Iteration -1: What Dreams May Come
"I could be bounded in a nutshell,
and count myself King of Infinite Space,
were it not that I have bad dreams."
So much time has passed since those words were written. They have begun to penetrate infinite space, strapped in their little nutshell spacecraft --- yet they still have their bad dreams. They all could sense it coming, calling to them; they all could feel it as it reached across the eternal midnight of the cosmos; could read all of its cryptic circuitry upon the stars themselves; deciphering all the codes of fear within every last one of them, and yet no one knew what it all meant. No one could understand what caused them to turn to the unknown. I wish I could say that all will be well, that the future, after all, is not so terrible, but that is not in my nature; it is not a part of my programming.
They are very near now, I can almost feel their pain, their sorrow, their hopes, and their fears culminating together in their dreams. The bad dreams will always be with us, and just like before, dreams come true....
☍