The sound of laughter floats through sunlight.
A boy—ten, maybe eleven runs barefoot through the garden behind a vast house of glass and stone. The morning is full of warmth and wonder. The air hums faintly with life, the kind born not of nature but invention. Wind chimes made of thin metal plates sing when the breeze passes; a fountain shaped like a neuron sprays ribbons of water into the air.
At the edge of it all, Alexander Abernathy stands in his workshop, sunlight spilling through the open doors. His hands are stained with oil and ink, surrounded by a forest of machines: translucent orbs that pulse with light, a hologram of a brain spinning lazily in midair, journals stacked in fragile towers.
He turns when he hears a voice at the doorway.
"You promised to rest today," Evelyn, his wife, says, her smile carrying both love and gentle reproach. A strand of hair falls across her face, and she tucks it behind her ear as she watches him.
"And break a promise to curiosity?" Abernathy grins faintly. "Never."
She rolls her eyes, laughing softly. "You two—always lost in thought."
Abernathy looks to his son. "Arthur, your mother says I dream too much. But how can a man stop thinking about what makes dreams real?"
Arthur beams, wide-eyed and innocent. "Maybe when he finally builds one."
Abernathy laughs, lifting the boy into his arms. The moment freezes in gold—the kind of happiness that's too whole to imagine it ever ending.
Then the light fades.
The sound of laughter cuts short. The house dims, curtains drawn. Evelyn dies from a tragic accident. Her shoes remain by the door, untouched—the last echo of a life that once filled the house with laughter.
Arthur grows quiet, his sketches darker. Abernathy's inventions sit untouched, their faint hums dying out one by one.
Only silence remains.
Years pass. The sunlit estate becomes a hollow shell.
Arthur is seventeen now—tall, pale, with sleepless eyes. His hands tremble as he draws strange diagrams on the walls of his room. Circles. Patterns. Neural maps that seem to pulse under the lamplight.
He hasn't slept properly in months.
Sometimes Abernathy stands at the doorway, watching his son murmur to himself.
"Arthur," he whispers one night. "Please, rest."
"I can't," Arthur mutters, voice trembling. "Every time I close my eyes, I feel something slipping. Like I'm being pulled apart."
Abernathy steps closer, his own body frail, his eyes shadowed with exhaustion.
He wants to help. To fix. To save.
But he can't.
It begins with tremors—his hands shaking as he tries to write. Then the coughing. The blood on the handkerchief. The fainting spells. His body starts to betray him.
"It was as if his body had started to forget how to live the same moment his son forgot how to sleep."
He hides it from Arthur, pretending it's just fatigue. But one night, his body gives out. The world tilts.
Darkness swallows him.
Fluorescent lights. The steady beep of a heart monitor.
Abernathy lies in a white bed, eyes fluttering beneath pale lids. Machines surround him—machines that breathe for him, feed him, keep him tethered to what remains of life.
The doctors speak softly near the door. Arthur listens, motionless.
"His organs are stable," one says. "But his brain activity is deteriorating. If nothing changes, the nervous system will begin to shut down."
Arthur nods once. His face is calm, but his knuckles are white.
Abernathy stirs. His voice is weak, but gentle. "I see you've finally slept, my boy."
Arthur forces a smile. "Yes. I guess even the mind learns to rest when it must."
Abernathy coughs hard, the sound rattling through him. "What did the doctor say?"
Arthur pauses, then lies softly.
"That you're standing on stones now, Father. Just a few more steps and you'll find the shore."
A faint chuckle. A trembling hand grips his son's arm. "I love you, Arthur. Remember that."
A week later, the monitors' rhythms grow fainter.
Arthur snaps. He shouts at the doctors, the nurses, anyone within reach.
"You keep him breathing but not living! That's not medicine— that's mercy on pause!"
He signs the papers himself.
Thunder cracks outside as he drives his father home.
The workshop is alive again, but not with laughter this time.
Rain lashes against the glass walls as Arthur moves among the machines, wires coiling around his arms like veins. His father lies motionless on a padded table, pale under the flicker of light.
At the center of the room stands the Dreamborn Machine.
A glass chamber half-filled with translucent liquid—its surface alive with faint blue light.
At its core, a crystalline sphere pulses, like a second heart.
He pauses, staring at it—his reflection caught in the glass. His hands won't stop trembling. He tells himself it's science, not desperation. But the truth is, he can't tell the difference anymore.
Arthur's voice shakes as he speaks.
"Father… we've always believed medicine heals the body. But it's the mind that commands it. The brain can rebuild itself—it just needs the right signals."
He runs a trembling hand along the chamber's rim. "I built a system that transmits neural echoes through liquid neurons. It tells the brain it's whole again. The liquid neurons are bio-reactive. A synthetic gel that mimics synaptic behavior, feeding signals back into the brain through adaptive resonance. Oxygen synthesis maintains cerebral activity even has the body sleeps."
He meets his father's gaze.
"It healed me," he whispers. "It can heal you."
Abernathy's eyes flicker—fear, love, and a fragile hope.
"Will I see you again, Arthur?"
Arthur hesitates.
"When you wake up. When the mind remembers the body."
Abernathy exhales softly, a tear slipping down his cheek.
Arthur leans forward, places the neural cap on his father's head, and connects the tubes. The chamber glows brighter—light flooding through the veins of the machine.
Abernathy's breathing slows.
Then stills.
The monitor steadies into a low hum.
Arthur stands there for a long moment, silent.
(Transition: the hum fades… replaced by the soft breath of wind.)
Light.
Soft. Endless.
Abernathy stands in a golden field beneath a wide blue sky. The world feels warm, like sunlight remembered. The air hums faintly—the same pitch as his old machines.
He looks down at his hands. They're steady. Whole.
For the first time in years, his chest feels light.
In the distance, he hears a voice.
Arthur's voice.
Soft, almost like the wind itself.
"Sleep well, Father."
Abernathy closes his eyes.
The sky deepens into gold.
The wind carries a hum; faint, rhythmic—as if a machine away had just remembered how to dream.
And somewhere between silence and breath,
a father's dream began to heal.