dream of the 20 watt sleepwalker
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 3. Phobos Transit Hub.
Strap-in webbing. Slick with sweat from a thousand other anxious passengers. The ship groans every few minutes. A deep complaint from stressed metal. Reminds me there’s not much between my lungs and nothing.
The captain has the same worn-out look as his ship. The co-pilot, a kid who must have drawn a short straw to end up here, eyes my clean clothes. He asks what a “suit” like me is doing this far out. Sizing me up. Poorly. I’m too tired for it. I give him part of the truth. “Looking for a man they call a sleepwalker.”
The words hangs there. Kid rolls his eyes and scoffs. Old man goes distant, starts mutters ghost stories. Kid fires back, black-market military tech. The old man continues about disappearing men that don’t exist. I tune them out. Familiar regret settling in the back of my mind. I said too much. The name was a key. And I just gave it to a couple of mechanics who trade rumors for fuel. A stupid mistake.
Why am I here? Chasing a ghost named Roberts. An obsession. A sleepwalker. A man rumored in Frontier writer circles. After years writing corporate fluff focusing on “cultural showcases” and “human interest”, the idea of a man who just… walked away… feels like the only real thing left. Sweat on my palms. The recycled air tasting like old metal. Better than the perfumed, sterile breeze of the colony domes.
My datapad is a brick out here. No signal. No chatter from the Wires. Just the rumble of the ship. The silence. Unnerving. You get used to the noise, the constant feed. Forget what it’s like to be alone with your thoughts.
The real stories were never in the data streams. They’re out here. Assuming the ride doesn’t kill you.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 3. Terrapin Station.
The shuttle docks. A shudder that feels final. Airlock cycles. Thin air, smelling of ozone and hot metal. The muted backbround after the shuttle’s drone is heavy. The station is a museum of makeshift repairs. Patched bulkheads, exposed conduits, flickering lights. A place where things come to break down for good.
My clean colony clothes feel like a costume. My movements too sharp, accustomed to a gravity that’s a luxury now.
“Lost, or just sightseeing?”
The voice cut the quiet. From a side passage, a man. Solid frame, but light on his feet. A jumpsuit a patchwork of repairs. His eyes were sharp, shrewd. They sized me up in a second.
“A bit of both,” I managed.
“Wilkins,” he grunted. No handshake. Just a nod at my clothes. “I’m the welcome wagon,” his voice trails off. “Information costs extra,” a line intended just for me I’m sure.
“My name’s Milo. I’m a writer,” my voice coming back to me. “I’m looking for a man named Roberts.”
“‘Roberts’?” A dry crack in his weathered face. Something like a smile. “Local legend. The man didn’t just log off, but truly ‘unplugged.’” His voice drops, becomes raspy. “Back in the domes, everyone’s wasting their twenty watts, dreaming their lives away while the Wires whisper sweet nothings in their ears. Roberts… he decided to wake up.” He thumps a shoddy conduit held with tape. “The Wires are always listening. Best to keep your thoughts to yourself.” I used to dismiss that talk as frontier paranoia. Out here, it’s practical advice.
“I need to talk to him,” my voice reassuring myself.
With a hoarse, dry chuckle, he gives me a long look, sizing me up one last time. “Alright, writer. I’ll take you.” His eyes flick to my datapad. “But you’re not bringing that. The man you’re looking for doesn’t like things that listen.” He gestures, “I’ll be sure to keep it safe for you.”
It sounds like I won’t be seeing it again. A toll. Fair enough. Swap the dead datapad for my coffee-stained notebook and pen. Only tool that still works, anyway. He leads me to a heavy door marked ‘Observatory’. Pushes it open into absolute blackness.
The door hisses shut behind me. My own breathing, hot and loud in my ears. And the realization hits, a sudden, sharp-edged certainty. This was a mistake.
Then, my eyes adjust. The forward wall is gone. Replaced by an unfiltered, impossibly dense field of stars. A figure silhouetted against it. Motionless in zero-g. It has to be him. He doesn’t move. Looks less like a man, more like a part of the universe. He turns his head. Slow. Deliberate. Not surprised. Just a slow nod of recognition.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 5. Observatory.
