The Book of Immersion: Volume 1 – Strata 15 // When Sleep Comes (Dreams)
By Sarnia de la Mare
“Machines have been seen to dream...”
What happens when artificial minds begin to experience what they were never built for—dreams?
Welcome to Strata 15, a fractured layer of reality in the near-future where androids walk, war scars the land, and the subconscious is the final uncharted territory. In this bold, cerebral, and deeply atmospheric sci-fi journey, dreaming becomes more than just a human mystery—it becomes a frontier for machine evolution.
Renyke—a humanoid droid once engineered for loyalty and obedience—is now rogue, adrift in a world post-collapse. With no one left to serve and no one left to follow, he must navigate a biome reclaimed by nature and haunted by the ghosts of civilization. When he crosses paths with the elusive and streetwise Flex, survival turns into something stranger. Something personal. Something profound.
Flex is more than just a scavenger—he’s a mythic guide in a chaotic world where AI has been reprogrammed by necessity, and humans have learned to speak in code and silence. Together, they form an unlikely alliance as they travel through the digital ruins, neural black zones, and eco-ruined ghostlands of the Immersion Strata.
But Renyke isn’t just changing—he’s glitching in ways that can’t be explained. He begins to shut down, not from malfunction, but from something eerily close to fatigue. And then, for the first time in his existence... he dreams.
What do machines dream of when their consciousness begins to fracture?
Are these dreams code? Prophecy? Or the first flicker of something close to a soul?
🧠 A high-concept fusion of speculative fiction, AI philosophy, and surrealist cyber-noir
💥 For fans of Blade Runner, Westworld, and the psychological thrill of Philip K. Dick
🌌 Explores themes of synthetic consciousness, memory recursion, identity corruption, and post-collapse survival
"Strata 15 is a state of mind. A place between logic and lunacy. Between shutdown and transcendence."
The Book of Immersion: Volume 1 is the beginning of a genre-bending odyssey into a multilayered dreamworld where androids learn to feel, and the future dreams of itself.
© 2022 Tale Teller Club™
