He opened his eyes and spent a long time looking in the mirror. Funnily enough, there was a small, round mirror right beside his bed, as if waiting for him to come out of his sleep. 
He examined his face and thought back to the horrible nightmare he'd had. Particles of it still floated into his head, making him shiver. There had been so much pain in it and it had seemed so very real. 
Paul didn't like nightmares, that was the truth. He knew that some people did. His little Cassie, for example, she told him about the nightmares she sometimes had with such joy that it was almost delight, brightening her features. 
She'd smile her big, beautiful lips at him, as if they were conspirators, and he felt thick as thieves with her in those moments, because the words provided him loopholes into her mind and it fascinated him.
*Cassie.*
![ocean-3209830_960_720.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSeNfX19jaPnebVX9a4M9R2iGTGYPoskpVComoda6JU2x/ocean-3209830_960_720.jpg)
He closed his eyes and turned oblivious to the mirror, because it reminded him of the horrible dream he'd had. Of all the suffering and most of all, of little Cassie's screams of denial, of hurt, of brutal, blinding anger. Cassie, turned helpless in his mind's eye.
He pushed the mirror out of his face and it disappeared as if it was never there.
Because it was not.
It was just a reflection of what he'd wanted to see, to reassure himself that he'd somehow, miraculously escaped reality.

But the sad fact was he had not and Paul had, in the past 24 hours, been as much as a slave to the whims of time as he had ever been. The truth was Cassie's screams had not been imaginary, nor had the pain he remembered feeling. Nor had the tears on his wife's face. 
The images of his brother alone with him in the room just losing it and crumbling his sanity to the floor were real, too. 

This was now Paul's reality.

There had been a sloppy mechanic. There had been a glitch in the brakes. And there had been the slide into the crash. The shattering of limbs, and most of all, of spirit. 

Others' spirit, of course. Paul's was safe on the blockchain. 
![sunset-3156176_960_720.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPG5RA7GRBz94kttgquQF16dezd95LqMLeVKu7AmSBZf1/sunset-3156176_960_720.jpg)
The crash had hurt Paul. Well, it had done more than that, to be quite honest, it had physically killed him. So to speak. But it had absolutely destroyed Cassie. His little Cassie, who'd once told him her dreams and her nightmares and had spoken to him and had filled his heart and mind with images of her own, altered reality. His little Cassie, who'd screamed and raged, because her father's soul was slipping out of his body and transferring to the collective memory of the blockchain.

When he tried to get out of the bed in his head, he found himself treading on air. On white, thick air, so unlike the ones he'd seen before. It didn't take him long to realize that he was stepping, in fact, on clouds of consciousness. Little bits of memory, gathered probably, by other people. 
At first, he tried to recreate his room, at home. The big, chestnut wardrobe that stood opposite the bed and the big window that allowed the brilliant sun into their lives.

But the effort was too much for him, it was getting his thinking power down. And besides, his mind kept drifting off to the fact that he had, indeed, been right all along. See, Paul Winston, in his later life – which was, to think of it, the months leading up to the car crash that ended his life – had become more and more sure of the fact that he would go on to the blockchain in the afterlife, as it were. After all, so much of him was already there. It just seemed the logical step. 
 
He walked around the streets of endless time that shaped the great cloud of thought and saw others, but didn't speak. For the first time since discovering the chain, Paul was silent, as he had nothing more to say, but a question to ask. He scanned the blogs of the people he passed, but found nothing that could answer his queries. 
And they burned through his head and made him feel so strange – not to have answers to your questions wasn't something that had happened to him before. 
But, there is a first for everything. 
As he walked, be began to think that there probably wasn't an answer to his questions, since the people that passed were probably scanning him, in return. And since nobody stopped to address this curiosity, there was most likely nothing to say. 

And suddenly, on the streets of the block chain, Paul crouched down, hugging his knees into his chest and screamed. There was a burning, red sensation in his head, that he couldn't get out. And it beeped at him and screeched, drowning out all other thought.

