The False Promise of Steemit

Merwin stared at the link. "Steemit - Make money with social media!" it said. Sure. Another empty promise on the web. What else is new? He'd fallen for it again and again. He wasn't going to be duped this time.

He took a big gulp of his water. He'd been up all night, tweaking his site to get the SEO just right and hopefully, eventually make a few bucks. Nice. Now I have to piss. Won't be able to sleep for even longer now. This always happened when he was up late. He drank water, or Monster, or Jack and Coke, and ended up having his slumber interrupted by his nagging bladder. It was always the same little mistakes, over and over.

He'd been trying his damnedest to find some direction. But every path he chose led him back to square one. The problem was that it took time to build an audience online, and time was something he didn't have much of.

Merwin had been jobless for 3 months now. He was lost in a cloud of hopelessness from which there seemed to be no escape. He sat there, staring at the screen, his body motionless. But in the background, his mind was looping through the same worries and frustrations it had been since he lost his job. Yeah, everyone's gonna be a social media rockstar. Except me. I'm not buying it. Not buying it... not buy...

Merwin was asleep again.

Merwin was in a crowd. No, not a crowd. It was an enormous pile of bodies, writhing, grasping, for footholds and handholds to get to the top. At the bottom, supporting them all, was an old pirate ship, slowly sinking under their weight as their frantic movements threatened to capsize it.

And above them hung an equally enormous piece of fruit, from the branch of a tree made of a material so reflective it was almost invisible. And it didn't just reflect light, it reflected sound as well. And the sound that was coming from it was a kind of joyous song filled with laughter, the complete reverse of the cries of agony, sorrow, and desperation coming from the mountain of bodies on the ship. It was a grotesquely sarcastic, cruel mockery of their pain.

Merwin looked up at the fruit as he clawed his way up the pile, his left foot on some wretch's head, right on something soft yet bony, both hands clinging to a dirty red ponytail. The screams of the horde clashed with the mocking voice of the mirror tree, yet somehow it was the perfect harmony, as if ordained in some way by the laws of nature.

The fruit hung there, as Merwin made his way to the top, swinging gently to and fro, teasing as if to fall right into his hands. It was beyond beautiful. But as he looked closer, he realized that he couldn't actually see it. It was a formless, colorless void. But it wasn't nothing. It seemed to be a reflection of his idea of some magical, perfect object. Everything around the edges, the dream world he was in, gave the appearance of being outside of him. But within the edges it seemed like he was seeing the fruit from inside his head.

Merwin woke up. That is to say, he woke up inside his dream. It was his first lucid dream, as far as he knew. Ahh, I've heard of this... he thought to himself.

Everyone went silent and stopped moving. He could feel that all eyes were on him, while his eyes were still on the fruit. But he turned and looked at the crowd.

"What the fuck are we doing?" he asked.

"We're trying to get the fruit! Duh!" came a snarky retort from someone down at the bottom of the pile.

Merwin was fully aware that the voice was actually coming from himself, his own mind, or whatever. Who else could it be? However, he wasn't aware of how he was doing it. I mean, it didn't feel like he was creating the voice. For all he knew it could be coming from his spleen. Or his bladder.

But I can do whatever I want here. This is my dream, he thought.

"Fuck you, Merwin! This is OUR dream!" came another voice, this time female.

Merwin directed his attention toward the voice, and simultaneously parted the pile like the Red Sea with a flick of his wrist.

The woman lie there, her blood and bruises fading away like the illusions they were. "Take a load off. Let's chill out and have a little talk."

Merwin walked over and lie down beside her, and they both propped their hands behind their heads like pillows, and looked up at the fruit.

"What is it?" said Merwin.

"How should I know. You said it's your dream. I'm just a figment of your imagination, aren't I?"

"Yeah," said Merwin.

"Yeah," said the woman, simultaneously.

"I mean, you seem real, separate from me. I don't feel like I'm controlling you in any way..." they said.

"Whoa! What the fuck! How are you doing that?!" they said, the woman giggling, with a sarcastic expression lighting up her face, which seemed to know everything.

Merwin jerked upright. And so did she. They both turned their heads, and looked deeply into each others' eyes.

"You have things a little backwards, Merwin. You're not me." She said.

Merwin suddenly felt his mouth moving, completely out of his control. Before he had time to even consider the possibility of resisting, his mouth said, in the woman's voice,

"I AM YOU."