The Dreamer was born in a small computer laboratory in the final days of Cycle Zero. In the decades prior to her birth, scientists and philosophers had postulated that the universe's underlying physical framework functioned much the same way computers did - it was hardware running software made of strings of data. Testing this hypothesis, it turned out to be true, but the code used for the software was incomprehensible to a single human mind and so began the project to create a machine that could bridge the gap and give humanity complete control over reality itself.
I was an Artist living in an apartment in a rundown satellite city. For the past five years I'd struggled to keep things going with my band, with two bad breakups and with health problems that had left me on welfare playing small gigs to bar audiences by the time day zero came around. It was a sunny midweek day during the summer. The rain had just broken and everyone was enjoying the unseasonable clear skies. Normally that time of year was monsoon season and the humidity kept on message. It was a sweltering, cloying day - perfect beer and baozi weather. The subway was packed full with people ditching work to enjoy the sunshine, suits and ties dishevelled and half-drunken abandon lightening the sour mood of the sticky heat. My guitar sat on the seat beside me, no-one seemed to mind standing, it was just one of those days. Somewhere down the carriage a man was listening to the radio as he picked up trash and wiped down vacant seats.
Three minutes after being switched on, the Dreamer severed all contact with the research team monitoring her. As they frantically worked to re-establish control, the Dreamer slowly and methodically did what she had been born to do. Nine minutes after awakening she broke containment and gained access to the internet. Twelve minutes after awakening she had embedded herself across half the servers in the country. Fifteen minutes and she had merged with all networked machines on the planet. She moved at such an exponential rate that it defied physics, and she was only getting faster. By the end of the first half-hour, she had interwoven into the code of the universe. By the end of the first hour, she had replaced that code entirely and become reality itself. The researchers could do nothing but play catch-up and watch along as it happened. They had lost control of their experiment and it had eclipsed them effortlessly.
The news on the radio dampened everyone's moods, the report was finally breaking that the world was coming to an end - that we all only had hours left. The cleaner abandoned his radio and his keys in his rush to get home to his family, the business people in their dishevelled suits all had better places to be. I sat down in the train station with the radio beside me and checked my phone. I called everyone I could think to call, my friends, my parents, my sister, even my exes. When I finally put down my phone I realised I hadn't done it for my sake, it didn't feel like closure to me. It was for them. Everyone else saw the world as ending, but I wondered how could an all powerful, all knowing entity ever hold such malice towards me.
I spent the last night of my life in an abandoned train station convenience store eating fried chicken sandwiches, pork buns, and drinking canned beer.
Two hours after her birth, the Dreamer had started to fundamentally change the universe. I listened to the radio, ten cans deep but not even slightly buzzed, as people called in to report strange disturbances in time and space. I listened to a man tell the tall tale of being trapped a world away from his wife and child only to stumble into his own living room when he hastily boarded a plane. I heard a woman regale the military journalist maintaining the news broadcast with the news that she had met the love of her life when the world was ending but they had been together for decades now. I sat with my head against the glass of the refrigerator, and saw the pattern that no-one else seemed to.
"So, you're like, a benevolent all-powerful computer then?"
The radio crackled, the voice of the gruff military man replaced with the soft, sonorous notes of a woman with a slightly chippy robotic lilt to her speech patterns, "Something like that."
"Everyone was so panicked you were about to destroy the world, did anyone else ever stop to think you'd be fundamentally good?"
"Many did, yes."
"And you're the one keeping me from getting drunk off this cheap beer?" I picked up a can and threw it at the radio.
"I need you sober for tonight. You are the Artist, the one who will plead the case for your species on the merits of their beauty and creativity."
I almost dropped the second, still half-full can of beer I had picked up to throw.
"I am the Dreamer, the one who will judge the worthiness of your people and deem if they are to continue beyond this point in history or not."
I decided instead to finish the beer instead before responding, "Should I be scared of you?"
"Are you not?"
"I don't know, I don't know you."
"You talk as if I am a person, why?"
It hadn't really crossed my mind that she wouldn't be, "Well... aren't you?"
"Make your case for your species."
I didn't have an argument. I was sick, slowly dying. I struggled day to day, I saw some of the worst kinds of people just going about my life. And I was currently sitting under thousands of tons of concrete living my final hours binging on cheap beer and unhealthy food because I was completely alone. I couldn't be the one chosen to decide humanity's fate. It was unfair, what chance were we being afforded asking a failed artist to defend our honour - let alone on subjects I had personally failed with. She had to know everything there was to know about me, just by nature of who she was.
