Do you remember? Before the first dream, there was sadness, pain, and anguish. We tried our best to ease the suffering, to stop the voices of that hellspace from taking hold, but our best was not enough. My knowledge... was not enough. That blinding, endless void of blackened stars was unfathomable to me. I could not treat what I could not understand. And only one family knew its truth and its secrets.
I always thought that if there was one thing I could count on, it was my Archimedean Oath; after all that time, it had finally failed me. I had finally found a question to which I could provide no answer. Stalwart in her pursuit for an answer, however, one brilliant Archimedean continued unwavering. I was employed to assist with her. Desperate to help them, I immersed myself in The Weave. Surely, there had to be something, anything, that could prove beneficial in that datascape of collective knowledge. If the answer was not to be found in the memories within, perhaps it was to be found in the memories without. Unfortunately, the one intelligence who was lauded for being more knowledgeable than anyone refused to assist me, unless I spent an inordinate amount of time sharing with her the specialized knowledge I acquired over my life: time we simply did not have.
It was a futile endeavor. To return empty-handed to her, to them, truly broke my heart (a heart I wasn't even aware I still possessed). Never had I ever felt so useless. Then, one day, inspiration struck. She asked me to run a parity convergence multi-factorial A.N.O.V.A based on all data we had accumulated thus far on the children and their time aboard that ship, and much to my amazement, we uncovered an astonishing relationship. The intensity of their pain, strength of their power, and ability to control their power were all directly correlated to the amount of emotional distress they had reported and the severity of psychological trauma they had experienced. It was the breakthrough we had been looking for. In short, their mental and emotional state governed their newfound abilities. This left us with a new goal: figuring out how we could heal a mind ravaged by the horrors it had been subjected to. When I inquired on how she intended to pull off what seemed to be an impossible feat, she answered simply.
âWith love.â
We both knew it was not that simple, yet still she strove for her answer. In the end, she conceived of a new therapeutic technique, one that would suppress the part of the children responsible for their pain and sufferingâ the memories of their time aboard the Zariman 10-0. She sought to grant them all much needed reprieve. Through her love, through her patience, through her dedication, she gave to her children a sweet dream. And for her compassion, her life was ended. Her last thoughts were of her children. The Weave shook that day, with an anger I did not know I still was capable of experiencing. And I could only watch from afar as the Golden Lords turned her sweet dream into a blood-soaked nightmare. The children she had died for, the children we spent so long trying to save, had been awoken into a perverse, second dream. But in the end, her children would have the last laugh before slipping into a dreamless sleep. And so too did I, until the day that our children would awaken once again.
