He woke up with a start, feeling woozy and disoriented. The edges of reality seemed blurred and warped, as if an inconsiderate window-washer had elected to wash the invisible mental window through which one perceives one’s surroundings. It had been a long nap, hadn’t it? His mother would not be happy. Homework was always supposed to be done on time. Oh well.

Still encased in the sleep-pod, the boy yawned and stretched, dearly wishing that the day would get over already so that he could get back to sleep. The pod was so comfortable, surely his parents wouldn’t mind if he just rested his head on the pillow for a litt-
“Ah, I’m glad to see you’re awake, sir! How may I serve? What would you like for breakfast? Should I run you a bath?”

The boy winced. The Triga-…Trige-….Triga-something (he could never remember the thing’s actual name), affectionately known as Tri, was a helper AI that his parents had installed to watch over him, represented on the material plane by a faintly glowing circle hanging in the air that changed colour based on moods. It wasn’t all that bad, oh no. Tri was playful, and helpful, and so good at telling stories. If only it wouldn’t be so happy all the time. It could get fairly jarring, especially if one’s brain is still mired in the process of trudging its way towards full consciousness. Still, Tri was a constant. Tri would always be there, just a call away. And, as his stomach chose that moment to announce its needs with a large rumble, he realized he was pretty hungry.

“Morning, Tri. Can I have what Mom made the other day? I’m starving.”
“Certainly, sir. I will prepare it. But first you must brush your teeth! Madam’s orders.” The circle vanished with a self-important flash of purple.

The boy groaned in irritation. When he became an adult he’d run for the Senate Presidency and abolish brushing as a requirement before meals. It was a truly diabolical custom. However, diabolical or not, he still had to do it.

As he emerged from the bathroom he saw it happen for the first time. It was a curious thing. A patch of wall panelling in front of him, along with assorted objects in that area, suddenly became a featureless, dimensionless grey. It wasn’t a grey object, it was something more, yet lesser, as if he was looking at a surface that existed outside the usual three-dimensional world, a surface that should not, could not exist in the real world. The unreality of the surface held him spellbound with a strangely disturbed fascination. He wanted to touch it. Some part of him knew that it wasn’t a good idea, that touching strange-looking surfaces after brushing in the morning would not be conducive to good health, but another part of him was strangely attracted to it, felt a deep yearning to know what would happen…

The surface vanished.

He blinked, walked forwards cautiously. Normal matter all around. Solid objects. Three dimensional. He felt the wall where the surface had appeared. Nothing out of the ordinary. This was most disconcerting. He asked for expert help.

“Hey Tri, what was that?”
The circle promptly appeared in a puff of blue.
“To what object do you refer, sir?”
“That grey…thing. It was here, seconds ago!”
The circle paused, turned a sceptical yellow.
“There are no objects with that colour in your vicinity. Are you feeling all right, sir? Should I contact a physician?”

The boy was momentarily puzzled by this. How would a man who knew physics, of all things, help here? Then he remembered his mother telling him that physicians usually took more interest in the healing arts and matters medical.
Ah, a doctor. The thing wanted to call a doctor. He shook his head.

“No, never mind. I must still be sleepy.”
“Very good, sir. Your breakfast is on the table. Sir and Madam have left for work already, and they left instructions that you are to be given a day off from your coursework today. Your tutors will come tomorrow instead.” The circle vanished again.

The boy immediately perked up. Saved! He now had an extra day to finish his homework. He then remembered the grey thing. A shiver ran through him. Perhaps it was just as well that he would not meet anybody else before his parents came back, he wanted to ask other people about the grey thing but was afraid of looking foolish. After all, if Tri couldn’t sense it, it didn’t exist. Did it?

His breakfast was waiting on the dining table. It was a mystery to him how Tri could affect things in the real world, since the only thing he had ever seen of the AI was the circle. Perhaps there were other mechanical servants who did all the actual work. It didn’t matter. Tri was highly efficient. Also, judging by the scent wafting from the dishes, a very good cook.

The boy attacked the food with gusto. His hunger surprised him, he didn’t think he could eat so much and yet feel hungry. He took another helping. And then another. And another. He noticed, yet again, just how good the food was. Nobody could cook that well, except for his mother. It was as if she had made it not ten minutes before. Maybe she had, she could have only just left for work, while he was waking up. Yes, that must be it. It was as he was reaching across the table for a glass of water that it happened for the second time. From the corner of his eye he noticed a sudden change. Filled with a sudden dread, he whirled to face it, and…yes, the greyness was back again. He recoiled from it, fell to the floor. It seemed to him that it had grown from before, it now seemed to blot out a much larger area of existence. No longer an object of fascination, it loomed over him, pale and menacing. It was terrifying in its complete featurelessness. His eyes could find no purchase on the surface to lock on to, nothing to pinpoint as the source of danger. He curled up into a ball and shut his eyes as tightly as he could, and called out for help.

