Once upon a time, inside a skull, skilled and cold-blooded, a Reality-Check Apparatus was born. Its efficiency was so unparalleled, that the other physical-factors-that-decided-abstract-phenomena, couldn't tolerate its existence. They were very jealous of it, and they started to fear that their own spans of survival were under the threat of being overpowered by that one living, breathing object.
Within the cerebral confines of their owner, they made plans, wide and wicked, intended to destroy RCA.
Accordingly, one day, they threw a party and invited RCA to it. At the gathering, naturally, proud of its worth, RCA didn't bother to even interact with the others. The others, huddled together, consolidated their selfish plans of ending RCA, and calculated every step of tearing it apart. RCA was too haughty to notice the crowd's concentration.
All of a sudden, everyone turned towards it. It was taken by surprise for the first time since its inception. It told itself that the others must be about to worship it. It was used to holding back deadly stares from mortals, but never before had it confronted so many eyes looking at it, with the same inexplicable expression.
The skilled and cold-blooded skull's walls began to tremble and echo with strange loud beats. RCA tried to tear away from the extremely straining eye-locks, to look around the room. It could vaguely discern reddish white-washed walls with its own pictures hanging in frames, all around. It couldn't be sure if they were pictures or mirrors. It could not go to find out. It could not free itself from the crowd's stare-trap.
The vibrations grew louder and more severe. The frames broke. The pieces of glass, swung at each other in controlled animation. RCA felt the familiar crescendo it had always feared. The invisible waves came to it, criss-cross, from every direction. Only if the others would look away, it thought, it could calm the elusive storm around it.
Nothing slowed, or stopped. Rising above thresholds, beating all the old-preserved frequency records, the waves of doom superimposed in a destructive interference never experienced before. The others continued depriving RCA of all sense of time and space. They were glad that their presumptions were correct. They were apprehensive that their owner would wake up and pause their exercise. But, nothing betrayed their collective visual-kinesis.
RCA heard the faint sound of a crack within him, and made a mental note of mending it as soon as conditions were back to normal. Normal! The word seemed lost from his dictionary. It felt its reason being robbed away gradually. It still couldn't break free. It still couldn't believe in its weakness, or dependence on others. It held out its shield's handle from the back, without a clue, that the metal has long melted into watery smoke. Blurry-eyed, it tried to admit exhaustion. But even such powers of introspection, admission and action slipped away before it could grab them.
The crowd dispersed. The storm crawled back to the horizon.
What remained of the proud Reality-Check-Apparatus was a feeble piece of papyrus.
The others had won. They tossed the piece outside the skull-world.
The owner woke up.
