Melanie trudged across the empty landscape. What was this place? Why was she here? She had been safely in the confines of the room the grandparents had put her in, and then she was somewhere else...but where? This place didn't seem to have any connection whatsoever to the room she had gone to sleep in. In fact, it didn't seem to have any features at all. Was this a "dream," to be transported in sleep to some empty place? How could that be "sweet?" There was nothing to taste here, and while Melanie vaguely understood that "sweet" could have implications of desireability without literally referring to taste, she couldn't see how this could be classified as desireable in any sense. What was the purpose of this?
Not knowing the answer, or having any better idea, she trudged on. While in the real world her gait was a little goose-steppy as she was still getting used to her new legs, here it seemed like she glided along without even noticing the motion, as if what she wasn't paying attention to didn't really exist. But she wasn't paying attention to it, so it only felt a little strange, and didn't really distract her. As she went on, the landscape inexplicably changed, becoming a rolling, desolate rockscape covered in dusty rust-red soil and scattered clumps of black rock, under a pale pinkish sky. She stopped and looked around, curious. What was this place? Why had it changed? Was she now in another different place, transported again?
When she looked back down, Melanie was startled to find herself standing in front of...herself. There was another Melanie there, on top of the hill she was standing on. This didn't make sense; wasn't she Melanie? She had thought that life in corporeal form meant being defined as an individual, and correspondingly confined to being an individual; could this really be her in front of her? Or...or was it someone or something else, using her appearance for some purpose of its own? This idea produced a very uncomfortable emotional reaction in her, but she couldn't say why. Curious and nervous, she approached the other her.
The other Melanie looked back at her, but said nothing. As Melanie approached her, she stared deeply into the impostor's face, looking for any difference at all. It seemed like so much of how humans identified each other was in the face; if there were just some difference then she could know for sure that that wasn't her...but there wasn't. She remembered from looking in the mirror what her own face looked like, and aside from the blankness of the expression, this mirror-image now in front of her was exactly the same. She felt her stomach turn, and turned away.
But that only made things worse. The landscape was now covered in other-hers, row upon row of them all across the hillside, all surrounding her and all staring back at her with that same blank expression. Melanie felt like she was going to be sick. Why did this bother her so much? It didn't make sense; it was no more than an intermediate state between her original existence and her new self, yet something about self was revolted by the sight nonetheless. She was her, not any of them! She was her, she wasn't them, she was an individual, not a...not a...a horde!
And then they began to move towards her...
Melanie woke with a shriek. The room was dark, with only the light at the end of the hall filtering in. She could just make out the boundaries of wall and dresser and bed and doorway, but it was enough. She was here, she was in the house of the grandparents, she was no longer...in that place...no longer with them...she was just her, just the one of her, not them...
The terror of the dream was fading now. She couldn't explain why, but she began to understand that it wasn't real; something about the waking world gave her a sense of reality that the dream lacked, and she could tell the difference. So that was a dream; when she slept, her consciousness might persist, in some way, and find its own perceptions in her mind? And she understood that "sweet dreams" was not a statement, but a sort of ward, or wish, because they could just as easily be undesireable and discomforting. Grandmother had no power to control what was in her brain that her dreams could be drawn from, but she offered a wish for "sweet" ones all the same, because she cared for Melanie, because..."because she did," Muriel had said. But she had to wonder what in her brain could be the source for something like that, and what a "sweet" dream might be drawn from instead...
Melanie was very tired. She couldn't tell what time it was, but it felt late, and with the adrenaline leaving her system, her body began to want to go back to sleep. She was a little afraid to let it, but...perhaps the next dream would be sweeter?
Mikey laid awake, not quite able to get into sleep mode as she sorted out her last thoughts for the day. The revelation that Becca of all people was a magical girl protecting the world from some "Enemy..." ...it was a little difficult to believe, though not so unthinkable as it would've seemed before the world got very strange nearly two months ago. It wasn't like she wasn't smart enough to know what she was doing or anything, it just felt...so strange for a little girl to be given that kind of responsibility, even if she hadn't always been a little girl. But from Becca's account, it sounded like she had been doing well with what encounters she'd had, and like she even enjoyed parts of the experience. And Mikey supposed that if nothing else, it gave her something to do with her time, and probably made her feel more grown-up. Still...
...still...this only raised further questions. Mikey had no doubt now that the virus was planted by this "Enemy," trying to use a robot (or rather, a cyborg) just as they'd apparently used the vice-principal, of all people. Somehow or other, they had the knowledge to identify one of these "Numbers" simply by sight (and maybe whatever other senses Hiro possessed,) and were trying to use him for exactly that purpose - and if her fairies hadn't intervened, the Enemy would've succeeded. But they'd stopped it, and they'd patched the vulnerability - for now, the Enemy couldn't pull that same trick again, not until they found a new in.
Beyond that, though...what could she do to help? She felt like she should tell her parents - after all, they were in charge of taking care of Becca - but what could they do to help? The idea that they might simply have to depend on Becca to look after them seemed crazy on the face of it, but if the Enemy was a serious enough threat that the world raised up its own dedicated protectors just to oppose them, then maybe...maybe there wasn't much they could do, other than to support Becca in her duties.
And on top of all that, there was this nagging feeling that...that somehow, she'd already known about this. It was completely irrational; she had no specific memories of ever learning this before this evening, and she certainly hadn't felt any such familiarity when Becca was explaining this. But now, looking back on it, this nagging sensation suggested that she had. A false memory? The order of events could get jumbled if she went too long without giving sleep mode a chance to sort out her daily memories, but she knew precisely when and how badly she needed sleep, and she wasn't close enough to be experiencing anything like that yet...or at least, she shouldn't be. Maybe it would be gone in the morning...if it wasn't, maybe she could ask around on Emergence about it.