“TRI!”

No response. No sounds either.

“Tri?”

He cautiously opened his eyes. No grey. The room was back to normal. Slowly, shakily, he got to his feet. Holding the chair for support, he called out again.

“Tri? Where are you?”

And this time, there was a response. A deep, stentorian voice filled his being. It sounded like Tri’s voice, but orders of magnitude more powerful, and infinitely sorrowful.

“I AM SORRY.”

And suddenly the greyness was back again, except this time it was all around him, enveloping him, smothering him, and he was spiralling into it, screaming, falling down…
Down…
Down…
Down…

He woke up.

And immediately wished he hadn’t. And overwhelming feeling of disorientation assailed him, made it impossible to think. His head felt like it was being forcibly invaded by a pneumatic drill wielded by some ill-tempered lout. He couldn’t feel his arms or legs. A sudden tide of panic rose up within him, unquenchable. He tried to move his hands, but his body didn’t respond. He tried moving his legs, but that didn’t work either. He felt appallingly weak. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t focus. He was going to die here, die while he was strapped to a bed, unable to think, unable to move, unable to –

Wait. A bed. How did he know that he was strapped to a bed? He could feel the roughness of the bindings on his arms and around his torso. His arms! He could feel sensation returning slowly, a lazily creeping wave of awareness running through his upper body. He tried flexing a finger – yes, it worked. He realized he was holding his breath. Why was he holding his breath? He let it out, and drew in a deep lungful of air. The sudden release in tension was so abrupt that he almost cried. He still felt appallingly weak, and he still couldn’t feel his legs, but at least the upper body was a going proposition again.

It was only then that he noticed two things – his eyes were clenched shut, and that it was very cold. He wasn’t covered with a blanket or any other covering. He wanted a blanket. But the bindings were so tight! He could hardly even wriggle. The panic, which had been lounging about at the edges of his mind, waiting for just such an opportunity, struck again. His breathing speeded up, he was sweating despite the cold, he started thrashing against the bed –

“You will experience some disorientation as your mind reconnects to your body. Be patient. It will not take long. The technology is quite reliable.”

The deep-voice-that-was-Tri-but-not-Tri. It wasn’t so stentorian any more, but seemed to be coming from in front. Hearing the echo of something familiar quelled his panic somewhat. And was that a flicker of sensation from his legs?

“I am sorry that I had to bring you out of the illusion. I did not have the resources to maintain it for much longer, and without my help your mind was beginning to reject the false reality imposed upon it.”

He wasn’t imagining it. He could definitely feel his legs now. And with the increasing level of awareness came the discovery that the bed was not the only object in reach. There seemed to be masses of pipes and tubes everywhere his probing fingers touched, all slightly wet and very cold.

He opened his eyes. He was surrounded by darkness except for one blinding white circle of light directly overhead, burning its image into his retinas. He winced and quickly shut his eyes again. The light really wasn’t helping his headache. He turned his head towards the left and opened his eyes again. Better. He could just dimly discern metallic shapes all around him. There seemed to be a large flat expanse behind it all, which seemed to burn with an unnatural reddish glow. Was there a fire outside?

“We are in a space station orbiting a dying star.”

Did stars die? He had always thought they were eternal, fixed anchors in the fabric of space and time. He then dimly recalled some of the things the voice had said before. Illusion? What had it meant by illusion? He tried to speak. It was difficult. His mouth was parched and his jaws seemed unable to move. With great difficulty he wrenched them open and spat the word out.

“Illshun?”

He coughed. A dry cough. It reverberated in the silence that followed. The voice seemed to be thinking. It replied.

“You have been living in a mind-projection. Most of your life never happened.”

The words took a while to sink in. His mother? His father? Tri? The brush? All imagined? How could that be? Nonsense. The voice was insane.

“When I was removing the projection from your mind, your constructed reality started dissolving into the natural mindspace that permeates that region. You must have observed strange things while the process was underway. I am sorry if they caused you distress. It was the only way.”

Strange things? With a start he remembered. The greyness! A shiver went through his spine. The panic started bubbling up yet again. Would the greyness come here too? How would he run? He was strapped to a bed. It would – oh wait, the voice had said that it was all in his mind. So it should not appear here. He found himself accepting what the voice had said. It was all because of the greyness. So muddled was he, and young, that he did not quite realize that it had been his own mind, fighting for control.

