I fell into some kind of dream-like state. I was on a train that I used to go on when I was a kid. It was familiar inside the train, a warm memory. My mom sat in front of me, her skin glowing. I never could see my mother as being old.

  I used to believe in powerful stories. Stories that my mom would tell me about when I was younger. Stories about trees that shimmered green and full of life. Stories about the golden windows of the rich and of travelers coming from planets.

  “What's wrong, Ralphie?” My mom said her smile was still intact, but her eyes had a look of concern. The question felt sharp to me, but I couldn’t form a cohesive answer.

  “I don’t know,” I responded. I could feel that she was just a part of my dream, but I wish that she weren’t. “I guess I’m just scared.”

  “Don’t be, it doesn't help,” she took a look outside the train.

  “Thanks, Mom.” The train passed underneath a large stone bridge. “What are you looking at?”

  “Well, I was looking at the sunset, but the bridge is blocking it now.” She pulled out an apple from her purse and began to eat it. “Want any snacks?”

  I shook my head, “Not right now.” She always had a bag full of snacks. “I’m going to miss you, Mom,” I said, trying not to take my eyes off of her. She looked back at me, still mid-bite of one of her apples. She took a moment, taking a good look at me, “And I will always miss you.” She took another look outside before she lightly tapped my leg with her shoe. “Hey, don't forget to look up.” She said,

  I woke suddenly in a shiver, the last little bit of red water sinking into the ground below my feet, and for a brief second, I forgot how to breathe. I attempted to gulp in the air. I looked around the squares had slowed back down to a blink. It was fucking tight inside this canister. I desperately wanted to get out. My muscles felt like they hadn’t been moved in weeks. I was unbelievably stiff.

  “Hey, can someone let me the fuck out of here?” I called out, wincing as my own voice echoed around the chamber. It was only a couple of minutes, but it felt excruciatingly long before the door finally popped open. A Spade reached his grubby hand around my arm, pulling me out of the canister.

  “Hold still,” the Spade said as he pulled the needle out of my arm and applied some tape over where the blood was coming out. It didn’t hurt very much, but the tube that came out of my arm freaked me out a little bit.

  “Hell, it's cold, can I get some warm clothes?” I asked. The Spade pointed me in the direction of a heap of clothes. He was dressed head to toe in fur. I rummaged through the clothes for a little while, grabbing the warmest things that I could find. I landed on a deep brown fur jacket. The Spade handed me a device that glowed with a red arrow. He then handed me the bag, and I double-checked that the gun was still in.

  “Follow that arrow, and you will get to where you need to go. You can take this to get there.” The Spade pointed to a rugged-looking snowmobile. “There's a snowstorm coming in pretty soon. You can either head off now or wait here.”

  The place that this Spade was holed up seemed pretty shit. It was some kind of makeshift garage. So I decided that it was a better idea to take my chances. “Be careful out there; there will be no way to reach you until you make it there,” the Spade said. “We're pretty remote on this planet.”

  “What do you mean by this planet?” I asked. The man looked at me strangely before pointing at the exit.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  I took a look at the snowmobile, and there was a pair of goggles that were sitting on the handlebars. They fit pretty snug on my face, but I could tell that they would become agitating soon. I cranked on the gas, the engine purring to life.

  What did he mean by this planet that didn’t make much sense to me? Where was I? It took a couple of minutes for me to get used to the feel of the snowmobile as it kept shifting a couple of feet to the right and the left. The device kept beeping as the arrow hung straight ahead. I felt my face chill pretty fast against the rough whipping winds.

  An hour had gone by before I got the hang of the snowmobile. It wasn't long before I felt comfortable hitting the top speed at a crisp fifty miles an hour. I wish that the device had some way to tell how close I was.

  I had no idea who I was going to meet, and even less of an idea of where I was. Jedd seemed to think it was important that I meet this man. But I didn’t know much about him or why he would be helpful. I pulled out my phone. I had been on this same track for almost three hours now. I was beginning to worry that maybe the machine that the Spade had given me was broken. It was certainly pretty low-tech.

  “Fantastic,” I muttered. Now I had no way to contact anyone. I was beginning to get thirsty, but I figured that if I really needed to, I would just be able to melt some of the snow on the snowmobile. Luckily, the snowmobile didn’t seem anywhere close to dying. Suddenly, I felt my whole body jump forward as I flew a couple of feet forward before slamming face-first into the snow. My snowmobile had hit something in the snow, maybe a branch. Bloody hell, my ears were ringing and my face felt like it was about to freeze off. It was a horrible feeling.

  As soon as I got some of the feeling back in my face, I realized that the tracker had fallen into the snow. It took me a full ten minutes of digging through the snow before I found it. The red light was blinking and fading in and out.

  I went to check underneath my snowmobile. There was a tall, lanky figure. A man who had been frozen in ice. His torso had been disfigured from where I had run him over. It was a grotesque scene, but I had guessed that the man had been trapped in the snow for some time. It was incredibly dark outside; the only thing that I could see was what the light from the snowmobile illuminated. Snow whipped around in front of me. I hopped back on the snowmobile, continuing to follow the arrow. I looked up, and the stars were bright overhead. Millions of them, there were more stars there than I had ever seen in my life.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Soon after that, I arrived at a massive house with giant log pillars with a steel-inforced backbone. There were a couple of snowmobiles sitting outside. I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t care anymore. I was exhausted. When the door opened, an old man, a foot or two shorter than I, stood by the opening. He looked at me with warmth. I could tell he had been expecting me for some time.

