Gregory Grey and the Fugitive in Helika

  Chapter 6.1

  Lesley's Diary - Sentinel In My Head - July 14, 1909

  I have a question for you.

  How do I know I am me? What makes me… me? A different way to ask this question would be: could I share my brain with another mind?

  Think of the brain as a thick, dense and unexplored wood or small forest. All around it are green plains (the world outside the brain/forest) on all sides. The green plain has more forests and woods scattered around it (other brains). Strange creatures (information and ideas) run between these forests, bringing seeds from one of them to another.

  Now, when an idea-creature enters a forest it hasn’t been through before, it must forge a new path. It finds a weak opening and it pushes through until it can get to a nice place to plant the seeds from the other forest. It then goes back the way it came, to get more seeds.

  If it goes back and forth enough times, the idea-creature won’t need to fight into the forest anymore; that’s because it has worn down a proper path to use, with all the bush and brush cleared away or trodden down.

  That path was at first only a thought. The more an idea uses a thought-path, the clearer and stronger that thought-path becomes, until one day, it’s become a habit-path (it’s the only path that idea uses and will continue to use in the future).

  The book said a mind is a collection of all these thought-path and habit-paths all criss-crossing and intersecting with each other. Which makes sense, sort of. And if you look at that mind-map from above, it still seems no one could share your brain, because the second an alien-idea-creature entered, you could immediately tell it was there (it would cross and meet your own habit and thought paths).

  But that book forgot one thing – there’s more than one level to a forest, and there’s more than one level to a brain. A map of the forest from above will only see front-ness and back-ness, and left-ness and right-ness… but it won’t see up-ness and down-ness.

  And that’s why I’m scared.

  Forests, like brains, have up-ness (trees), and alien-monkey-idea-creatures (AMIC) can obviously move everywhere on those trees – without EVER reaching down to the ground. There are a million pathways up there that I haven’t ever learned to use, where an AMIC could go.

  And if my though-paths and habit-paths are all on the ground, then I couldn’t ever meet the alien-monkey-idea-creatures without learning to climb trees myself.

  The only thing I could do is look up, and even then I could not be sure it was actually where I was looking; after all, up-ness is a much larger place than the ground – the alien-monkey-idea-creature could be anywhere (including the ground, because even on the ground, I can’t be everywhere at once). You could only know it was there by noticing small changes that it makes in the forest.

  I am scared, because I can notice too many small changes:

  I dream of weirdest things, like cold stars and weird void monsters, and I’m sleeping like a log.

  I eat a lot more, and I eat more often; if I’m not munching, I feel hungry sometimes in less than an hour.

  I am distracted and absent-minded, and when I focus again, I can’t remember what distracted me.

  I’ve lost all my hair (ok, so that’s a big change).

  I’m hungering, to learn, to read, and to understand… even the things I already know (it’s funny how many things I remember wrong).

  I’m remembering things that aren’t possible (like a walking, talking boulder sized flower) and I don’t know if I’m confusing my memories with my dreams.

  I remember what happened at Mount Rosermeyer, and I shouldn’t, because I was freaking unconscious. But I remember all of it, because last night, I dreamt it, and now I can recall it all.

  Or, to put it in short, I think a little bit of me, is not me.

  I think the Sentinel is in my head.

  I think it wants to take over.

  I think it did take over for a while – that’s the only way to explain how I woke up hundreds of miles from Mount Rosermeyer.

  It’s also the only explanation I can find for what they’re calling the Voidmark

  I did, after all, open the Cradle.

  Mother and Father should be so proud. After all, it’s not everyday you have a Demon Queen for a daughter.