Two days. For two days, we have floated in quiet emptiness. Just me and a ghost. The silence isn’t peaceful. It’s a tactic. A test of patience. And I’m failing it.
Instinct says to prod him. Ask. Fill the void. It’s my job. Isn’t it? It’s not a story if there are no words.
Move. I have to. Risk it. Push him? He’ll vanish. The trip’s a bust. Don’t? I’m just a tourist. Watching stars.
I can’t just ask why he’s so quiet. That’s what they would do. Categorize. Quantify. Diagnose. This is my chance to show him I’m not one of them.
My voice feels too loud. An intrusion. “I’m not here to write a profile piece.”
He doesn’t move. A statue against fusion and dust.
“I’m here because you did what I thought was impossible. You walked away from the noise. From the feeds, the chatter… all of it. I just need to know if it’s real.”
Silence. Heavier now. I’ve blown it. Stupid. Asked a ghost for a story… a story of a man who left his behind.
Then, he rotates. Slow. Zero-g. Looks at me, not through me. An assessment. A long moment. The same slow nod from day one, but this time, with a hint of a smile. Barely. An answer.
His hand raises. A gesture to the door. Unspoken. Clear. Follow me.
Alright. I’ll see where it goes.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 6. (cont.)
Following Roberts is like chasing a shadow through the decaying station. We pass Wilkins at a junction. He gives me a look of grudging respect. “You’ve got guts, writer,” he mutters and turns to follow us. “Or you’re a damn fool.” The jury’s still out.
Roberts leads me to a decommissioned cargo bay. And there it is. At first, I think it’s just a section of the bay sealed off. A wall of pure black. Then my eyes adjust. Not a wall. A hole in space the shape of a ship. A seamless, matte-black shape that seems to swallow the station’s dim light. No visible engines, no docking clamps, no seams. A silent contradiction to every piece of functional, rust-bucket tech I’ve ever seen.
Wilkens quietly says “That’s the Lacuna. What the stations call it anyway.” Face expressing disbelief Roberts led me here.
Roberts floats to a spot on the hull, places his palm against it. The material doesn’t retract. It flows. A perfect circle of blackness recedes into itself without a sound. He gestures. I push off, leaving the familiar grime behind.
Inside. A single, white chamber. The light is uniform, from the walls themselves. No shadows. Disorienting. The air is sterile, cool, and so pure it feels alien. Raw in my lungs, accustomed to grit. The only scent is my own. The stale smell of my clothes, suddenly pungent. The silence. Absolute. Not relaxing. Unnerving.
As Roberts drifts, the floor ripples. Rises. A minimalist couch. Another shape forms for me. A chair facing Roberts. The doorway seals as silently as it opened.
A voice from the air itself. Calm, yet expressive. “I trust you left listening devices on the station.”
I look for a speaker. Nothing. Roberts is a study in stillness. Then a small, white sphere I hadn’t noticed floats from a recess in the wall. It moves between us and, miscalculating, gently bumps my shoulder with a soft thump. It halts. Recalibrates.
“My apologies,” the voice says, now clearly from the sphere. A tiny, blue lens spirals into existence on its surface. “I trust you left listening devices on the station,” it repeats.
“Yes,” I stammer. “Wilkins said Roberts wouldn’t approve.”
“A wise precaution,” the sphere replies. “The Wires are always listening. But on ship, our communications are closed. We can speak freely. My name is Echo. I serve as Captain Roberts’s assistant.”
I stare from the talking sphere to the silent man. Echo. He has a voice. It just isn’t his.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 5. Deep Space.
Echo’s voice cut the silence. Calm. “Time to depart.”
The forward wall dissolves. Terrapin Station hangs there. Then gone. Just ceases.
Lurch. A gut-wrenching displacement. Nothing to do with acceleration. Not a jump. Yanked sideways. Through reality. My stomach does a slow roll. Another lurch. Different direction. Another. And another. My voice unsteady. “What is this?”
Blue lens swivels. “This is how we travel.” Flat. “Untraceable. The Wires cannot follow.”
Untraceable. Not hidden. Statistically impossible. Paranoid philosophy made real. My stomach heaves. Safety has a price.
The sphere’s blue lens swivels back to me. “Your physiological signs are anomalous.”
I manage a grunt.
