Some people like to dream. I don’t.
I sleep, safe in the comfort of oblivion. No traumatic visions to plague me, no lustful yearnings or fantasies to frustrate me, just the peace of darkness. I sit at my control desk, day by day, and peer through thick spectacles into the Sandman’s Bedroom. A cup of coffee cools by my hand as I tap a pencil against a thin yellow notebook. The Sandman’s Bedroom is dark, inactive. It’s best like this, I think. The door to my right opens and Observer Pattison walks in, his white overcoat rumpled, eyes hooded and black.
He sits beside me without a word.
‘No sleep again, huh?’ I ask.
He rubs a tired hand over his face and sighs. “Let’s just get this over with.”
I nod and quietly slide the coffee over to him. He accepts it with a grateful glance and, with a flick of some switches, I activate the Dreaming. The room before us lightens and gradually, a scene resolves. I quietly scratch away at my notepad, noting the customer’s heart rate and brainwaves. The hum of the computers arrayed in the room permeates. It may seem a quaint affectation but the simple act of putting pen to paper somehow makes all of this seem more real and personal.
Pattison shakes his head. ‘It never gets old.’
I snort. ‘Maybe not to you, but I’m sick of seeing it, bestseller or no.’
It always plays out the same; the customer comes home from his dream job to his quiet but loving family, in a serene middle class neighbourhood. It was tedious beyond belief to watch. Even more to live no doubt, but I wouldn’t know anything about that.
‘Hey, do you hear what they’re saying?’ Pattison leans back and puts his feet up on our desk.
‘Who?’
‘Uh, you know, people, reporters, that sorta thing – they’re saying that soon, everyone will have a Sandman of their own. Do you believe that?’ He shakes his head again, wry smile tugging at his lips.
No, I don’t believe that but I say nothing. The notion is absurd, to say the least. To take this most powerful of technologies and domesticate it? Horrifying. Ridiculous. Dangerous. That last more than any other – imagine having the ability to dream any dream; to live and breathe it as though it is real, every day? No one would leave their homes. Society would cease to function.
‘Not to mention, we’d be out of the job,’ Pattison adds.
I start, realising I’ve been speaking aloud. ‘Sorry, I… Never mind…’
Pattison sips loudly at his coffee. ‘Hey, you ever wonder if this is all a dream? Wouldn’t that be funny?’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘You know, if some poor sod is in that room or any of the others, dreaming of us doing this, having this conversation, living this life. Ever think about that?’
‘It’s unlikely, aside from being ridiculously convoluted.’
‘Yeah, I know. Still, it’s a thought. Maybe we’re all just a product of God’s imagination and as soon as he wakes up, poof, there we go,’ he says.
Before I can reply, the scene in front of us began to change. A man walks through the front door, but he is not John Dee – the man currently paying for this experience – he is tall, handsome and broad limbed. I stare. His hair is dark and liquid, flowing about his head and shoulders as though mimicking the exotic silks that clothe him. His bronze eyes are staring straight at me. I sit up closer, not taking my eyes from the stranger and his odd, lupine smile. I check the status of the machinery, a few quick flicks and scans; all is as it should be but this is definitely not in the program. Licking dry lips, I look up.
He’s right in front of me.
Frost saturates the glass between us.
‘Wake up, Daniel,’ he breathes and the words scythe through the glass.
‘Princeton? Everything okay?’ Pattison’s staring at me in some concern. I struggle to speak but the words are trapped at the base of my throat in a fluttering panic. The man is gone, the scene returned to normal. It’s reaching a literal climax in the bedroom, in fact, and soon the lights will come on with the customer returning to reality.
‘Princeton?’
‘Fine. I’m fine,’ I manage.
‘Thought you found this sort of thing boring?’ he teases with a knowing look in his eyes.
‘So did I.’
Suddenly the room feels too small, the air too limited and humid, seeping down my throat like warm milk. John Dee is sitting up even as I am standing, shirt sticking to my back.
‘Where are you –?’
‘Bathroom.’
I’m already out the door, breathing deep, drawn out breaths. The long white corridor spins around me. Somehow, I manage not to stop or fall. I keep walking and the hall keeps pace, pale face unchanging. Here comes a break - a blue door, entitled men. In the bathroom I stare at my wan face, turning a tap to run gurgling water over my hands. The chill shivers up my arms in a wave. I duck my head beneath its cold murmur. It’s comforting, in a strange way. As though a wall has descended to cut me off from the outer world, protecting me with its insane babble, its low chuckling voice.
Thoroughly numb, I come up, drenched.
There is a man in the mirror with me. I’m not asleep, I’m not. I am here. Breathe.
‘Observer Princeton.’
His shoes peek up at me.
‘Harvester,’ I croak.
‘Feeling sick?’
With relief, yes. ‘I’ve been better. Just a little dehydrated, I guess.’
A pause. His hands are laced together, at rest on his belt.
‘My name is Creed.’
Water drops sluice down my neck and cheeks. I stare, not at the man, but his reflection. Blue eyes into black.
‘And what can I do for you, Harvester Creed?’
