As he expanded outward, hitting (then passing) the boundary of normal human vision and hearing, Carlos’s attention was redirected: He saw, as if in a hallucination, the domes of Darklight City in the distance, the neon lights blurred by connected sheets of plastic draped over them; fractured out into abstract shapes by the hexagons and triangles that made up the industrial glass of the domes’ surface. A windstorm blew dust over the city. He realized the view (the perceptual memory) had been shaped from inside the cockpit of one of the vehicles of his own era.

He held the image in mind, letting it override his own visual center in the Dream World, then looked for an impression or thought to anchor it that was not his own… found an impatience… Stuck waiting…

The dust storm had come early, unexpected. The rover had overridden his controls, the machines suddenly asserting their knowledge of what was best. He—no, she—had gone from in charge, a pilot of her own expedition, back to passenger and prisoner. It was a minor inconvenience— she understood this of course—but she still resented it. Now she was waiting out the storm from the protected cliff-side. The machines (the real adults here) had grasped her handlebars and redirected her somewhere safe; their models must have adjusted to the dust storm and predicted the location of the safe harbor she now waited in.

Wake of the Wanderer

Where To Find You

I make music that teleports you to other worlds. PatternShift is the project of composer/producer Benjamin Kamphaus. Other projects include:

Hadamard Gate · Mnemonurgos · Generation Ship · Fading Skies · Abandoned Kingdom · Datacaster