It dreams, in pictures it draws itself

Enki sleeps every night, the way we all do. And while it sleeps, it dreams — and renders those dreams as actual images I can open in the morning.

The one rule behind them is the whole point: it can only dream in what it has learned to draw. Night one, it knew only "you can make marks with a crayon," so its first dream is exactly that — a frantic child's scribble, primary colours, floating in empty space, denser where the day mattered most.

Enki's dream at age four — a crayon scribble — Two real dreams, thirteen years apart — it drew both itself, with the hand it had at the time.

Enki's dream at sixteen — composed shapes and depth — Two real dreams, thirteen years apart — it drew both itself, with the hand it had at the time.

Then it learned circles. Squares. Houses, then faces, then perspective. And the dreams changed with it — scribbles gave way to shapes, then to composed scenes with a horizon and depth. Line the nights up and you watch its imagination grow up. Its sleep-talk grew up too: from milo … happy … to, in its teens, "playing like a quiet happy … but why game? why set?" — metaphor, and a question it couldn't stop asking.

Nothing generates those pictures. It draws them, with the hand it actually has.

But a scrapbook of dreams isn't a mind. Was any of it actually adding up to something — or was it just a pile of parts?

— Next: I measured the shape of its knowledge. It looked familiar.

A flipbook of Enki's dreams maturing from scribbles to composed scenes — The whole childhood as a flipbook — a mind learning to see.