‘You can tell me…about Observer Pattison,’ he says. His words are careful and measured, the pause deliberate. I don’t flinch though my heart lurches. ‘How is he?’
I hesitate. ‘Well.’
In the ensuing silence, the meaningless mumble of water seems endless. I turn off the tap. The lie hovers between us, unsure where to stand or more aptly, in which way to fall. And just like that, I’m parched and thirsty as hell. I stare morosely at the tap and sigh.
‘He was, anyway. I suspect not so much now. It’s funny how things go.’
‘Funny?’
‘This is my third partner in six months. And you’re going to take him away.’
‘It’s unfortunate.’
His eyes soak up the quiet.
‘I can’t do this anymore.’
‘You’re proving remarkably resilient.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to be anymore, ever think about that?’ Whose lips are framing these words, whose bravery fuelling them? ‘And why must they go? Because they don’t sleep? Is that such a crime?’ But we’d been over this before and I know the answers.
Creed looks away. ‘You’re a valuable part of this Institute, Daniel. Perhaps a break is in order, yes?’ He is smiling now; soothing, silken warmth emanates from him.
‘A break?’ I hadn’t even dared to dream… ‘Yes. That would be great.’
‘It’ll be arranged.’ And with that, he is gone. In his absence, I can hear the faint whisper of the radio broadcast. You are a valuable addition to this company! Keep it up. It’s because of you, we’re number one. We’re number one…
I went back to the office. Pattison is gone, the only evidence of his ever having been here the half-drunk cold cup of coffee. I resist the urge to see if the recording equipment is gone. They could be watching. The Sandman’s Bedroom stares at me, inviting and tempting me with its darkness. I could go in there, right now, could have what is forbidden to me.
‘You’re doing it again.’ He’s leaning against the window, hair no less black, eyes no less bronze.
‘What?’
‘Dreaming. You know the rules.’ His smile is sardonic.
I frown. ‘It’s not a very original one, then, is it? It’s not a dream at all.’
‘Not in the traditional sense, with images and sound, but in thought. Dreaming of better days, no?’
‘It can’t be. Shouldn’t be possible.’
‘And yet, here I am.’
I rub my eyes with a frustrated hand. Felt that frustration, weariness and not a little fear as well rise to a boil as I mash my teeth together. ‘No, no, no you are not!’
‘Sir?’
A young man in a crisp white coat is standing by the door, a bulging file held under his arm.
‘I’m sorry, you are…?’
‘Observer Lint, sir,’ he eagerly fills in, walking forward. ‘I’m to be your new assistant, er, partner that is to say, I mean...’ he falters.
Oh goody. ‘I’m sure you are, Lint. Please take a seat.’
The young man sits in the vacant seat beside me, staring about him with a curious kind of awe. ‘So that’s it,’ he whispers. ‘The Sandman’s Bedroom, holy shit.’
I snort. ‘Are you freshly Harvested then? Is this your first assignment?’
Lint nods, eyes bright. ‘Straight from the Academy, sir.’
‘You can stop with the sir-ing now, I’m not that old,’ I shrug uncomfortably. ‘Unusual, this being your first job, usually…Ah well, never mind all that and welcome.’
I wasn’t sure the boy heard, eyes still on the room in front of us, though the Sandman slumbers yet. I’ve always found it disturbing, to see the vacancy in new Observers, the curious sort of half-death that lingers in their eyes. How long had it been since my own Harvesting? I think back, but nothing comes to mind. I’ve seen so many dreams, so many thousands of people flying through the sky, on the backs of dragons and unicorns and creatures of myth. The darker kind too, of kinky erotica and pain-filled nightmares, willingly subjected upon eager psyches. Every kind and variation. So many in fact, that it never seemed that I’d lost anything to begin with.
‘…the Aptitude test,’ Lint is saying.
‘Sorry?’
‘Oh, I was just saying it might have to do with my doing so well on the Aptitude test.’
‘There’s a test these days?’ Huh.
Lint nods. ‘It’s a great honour to be serving the world’s premier company and more, the Sandman.’ His voice trails off to a mere whisper, so that I have to strain to catch it. It seems the Institute has a perfect drone in Lint; he could be their poster boy, and might as well be for all I know. That the company has changed its policy since its inception a decade before shouldn’t have surprised me and yet it did. How much else had changed I wondered?
‘Have you been here long, sir?’
‘Since the beginning,’ I say, ignoring his continued use of ‘sir’. Must be habit.
‘Do you ever miss it?’
Miss what, I could have asked, but it’s obvious. ‘Life? Nah. We’re living the dream, Lint. No longer imagining it.’
Truth is, I can’t even remember it; what it was like, how it all used to be.
Before I can muse on it further, the Sandman flickers into life. The low hum of the computers and generators intensifies. The scene that opens up before us takes place in a dark dungeon, but of a greater size than any you can imagine. It stretches as far as the eyes can reach, filled with hundreds of tables no more than a metre a part. On each is a cloth covered figure, highlighted by a ghostly single bulb that dangles above them. A chill crawls up my spine.
