Ever since I was young, I had always dreamed of doing many things when getting older.
Becoming a doctor, a paleontologist, a martial artist, a robotics engineer, a musician, a great artist, a video game developer, a multi-billionaire businessman, a physicist, anything that I saw as wonderful or amazing.
In my teen years, I even had a nerd phase where I wanted to be a superhero, a fantasy elf, a xianxia immortal, and such and such.
There was a little problem though, I was just too lazy to achieve my dreams.
That didn't mean that I didn't overcome my laziness, but I was just too late to do it.
It took me almost 3 decades to overcome my laziness.
It was around my early 20s when I discovered that my laziness was odd. It wasn't that I didn't want to do anything, but it felt like my brain just wouldn't instinctively want me to do anything.
I went through every medical route to try to fix it, but it just kept resurfacing.
That was when I finally had this odd delusion. What if I were to discard my body and brain, and just become a floating mind?
I can still think and do anything that I wanted, albeit in a fantasy land created by mere imagination.
Having no good naming capabilities, I named it boringly, Cerebral Lifeform.
And so, years passed since then.
Now, in my late 30s, after achieving nothing that I had dreamed of and becoming a shut-in after becoming tired of life, I was finally at rock-bottom.
During the 2-year period of me becoming a shut-in, I had read many stories about do-overs.
Ah, how sweet would my life have been if I had the chance to a do-over?
Always having such thoughts, and always regretting the choices I had made.
One of the reasons why I was so obsessed with regression type stories was because of my laziness.
Every psychologist, therapist, psychiatrist, and doctor I've ever met, eventually said the same thing.
That my laziness started being ingrained to my subconsciousness when I was very very young.
Young enough to not remember why I became terminally lazy.
I don't necessarily blame it on my upbringing though. It just felt like if there was someone to blame, it was the stupid baby me.
The pure self-loathing that came from my realization was eventually what led to my life's decline.
Even though I had somewhat escaped from my terminal laziness, life wasn't kind enough.
I lost everything. My family, friends, career, everything but myself.
And once again, I myself was the one to blame.
Going through all those medical routes wasn't cheap. Eventually, I even put my family in debt.
When that happened, I just lost all hope.
I ran away taking all the money left in whatever emergency savings my family had, and shut myself in a cheap but shitty apartment that was popular with poor college students.
Miraculously, I lasted 2 years living dirt-cheap like this.
And now that the money had run dry, it was finally time to end it all.
I didn't particularly like getting myself hurt, but I had dug myself too deep.
Being an atheist, I never hoped for anything after death.
Though regression and reincarnation plagued my thoughts, ultimately, they were impossible.
Ah, I had forgotten.
This was all just a dream.
****
I woke up eyeing my room sweating profusely.
I had no name. My nametag was simply labeled "004".
I was a child, yet I wasn't.
'Who.... am I?'
The dream I had was odd.
I was an adult in that dream. An adult living a terrible life.
'What are these thoughts?'
I was utterly confused, just yesterday my mind was that of a 4-year-old.
But now, now it felt like I was a 4-year-old with a mind of an adult.
What was stranger was the fact that I didn't know anything about that dream.
The concepts, images, words, and terms in that dream were not taught to me at all.
'And so how come I know all of this?'
In that dream, I was a data scientist.
'Where did I learn anything about data scientists?'
According to the fragmented memories of that dream, the current me was a 4-year-old child experiment subject.
'Is this regression or reincarnation? Maybe transmigration or possession?'
Fantasies aside, I wasn't the same me as yesterday nor was I the man in that dream.
Cerebral Lifeform.
That term suddenly came to my mind. The term coined by the miserable man in that dream.
My emotions suddenly fluctuated when I thought about this term.
I felt sad, extremely sad. And happy?
Tears flowed on my face. I was crying for happiness.
The emotions of the fragmented memories took over me.
After wiping away my tears, an alarm sounded.
Then, a robotic voice came through the speaker system.
[ALL FACILITY SUBJECTS ALERT]
[DAILY EVOLUTION EXPERIMENTS WILL COMMENCE IN 5 MINUTES]
'Oh, right.'
The current me was a test subject for an organization called the Human Evolution Society.
[SUBJECTS 001 TO 100 ARE SCHEDULED FOR ABILITY TESTING]
[SUBJECTS 101 TO 200 ARE SCHEDULED FOR ABILITY AWAKENING]
[SUBJECTS 201 TO 300 ARE SCHEDULED FOR BODY ADJUSTMENTS]
[SUBJECTS 301 TO 400 ARE SCHEDULED FOR MIND ADJUSTMENTS]
I carefully went down from my bed and wait in front of the steel door locking me in my white and sterile bedroom.
I was subject 004, which meant that I was going to be testing my ability.
In the world of that dream, abilities and superpowers were science fiction.
But in this world, they were real.
My ability was telekinesis, though now I had an inkling that it was more than just that.
'Cerebral Lifeform....'
My mind kept gravitating towards that thought.
'Maybe, maybe, I can become that.'
A burning ambition lit up within me. Without the so-called terminal laziness of the man that I was in that dream, I could become a Cerebral Lifeform.
CREEAK
The steel door to my room opened and a guard wearing a protective combat suit holding an electric baton came in.
As it was routine, I followed the guard into a huge room full of other test subjects and guards.
The subjects were all busily going to their respective test rooms, and the guards were directing them.
Whilst checking on his wrist device, he told me what to do.
"Let's see here... Subject 004, you're going to room 3."
I nodded and walked to a room with a big label of "3".
Inside the room, there were many other test subjects with similar abilities to my telekinesis.
While what I had was a versatile type of telekinesis that can move objects, it was very weak.
Meanwhile, the other test subjects often had far more powerful telekinesis abilities, some more specialized in moving and manipulating certain objects.
In this facility, there were lots of kids as test subjects. But that didn't mean that there were no teenagers or adults.
Mind adjustment was what my dream memories would call brainwashing.
Subjects above the age of 2 had to go through mind adjustment every 4 days.
Body adjustment was comprised of surgical experiments that would configurate the human body structure into producing or enhancing abilities.
And it was also done every 4 days.
Ability awakening and ability testing are self-explanatory. They involve experiments to awaken and test our abilities.
They're also done every 4 days.
These experiments were done in order of mind adjustment, body adjustment, ability awakening, and ability testing. Each done to 100 subjects per day, then a different 100 subjects group the next day.
Then they loop back around.
That was my current life routine.
I had vague memories before becoming a test subject.
War.
This was all done for a war. Though I didn't remember what kind of war it was since I was too young.
'Maybe we're becoming brainwashed superpowerful soldiers? But for a war against what?'
As I was still too young to have learned the common sense of this world, I could only rely on the complete yet fragmented memories of the man in my dreams.
Having thought about that dream once again, a strong feeling of obsession took over me again.
'Ah... I want to become a Cerebral Lifeform.'