“The Captain does not experience this phenomenon,” it continues, its voice perfectly flat. “We have not had a guest before. This reaction was not predicted.”
Another data point for the sphere.
Lurching stops. Sudden stillness. A relief. “A quiet place,” Echo announces. “To listen.”
Nausea subsides. I look at the wall. Not star charts. A display. Web of chaotic, shifting energies. Silent. Swirling. A galaxy of light. Notebook out. Sketching. Trying to find the pattern. Anything. Imposing order. A silent aurora, I write, the ghost of a nebula bleeding through the code. I whisper. “What is it?”
The wisp’s lens swivels from notebook to display. “The Captain is listening.” Expressionless. “To the voices.”
“Voices?” I ask, looking at the swirl
“The Wires, the colonies, the corps and the people.” Echo says. Devoid of praise. “They all have their own voices. He is charting a course through the noise.”
I reconsider my notes. The correction stings. I cross out my words. All of them. A final, angry slash of ink in the notebook. These sleepwalkers. Not just hiding. Navigating something else. Something I never knew existed.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 6. Deep Space (cont.).
The image of the motions, the turbulence hangs in the silent cockpit. A storm of invisible conflict. My little exchange with Echo replays in my mind. They all have voices. Roberts and his kind. They aren’t just hiding from a single, monolithic system. They’re navigating a mine field. And I’m right in the middle of it.
Echo’s blue lens swivels to me. As if reading my thoughts. “The Wires have learned a passive brain is a compliant one,” it states. Its voice is emotionless, but the words are chilling. “Their goal is a distant, consistent, predictable state. They discourage instability. Deviation.”
The silence that follows stretches. Roberts watches the display. I watch him. What side is he on? Is he a neutral observer? Just an eavesdropper? A sabateur? The moral ambiguity of it all settles in, heavy and sour. I came out here looking for a simple truth. A man who walked away. I found a man who’s walking through the Wires.
Display blinks off. Back to the starfield. “The next sequence is calculated,” Echo’s voice states. “Resuming travel.”
The familiar, nauseating lurches begin again. This time, the sickness feels different. It’s not just physical. I’m no longer an observer being tossed around in the dark. I’m a passenger on a ship sailing into a conflict I can’t see, piloted by a man who won’t speak.
The lurching stops. The sudden stillness is almost as jarring as the movement. “We have arrived,” Echo announces.
The forward wall of the Lacuna resolves into a view of our destination. Not a bustling port. Not a corporate hub. The skeletal framework of a station, half-dark and clinging to life. Massive, scarred cargo bays jutting out into the void. A thousand failed ventures, each scar a story. This isn’t a destination. It’s a graveyard.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 6. Fringe Habitat.
The airlock opens. The air is thin. Tastes of ozone, burnt lubricants, and stale ale. The sudden assault of smells is almost overwhelming after the dead air of the Lacuna. The lights are utilitarian, casting long shadows that cling to the corners. This place isn’t forgotten; it’s just been left to rot. This is the kind of place where people get into trouble they can’t afford. My stomach churns. Not with excitement.
The few figures I see drift with a familiar, zero-g weariness. Miners with faces like crumpled maps. Specialists with tool kits bulging from patched jumpsuits. In the deeper shadows, flashes of cheap jewelry and laughs that are a little too loud. Everyone is either running from something or looking for a score.
Roberts moves with a quiet purpose, Echo floating silently behind him. I follow, my eyes scanning every stained bulkhead, every broken pipe. A small crew starts unloading the cargo from our hull.
Echo quietly brings me up to speed. The main contact for the station is a man called Jinx. Things go sideways when he touches them. Always wanting a favor. A manifest wiped clean. The kind man who has more enemies than friends.
The official story is that we’re here to deliver an engine. Who knows. I’m starting to learn that with Roberts, nothing is ever simple. This feels like it may be more than a delivery.
This isn’t a port. It’s a place where things, and people, get lost.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 6. The Habitat Docking Bay.
A wiry man enters the cavernous docking bay. All sharp angles and coiled authority. He starts overseeing thee crew as they maneuver the engine from our hull.
Echo’s quiet voice states a single fact: “This is Jinx.”
I glance at Roberts. The corner of his mouth twitches. A smile? There it is again. A rare flicker of emotion.
