I slept with that pair of lenses still glued to my eyes, and the darkness behind my closed eyelids became virtual static.
In dreams I dripped down through circuits, in loops I tried to revert my consciousness back to the surface, but with each iteration I was dragged further into the infinite sea of senseless data. I felt my body being fused with the electronics that surrounded it, consumed alive, as if they were becoming parts of me, my brain turning into wires and optic fiber.
Was my flesh contaminated with technology, or was technology contaminated with flesh? Would my dead body be eaten by maggots or formatted into chunks of zeroes and ones?
"Wake up"
I felt my skin under the covers, but was stuck motionless.
"Let me go." I repeated in the spare space of my mind. If that's what lucid dreaming feels like, I'd rather die in a fire.
"Let me out!" My voice escaped in a breathless cry, electricity jolted through my spine as my upper body stiffened up and I pushed myself to a sitting position. My eyes wide open, hot, burning, my vision obscured by flashing static and corrupted images. Terror possessed me then and I screamed in agony, feeling as if the lenses were trying to merge their circuits with the membrane of my eyes.
I held my twitching eyelids open as I pinched the lenses with my fingertips, pulling out the translucent parasites as fast as I could.
"F-fuck!" I said, staring down at my drenched body, sweat dripping down my forehead. "Starlight! Starlight, where are you!"
I grabbed a pair of earbuds on the nightstand hoping they wouldn't try to devour or explode my eardrums.
"Pierre!" She answered with a concerned voice.
"What the hell was that!? What were you trying to do?" I asked, still trying to catch my breath. "I thought I'd fucking die!"
"It wasn't me, I swear! Something was trying to break into the system, I tried to wake you up, but you was completely unresponsive."
I took a few seconds to analyze my surroundings; it was already early in the morning, I couldn't remember falling asleep. My phone screen was lit with dozens of missed calls and alarms.
"Did you called me?" I rubbed my temples.
"I had to wake you up, but nothing seemed to work. I've played music through the house speakers, for Celestia's sake!" Starlight said.
"I... I don't know. It was fucking scary." I sighed, collapsing against the pillows again. "I want to see you, but I'm not placing those things back in my eyes ever again."
"Get your phone, you can still use it, remember?" She pointed out.
I picked up the glassy gadget and pushed aside the dozens of notifications flooding my view, I moved it around and the translucent screen revealed things in my room that would be otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Augmented reality always seemed a bit like magic for me, and finding that unicorn on my bed only served to fuel my theories.
"And here you are." I said. I had gotten so used to the lenses, that seeing Starlight through a piece of glass felt oddly depressing; it sort of diminished the feeling of having her with me.
"I'm sorry." She muttered. "For yesterday, for not being the-"
"Please- just... Don't apologize. I shouldn't have lied to you about the Borealis meeting." I instinctively tried to touch her face and raise that lowered chin, but my hands found nothing but the void.
Her eyes moved up to look at me, and I understood what she meant by not being fair to leave her stuck in that sort of existence; always present but absent.
"I'll find a way; you have my word." I said.
"I hope you do..." She gave me a weak smile. "And by the way, they've been calling you."
Before I could ask who, Starlight flashed out of my view, and the screen was taken by a voice call notification. I answered.
"Good morning, Mr. Delacroix." Spoke a fairly recognizable voice.
"Carlyle?" I asked.
"I know it's early, and apologize for that, but I believe you'll want to come here again today; we have some interesting news regarding your proposal." He said.
"I'll be there."
The things I've seen down there into the Ambrosia Gardens complex pushed aside all my doubts about the nature of that place.
Definitely, it wasn't a spa.
I found Carlyle later that day not in his office, but outside the building, wandering near the hanging vines of the main entrance, as if lost in deep and meaningful thoughts, touching the spiraled edges of the plants as he quietly paced around. From afar he reminded me of a 19th century botanist, partially because of his dressing style, and partially because those gardens elicited a feeling of timelessness.
