THE GODS PUNISHED PROMETHEUS FOR GIVING HUMANS FIRE. BUT THEY NEVER GOT THE FIRE BACK FROM THE HUMANS. YOU TOOK IT AND RAN WITH IT. TIE GOES TO THE RUNNER, BABY. WHO CARES ABOUT THE GODS ANY MORE?
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Meera asks.
‘Tie goes to the runner. It means when something is out there, it’s out there. You can’t get it back.’
Meera is shaking her head as if she’s just been handed a plate of worms for tea.
‘No. I don’t believe that. Maybe we can’t get it back, but we don’t have to let it destroy us. It’s all about the decisions we make. Frankenstein could have treated his monster nicely, but he didn’t. This doesn’t have to end in tears.’
‘Meera,’ I say. ‘I do believe you’re even more of a Pollyanna than I am.’
‘I am not a Pollyanna. But I have hope, and you need to have that, too.’
Hope. She did cure my narcolepsy, albeit by spiking my bevvies. Daring to hope is freakishly scary, though.
Meera says, ‘So you’re a dreamhacker, right? And you can talk to this Agency? If communication is possible, then so is understanding. This is the foundation we stand on as people. Without the hope of understanding each other, we may as well give up.’
‘The Agency has been killing people. It tried to kill you just now. Try negotiating with a murderer.’
She has no answer for that. I go over to a shop door, where in the reflected light I see myself all in black, with the Creeper’s mask. I’m a dreamhacker. If I can change other people’s dreams, I can change this dream. Anything else makes me a hypocrite.
I will the image to be the actual me. Charlie Aaron, green-eyed, head half-depilated, soggy, unremarkable. And defiant.
There you are, love. Be a fucking professional and get it done.
‘Let’s climb back up to the platform,’ Meera says. ‘I would feel safer there.’
I wouldn’t. But we climb up the scaffolds. It’s easy, because this is a dream. We do it in no time. When we get to the top, we are surrounded by greyscale sleepers acting out their individual dreams. I turn and look across the city. Written in cloud above the canal are the remnants of the words I have just spoken. Most of them have dissolved but one remains.
MURDERER.
I shiver. But Meera’s right: if I’m being used then it cuts both ways. The Agency is in my head. If I don’t like the way it is conducting itself, I have the power to change it.
No sleepwalking for me.
I’m awake, and what’s more, I’m going to wake everybody else up.
Meera is walking around the platform trying to talk to people, but they ignore her. I know how that feels. Well, they’re not going to ignore me. I’m the Agency. If I’ve been complicit in murder, then I’ll have to live with that – but I won’t let it define me.
I walk up to the nearest person. From what I can see of her figure she is only a girl, maybe thirteen, with a cloud of dark hair behind her mask. She’s sitting on the ground in PJs covered with emojis that spring out at me in AR. I kneel beside her.
‘You can take off this mask,’ I tell her. ‘You can open your eyes and look around. There’s a whole other world here. A world that’s alive and awake, that will talk back to you. Do you want to see it?’
Her mask turns up towards me. Her eyelessness is spooky. She reaches up and tries to take the mask off, but it seems to be stuck to her.
‘How do you get it off?’
Her voice is muffled.
‘Let me try.’
I reach out and lift the mask off easily. I can see her face in the neon light of the platform: smooth, young, half-smiling as she opens her eyes. Her emoji-PJs begin to acquire some colour as she becomes conscious.
‘Who are you?’ she says, taking in the sight of me bending over her, dripping wet.
‘I’m Charlie Aaron, and I’m a dreamhacker.’
I reach out to shake her hand and a fish falls out of my cleavage. The girl leaps to her feet, startled.
‘You don’t need this mask,’ I tell her, and I change the mask into an old-fashioned silver key. Then I draw a rectangle on the grey Sweet Dreams platform, with a keyhole in it. ‘Open the trapdoor,’ I tell her.
She fits the key into the lock and the trapdoor opens to reveal a staircase winding down into the luminous wilderness of the Dream City.
‘It’s yours to explore and change,’ I tell her. ‘You can do anything you want with it. And if you meet any monsters, remember they belong to you.’
I pluck the key out of the lock and give it to the girl.
‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ she says.