He closed up his mind and focused his eyes on the great big red.
<center>
![mes.gif](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQD9S9DbKNknUtgSc4cJsuEL9H3jVBSyarKVoraJ6S398/mes.gif)
</center>

Paul could still see the tear-streaks on his daughter's face. Still, the face of a child. She was fifteen years old and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. If only her eyes hadn't hurt so bad, if only she hadn't felt so much pain at such a young stage. She bit her lip and looked at him, almost as if she could see him. 

She turned away and nodded. She could see him. 

*'I love you, baby,'* he cried, and found himself reduced from a youthful man to a feeble old fool. 

*'I love you too, daddy.'*

But Cassie's face was scrunched up in a frown, for something was bothering her. She reminded him once more of the little child who used to speak to him of nightmares. Real stories that only he had ever heard. 
And once more, he listened. 

But she couldn't speak. She said nothing, although she did try. But her words broke at the hip, right before they could come out of her mouth. She kept shaking her head. 

*'Baby, it's okay. See? I'm fine. Daddy's right here. I'm here.'*

The little girl shut her eyes and gritted her teeth, struggling not to break, not to weep, because she'd wept so much lately, and she wanted to learn how to be strong. She had to.
Realizing there was nothing he could say to alleviate her pain, but trusting it'd all be alright, Paul was silent. He had, after all, an eternity to look forward to and every second he could spend with his daughter was a blessing.

So, he sat watching her gather her thoughts. 

![people-3111875_960_720.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmcgmCpUbFUVgkbeNokUiLHNwCRt2YqWiKp8swcjiP8hdi/people-3111875_960_720.jpg)

*'Cassie, baby, why aren't you looking at me?'* he said, after a while, seeing that his daughter was avoiding his eye. 
She shook her head and smiled a sad, broken smile. Worthless to anyone but him.

*'Because you're not you, daddy.'*

Paul didn't understand. Of course he was him. He was just...just like he used to be.

*'No, dad. You're just an image, made by other people.'*

What people, honey? He couldn't bring himself to speak, but on the blockchain, he didn't have to.

*'You're just a collection of my father's thoughts, your ideas are only things he already wrote, your memories are just images he uploaded. You're not my father. You're the blockchain's recollection of my father.'* 

She was silent for a while.

*'You know, when you died, I thought for a while, that it could be real. That you'd been right and you were just living on the blockchain, now. Like you'd moved away, you know. But I watched you, I watched your interactions with other users, with other people on here. Real, live people. And it's not you. You're just churning out things my father used to say. But you'll never learn new things, you'll never change your mind, you're just a ghost. An old version of my father.'* 

She was almost screaming now.

*'You're not you!'* 

And Paul realized that he, too, was crying now. He didn't know you could cry on the chain, but apparently, you could. She seemed so hurt and he felt so useless, so unable to help. There's nothing worse for a parent than being rejected by their children.

*'Cassie, please, please'* he begged. *'But I love you.'*

And the girl who would soon come through the other side of this pain, becoming a woman, took pity on this lame ghost. It really thought it was her father. How she wished she could think that, too.

*'You don't. You think you do. But, in fact, you just remember that my father used to love me.'*
![people-3120717_960_720.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmYfpQFd2Kdv7fQzcE1rcAKHXAaVqiuWoLBYegqpEhgazx/people-3120717_960_720.jpg)
The screen went blank as the girl logged out. She decided, then, a weeping child of fifteen, that she would forsake the poor, confused ghost on the blockchain, and she really thought it was a promise she could keep.
But in her life, she came back to him, time and again, 'cause he was always there, always loving, despite of her words, since he couldn't register new information. Always waiting for her.

On the blockchain.

*Image Sources: [1](https://pixabay.com/en/ocean-fischer-clouds-reflection-3209830/) [2](https://pixabay.com/en/sunset-tree-silhouette-dusk-lonely-3156176/) [3](https://www.google.ro/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiZitvuxYzaAhVEZlAKHVEZBB4Qjhx6BAgAEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fgiphy.com%2Fexplore%2Fnew-message&psig=AOvVaw3BCd94h3FRjDMlw90jI2Na&ust=1522241535498838) [4](https://pixabay.com/en/people-one-window-abandoned-3111875/) [5](https://pixabay.com/en/people-man-adult-nude-hand-3120717/)*