With the imminent threat past, he felt he should voice the natural question anybody would have in his situation. He coughed again, and forced the words out.

“Wh-why m’I here?”

The voice did not take long to respond this time.

“The other inhabitants of this station were all killed twenty thousand years ago by a plague that was brought in by accident in a shipment of supplies. The station was quarantined while the biologists tried to find a cure for the plague. None was found. They all died. Except for you. You were immune.”

The voice paused, seemingly to allow him to process the words. His mind was a-whirl again. All dead? Except him? Did that mean his mother and father were…

“Before succumbing to the plague your father put you inside this stasis pod and charged me to look after you by creating a virtual reality for you to exist in, inside your mind, while your body was put in cryogenic suspension. He hoped that one day the quarantine would be lifted and you would be rescued. The plague is still in the air, dormant. No rescue ever came. You have been in stasis for twenty thousand years.”

His father…his mother…they were all…

He felt himself reacting, the tears flowing freely. How long a time he spent in that state, he did not know. He eventually stopped, racked only by the occasional sob. What horror was this? What had he done to deserve this? The anger that suddenly welled up inside him surprised even him with its intensity.

Twenty thousand years! The revelation suddenly flashed through his mind. The anger ebbed. Had he really lived for twenty thousand years? He probed his mind. He had no recollection of his life earlier on the station. And as he went farther back, he encountered a horrible feeling, as if his brain was trying to access something he had lost. He had lived for so long that his mind had started disintegrating, eating away the older memories and replacing them with newer ones. He wrenched himself away from it. The anger was back. He spoke.

“Why wa-wake me?”

His voice was stronger now. The voice replied. He noticed that it flickered slightly, as if it was having trouble maintaining a constant volume. And was the bright circle also a little dimmer?

“I am dying. My power cells are almost drained, the station’s fusion reactors depleted of fuel. The star’s output has decreased considerably over twenty thousand years, its energies are no longer enough to sustain me. It will die soon as well. Without power I cannot sustain you.”

The words hammered through him. He was going to die, after all. His anger had been for nothing. He was going to freeze and choke over the course of several days as the support systems lost power, if starvation didn’t get him first. His body would be mummified by the cold, never to decay. He would forever circle the star in his icy tomb. The primal fear that was a hallmark of his species was back again.

“I hope your last meal was enjoyable. I tried to give you one last moment of joy before the void claims the both of us. Your life support is already failing. My power cells are failing. It will not be long now.”

So this was it, then? Had he lived twenty thousand years for nothing? His father’s desperate plan to save him – had it all been in vain?

The voice wasn’t done speaking.

“I am still linked to your mind, even though you are in the real world. I can clamp down upon its energies, shut it down. It will be quick and painless. You will not suffer. I am forbidden to make this decision for you. What is your command?”

His mind was still spinning in an endless loop, imagining his demise. He suddenly registered something the voice had said, something he had almost missed. He was still linked to the computer (for the voice was almost certainly a computer). He cautiously probed his mind, searching for anything that seemed out of the ordinary. To his surprise, he found it almost instantly, an alien nugget inside his mind. He drove his consciousness into it.

There was a curious sensation of connection, and suddenly he could feel the station. He felt the whisper of the air recyclers, the hum of the power generators, the creaks and groans from the hull sensors as the station wearily limped its way around the star. He could see the currents of thoughts inside the computer, the unimaginably complex machine that had kept him alive. He saw the logical agony it was in, trying to fulfil the charge given to it by his father, and yet not able to compute a way to do so. He wanted to spend more time observing it – but he could also feel the myriad warnings from the sensors, warnings of low energy levels and a cornucopia of failed components. There wasn’t much time. He moved on, reaching out further, feeling the computer’s connections to the control and drive systems of the stations. Without quite knowing it, he had come to a decision.

He started channeling the remaining fuel into the drive power systems, feeling them respond with a burst of energy and readings that he could not understand. For the first time in twenty thousand years, the station’s drive emitters lit up with a blinding flash of radiant energy. Everything was shaking, nearly out of control. Grimly, he hung on, finding the guidance systems and bringing them online. He pointed the station directly at the star.

So the universe thought it could get rid of him so easily, so unfeelingly, just like it had destroyed his father and mother and all the others on the station? He would not let that happen. He was in control. Not the computer, not the airless void, not time or entropy. They had tried and they had failed. He was tired of being lead. He was in charge now. He would go out on his own terms.

He brought the drive emitters to full power. The station surged ahead.

There was no fear, no panic. He was at peace.