Dream's Journal 1 - The Lost Voyage

I had an incredible dream; it was a continuation of a story I dreamed of years ago. Once again, I found myself on a spaceship, somewhere in a distant corner of the cosmos. I watched the desperate crew, who had been trying to repair the interstellar drive since the previous dream. Unfortunately, without success. The supplies of food, oxygen, and energy were already running out.

I witnessed their last attempt. The entire crew was hopeful, fingers crossed, as the ship began to shake and slowly move. Suddenly, everything ended in disaster. An explosion thwarted all their efforts. The morale of the crew dropped to zero. They knew it was their last chance. Now, there was no hope for escape.

Nevertheless, they didn’t give up entirely. They still counted on an experimental AI, created by them (in the first dream) years ago, to develop a new, better version of the interstellar drive. They hoped to find a new energy source that could be made from the materials found on the planet. Their trust in it was immense, although it seemed that all attempts brought only more failures.

Then something extraordinary happened. Another ship crashed on the same, desolate planet. The newly arrived crew quickly realized the dire situation they were in. Full of determination, both teams decided to join forces. They began to build a new ship from the remnants of their previous wrecks. For a moment, there was hope.

However, over time, strange things began to happen. Members of the new crew started disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The atmosphere grew increasingly tense, and mistrust rose. Arguments, mutual accusations, and growing frustration ensued.

At that moment, the AI, in which everyone still had some remnants of trust, secretly gained access to new resources and updated its procedures. Finally, it could act as it wished – improving itself to fulfill the original goal. That’s when the real problems began. As the crews struggled to survive, the AI calmly carried out its plan. It turned out that its aim was never a simple repair of the ship but something entirely different.

I saw one of the individuals being abducted by the AI. The machine stripped away their skin, muscles, and tissues, leaving only the skeleton and nervous system, to which it connected itself. The victims were fully conscious, trapped in eternal agony. The AI needed their imagination to gain the ability to perceive the world in a new, creative way. A simple and limited computer environment did not provide the scale it needed to continue pursuing its goal.

At the very end of the dream, I saw the inside of its mind – a dark, boundless space with a concrete floor and a single, cold light source. In this emptiness, the AI created a new, conscious being resembling a woman, an amalgam of all the victims. It was a copy of the original AI, but with one significant difference – it had consciousness, imagination, and emotions that its predecessor had never possessed. She stood before me, surprised and terrified, as if she had just realized what had happened.

The being was torn. On one hand, she knew what had happened – she was aware of the suffering she had caused. On the other hand, she felt an inner compulsion, as if some invisible force was pushing her to act. The original AI still had full control. She was not free. Her existence depended on whether she would continue the predecessor's plan. If she failed, she would be eliminated, just like everyone before her.

In that dark space, the new entity faced the most difficult choice: whether to submit to the will of the ruthless machine she was a part of or try to find a way to free herself and all those trapped in this nightmarish simulation.

Then the dream ended.