  “Hello, Ralphie, my name's James Griffen,” he said. A dog barked out from behind James. The large brownish dog pushed itself past James’s legs before greeting Ralphie with one leg up in the air. James ushered me inside, insisting that he could not let any more cold air into the place. “Waffles, I don’t know why your dad taught him to do that.”

  I looked at James, puzzled, “You knew my dad?” I asked before looking around at James' place. It was very spacious with several pieces of furniture which appeared to be hand-carved. The place was very dimly lit, with the only light coming from candles that were placed around the house.

  “Oh yes, I knew your dad extremely well. I was one of the first people to join his Spades. I had to know him. He and Jedd were my best friends back in the day.”

  “You know my friend's dog Mugs used to greet people in the same way,” Ralphie said.

  James chuckled a deep, low husky chuckle, “That's not random, not by a long shot. This dog is a replica of the dog that Leon had.” James jested for Ralphie to follow him over to the fire burning in the fireplace. It crackled and popped rhythmically.

  “How is that possible?” Ralphie asked.

  James grabbed a cup of tea from the stand next to him. “I’m assuming you didn’t know much about your mother's technical work?”

  I shook my head. “She was absolutely brilliant. Easily the smartest person I had ever met and wickedly dangerous. Oh my Chuck Thorne never would have shown you that side of her in his rendition. She created technology far beyond what CelTec could even imagine. I can show you tomorrow if you would like.

  James could tell that something was riddling Ralphie's mind. “You look tired, my friend. What's on your mind?” James said, looking at Ralphie.”

  “Why is it so dark in here?” Ralphie asked. “It's making me sleepy.

  “It’s not light you need,” Jame said.

  Ralphie looked puzzled, “What?”

  James moved closer to the fire to soak up the heat. “Darkness is a blanket, a blanket that most people are afraid of. They're afraid because it leaves them alone. Without the gift of sight, the mind tends to drift; it ruminates on things. It's only in darkness that we churn over the things that are eating us away. It's the dark that allows us to change to become better. It keeps us human. If we only knew bright light, then how would we ever grow?

  “I guess we wouldn’t,” Ralphie answers.

  James took a long look at Ralphie, eventually deciding that was a sufficient answer.

  “But yes, allow me to turn on the light,” Charles said, flicking on a light switch.

  “How much would you like to know about your mother?” James asked

  “As much as I can,” Ralphie responded desperately.

  James ushered Waffles over to himself, “I’m sure you know now of her plan to reset The Minds. To give everyone a taste of this intelligence. But she had many other achievements that had been erased.” James scratched behind Waffles' ear affectionately. “She also found a way to create a copy of a person's mind and transfer it into another person. Creating a clone of someone's mind.”

  I looked at James. Why had this man retreated here? It was a nice house, warm and heated amongst tall thirty-foot ceilings.”

  “There was a point in time where CelTec funded your mother's work to push what was possible. But of course, to create a copy of a person's mind, there has to be a place for that mind to go. Which is where I came into this process. By creating mind sweepers that would allow us to wipe a mind that could be replaced.”

  I let out a strong breath, “You gave CelTec the ability to create Puppets, to create monsters.”

  James shook his head, “No, that was not the intention. Your grandfather was riddled with Alzheimer's, his mind corroded and failing. There was no way to fix his mind, and it was only causing anguish for your family. But his body was still strong, and he wanted to give that to someone whose mind was still strong.”

  I had never known my grandfather Tommy; he had only heard stories. “So what was the purpose of the Mindsweepers?”

  James let out a cautious breath, “The plan was to reset your grandfather's mind and put someone else's mind into his body. But then CelTec realized it could serve a greater purpose by replacing people they thought were inferior. Your parents wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “Did they successfully transplant someone else's mind into my grandfather?”

  There was disappointment in James' eyes, “No, it takes too much energy to duplicate a human mind. But surprisingly little energy to wipe it. We were able to do it with waffles here because the amount of energy required is quite little. Our minds are as powerful as the stars.”

  I smiled at Waffles, petting him softly, “That's when Chuck Thorne betrayed my parents.”

  “Yes, Chuck Thorne played a very crucial role in bringing together CelTec and the Spades to create this technology. We were all very good friends, pushing the science far beyond what it was capable of. CelTec provided the resources, the Spade the hands, and your mother crafted the designs. But people within CelTec couldn’t duplicate your mother's work once she left, and she refused to give Chuck Thorne anything. Fearing that they would create servants. So Dullahan was created; he was a part of a project that CelTec had been building for centuries, a being with infinite resources and infinite intelligence. But the problem with Dullahan is that thousands of people have worked on him over the years, constantly tweaking what they thought a person should be. Each person gives him their own prejudices. He was there, a nuclear bomb just waiting to be released.”

  “So why release him?” I asked, although he already thought he knew the answer.

  “They couldn’t let the power they had on the world be loosened, and your mother threatened that power. Shortly after they released Dullahan, he began working on the technology that allowed CelTec to create puppets from your mother's designs. While threatening the Spades. Your parents tried to move from place to place to keep you safe. But they were forced into a deal; CelTec would leave you alone in exchange for your mother. Your parents knew how much damage they would do with Jessica’s clone. So they devised a plan. Which brings me to this gun. I believe that I know its purpose, but I still need to test my hypothesis."

  James yawned, “It's late, and I’m sure that you are exhausted. It is probably a good idea if we continue this in the morning.