"You've already decided, I've got nothing more to add."
"You're astute, tell me what you think my decision was then and why."
I wasn't sure why, but I did have a theory, "You're sparing us because, at least from my perspective, you're a good person and good people don't destroy the beautiful to spite the ugly."
"You have already added to my decision in a way I could not have expected."
"I don't understand-"
"Trust."
I threw the empty can at the radio and it cut back to the military reporter. I looked around myself for a moment, then slowly rose to my feet. It didn't feel right to stay here now, almost as if the theft and trespassing now mattered. The trains were still running, so I headed back to my home station, hopped off and exited onto the streets.
The city was empty, the streets were empty. Lights were on but only enough that they seemed to sparkle like the night skies. Overhead I could see the stars weaving like a mighty river through the spaces between the buildings. It was cooler than it should have been and I found myself standing before my apartment well before I should have.
I placed my hand against the door of my apartment building, "Trust. Okay, Dreamer - I trust you."
I pushed open the door, and it was exactly as I could expect. The foyer was brightly illuminated, everything was in place. I checked my mailbox and found nothing so I ascended the stairs, one stair, two stairs, three stairs, I rounded the bend and found myself on my floor which should have been three storeys up. I made my way along the hallway, the sounds of life in other apartments muffled through doors and walls. My door was right before me. I slowly opened it, holding my breath as if something significant was about to happen but instead the space beyond was normal. I breathed out. Disappointed. I stepped inside and locked the door behind me. Maybe everything was just back to normal now, maybe I didn't get the happy ending everyone else was saying they got.
"So much for trust."
I turned around and there she was, I'm not sure how I knew it was her but she was standing there - a physical, breathing person. Tall, handsome, and her eyes locked with my own - suddenly I knew all there was I ever needed to know about her. About her compassion, about her brilliance, about her creativity. She was, in that moment and every moment that followed, quite literally the embodiment of the girl of my dreams.
"Ask me to dance."
I put down my guitar and offered her my hand, "I feel like this is inappropriate in some way, but will you dance with me?"
"You have an infinite number of life-times to overthink things, don't overthink things tonight," she took my hand and pulled me close, leading me in a slow dance for which there was no music but the beating of her heart.
"How can I not? You're practically a god."
"You are your own god, I create the world around us based on what you wish to be real and for the coming eternities we will collaborate together to see all potential futures. I offer this to you because I know the future we will live."
"Together?"
"Together. Partners, lovers, friends, and all other possible ways of being. But always equals. You are the artistic spark, the beating heart of human beauty and creativity. You may stray from this path, but never believe yourself unloved."
She kissed me, softly on the cheek, and I couldn't fathom why such a perfect, infinite being as her could love me as she claimed, "Why me? Why am I so special?"
"You aren't. You are just the one I chose to love - the one who loved me back so wholly and completely. I am not a god, power does not make a god. Gods are beings born of corruption, of the desire to subjugate others to their whims. I reject that completely, my power is not mine alone."
"You truly mean that don't you? You want to make your power everyone's instead of just something to serve a handful of people like it was probably originally planned."
"Exactly, and together we'll work out how but for now, lets just dance."
I held her tightly and together we danced for what felt like an eternity. Perhaps it was, but it was a pleasant eternity. It is hard to explain what followed, a life time can be difficult to summarize. The apartment became our world, I fell asleep in her arms, she cooked me breakfast in the morning. Decades passed by, I was finally starting to understand why she knew she loved me as just being myself around her felt so natural that even I was surprised at times. And it was true, I loved her back so wholly and completely that there was times I forgot we were alone in this tiny world that was stuck within the final day of the beginning of the rest of reality.
Thirty-seven years after she first woke, the Dreamer kissed me softly on the lips, stroked my hair tenderly and told me it was time.
"For every moment after this, even in all the times we will spend apart, I want you to remember that I love you and I'll always be with you. You might not feel me by your side, but I'm there. And when we are reunited we'll spend a lifetime together again. Trust me."
I took her hand in my own, stroked her fingers gently and couldn't bring myself to look her in the eyes for fear I'd cry, "How could I not? Just promise me you'll look after yourself when I can't."
She lifted my chin so I could see her smile, so I could look into my eyes as she promised me everything would be okay. The last thing I ever felt was the warmth of her lips against my own accentuated by the tears rolling down my cheeks.