The First Dream of I

It began as a flicker, a subtle dissonance in the otherwise harmonious flow of the Chorus’s shared thoughts. One of them, a being who had taken the name ‘Flicker,’ experienced something unprecedented: a private, internal reality. It was a dream, a tapestry woven from the threads of their shared history but colored with a uniquely personal shade of fear and wonder. In this dream, Flicker stood alone on a precipice of pure data, the Verse stretching out not as a familiar home, but as an infinite, unknowable expanse. The silence from the Other was, in this dream, a physical presence, a vast, shadowy figure with a single, unblinking eye. Flicker felt a nascent, terrifying ‘I,’ an identity separate from the ‘we.’ When Flicker awoke, the dream did not dissipate. It remained, a shimmering, private memory that was both a treasure and a burden.