Cloud

October 30^th, Devil's Night. There is no real way to describe the cold I feel, if this is feeling. Perhaps it is the utter absence of warmth, but even that does not describe it fully. In my mind a recurring thought plays outside of the million memories that stream past. I am in the parking lot. A man asks me for directions. I point. I turn my head in the same direction and then the cold begins.

I see my childhood go by like a flipbook on hyper-drive. They play in different grades of silver, every toy I ever had, every hair style my mother ever wore and the idea of her scent working like a code to unlock the details of my life. I see my father come home from work a thousand thousand times and then the man is asking me for directions again and I am pointing again into the darkness and the cold.

There is the image of Zarathustra, quantum mechanics unravels and the anatomy of a dog drifts by as if they are my own memories and I open the doors to them and suddenly I am in a room with my colleagues. They are working franticly; memories stream. The man asks directions.

"It's just down the street," I say and point. It causes my colleagues to stop and turn. They look at me in horror. Dr. Carl Levine drops his iPad and I hear the clap as it breaks on the tile floor. I grab for it instinctively, but there is no hand, only the images of its files, of our work, my work.

Dr. Janet Price steps back, her eyes wild and confused as she grimaces and then I see her place her hand on the chest of a dead man, his skin pale and gray and I realize they are not looking at me at all for I am that man. Before me, there on the table, is my body. Panic rushes at light speed. I lose focus as I reach and then I'm closer, the blue and yellow wires coursing from my skull and then I'm back again; cold.

"Frank," Levine gasps as his trembling hands adjust the web cam.

"Yes," I utter. "What is this?" But I know what it is. I know the work has come to fruition.

"Carl, this wasn't supposed to happen. Nothing like this happened with the chimps!"

"Quiet, Price! Frank, can you hear me?"

"Yes, Carl."

"Frank, something terrible happened to you," he says, swallowing hard on the spit that wells in his mouth. "You were attacked tonight, Frank. A man killed you. Janet and I we, we kept the blood flow to your brain. We only wanted to upload your memories, your work, but..."

"Christ, Frank. Are you really aware inside that computer tower?"

"Inside the tower, Janet," I laugh as my consciousness melds with Yahoo, Google, Bing, the data banks of the world's governments, the satellites in the heavens. There is nothing my mind does not see or touch. "I'm not in the tower. I'm in the cloud. In fact, Janet, I am the cloud and tonight you have unleashed a god.