‘Whatever you want. Sew it into your sports bra, I don’t care. Just don’t give it to anyone else, and don’t bloody lose it. Now, off you go!’
She looks down through the trapdoor, into the brilliance and complexity of the Dream City, her emojipj’s bursting into laughter icons and giggling sounds. Then, barefoot and wide-eyed, she starts to descend.
Meera is at my side.
‘I’m scared for her,’ she whispers. ‘That place down there is a complete unknown, anything could happen.’
‘I’m scared for all of us,’ I say. ‘But being unconscious isn’t going to save anybody from anything. We’ve all got to wake up.’
So I leave the girl to her adventures. I run through the greyscale crowd tearing people’s masks off and shouting, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’
Some of them dodge me and some come at me like they’re going to cagefight me and I have to sidestep them to avoid getting hurt. But I get to one or two, and then another and another. I grab their masks and throw them away like Frisbees into the dark sky, and the masks turn into birds. I give the dreamers back their keys, and their greyscale clothing starts to show hints of colour. In shards of reflected neon, I glimpse the dreamers’ faces, and for some I see that their eyes are finally opening. Inside the dream, inside our group consciousness, they are becoming lucid.
The opening of the sleepers’ eyes makes me realise just how bloody dark it is here. Why are we all walking around in the dark? When is it ever going to be daytime?
And then I remember. I’m a dreamhacker. And I can change this place. It doesn’t have to be night here all the time.
Where is the damn sun, anyway?
I don’t know which way is east, but I pick a direction. Come on, Sun. Show yourself!
At first nothing happens, but I know now that I am the Agency and it is me. If I can take shit from the Agency then I can also dish it out. And I’m bringing the sun up, damnit.
Now, beyond the rickety scaffolds of BigSky’s platform, beyond the neon flyovers and the sideways skyscraper, the foreglow of a new day appears, a slow rumour at first. Then in a sudden rush of pent-up dawn the sun cracks like a runny egg over the Dream City and daylight makes its way everywhere. It scatters across waterways and scaffolds and buildings.
The long night is over.
Spontaneously, birds begin singing in the Dream City. Big birds, little birds, mechanical birds, ghost birds and the birds that used to be masks. Singing in the wild light that runs all over the place.
I’m not at all certain I want to wake up. It’s so magical here, and I have power, and in this moment all of the challenges that lie ahead feel remote because I am elated.
Plus I’m freaked to wake up. Reality has always scared me loads. I’m small and insignificant and scruffy in the real world. I have no influence at all – or I thought I didn’t. I reckon that’s going to need to change now. I will make it change.
‘Wake up,’ I tell myself. Waking up feels like swimming through sludge, but now that I’m in charge here, I have no choice but to obey myself.
There is something hard and grainy under my face. It’s cold and damp and I hear pigeons cooing and strutting in their cages. As I come to awareness I realise that somehow we have ended up on the roof. Meera must be sleeping flat on her back because I hear her snoring like a walrus. Then Shandy’s voice.
‘Hor
se! Well, that was an adventure. But I didn’t let her fall. You OK?’
‘I’m OK,’ I croak, still struggling towards consciousness.
I’m holding Shandy’s hand; it’s warm and I feel her pulse and my pulse. That’s what matters most: my heart is still beating. I’m not myself any more, but I can go on. I’m alive and I’m awake and it’s not the end of anything but only the beginning.
I open my eyes.
Acknowledgements
During bonkers times in my life, Elizabeth Peters’ Vicky Bliss novels have offered refuge in the form of witty banter, art history, and Blake Edwards-style crime. I can’t hold a candle to the late Peters aka Dr. Barbara Mertz, but this story is my twisted homage to her work.
Thank you to:
Annie Lennox for the songs that inspired this story
Karen Mahoney for writing with me via g-chat
My thoughtful and patient editor, Marcus Gipps
Lisa for her lifesaving copyedit
(remaining errors are mine)
My FB peeps who helped me figure out stuff
The ASMRtist Deep Ocean of Sounds
. . . and my family, of course.
About The Author
Tricia Sullivan is an award-winning writer of SF, Fantasy and YA. Her third novel, Dreaming In Smoke, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best SF novel. Her work has encompassed cyberpunk, space opera and near future satire. Her novels have been shortlisted for the BSFA Award, the Tiptree Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. An American, she has lived in the UK since 1995.
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