So enamored was I with redwood DNA that I had patterned GOLEM’s matrix after it.

As such, it was no surprise to find myself lost within an Omega-generated forest of giant sequoia, forced to scale one of the titans in order to reach the strange creature that had rescued me earlier.

Or not.

If this was truly a dream, why bother? If humanity no longer existed in my imagined Omega existence, why be humane? There were two rules in my dreamscape that were now well established; the first being pain. If injured I would feel it, the sensations registering in my brain’s neural centers as real. The second rule—no matter what my subconscious threw at me, I still controlled my responses to each challenge—I still possessed free will. If I didn’t want to risk my life to save the cephaloped, I didn’t have to. So what if the creature had saved me? It was my movie, after all—it was supposed to save me. I was man, created in God’s image—superior of intellect. What king would jeopardize his fiefdom to save an eight-legged servant?

My internal game of devil’s advocate didn’t play well with me. Dream or no dream, I would not succumb to the criminal actions that had sentenced humanity to the Great Die-Off just because I could get away with it. I refused to be apathetic to the suffering of another. I would save the creature that had saved me, or die trying.

First, of course, I needed to reach it.

Climbing a cliff face and climbing a redwood are two different challenges. A slate wall has grooves and handholds and ledges; a sequoia is essentially a slippery pole for the first half of the assault, in this case its first three hundred feet. You don’t “free-climb” a redwood, you shoot an arrow attached to fishing line and an acre of nylon rope over an upper limb, then secure the loop and pull yourself up using a combination of rigs and carabiners.

I had a steak knife, binoculars, and a torn jumpsuit.

Mother Nature is far from benign, and among trees, the redwood is considered an apex predator. Towering above other species, it will dominate its ecosystem by controlling the sun, using its shade to stagnate the growth of a neighboring tree or even kill it. It will drop a ten-ton buttress of wood upon any perceived challenger, delivering a deathblow in a territorial action known to botanists as “redwood bombing.”

Circling the clearing, I soon found what I was looking for.