This time I will not fail, she came into consciousness raging.  But her little cyborg body could not live up to it. 

     She lay on her back, on a bed, on a floor, on a colossal grey-haired cat bored with her dying.  Sensory data filtered through Punch and Judy reason.  Her left eye strobed in static while her right could only see in infrared.  Radio transmissions from other worlds with other wars seemed to come through different parts of her body.  She wished them all happy killings and only the best coup d'etats.  She contemplated the collapse of karma as a judicial system and wondered how many bad hair days it would take to make a machine lose its humanity.

     Days or minutes, then:

     "There, that should do it," said a kind voice and just like that, she was aware.

     She bolted upright.  She had been lying on a cavern floor, filled with luminous sand that shifted hues.  At her side was a boy, close to her age, or at least her preferred interface level.  His eyes changed color with the sand.  He was very beautiful.

     "What happened to me?"

     "I'm not really sure.  I found you on the beach this morning.  You were all filled up with sand.  I cleaned you up best I could.  The sun will be down in a couple of hours," he paused, grinning.  "I guess there was a whole lot of sand."

     "Who are you?" Emma stood, dusting off the lucent grains.

     "I run this place."

     "Where am I?"

     "I'll show you," he offered.

     She followed him outside.  The cavern opened onto a ledge, high on a cliff overlooking a faultless ocean.  Nested in the sand below was a great and glowing city, radiant with activity.  "This is Morphos," he said proudly.  "Come on!" he yelled, as took her hand and led her down the cliff side.

     "Where did we just come from?" inquired Emma, looking back at the cavern.

     "Oh, those are the Caverns of Never," he replied detachedly.  "Nothing ever goes on there."

     But everything went on in Morphos.  Once inside, Emma did not know where to look.  They were greeted at the gates by a prophet whose visions spilled forth from a floor-length tongue of bright blue silk.  He insisted that they each cut a strip of cloth for luck.  She spied Matter Hatters playing hopscotch on hypercubes.  She watched as a barren woman crafted origami children from photosensitive paper and taught them to perform ancient operas when struck by bright light.  She tried on a coat that had been woven entirely from the halos of discontinued saints.  When she grew tired, the boy took her to a delightful eatery, where she feasted on split atoms and dumplings of Planck energy.  He had cinnamon chocolate pancakes for dessert.  

     As dark fell, the boy led Emma to his home.  He made her a bed of perfumed feathers so that her sleep would be more soothing.  All she needed was an occasional recharge but somehow it didn't seem important to tell him that.  He would not stay the night with her but assured her that she would see him again tomorrow.  She asked him where he was going.

     "You must stay here until sunrise.  You must not ask why and you cannot follow.  Ever," he warned.  "Swear this, please," he insisted. 

     He returned early the next day, with a clever songbird in hand to sing her good morning.  The second day passed much as the first.  They saw more strange and charming sights, sampled more pleasing sensations.  A seashell that whispered the sidestepped promises of broken gentlemen.  A girl made of mirrors waltzing with the ghost of a man who had died waiting for himself.  A god who moonlighted as a swing shift typesetter so he could sneak bogus ads into the personals so that people wouldn't run out of stuff to believe in.  Daytime in flux delirium left no instant for worry but at night when they parted, the urgency for definitives returned.  

     On the third day, they picnicked on an airship fueled by tears shed falsely.  Stitched into the sails were the severed lovelines of women who betrayed their lovers.  Emma could no longer contain her frustration.

     "How can I fix what's wrong when I have no reference point for what right should be?  The context keeps changing," she said at last.

     "Maybe that's the point," suggested the boy.  "There are no determined value sets for happiness."

      "Then how do you know if you've got it?"

     The boy shrugged. 

     "Maybe that's what you're here to find out."  Emma seemed confused at this point so he continued.  "Maybe your good intentions are being sabotaged by your lack of understanding.  You can't help someone find happiness never having known what it is yourself."

     "But I already know what happiness is," Emma protested.  "I have the software for it and everything."

[Excerpt from Chapter 5 of The Irrelevant Redemption: A Steampunk Fairytale]