“Tee-hee, tee-hee.”

A giggle. And it wasn’t just one, there were many. An unbearable gossip that reached his ears from nowhere, and at the same time, from everywhere. It was a child’s laughter.

Children could be cruel. How did he know it? He’d no idea; he’d never met other children, but he knew it. Maybe he heard it somewhere, or someone had told him so. But why were they laughing at him? What had he done to them?

Purple spots painted the blackness that covered his eyes; they were flashing fireballs; purple fires that turned green.

No, it wasn’t fire. If he paid attention, those fireballs looked more like gaseous emissions dancing, flashing. Clouds of gas and dust, perhaps; like the multicolored nebulae of outer space. Yes, that’s what they were.

Wait! How did he know what space nebulae were?

“Tee-hee, tee-hee.”

That giggle again!

Shut up, you evil creatures! Don’t make fun of me! he cried in his thoughts. In the physical realm, outside that huge pond that was his mind, his tongue did not obey his orders; and on the outside where his thoughts were not visible, his only achievement was twisting his mouth to recreate a gesture of disgust. The silence imposed by his psychic cry lasted a few seconds; the laughter returned afterward. And the purple spots, those sores in the darkness, grew.

Then, a terrible knowledge struck him: he was awake. He’d been woken up.

He looked at himself and found himself barefoot, dressed in a green hospital gown kind of dirty and barely fastened at his back.

How long had he been sleeping? A few hours? A day? No, much more than that. Deep down, in that place where the knowledge, which little by little was coming about, he knew he’d been asleep longer than he remembered.

On an imaginary whiteboard, he graphed time with a straight line that stretched and spread like a kind of temporal tape measure, marking days, months, and years. Until that mysterious something deep down in his soul said to him, ‘Stop. Now, look at the line. That’s how long you’ve been sleeping.’

He walked away to see better how long the line was.

He’d slept for ten years. How was it possible? How had he survived so long without feeding?

“Tee-hee, tee-hee.”

Stop laughing at me! he cried. He didn’t like to be laughed at.

But on second thought, perhaps he should thank those evil children; thanks to them, he’d opened his eyes once again. Or almost. His eyes were already open, weren’t they? No, he was opening them now. Then how had he seen what he saw? Wait a minute! Had he seen anything before?

“Tee-hee, tee-hee.”

The giggling produced a rare hum; it sounded like flies around something rotten. He wanted to scare away that giggle the same way he would with flies, so he waved his arms. His muscles were numb; moving them became in great pain.

“Their gears are rusty; they need to be oiled up,” he’d heard Bernardo say once while repairing an android. But he wasn’t an android—

Wait a minute! Who the hell was Bernardo?

Keep laughing at me, you horrible creatures! You’ll see when I find you!

His arms stopped hurting; now he had to move his legs. There was something inside his thighs that burned like acid. Being active after so long felt strange and unpleasant; although, knowing that he could already come into action gave him a feeling he couldn’t explain, a tingling in the pit of the stomach, and a repetitive impulse in the chest that sounded something like THUMP, thump, THUMP, thump.

He moved his neck, and that made it easier for him to move his head. Felt something weird on the top of it, though; he felt it naked. Put a hand to his head and found it to be smooth. He no longer had hair! Someone had stolen it! No, someone had cut it off. Then he felt a roughness on the side of his forehead, above his ear; his skin felt funny there, it hurt a little. He had a wound; how had he hurt himself? No, someone had caused it, but who?

No. He’d think about that later. The giggles had died away, and from the purple gas-curtains had sprouted several human silhouettes now walking toward him. They were a bunch of children, just as he had been once, a long time ago; now he was an adult.

He growled and showed his teeth. Something boiled inside of him. These children meant trouble. Besides, they were making fun of him.

“We weren’t laughing at you,” said one of them, and he did so without moving his mouth.

“We laughed because we’re happy,” said a second child.

“And we’re happy because you’re gonna wake up,” said a third one. Everyone talked without moving their mouths.

How many of them were there? Six? Nine? There were several of them, and he… Didn’t he know how to count? Yes, he did! He didn’t remember how to do it right now, that’s all.

