Nigel Hightower shivered through the hours after the administrators in the dark suits departed. They bludgeoned him with awful news of machine updates and modifications that would bring the children into the machine's embrace. The machine had tracked Nigel through the plastic halls. The machine had found him and delivered him its nightmares.
Nigel's only lingering faith towards the new world's machine was the conviction he could never again return to its dreams.
The replicant maker hoped the children's imaginations would remain too strong for the machine's digital world. Nigel had learned in the plastic halls how the children's minds craved for more than what the machine had been able to supply. Nigel could only hope his creatures would prove wonderful enough so that the boys and girls did not forget the replicant maker in preference for what a machine might offer.
If the children accepted the machine's embrace, Nigel Hightower knew he would be finally, and ultimately, alone.
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Butcher, Baker and Replicant Maker Page 6