at the edges of narrative

5AM

i remember you. i remember when we ran down the flight of stairs together. i remember when we reminisced about the memory before. i remember when you led me by the hand, down to prepare for a journey ahead. i don't remember what the journey was supposed to be. i don't remember how you looked. the only thing i remember about you know is your hand at that moment.

it is 5am and i have lost you. i only retain a vague collection of vague recollections, like a function whose cached attributes were recently killed off. and every moment being awake now is like a tempestuous flow of corruption, like poison, eating into me, overwriting my brain, away from you. i already miss you.

i can no longer remember you clearly. i felt like i you were always there, since way back when i was small. maybe you showed me things of wonders and interests. maybe you just spent time on a lazy afternoon with me, watching a warm sunset. i do not know. i do not recall what tender memories compelled me to remember, yet i know you were there with me, and i remember. there was an embrace, i think i remember. please.

another dream continued, a whole series that had been airing for years. the character foggily gets up and registers a long sleeved shirt drenched with sweat and tears and saliva. the character gets up to change and take a leak. the character glances at the mirror. the character considers the eroding dream. the character notices it is being erased in real time. the character thinks of an analogy to virtual machines and fragility of any arbitrary mind states. the character listens for the dying narrative:

this is another dream! this is someone else's dream! please let me stay for a while longer -- i did not say, nor scream, nor really thought. i continued it as the narrative continued, as the narrative rolled into itself and extracted itself away from my mind. it was there in the back of my head, and the pleading went on as the narrative reasonably should continue. the i created for the short narrative sinking back into the long narrative, submerged, consumed, absorbed by it, and one by one i felt the memories fry away, wrestled from me forever. please, i begged, please.

the character remembers a hand. the character cries. a death. a hand. the character thinks this might make for a good story.

a world that existed fully in its own right, no matter how short. you, who existed fully in your own right, who spent time alongside me indeed, who was there indeed, no matter whether how much brain computation actually went into the memories of memory, no matter if it lasted minutes or hours in real time. but i remember, we did walk down some stairs back when i was small, and so it was computed after all. and the character wishes, as i am getting overwritten and corrosive thoughts and concepts of final tests and dental hygiene and experiments to run today and social status and earworm tunes and guilt and thirst and water and room and clean and lights and dark and switches and bright and oppressive orange light flush in and clear away everything. the character wishes you well, wherever your world is now, continuing to be computed, perhaps in another character's mind, perhaps in sheer space of all that permutates, on dust and states. somewhere else, perhaps tomorrow, in the character's mind once again. the character bids,

farewell,

and continues typing.

and as i too, dropping away moment by moment as someone else type these words, i will remember you, and that remains true. i will remember you the very next moment, when my states are computed, and i wake again, run on a different substrate, somewhere else, but a continuation nonetheless. i remember your hand, and almost nothing else. there was something about running through a grocery store, and a row of identical housescapes on the first floors, with metal bars and so on, stretching into the distance, and i met an old person who admitted even he was mistaken sometimes. perhaps nothing ever existed beyond the fact that i remember you dearly, not that i can tell the difference now, but the fact remains that i remember.

it is half an hour past waking. it is five thirty. the character witnessed two deaths, told to remember a hand, wrote a short lossy account of the story vent, and is now clueless about what to do next. another dream. a dream amongst thousands others. a special one nonetheless, and i hope you know it as well. i miss you a lot. i remember your hand.