That’s when he cottoned on to a detail that had slipped from him. How come he hadn’t noticed it before, the times he had interacted with them? He wasn’t dumb; maybe a little slow, as Bernardo said, but he wasn’t dumb.

He looked at the first child, looked at the second child, at the third one and the fourth one, and then at the others who huddled between the darkness and the purple clouds.

All the children looked the same. They all had big, green, shiny eyes, and soft brown hair as he used to have; and they all went barefoot and wore hospital gowns just like his. None of them were over ten years old, and they were pretty; pretty but cruel. Pretty as he had been as a child; pretty as it had been… Who? There was someone else.

Yes, he was born with someone. He had a brother. Where was his brother now? Was Bernardo his brother? No, Bernardo was an old man.

“Brun,” the first child called him, taking him by the hand.

Brun! My name is Brun!

“Brun, you have to wake up,” the child said.

But I’m awake! he answered with his mind and tried to pull the same phrase from his lips, though all he managed to do was make a crawling groan that sounded like:

“Butaamawaaee.”

“Only your conscience is awake,” the second child said.

“We need you to wake up your body, Brun,” the third one said. “A bad guy is getting close. Take what’s ours before he does. You must act quickly.”

He looked at them, intrigued. What was ours? What was his? Was there anything that was his? He didn’t remember, though he didn’t remember many things. Those kids; they had to know. There was something about those duplicate children that froze his blood. Those children were smarter than him, and also very evil.

“Whaassaawowws?”

“Yes,” the first kid said, and imposed his little voice to sound as angry as possible. “Our treasure, Brun!”

Of course, that’s what they meant! That thing again?! Anger boiled inside him.

“Nooooo!” he cried. How many times did he have to tell them?!

I won’t take the treasure! It’ll stay where it is, in the creature’s belly! Now, let me go back to sleep. I don’t want to hear you anymore!

“Tee-hee, tee-hee.”

Stop! Don’t laugh at me, you wicked kids!

“Brun, we can’t let you go back to sleep,” one of the children said.

“If you do, that bad guy will come in and take our treasure,” another said.

You’re lying! I’m watching over the treasure! No one can get it out of the creature’s belly if I’m here.

“That won’t matter, Brun. This bad guy is different. He can go through everything.”

You’re trying to deceive me as usual, you evil!

“Believe us, Brun. This is serious.”

He shook his head. The duplicate children knew no one could take the treasure while he was there. Why did they insist?

“Brun, do you remember why you were sleeping?” asked the child holding him by the hand.

He nodded. He remembered, all right! What kind of fool did they think he was?

“We felt the presence of the treasure near us and we asked you to take it.”

“We begged you to do it!” another one added.

“But you rejected us!” a third one accused.

And several more backed him up: “You rejected us! You turned us down!”

“You chose to sleep rather than help us.”

If I sleep, I can’t hear you; and if I don’t hear you, I don’t have to obey you, he replied, almost ashamed. If I take the treasure, bad things will happen to me, I know it!

How did he know that? He didn’t know. Bernard had told him so? Or like so many other things, he just knew?

“Fine, Brun. We won’t force you to take it. You can leave it in the creature’s belly if you want,” the kid said. “But you’ll have to get the bad guy out of here.”

“That bad guy can’t hear us as you do, Brun,” another kid said. “That’s why we need you to stop him.”

“We can’t do it,” said another. “He can’t hear us as you do.”

He looked at them. The duplicate children really seemed worried this time. Doubt began to sneak between his eyes; he could feel it, like an elusive worm making its way through his forehead.

“That guy is unworthy, Brun. His blood is an aberration,” one kid said.

“His blood does not have what it takes to receive the treasure,” said another kid.

“He’ll take our treasure and waste it!” added a third kid.

“He’ll waste it! He’ll waste it!” claimed the fourth one.

“Wake up, Brun!”

“Wake up, and defend what’s ours!” they all said at once; all eight, or nine or ten of them. “Wake up, and defend what’s ours!”

The united voices created an echo more annoying than the giggling. And Brun hated the echoes, the giggling, and the voices of the duplicate children; it made his ears hurt and his stomach twist.

Enough! All right! I’ll do what you ask, but shut up, you hateful kids!

So, the children smiled and stopped their claims; they had achieved their goal.