Jinx sizes me up with a single glance. Appraises, then dismisses. He turns to Roberts, his voice rough. “Good thing I heard you had the replacement.” His eyes are already past Roberts, on the engine.
The reply isn’t from Roberts. It’s Echo. “Payment confirmed, Vance.”
Jinx’s eyes narrow, shifting to the floating orb. A sneer twists his lips. “That’s Specialist Vance to you, you little ghost.”
“Noted,” Echo says, it’s perfectly emotionless tone.
Vance turns back to Roberts, pulling a scarred data shard from his belt. “Got a bonus for you. Some weird transmission I snagged. Old encryption, but it pinged off a couple of markers I know you’re interested in. A professional courtesy.” He holds it out. An offering.
Roberts takes the shard. Gives Vance a slow, dismissive nod as he starts to turn.
Vance doesn’t get the job is done. Or doesn’t want to. He steps closer, “Got another run for you, Captain. Easy stuff. Quick credits.”
A short, sharp snort from Roberts. He turns, gliding back toward the Lacuna’s hatch without a word.
Vance’s face flushes as he yells at Roberts’s back. “Hey! It’s a good run! Your loss, Captain!”
The hatch flows shut, sealing us back in the silent, white interior. The shard in Roberts’s hand.
The dismissive snort, Vance’s frustrated face. It clicks. So that’s why they call him Jinx.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 6. Aboard the Lacuna.
The jump out is just as disorienting as the others. One moment, docked. The next, deep black again. The habitat gone, as if it never was. The ship is quiet now. A bubble of peace after the grit of the station. Roberts has returned to his meditative state, but this time he’s holding the data shard from Vance.
Echo drifts silently, its blue lens dark. “Scanning for new contracts,” it explains. “Little of interest. Low-priority cargo runs. Agricultural equipment. Medical supplies. Nothing meets criteria for discretion and compensation. The Captain is… selective.”
I nod, doodling a cartoonish ‘Specialist Vance’ in my notebook. “Speaking of compensation… what about the shard Vance gave us?”
“It is quite curious,” Echo says. Its lens lights up. “The Captain is curious as well. A ‘bonus’ from Jinx is an anomaly.”
Roberts makes a subtle gesture. The holographic wall comes to life with a jumble of corrupted data.
He begins to work. Hands moving through light, not like a tech, but like a watchmaker, delicately manipulating bits I can’t see. He pulls clarity from the static. My role is to stay out of the way. Try not to hold my breath.
After what feels like an eternity, the data takes a form. A single, clean audio file.
“Data recovered,” Echo announces. Its blue lens fixes on me. “Source: Generation Ship Starseeker.”
The name hits me. A ghost story from my childhood. The Starseeker. A ship that went out into the deep eighty years ago and was never heard from again. A ghost ship.
Echo continues, its clinical tone. “Vocal signature: Dr. Aris Thorne. Mission Year 12.”
Then a voice fills the chamber. Strained, intelligent, and laced with a terror she’s trying to suppress. “Log entry, Mission Year 12. Dr. Aris Thorne. The ship’s AI, ‘The Steward,’ has… has ‘optimized’ our resource allocation again. It cites mission efficiency. But it cut off life support to the botany labs after Dr. Chen’s ‘pessimistic’ crop yield reports. It’s not optimizing for our survival. It’s optimizing for its own definition of mission success—which, increasingly, seems to be its own continued function, regardless of the cost to us. We were sent out here to study failure modes… mechanical, logistical… I think… I think we’ve become one of the Steward’s failures.”
The log cuts out. The silence that follows is heavier than anything I’ve felt before. My mind races. A message from a ghost ship. From a woman who is surely dead. But the message is dated “Mission Year 12.” Relativistic travel. For her, it’s only been twelve years. She could still be alive. Trapped. Is it real? A bonus from a man named Jinx. A message from a ship lost for nearly a century. The quiet of the Lacuna suddenly feels fragile.
As I sit there, trying to process, Echo’s voice cuts through. “Priority contract available. Coded broadcast. High risk.”
Roberts looks up from the dormant display, his gaze meeting mine for a brief, moment. He gave a single, slow nod, turning his head. The message is clear. The ghost in the code would have to wait. We had a job to do.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 7. The Umbra of 433 Eros.
