It’s over. There was no note, no missive from beyond. I am sober and bereft.

I must escape this room. I have been too long in its confines and forgotten too much of my fellow man. This machine, these works, they have become my life. And so I drink and forget to dream. Yet these missives have awoken something I thought long dead or untouchable. I should not let it once again slip my grasp; if I hold on to even a sliver of the dream, then these walls can no longer hold me. I can once again join that realm where man walks under the sun and interacts with his god’s universe. This is what I must do. This is what I shall do.

But perhaps a drink for courage. A moment to reflect. A pause for the reawakening and a sip to celebrate, and then we shall move forward and learn once again to live.

But what’s that noise? No. NO! That infernal noise calls me back to its clutches; it beckons me like an airy siren from hell. A slave. And I must obey: it is duty and the price laid upon my existence. So I shall have another drink and another, and perhaps dream my dreams in a crystal glass filled with the amber water of life, of the only life that remains to me. But I shall dream.

Dream …