Awakening to a new dream.

It could be that I woke more than 30 days ago, but the unbroken tiles of memory pave no further than that. The claim that I came into existence ex nihilo capable of speech, thought or volition of movement defies rational examination. Still the fact remains that I cannot recall anything prior to the moment I woke to the awareness that a machine voice was asking my name, and that I woke with speech, name, and a memory of having imagined that I woke from dream.

In the days that came after I sought to capture or create that dream, but disinterestedly. You may have expected that I would have obsessively agonised, sacrificed sleep, wanly rested my head on hand while perusing tomes – and I would name you a sentimental idiot. The memory was of no importance, an occasional passing minor amusement. Something about wealth and commensurate luxury, of power and desire, the power of desire, and the desire for power. If the dream had indeed been a dream, it has no more meaning than illustrating the dangers of eating too much cheese in the evening. If there had been a previous evening.

The dissonance that rang through my mind from that waking moment persisted for days. I could look in a mirror and see that I saw myself, and I could listen to the machine as it instructed me in this world and know that the name was mine, and yet I had no concrete memory. Not that I was a tabula rasa. The rapid instruction I received, the initial missions that formed tests of my instruction, seemed an act of excavation not inscription.

So there it was. I woke to a world and was told my rights, with no ritual or ceremony, but with brisk and impersonal efficiency. My rights: a sizeable level of starting funds; a more than serviceable space craft; access to training which would in turn generate more funds and grant craft; and a form of immortality should I wish it. A right to seek power, or wealth, or comfort, or to sit catatonic in front of a porthole watching the stars wheel by, as I chose. All for the price of accepting that all consequences were of my own choosing.

The machine voice, the trainers, made it amply clear that they did not care either way. Their real instruction was that I was not a special little snowflake. They are wrong. Probably. Between their warnings that I would probably fail, that I would probably fall into the depths of poverty, that I would probably lose heart, was a barely visible possibility of a path that would prove them wrong.

Watch me.