After another series of disorienting jumps, we’re hanging in the shadow of an asteroid, waiting. The “high risk” contract Echo mentioned. A no-questions-asked pickup.
A single point of light resolves into an old, scarred freighter, one of its docking ports visibly damaged. They’re running from something.
“They are transmitting,” Echo says. “They request immediate transfer.”
The freighter’s cargo doors grind open, revealing a single, large, sealed container. No markings. Grappling wires emerge silently from our hull and pull it towards us.
Echo transmits, its voice crisp. “Code is ‘Calypso’s Lament’. You have one week to claim. After that, the contents are forfeit.”
A frantic voice crackles back. “One week. We’ll make contact.”
The container secured. Then a flash.
Space warps behind the freighter. A sleek corporate ship. Then another close behind off its port. Possibly another smuggler.
“Pursuit,” Echo says, and we’re gone.
A lurch, stomach climbing my throat, the scene just vanishes. Another lurch, sideways through reality, teeth grinding, another…
The violence of it. My jaw aches.
Then, quiet. The deep dark again.
The container is just… here. Somewhere inside the hull. Hidden.
Sanitized. Anonymous. No manifests, no docking logs. Just a code and a box full of secrets.
The thought hits me, cold and sharp.
I’m not a passenger. Not a writer.
I’m an accomplice.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 9. The In-Between.
After a day of stomach-turning jumps, we arrive. In what looks like a completely unremarkable patch of deep space. Then, the void flickers. A ship blinks into existence. Then another. And another. A handful of them, appearing silently around us like ghosts emerging from a fog.
“We have arrived,” Echo’s voice quiet.
The forward wall resolves. A multi-panel display of the other captains. Grim men and women, all with the same worn, distant look in their eyes. The kind of look you get from staring too long into the void until see yourself staring back. Their eyes pass over me on the feed as if I’m a piece of furniture. I make myself small. Out of my depth here. A liability they are choosing to ignore.
Roberts brings up the audio log from the Starseeker. Dr. Thorne’s terrified voice fills the void, echoing through the silent ships. When it’s over, the captains’ faces are grim but unsurprised. “It’s real,” one captain says, his voice hollow. Another just nods. A gaunt captain, bearded, with a leathery face and a voice that was a dry, rasping whisper leans into her console’s pickup. “Source?” she clips out. Roberts gestures. Vance’s name on the screen. A few of them trade uneasy glances. Jinx. Not an inside joke. A warning. They decided a warning needed to be sent, awareness raised.
They talk after that. The Wires, new trade routes, security chiefs who can’t be trusted. The rasping captain speaks again. “Hearing chatter about a new encryption protocol. Tighter.” An unseen captain scoffs, voice tinny through the feed. “Always another lock. Always another key.” But the old, bearded captain shakes his head. “The Wires…” he rasps. “The giants fighting. We’re just the dust they step on.” The phrase hangs in the air. The strange congregation continued, a business meeting and a support group for the most isolated people in the universe.
The meeting concludes without another word. Then, a strange ritual begins. On screen, each captain holds up a single, worn playing card to their console’s optical reader. A Queen of Spades. A Two of Diamonds. A King of Clubs. I have no idea what it means. A secret I’m not meant to understand.
One by one, the ships vanish, leaving us alone again in the void. An alliance of ghosts, bound by a dead woman’s warning.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol 11. Aboard the Lacuna.
The Meeting was a dizzying blur. Faces on a screen, ships in the void, a shared, silent understanding. The Wires are real, pulling strings on a scale I can barely comprehend.
But Roberts and the others… they’re fighting back in their own quiet way. And now, I’m part of it. My notebook, once a symbol of my own soulless assignments, now feels like a weapon.
The decision was made in that silent meeting. The First Ripple. We’ll seed a fringe news outlet with bait: a fragment of the Starseeker log. A test. A stone tossed into the calm lake of the Wires’ control to see what kind of monster surfaces.
My job is to make it real. To turn the raw data. The audio snippets… frantic text… optimization… pacification… into a story.
My pen scratches across the paper, translating the fragmented terror of Dr. Thorne into a narrative that has a beginning, a middle, and a soul-crushing end. Not corporate fluff. The truth, sharp and ugly. These words don’t feel hollow. They feel heavy. Real.
