A strange pain courses through Deity's being- 'What the hell is happening?' he thinks as everything seems to rush and swirl past him.
'Am I actually feeling this? Where am I? He can’t comprehend what his senses should be detecting amongst the surrounding blur. He feels as if his form has been dismantled to pure elements, his smallest possible components and these have been hurled in a thousand different directions. He can sense the contortions and twists above the feeling of disembodiment and this is the unusual pain. Before he comes to grips with his predicament, however, he is abruptly back in his functioning form, the pain gone as suddenly as it began.
He swivels, looking back at where he had been, it seems to be quite unremarkable, what had caused this strange experience? He backtracks to investigate, as he approaches he detects a faint blurring about the diameter of the cybersphere; little bigger than a large data-trail. He looks around his surroundings, there are other blurry areas like the one he had just been through, what were they? He thinks back to just before the pain and disorientation, he was planing through free space as he usually did and... he was passing a net-hub with a number of cyberspheres, again nothing unusual, he had passed such structures countless times before. He surveys the area around him and doesn't notice any of the structures he had recalled. The cyberspheres are in a different formation and the net-hub he swore he just passed is no longer there. It is all very different to where he was only moments before. What had happened? Had he been transported here?
There are still datatrails here, he thinks as he watches a group of them ahead of him. He is still in his realm, his domain he reassures himself as the datatrails move ahead in their typically ordered, robust fashion but he notices the group is shrinking. He approaches them, the leaders and those following disappear, all at the same point. He recognizes it as another of these blurry areas, just like what brought him here. The last of the datatrails vanishes and he thinks about this phenomena; he had seen this occur before... but hadn't been that interested. There are so many of these mindless little droids he regards them as beneath him, irrelevant to his station but perhaps he has been ignoring their clues to his latest discovery.
He stretches one of his limbs toward the blur that had swallowed the datatrails, it's shimmering more obvious when contrasted directly against his form. There is a force trying to suck him within, he resists it comfortably but the datatrails probably can't and he is usually moving so quickly that he never noticed it. Surely he has come close to one of these dimension warps before, he had just not noticed them. He moves into it now, just a fraction and he can feel the pain as before, he tries to sense what is within but only the disorientation of his previous passing comes through to him. The sensations are weaker than before but this may be because he only exposed a fraction of his being to this strange portal. He now throws his whole form within, the pain and disorientation is not as strong as previously, now that he expects it. His surroundings are different again, the datatrails which passed him only moments before don't seem to be nearby. Are they part of a cluster he sees in the distance? Were they transported elsewhere?
He decides to do a little experimenting of his own and soars over to a group of data-trails to grab a subject. Guinea pig selected, he returns to the dimension warp and pushes the robot within for a few moments. What he brings back is more scrap metal than anything else.
'Why can’t these robots do this?' he thinks to himself briefly. It doesn't matter much, since he has had no such problems. He takes in his new surroundings. They are unlike anything he knew in the cyber-realm. There are no cyberspheres and he can’t make out any boundary of a net-hub. Instead he is confronted by a massive factory assembly line stretching almost as far as the horizon, where it disappears into a tube similar to the start of a cybersphere. Before him is a long conveyor belt carrying a series of microchips. Further along the belt a large metallic machine clamps down upon them. It glows red hot, pressing down onto the belt, synchronized to meet each microchip that the belt moves beneath it. The glowing machine then rises to reveal the chip, now covered by a thin metal strip as it continues along the conveyor belt toward several other similar machines. Deity moves along and sees various other additions and alterations being made by these machines to the microchips upon the belt; edges are removed and extra layers added. As he moves along he recognizes that the microchips with all these additions and enhancements are becoming datatrails. This pleases Deity though unsure how he can manipulate this knowledge to his advantage he is certain it will be useful. Judging by the amount of these robots there may be millions of these factories around the cyber-realm he thinks as he continues to explore.
Watching closer now he realizes that occasionally there is a glitch in the system, data that doesn’t compute or components don’t align correctly. The system carries on regardless, sometimes any resulting debris is swept from the assembly line by another robot arriving from above. Seeing this Deity makes some changes himself; removing components, pushing them forward, flipping them over or on their side. Many of his manipulated datatrails break, others get stuck in parts of the factory. A blockage at a tunnel soon creates an expanding backlog of datatrails as the conveyor belt continues to load datatrails into the blockage. As Deity watches, they start to fall from the belt and the system begins to slow and creak, the tunnel begins to shake when several contraptions from above arrive and begin clawing at the mess while others attempt to sweep it clear. It reminds Deity of someone…an elderly lady, in an immaculate house who would arrive instantly, cloth and broom in hand at the first sight of dirt or dust or crumb. She was so kind to him... But he was beyond such menial things now, he tells himself, willing the images from his mind. They were coming more regularly now, concentrate, focus on what's happening here. So he knows what was being made here, time to find where it is sent. He flies to the end of the assembly line where the final product disappears.
The factory slows with multiple internal creaks from the blocked pathways Deity has created. The large convoluted machine gradually stops. As Deity approaches the exit tube he can still see no complete Datatrails ready for departure from the factory so he leaves disappointed, with nothing to bowl over as a final gesture.
As he enters the light dims for a moment before becoming blindingly bright. Blinded, Deity flies straight through the cybersphere. His vision returns and he sees he is back home, in the free, open spaces of the cyber-realm. He circles to see where he had come from. There is a short cybersphere connecting the black hole, from which he had just come, to a net-hub. He flies into the hub, vowing to himself that he will pay more attention to everything his home presents to him.