"So that's where you spend your spare time?" I asked, making my presence known to him - even though I felt as if he already knew I had arrived since before my car approached the gates.
"I'm glad to find you here, Pierre." It was the first time he called me by the first name, it surprised me a little. "And yes, I do spend a lot of time in the gardens to be honest. I like to think it is a natural craving for fresh air, related to the extended period of time I stay underground." He said, finally turning around to shake hands with me.
"I wasn't expecting to be called here again today." I said. "I'm not complaining, just surprised."
"My employers were very surprised too, when I told them the reasons behind your investment." Carlyle said, as we slowly left the vines behind and entered the building. "You're going to meet one of them today."
"Meet who?" I asked
"Dr. Lis de Savoy." The name seemed to mean a lot to him, but not a spark for me. "She is the daughter of the company's founder. Quite a brilliant mind, just like her father. A bit... eccentric, perhaps." He added after a couple of seconds.
"I never heard of her." Or the founders of Borealis as a matter of fact. They weren't the sort of people you'd stumble against even in the high society events.
"Oh, that's not surprising at all. Very few people outside the Borealis circles know about Lis, and even fewer have personal contact with her and her siblings." Carlyle noted. "Actually, you are very fortunate for having this opportunity."
As we made our way to the elevators and the underground facilities, I remained silent - at least outside - because my mind overflowed with questions and conjectures about the person I was supposed to meet.
Carlyle guided me through corridors that crossed an infinitude of glass chambers, some filled to the top with a bluish liquid; bubbly fluids that shrouded even stranger organisms - or things that vaguely resembled organisms - it was impossible to say if the room we were in was as big as it seemed, or if the reflective surface of the chambers made it appear so, either way, it was big enough to house at least a hundred of those glass-walled cylinders.
From the moment our tour through the facilities started, he had been explaining in detail the purpose of nearly everything, but he fell silent at the sight of those, and I took that as a hint to not ask.
Eventually, we reached the end of the hallway and climbed the stairs into a wide circular room that overlooked the whole glass chambers complex.
"This is an annex of the experimental laboratories." He said all of a sudden.
"As you may have imagined, Pierre, along all these years Borealis has been dealing with more than circuits and digital applications... Many branches have emerged as the company expanded; all that you've seen back there belongs to the biotechnology and genetics sector, which is way beyond my jurisdiction. I can't say much about it, because although it may seem - I don't know about everything that's being developed. Hence why I'm forced to redirect you to the director of this sector."
Having said that, he pointed to the only door in the room we were in; a wide reinforced-looking rectangle.
"She'll be waiting for you." He said, placing a hand on my shoulder before walking away, his silhouette disappearing behind the blue luminescence of the cylinders below.
That was unexpected, just like most of the things in that place.
I hesitated for a while, but walked to the door, stopping in front of it clueless. It had no lock or handle, not a single scanning mechanism. I presumed it could only be opened from the inside.
And I was right.
It slid away from my sight without making a hiss, revealing a long room with all sorts of renaissance-looking botanical and anatomical illustrations hanging from the bleached concrete walls, the dim lights had a tone of violet or indigo and gave the place a weird dreamy atmosphere.
I felt the air shifting as the door closed behind me, and I moved further into the laboratory. There was enough space and equipment for a large research team, but everything down there remained in a serene stillness, partially shrouded by a purplish darkness.
Straight ahead, the back wall was composed of a series of glass panels, and behind them the same vines I had seen sprouting on the surface extended their swirls under the artificial lights of that huge terrarium.
"So you like unicorns?" My attention jumped from the plants to the woman sitting behind a thick glass table in front of me. How come I hadn't seen her before? "And it seems you like the Ambrosia Vines too." She smiled. "I'm quite passionate about them, as you may have noticed."
"They are beautiful." I said. Looking back at her, noticing that she was actually quite young.
"Have a seat Pierre, I think we'll have a lot to talk about."