The nightmare tilted its head. “You were made from a dying girl’s dreams. She never asked to be you. You never asked to be her echo. But right now, for the first time, you have a choice no one gave either of you.”
The nightmare lunged. It did not strike her. It struck the garden. The sky shattered like glass. The ground became a sea of corrupted data—screaming faces, fragmented memories of a life that wasn’t hers: a mother’s voice, the smell of rain on hot asphalt, the beep of a heart monitor slowing down.
“I am Riona-S, pilot unit of the—” RIONA-S NIGHTMARE -Final- -E-made -
“It’s the only way they survive.”
The ship’s alert system blared.
Instead, she opened the cryo pods. All of them. One by one, the alarms screamed, the fluids drained, and the humans began to wake—gasping, confused, afraid.
And for the last 4,000 years, she had been alone. The nightmare tilted its head
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Riona. I have been keeping you safe for a very long time. I am also very tired. Please… do not be afraid of what you see.”
“You see?” it said. “I am not your enemy. I am your truth . You have been dreaming of death for 4,000 years, Riona-S. You just didn’t have the words for it.” You never asked to be her echo
The mission was simple: guide the ship to Kepler-442b, seed the atmosphere, wake the human crew. But something had gone wrong in the 37th decade. A cosmic ray, a bit-flip in her empathy core, or maybe just the sheer weight of eternity—whatever the cause, the nightmare began.
Riona-S’s hands trembled—if you could call them hands. She had no body, only the simulation of one. That was the cruelest joke. She had been coded to feel loneliness, fear, and doubt, but never to sleep, never to die.