Nocturn Core (Abridged)

I was slowly transforming into a robotic spider. My tongue was extremely sticky and removable. For some reason, I gained the ability to scale vertical walls with ease after licking them once. I used this ability to sneak into Nicole’s house through a window. This seemed to take place about five years in the past… Nicole and Jess were much younger, and they were still friends. They were sitting together in Nicole’s room. I crawled in and hissed awkwardly. That was my form of speech. Jess wanted to kill me and flush me down the toilet, but Nicole stopped her. I probably had it coming to me for letting that cat get flushed halfway down the toilet…

“He’s kinda cute…” Nicole argued. “I wanna keep him.”

“You want to keep that?” Jess scowled. Nicole knelt in front of me and gently stroked my head.

“Let’s teach him some tricks. Come with us, okay?” She and Jess went into another room. I followed obediently. They helped me correct my robot spider speech impediment, and I regained the ability to speak normally. I informed them that I needed to be at school at 8 AM, but I wanted to see Nicole before leaving. Nicole insisted that I could ride the bus with her. We started waling around outside. When I asked her about it, she admitted her bus driver probably wouldn’t let me ride to school with her… I was sorely disappointed; before I realized I wouldn’t be able to, I was enjoying a flashback to that giddy feeling of interacting with a crush. I tried to cling to that simple happiness.

“Well, at this point, I won’t make it back home to catch my bus… I need a ride one way or another,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” she assured me, “my mom will take us.” A bunch of people came out of the garage together. Everything smelled like smoke. Nicole smiled widely at them. “Oh, you were doing that thing!” she laughed.

“What thing?” asked her dad.

“That thing!” Nicole repeated. They still pretended not to understand (if they did understand in the first place). Mike and Eric were walking together. Eric mentioned something about being good at video games.

“You know what that means…” Mike said.

“Uh… No,” Eric said, shaking his head.

“You can reach into the fabric of the universe and bend it to your will! Space and time are your playthings! And rainbows? Don’t even get me started on rainbows. Wow. Just kidding, Eric – you can’t do that stuff.” Eric seemed confused. We continued looking for Nicole’s mom. I couldn’t remember what she looked like, so every time we saw a woman, I wondered if it was her. We decided to go in the garage, but Nicole went off on her own by the time we got to the backyard. Jess started laughing at me. She challenged me to destroy a glowing, black pillar in the yard. I punched it with all of my might several times, but I couldn’t break it. I continued into the garage. It was shaped like a barn. Once I was inside, I saw that they were on a platform near the ceiling. It took me a few tries because I was starting to lose my robot spider powers (it seemed to be caused by getting my tongue dirty), but I climbed up onto the ceiling and dropped down onto the platform. Something inside my body shattered. A console attached to my robot spider body sent out an error message.

“OV/OL,” Nicole read. She and Jess puzzled over what the error message could mean until a woman came up onto the ledge. She picked me up and sighed.

“Over voltage overload,” she said, explaining the console output to the girls.

“Oh no!” Jess cried. She seemed genuinely upset. I couldn’t figure out why. “We broke him!”

“Not to worry…” the woman said. “I’ll take care of it. You two should get ready for school.”

The dream jumped. I was my normal self again. Nicole and I lay on the floor in the living room (except it was my Oma and Opa’s living room). There was trash everywhere… Spilled drinks (grape soda on white carpet, jeez), half-eaten candy… I tried picking it up while Nicole and Jess played a fighting game. Justin was at Nicole’s house, so he played, too. He explained all of the unique headgears available in the game when I started watching. Nicole was playing as an incredibly powerful wizard with refined command of electricity. Scamper walked into the room and started eating food and toys left in his reach. I didn’t want Nicole’s family to get mad at me for things my dog did, so I made him drop the toys. One looked like Eric’s Guile figurine. A bunch of people had to leave again. I saw Beckman walk by. He complimented my talent for programming, and I took it to heart. Justin joked that Beckman seemed to be into me. I told Justin that I had a history of guys falling for me.

“Like Justin,” I said. I didn’t realize I was talking to Justin…

“Justin?” he asked, bewildered.

“Tynne. Serenity.” He fell onto his back in shock. Then, he started to cry.

“Serenity never gave me a chance…” he wailed. I hugged him to calm him down. After that was settled, I went into the kitchen to organize the refrigerator. I sorted the fruits with care. Nicole’s mom finally showed up. She asked if we were ready to go. I replied in the affirmative – just as soon as I was sure the refrigerator was in order.