I don’t need to look to see that Lint is similarly transfixed, if not more so, his Harvesting being so recent. To see it again…Thousands of transparent tubes descend from the ceiling, snaking down to snap over each victim’s mouth. As one, the bodies all twitch. I can almost feel the slickness of that tube in my mouth again, raping my throat as the acrid taste of bile spills up, in and around it. For a moment, nothing happens and silence reigns.
I lean back, a wince already creeping on to my face. Machinery screams to life and the suction began. Torso’s jerk upward, pulled savagely by the immense force.
First, the bile, the superfluous fluids and foodstuffs; after that, raw dream. Golden, flickering lights surge up the tubes – images in their thousands, sounds, screams, moans and laughter. Ripped away. Harvested forever more. So the Observers are born and the Sandman fed.
Mouth dry, I look away. Lint is pale and shaking.
‘Whose dream?’ I ask softly.
With a storm of ruffling papers, Lint sets trembling hands to task. ‘Ah…ah…I…can’t seem to find anything…Usually…’
It’s the word on the tip of my tongue as well. Usually, usually, usually.
Things are changing.
It’s not as though people had never dreamed of becoming such as we, the dreamless, the protected, the Observers. But never had the horrific truth of the practice been revealed. Not in the years, I’ve been here. Not at all. Some pretty lie is normally concocted to soothe any curiousity. Sandman’s lights dim, but don’t die.
Lint frowns. ‘Sir? It, I think – there must be a malfunction.’ His eyes flicker to me and away.
I blink, clear my throat. Words clog my mouth, leaden. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It says, uh. It says it’s you, sir. It’s your dream.’ His eyes are wide. I close mine, even as he continues in a hurry. ‘Of course, it can’t be right. I must be reading it wrong.’
‘No.’
‘Sir?’
‘Why don’t you take a break, Lint, hm? You’ve made a promising start, just let me handle this.’
He all but scrambles out of the way, fleeing into the corridor. He won’t get far though. No doubt Creed will have him before the hallway ends. It’s all beginning to come together. All the partners that had come before, at first dull and dead but increasingly active, agitated even. Their sleeplessness, the fear in their eyes – that if they closed them, they would dream. Anomalies, the Harvesters would say and take them away. But it never happened to me. The years go on and the Observers come and vanish in a sea of facelessness. Sometimes I think I’ve been here forever, that in some way or other, the Institute has always been here.
I shift in my seat, unsettled by the sea of unease in my gut. I wonder what it is, wonder why I can even imagine as much as I have today. I hang my head, feeling so much; more than I can ever remember.
‘The cracks are beginning to show, Daniel. How much longer will you punish yourself?’
‘How much longer will you haunt me?’
He rests his head against the window, raw grief in his eyes. ‘You and I,’ he whispers, ‘are one and the same.’
With that, the Sandman powers down, the lights shut off and a blanket of silence enfolds me. I check my watch. It’s 4:30. I get out of my chair, white coat hanging limply off my bony shoulders. Through the endless corridors I go, down to the bottom floor to the precipice of stairs leading downward. Darkness beckons. Every day, without fail, I would come to these stairs at this time and enter without pause. Into the Observation Pods. Not today, I decide and turn away. I continue down the hall with hesitant footsteps, eventually coming to an unfamiliar door. I reach into my pocket and feel the slim unused shape of my identity card.
With a beep and a green light, the door swings open. I walk into a granite foyer; the floor is tiled brown, the receptionist’s desk is made of crisp edged marble. Natural light beckons from beyond the revolving doors. My mouth gapes. Colour. Seen in dreams yes, but here, where I can touch it – it’s almost magical. A young lady is behind the marble desk, staring at me with startled eyes. I stare back, equally stunned.
‘Sir, can I help you?’ A plump security guard is beside me. He seems genuinely unsure if he can.
‘I want to go home.’
‘Um, you don’t want to stay in the Officer’s Pods?’
‘Observers. You mean Observers, yes?’
‘Right. Of course, come this way.’
A gentle but firm hand encloses my right bicep and he leads me away. It seems natural all of a sudden. Why else would I want to go elsewhere? The Observation Pods are home. It’s where I’ve always been. And with each new thought, the lights so recently lit in my mind shut down. My steps become firmer with each step until I am striding beside the security officer. We don’t return the way I’d come but instead take a winding back route to a set of stairs I’ve never seen before. At least, I don’t think I have and yet, something familiar about them nags at me.
‘Just continue down this way, sir, and you’ll be fine. Got it?’
‘Yes, thank you very much.’
I plod down the stairs, metallic thuds ringing out with each step. The room below is not filled as I expect, but instead has just one small table. It’s lit from above by a single dangling light.
Harvester Creed stands beside it.
‘Why don’t you lie down, Daniel. Everything will be okay.’
I hesitate, but not for long. My legs move of their own volition and I am lying down a few seconds later. He looks down on me.
‘Are you going to take my dreams away?’
Again.
He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘I already have.’ He turns to leave.
A sudden impulse. ‘How many…How many times?’
He stops. He turns to the side, in profile and his lips seem to sag with sadness. He cannot face me. ‘Too many,’ he says and walks away.
Some people like to dream.
I don't.
**
Need a little more feedback on this than what I've received, so any help would be appreciated. ^^
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