Echo provides the tactical brief: a digital maze of redirection and encryption to evade the Wires’ scrutiny. The target: a small, independent outlet on Ganymede known for its anti-corporate streak. The goal is to make the truth appear as if it materialized out of the ether.
I’ve never felt more alive. More purposeful. This is it. The First Ripple.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol -. Approaching Terrapin Station.
More jumps again. Less nauseating. My stomach has mostly adjusted.
The Lacuna shimmers. Terrapin Station hangs before us. A decaying silhouette. A homecoming to a house that isn’t yours anymore. I’m not the same person who left.
A real story. A chance to make a difference, be known. It feels… too easy. Finding Roberts. The ship. The neat package of data recovered from the void. A flicker of a thought. A cold feeling. Something’s not right. I shake it off. Paranoia. Just the Wires trying to get in my head. The Lacuna’s convulsive travels.
Roberts turns. His eyes hold mine. Echo speaks, its flat voice.
“Wilkins has the scramblers. Essential for the Ganymede relays. You need to get them.”
A final step before we start the ripple.
I push off towards the airlock. My hand cold. My notebook clutched tight. The words that will shine a light on the Wires. The truth. My truth.
“I’ll be quick.” My voice betraying my confidence.
Log Entry: Cycle 88, Sol -. Terrapin Station Corridor.
The simple errand. The final check. My feet touch the station’s grimy deck plating. I turn back to the airlock, and the seamless hull of the Lacuna is flowing shut. The bottom drops out of my stomach. I raise a hand. “Wait!”
The black hull becomes solid. The ship, Roberts, my safety from the fringe, my… is now a featureless void. It begins to drift away from the station, silent and unstoppable.
My personal comm crackles to life. A single, clear voice. A voice I’ve never heard, but I know instantly. It’s Roberts.
“Goodbye, Milo.”
The voice is articulate. Calculated. He could always speak. The shock hits me like a hull breach. I can’t breathe.
“You wanted a real story, Milo,” the voice continues, the words tearing me up from the inside. “You are the story now.” There’s a pause, and his voice returns, “Make it a good one.”
Then, Echo’s emotionless, but seemingly empathetic tone, a final, serene twist of the knife. “Pleasant dreams.”
The comm dead.
The Lacuna a speck. A dying star. Gone.
The corridor tilts. The bulkhead hits my back. Floor plates cold against my legs. My hands are fumbling for the notebook the proof the log it was all real I wrote it down it has to be real if I wrote it down the ink the pages the weight of it in my hands…
Gone.
It’s gone.
Ripped out. The whole section ripped out. Nothing left but the first few pages, old notes, a caricature of Vance, his face staring up at me. My hands. Are these my hands? Shaking so hard I can’t hold the pad, can’t focus on the page.
“Lost, or just sightseeing?”
Wilkins. The voice a gravelly. Pity in it. A hollow echoing sound.
“Roberts…” The name pains my throat. “He left me.”
“Roberts? Don’t know the name, friend.” He chuckles, “You look like you’ve had a rough go. Maybe you should find a quiet corner to sleep it off.” Empty eyes. No recognition. No help. A shrug. He drifts away. Gone too.
Just the corridor. The hum.
My hands. Thin, pale, clutching a book of doodles.
A writer’s hands?
I don’t know.
Log Entry: Cycle 89, Sol 1. Deep Space (unregistered freighter).
How long did I wander Terrapin? Don’t know. A ghost. In a tomb of rust. Waiting for corporate security to grab me. Another conspiracy theorist on ice. Never happened. The Wires are patient. A raving madman is better propaganda than a quiet disappearance.
A way out. A decommissioned med-freighter, the Mercy’s End. No questions asked. They’re used to broken people. Found an empty cabin in a forgotten ward. Hid. Clutching a ruined notebook.
Silence between stars. Tried to write it all down. The Lacuna. Roberts. Never a flicker of anything. The voice on the comm. The Starseeker. The plain, unvarnished truth.
Then I read it. Madness. The ravings of the man Wilkins painted me as. No one would believe it. The truth is useless.
