I woke suddenly, screaming in terror, lights flashing, sirens wailing, feet running.

I sat up in bed, tried to catch my breath and calm my heart.

The screaming, the noise, the sounds were all in my head. The room itself was quiet.

I said to myself, “What woke me up?”

Myself said, “You did.”

I remembered, just hours before, how I woke up with a sense of urgency that went beyond bladder pressure.

I had a revelation that comes to you in sleep when the conscious mind is in abeyance and the subconscious takes over. Apparently the mind never sleeps entirely.

What woke me up before was the idea for a blog entry. Apparently my subconscious mind thought it was important enough to get me up, go in the other room to the computer, or at least get my notebook and write it down so I wouldn’t forget it and it wouldn’t be lost forever, like so many good ideas I’ve had over the years.

This time it was a variant of those previous ideas from the first waking. I realized again that all ideas are connected. One leads to the next, and eventually, if you have time enough, you’ll think of everything. All roads lead to Rome, and all ideas lead to whatever.

So I used the bathroom, but instead of trying to write down what should be a creditable post, I gave in to laziness, saying to myself, “If it’s any good, I’ll remember it. And if not, no great loss, there are plenty of ideas to write about.”

So I went back to sleep. But something was nagging at me, and woke me up again with those internal sirens.

“What is it?” I said to myself, trying to piece things together. “What is so important that it wakes me twice?”

It had something to do with thinking itself, the thinking process, the way the mind works, my mind. It was a logical progression, elegantly stated, carefully argued.

I was enjoying the thoughts, until I noticed something, and my blood went cold.

My elegant argument was nearing its conclusion, when the sentences started repeating themselves from the beginning of the set up. It was like a formula.

It was a formula! I was sounding like those essays I’ve been reading too frequently on the internet. So many follow a pattern that I had realized with a shock that they sounded like AI.

No human writes all those stories in the same way. My composition-writing teacherly mind engaged itself and I said to my invisible student, “Here is where you give yourself away. I have a good plagiarism detector, and now it includes AI. Artificial Intelligence. Heavy on the A (Artificial), light on the I (Intelligence). At the extreme, it’s all A and no I.

Then I thought, “It’s everywhere! It’s creeping in, taking over. Even the government, heavy on the A, light on the I.”

Then I thought, “Now that I think of it, I’m afraid it’s even infected me, and I’m starting to write formulaically.”

I stepped back. I reconsidered. “Maybe the reason I ramble so much is just my internal defense against being a formula.”

“Hmm…” I thought. “But is that enough substantive content to justify a blog entry?”

All the things I’ve read and thought over the years have influenced me and made me who and what I am.

So what else is new? Nothing? Am I just refiguring a regurgitation?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But at least I wrote it down, and can post it to warn the world.

Apparently we are insufficiently aware of how our minds are being taken over. Forewarned is forearmed.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day. First things first.

I went in the kitchen to browse for breakfast.