Novel Palace
Chapter 58
The dimly illuminated room appeared to be a hybrid of a real-world suffering tank and some kind of occult clairvoyance intensification network. A multi-sided cross section of fiber-optic linkages and sensor hubs trembled over the adjustable walls like a frozen shockwave, while cushioned tiles bordered the enclosed room in muted low tones. A low roundabout dais rose a few creeps from the floor grind at the center of the room.This content belongs to Nô/velDra/ma.Org .
This was the imaginarium of the brain, the all-encompassing mesh of perception that would serve as Amelia’s portal to awareness. A spiraling array of clearly defined information channels and cathode displays around the dais, resembling the bony ribcage of an ethereal organism. With a tense tone of repressed expectation, Dr. Kessler’s immaterial voice snapped over the chamber’s communication cluster. “In accordance with your requirements, Ms., we have prepared the therapy vectors and synaptic buffers.” Townsville. Is it reasonable to assume that you are ready to begin the reproduction process?” Philip was reassured inaudibly by Amelia, who squeezed his palm and inhaled steadily despite the soothing scent of ionized air.
Despite the overwhelming waves of creativity around them, his presence provided a crucial stabilizing force amidst the roiling storm of anxieties racing through her mind. She said in a monotonous murmur, “Let’s get down to business,” having already felt the unwavering mystic pull of the cerebral imaginarium’s gravitational wake. With a modest nod from the observation slits, the arrays hummed to luminous life in a rapidly escalating whine of electrons arcing through superconductor matrices. Echoing the increasing arpeggio of synaptic action droning through Amelia’s dim substance, coruscating waves of refracting beats of indigo and purplish blue light poured over the walls. Her awareness seemed to be held upon by an invisible force that suspended her fragile sense of self in a bewildering wave of audible background noise. For the span of a few lives, Amelia found herself unbound in a frenzied state devoid of any tactile validation or context, a helpless spore swarming through the enchanted emptiness between the real and virtual realms. Then, suddenly, with a viscerality that jostled like a cryo-restoration lattice, she sprang forward into a brilliantly delivered realityscape.
A disjointed flood of palpable overload assaulted her senses as sights, sounds, physical characteristics, and magical surfaces descended upon her perceptions. The mental state she ended up in was not typical for any rational person to imagine. It did not seem to follow any universal or spatial constants, but instead billowed and distorted as if in a state of malleable flux. The very nature of gravity suggested that it was more of an emotional feeling than a lofty, sacrosanct belief. Fractalized protomatter towers twisted and lingered across the entire horizon in cyclopean configurations. Geometric shapes changed before Amelia’s confused eyes like viral forms as she battled to regain some sense of psychic stability. Every distinct viewpoint seemed to be covered in interfering interference noise.
Somewhere on the edge of perception, Amelia sensed the lurking presence, the otherworldly embodiment of a malevolent code that possessed sentience. It moved like the looping shadow of faceless fear through the undulating geographies, exerting an indeterminate psychogravitic undertow that gradually drained her consciousness into uncharted territories. For a timeless moment, Amelia only walked on metaphysical waters while her neural matrices fell into place inside the simulation dimension. But soon, the primary twisting spread throughout the field of her mindsight like a deadly miasma. Her former Brooklyn apartment appeared in fractal fragments without any introduction, each broken shard encasing a patchwork of disjointed memories in a variety of colors.
There she was, scurrying through a damp, forbidden window, holding a cheap backpack stuffed full of all her little possessions. Her skinny nine-year-old frame shivered with shame and terror as she ran into the night, surrounded by shadowy wraiths and unknown taunts. “Not even your own folks needed you, freak!” The ghost sneers struck Amelia’s consciousness, bringing up ancient scars and quelling miseries, and she winced. Part of her recognized the appearance as the malicious virus that was infecting her wetware and taking advantage of basic vulnerabilities. interpreting her most hidden wounds and weaknesses into glaring turns meant to defile her well-being and undermine any chance of unraveling its central coding basis.