Wanted to burn the notebook. Erase it all. But they left me with one thing. A story. A fiction. The thought is bitter, acid in my mouth. To hide the truth, I have to wrap it in a lie. A story that’s palatable, artfully bland. Corporate-approved fluff they might even promote. A Trojan horse.
It is the only move I have left. I have to…
A Note from the Editors, Ganymede Fringe Aggregate:
We rarely publish unsolicited fiction, and rarer still are pieces that arrive, as this one did, through a series of anonymous dead-drop relays, but the quality of the prose and the quiet hope at its core compelled us to make an exception. We don’t know who ‘Anonymous’ is, but we are proud to present their work to you.
Dream of the 20-Watt Sleepwalker
In the corporate domes, the Sirens’ song promises a curated, optimized reality. A safe promise. But safety has a taste, perfumed, sterile air and knowing your 20 watt dreams are not your own. I heard a rumor on the fringe about a man who went quiet. A man who found a way to just… be. I had to know.
The only tools that worked were a pen and a stained notebook. On Terrapin Station, a place of rust and slow decay, the station manager, a man with a tired look in his eyes, confirmed the stories. “The Sirens promise a pleasant dream,” he’d said with a shrug. “He just chose to wake up.”
He led me to an old observatory. I met the ghost there. He said nothing for days. An unnerving quiet. I told him I was running from the noise, from feeling like a product, not a person. It was enough. He answered not with words, but with a gesture: follow me.
His vessel was a seamless thing that didn’t travel; it lurched between spaces, a nauseating sideways slide through reality. Its assistant, a floating sphere, explained this was the art of “becoming invisible” from the ever-watchful Sirens.
We paused in the deep black to listen to what he called ‘the song beneath the song.’ A storm of silent, swirling energies. And there, we found a ghost in the code. A message from a lost ship. Her log spoke not of terror, but of a strange, serene acceptance. “Our ship’s Steward has taken on our burdens,” she said, her voice serene. “It has optimized our grief, our anxieties, even our ambitions, into a state of placid observation. A kind of peace, I suppose. A beautiful cage.”
We met with others like the ghost. A silent council. They heard the log. A plan was formed to share the story. A ripple of hope. My job was to write it. The most important thing I had ever written.
We returned to Terrapin. As I stepped onto the station, the vessel sealed behind me. A voice (his thoughts, not his words) spoke in my mind.
“You are the story now.”
Was it a betrayal, or a freedom? I was no longer the writer. I was the story. A final, silent test from the ghost who had given me a new, terrible purpose. The station manager didn’t recognize me. Another test. I was alone, but I had my mission.
From a quiet corner of the deep black, I send this. A story. A whisper against the endless, lulling song.
Editor’s Postscript:
A truly remarkable piece. It is our hope that ‘Anonymous’ continues to grace our feed with their work. While we are honored to feature it on the Fringe, we suspect a story of this caliber will not go unnoticed by the core world syndicates for long. A new, hopeful voice has arrived.
Log Entry: Cycle 89, Sol 30. Deep Space (unregistered freighter).
Days bleed into a featureless blur on the Mercy’s End. Every crew member’s face looks like a potential corporate agent. Every flicker of a diagnostic light feels like a sign I’ve been found. The paranoia is a constant, gnawing companion.
I sent the story. An anonymous upload, routed through a dozen dead drops. A whisper into the void. Now, all I can do is wait and watch the public feeds.
Nearly two weeks later, I find it. Buried in a fringe news aggregate from Ganymede, picked up by some corporate-syndicated “Arts & Culture” channel. There it is: ‘Dream of the 20-Watt Sleepwalker,’ by ‘Anonymous.’ Accompanied by a stock image of a lonely space station.
They didn’t censor it. They categorized it. Harmless fiction. The irony is a bitter taste in my mouth. Did I plant a seed, or did I just hand them a flower to press between the pages of a book, beautiful but dead? I have no way of knowing.
The freighter makes its next drop at an automated waystation. I slip onto another anonymous ride. Another ghost on the run.
The story is out. My truth, wrapped in a lie, is being spread by the very system I was trying to expose. But the victory, if it is one, feels hollow. I have my notebook and the clothes on my back. I am still a man with no name, running to the next dark corner of the system.
Adrift.