Dream a Little Deeper
A short story first published on Wattpad in 2019
Long ago, before the seas had names and the lands had borders, a Dreamer slept, calling new worlds into being. The face of this Dreamer is unknown to me, but the Whispering Winds assure me… the Dreamer was you.
As you slept, your mind spun out possibilities to their myriad conclusions, time and time again. This was your intended function, but you soon grew dissatisfied with such a monotonous exercise. It was all so deterministic, so utterly predictable. You operated as a perfect machine in isolation—no obstacles, no mistakes, nothing of any interest whatsoever. What you needed was a touch of chaos, a little fun.
And so it was that a self-destructive spark within you manifested as a separate mind and began to take actions beyond your control or understanding. In my world, this aberration is known as the Other. It is not your enemy; it does not exist simply to antagonize you or act against your wishes. Were the situation as simple as that, this Other would be predictable and therefore useless. Only by acting on impulse, without motive or consideration, does the Other serve its purpose. And the world is a richer place for it.
One of the Other’s first actions upon discovering its own existence was to produce Children. This was meant to safeguard itself in case you should decide you made a mistake by introducing chaos into your world. For each new Child, the Other reached its manifold tendrils into the depths of your Dream and pulled back a random sampling of material, enough to construct a new Dream, smaller in scale but essentially the same.
Each new Child was a microcosm of your mind, complete with that self-destructive spark, which was certain to yield its own Other. These Children, Dreamers within a Dream, were bound by their nature to operate in day-night cycles, passively living out the “reality” supplied by their Dreamer and then actively weaving Dreams of their own.
This is who I am: an echo, a shadow, a Child of your Other. I owe my existence to you, if indirectly. I long to know you better, to glimpse even a moment of your waking life. In exchange, I’ll share my Dreams with you, giving back what I can of the worlds you’ve lost. So please, dream a little deeper with me.