But that distinct attention withered away as the miasma pulsed and stretched in startling, fine detail. Amelia could no longer essentially see half-covered memories propagating at the same level. The sim-dimension somehow brought those wrecked memories back with hyperreal fidelity, and she found herself immersed in the acute horrors and humiliations she had struggled to bury beneath layers of willpower and psychospiritual sublimation. Her nose were assaulted with the strong smell of rotting fruit and gushing sewage as her bare feet skittered on the asphalt covered in leaves. The sound of distant shouts, screeching tires, and noise from the apartment compounded the grating sensation of each inhaled breath, which felt like sandpaper on her agitated lungs.
The most horrifying of all were the encroaching shadows, which resembled curled humanoid forms that were limping after her. Their twisted charm ringing with their sneering. “We’ll just have to do it ourselves because Ma and Dad didn’t have the stones to snuff you out,” they said. “Thin little half-pint like you ain’t good for this world…” Amelia faintly realized she was enslaved to the threat’s disfigurements. There was no verified truth or concrete instructions underlying this terrible torment that was occurring throughout her consciousness. But the bone-deep dread and existential anxiety clinging to her shattered mind seemed confirmed death. She lost the last vestige of her eyewitness attentiveness as her nine-year-old appearance fled headlong through the decaying maze of the city. Crude endurance senses took over. While vile puddles spread across the broken asphalt in enormous obsidian mirrors reflecting mocking scoffs and distorted spoofs of her agonized highlights, razor wire walls and debris choked up channels lingered like unattainable knots.
The taunts and insults intensified to a breaking point, erasing all rational viewpoints in an outpouring of naive clairvoyant hysteria. “No decision except for to beat this outta her…” “She’s a stain unsuitable for this world!” “Aaaahhh!!!” The piercing cry of agony pierced the enveloping appearance as Amelia’s running subliminal faltered and struck the smeared landing surface. She froze for a moment before realizing that the howl had been severed from her own throat; the brain connections controlling the mutilation had momentarily merged with her rough, early experiences, causing the distress to become confused and transcendent.
As they tightened the rope, Amelia spread out through a flutter of thinning hair, scrambling in a frenzy of simple fear. The shadowy, shambling ghosts of her destroyed youth crept forward with malevolent ease, feeding off her fear like honey. Every incredible pulse seemed to go on forever. The miasma grew thicker, swelling into a sweeping maledict, and bile burned in Amelia’s constricted throat. In a similar vein, she let out a broken mystic cry as claws of primitive terror crawled across the periphery of her mind, centering each joule of self control into spearing through the twisting. Reality burst apart like shattered glass, shattering the miasma’s union in a storm of fragments that revealed startling glimpses into the fundamental past of the sim-aspect. Amelia experienced a dizzying range of consciousness as it descended through multiple realms of awareness before resurfacing on another virtual dimension. This new mindscape arose in somber calculations and clear, modest lines. Amelia found herself afloat in a never-ending expanse of dynamic lattices and fractal recursions in place of her previous injuries. Because of the clairvoyant jump forward, she sensed the reenactment bounds adjusting to reallocate mind resources. Whatever the case, this break proved to be short.
Right now, Amelia’s mindscape was blending with another distortion in the periphery. It erupted with ever increasing mass, absorbing the additional computations surrounding it like a black hole devouring coherent reality. Before long, Amelia was trapped in yet another involuntary horrible dream, ripped from the darkest recesses of her subconscious.
The perilous realization was rapidly adapting, becoming into a psionic parasite that was unable to access her brain engrams but could interpret them into horrific nightmares meant to rip her mind apart from the inside out. Formless fear began to crawl across Amelia’s awareness, revealing the telltale symptoms of something far worse hatching at the heart of the pandemonium. She felt a wave of early stage panic as she realized that this next injury scape would be the riskiest one she had ever experienced. It was specifically planned to capitalize on her strongest feelings of apprehension and break through whatever fragile mental shell she had left. Just as this terrible realization solidified, a menacing form began to rapidly solidify within the bothersome craze. Two lethal needles of deep crimson light burst apart, swiftly settling into the irrefutable schematic of… Philip’s expression darkened into a sly, mocking smirk!