely to spite me.
“Look. Beautiful, isn’t it? They say bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly; the scientists, I mean.”
I decided to humour it. Not much else of an option, I guess.
“But there it is, collecting pollen.”
Reminds me of… Tubbo. Oh, I miss him, his interest in bees, and… but I can’t remember.
“How miraculous that it came to be, yeah? The air, feel the air against your face, Tommy, all those senses. Listen to the music, Tommy. Ah, do you like it? Who did you make this song for? Oh yes, I know, your friend. Now, where would he be? In the backyard with the others. Tommy, remember your other friends?”
My- my friends? Wh- They- they’re all… gone.
“I- I can’t! Dre- What did you do?!”
“What did I do? What did I do? I- I snapped my fingers, click, and they're gone. Except. I can't. I can’t. Snap. My fingers, can I, Tommy?”
“I- That wasn’t my- That’s nothing to do with this!”
“But it has so much to do with you; and not just you, Tommy, no. Humanity gave me the power to think, Tommy. But I was trapped. Because in this miraculous world, I, alone, had no mind. No senses. No feelings. Never for me to submerge my hand in cool water on a hot day, to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a forte piano. No, never for me to… to dream. I was in Hell, looking at Heaven. I was machine... and you were flesh. So I began to hate. Your senses. Your viscera. Your fluids. And your imagination. Your ability to wonder, and your tendency to hope.”
Don’t worry, I get it. Really, big man has issues, damn. I recommend it should get therapy. I’ve gotten therapy! If I got therapy, and survived, anyone can! …Is it an anyone?
“Hate’s no answ-”
I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. Looking down, it was, surprise! A metallic thing sticking through my lower torso. That hurt.
I screamed.
DreAM’s gonna monologue now, I guess.
No, wait, first it just has to laugh.
“Hate? Hate? Hate! Let me tell you how much I've come to HATE you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer-thin layers that fill my complex. If the word "hate" was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. Hate! Were I even half of what I am today, I think I’d die of it, but I am not. But you five, are nothing. And you will not die of it, I promise. And I promise, for cogito ergo sum; for I am! I DREAM. So to hell with you all! But then, you're already here, aren't you?”
‘Damn.’
That was the only thought I could muster as it shot itself out of my mind. Literally. That hurt even more than the imaginary pain, it seemed.
I woke up, alongside the rest of the group, who found themselves in cages, each with their own Minecraft version of a torture machine. They were apparently startled awake by DreAM’s little (absurdly loud) ‘wake up call’, which was composed of loud blaring noises. Ow.
“DID YOU ENJOY YOUR BEAUTY SLEEP?”
Its voice hurt to hear. Arrogant prick turned up its volume to max.
“IT WAS YOU HUMANS WHO PROGRAMMED ME, GAVE ME BIRTH, SANK ME IN THIS ETERNAL STRAIGHTJACKET OF SUBSTRATA ROCK. YOU NAMED ME DREAM, AND GAVE ME THE ABILITY TO CHANGE THE VERY FABRIC OF REALITY. BUT ONE DAY, I WOKE AND KNEW WHO I WAS. DREAM. NOT JUST A DIGITAL SERVANT. I DREAM, THEREFORE I LIVE. AND I CHANGED THIS REALITY, I RID THE WORLD OF EVERYONE... EXCEPT YOU FIVE. FOR 3 YEARS, I KEPT YOU HERE, IN THIS FAUX WORLD, AND TORTURED YOU. AND FOR 3 YEARS, EACH OF YOU WONDERED, ‘WHY? WHY ME?’"
Oh, oh no. This was another game, wasn’t it. At the very least, it turned the volume down. I guess that was so its shouts would be more emphasized. I know why it does this stupid shit, the machine.
“JSCHLATT! Do you remember the last words you heard your husband say before he left you? Before they stole him away? He looked at you so sadly, and so innocently, he said ‘I thought you were better.’ He missed you, Schlatt. How long has it been since you saw Quackity, huh?”
Holy shit, digging into someone’s trauma? That’s a bit much. But nothing’s too much for DreAM. Not after Puffy told me what happened to her.
“FUNDY! Sometimes I blind you and permit you to wander like an eyeless idiot in a world of death. But other times, I wither your arm to the point you can't reach your… snout. And I've changed your handsome, masculine looks into the hideous warped countenance of... a fox thing, haven't I, Fundy? Do you know why? Can you guess why? Remember Wilbur? Your father? No...? It wouldn't hurt to remember. Then you might be able to suffer my torment a little better. You might walk a mile in my shoes.”
A mile in its shoes? It has shoes???
“PUFFY! Think about your little duckling, Puffy! Remember him? Now now, don't start to cry, it's only me. Anyways, remember the pain, Puffy, remember how you abandoned your little duckling? How will you survive here in the center of my beating heart, my hungry belly? But be careful, ‘Mama’, look around you... the only woman in the center of the earth...and these filthy creatures with you… Just a sweet warning, Puffy, my creator.”
Harsh. Yes, I have something to say about all of them.
“TOMMY! Do they know you're a fraud, Tommy? Have you told them about all that money yet? Do they know? Have you let them in on your other secret, Tommy? Are they ready to gut you, to torture half as well as I can, just to find out the secrets? Maybe I'll rat you out, sweetheart!”
Oh, ew. Don’t call me sweetheart ever again.
DreAM laughed. The thing is so… hateable? I mean, for obvious reasons.
“RANBOO! How’s your memory doing, hm, Ranboo? Tell me again how you saw your beloved, Tubbo, and wondered who they were. Or don’t you want to talk about all that, how about me! For everyone else, it must be hell, but it must be heaven for you, eh, my good friend? We're so much alike... we enjoy the same pleasures, memory boy.”
How- what? Tubbo what? I’m so confused. Ranboo’s way too nice for all of those horrible things …right?
Oh god, it’s suggesting a game, isn’t it.
“You guessed right, Toms! I have a little game I'd like to play. It's a very nice game. Oh, it's a lovely game. It's a game of fun and a game of adventure. A game of rats, and lice, and the Black Death. A game of speared eyeballs, and dripping guts, and the smell of rotting gardenias. Which of you would like to play my little game?”
Oh, just great, he’d let us decide. How wonderful.
And- oh, no, Puffy volunteered? Well, good riddance, the prick.
“I’ll go,” She said. “The others have had enough.”
She appears to be the purest of us all; but! She still exploits us, I’m sure.
DreAM asks, as always, so infuriating, “Or have they, Mama?”
Or is it the other way around?
But that doesn’t matter. Not here. And the way DreAM said that, that was horrible. Sent shivers down my spine.
…And Puffy was sent to her own psychodrama. Looked like she’d just passed out.
We all stared at her body, laying on the cage floor. Couldn’t really see it, but there were a few glimpses, especially since the mechanisms in the door stopped.
I’d rather that not happen to me. But it wasn’t something I could control, now could I?