by J. M. Porup
The spiral staircase widened here at the bottom to accommodate the landing pad. Cables emerged from the base of the stairs and disappeared under the dunes, to emerge once more at the mouths of the many tunnels that led out of the crater.
What are those? Shade asked, and pointed.
“Electricity,” Linda said.
Elec-what?
“We are unplugged,” she said. “We are unable to use our mental energy for light, for power. So we tap the Collective’s network.” She shrugged. “Otherwise we would live in complete darkness.”
Shade’s rational mind clicked back on, fought with the song that still thrilled his soul. What, you’re all parasites? Sucking the life force from the Collective, and giving nothing in return?
Linda took his hand and led him to the base of the stairs. “We are not parasites,” she said. “It is a symbiosis. We give our dreams in return, Jimmy.”
Dreams we don’t want, he argued, but she stopped him with a long kiss.
“Let’s finish the tour,” she whispered. “Then I’ll answer any questions you have, alright?”
Buck gestured at the stairs.
They began to climb.
When they were far above the surface, Shade asked, unable to stop himself, Where are we going? I don’t understand. Are we going back topside? But I thought you wanted me to wait forty-eight hours. And what’s with the monsters carrying pickaxes?
As he said this, half a dozen more monsters covered in black dust whizzed by on their way to the ground.
“Dream Miners,” Linda said, panting for breath. “Coming back from the mines.”
Shade looked up at the Crust, still thousands of meters above them.
What mines? he asked. He vaguely understood the concept, but was pretty sure mines were something that happened in the earth, not high up in the air, part of the Crust. You mean the sewers? The drainage pipes?
“No,” Buck said. “The Collective has been thickening the Crust a layer of atoms at a time for thousands of years. The Crust is more than a kilometer thick. Most of it, as you know, is solid lead.”
And what, you dig holes in the Crust? What for? The lead is worthless. What precious commodity are you mining?
“Dreams,” Linda said.
What are you talking about? Shade demanded. You can’t mine dreams. That’s ridiculous!
Linda chuckled. “It is by working in the mines that we uncover our dreams. Do they literally come from the Crust?” She shrugged. “Of course not. All the same, dreamers must work in the Dream Mines. It’s part of what it means to be a dreamer.”
But this isn’t work. You said so yourself!
“The land between the World of Work and the World of Dreams is a special place,” Linda explained. “It is dangerous, powerful territory. A dream without work is worthless. Work without a dream is pointless.”
Oh yeah? Shade retorted. You wouldn’t call the Collective pointless, would you?
She looked thoughtful. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t. We need the Collective just as the Collective needs us. But I also wouldn’t say the Collective was worth working for, either.”
Shade ignored the insult. Better to expose this idiocy now, once and for all. And how, exactly, does working in the Dream Mines help you dream?
“Physical labor helps me find my dream.”
He snorted. I didn’t realize it was lost.
Linda took hold of Shade’s chin, turned his head toward the scene below. “Dreaming is a constant process of reaching into the unknown, Jimmy Shade. Of discovering and creating what wasn’t there before.”
The lights of the melted towers flickered below, the great black jaws of the groundscrapers obscuring much of the city.
“After a day in the Dream Mines, I return to the surface with new ideas, new avenues to explore, new techniques to try.”
Monsters surged past them, leaping up the stairs two at a time.
“Excuse us!”
“Coming through!”
“Dream Mines, ahoy!”
Shade stared after them. Their enthusiasm for this ridiculous pursuit puzzled him.
“Shall we continue?” Linda said.
How far is it to the top, exactly? Shade asked.
“Exactly?” Buck said. “No idea. Several kilometers, anyway.”
The surface was already far below them, but the Crust seemed as high as the clouds on a windy nuclear winter day. Shade sighed. Together they resumed their climb, continuing long past exhaustion, until all Shade could think about was how tired he was.
Several hundred meters below the Crust he halted.
“It’s when you’re almost there it’s hardest to go on,” Buck said. “We must not stop. To turn back now would mean failure!”
For who? Shade asked, still panting. For me? Or for you? He waved a hand. Besides, I plan on climbing these stairs again tomorrow. I might as well get used to it.
He stood, leaned against the railing. Just a moment to catch his breath. That was all.
A score of dreamers slid down the pole, waving as they did so.
Pity the going up isn’t as easy as the going down.
Buck laughed. “Ain’t that the truth.”
Shade looked down again at the ruined city, far below now. The enormous groundscrapers dwarfed the puny towers, those glittering shards of ancient death. Many-colored glass dripped down the sides of the surviving buildings. The crater from which the staircase rose was wide and deep, many kilometers wide.
Linda slipped a trembling hand through his elbow, and he could sense her eagerness. He was not ready to go on, though.
What were they? he asked.
She pressed close to him, put her mouth to his ear. “Humans, even as we are.”
No, he said. I meant the buildings. What were they?
“Oh,” she laughed. “Those were called skyscrapers. The ancients built up, even as the Collective builds down. In these towers they lived and worked, competed with each other, struggling to achieve their dreams. You can still find ancient skeletons preserved in some of them.”
The landscape, the architecture—it was all so alien, Shade thought. Individuals who competed against each other instead of working together for the common good. Every tower—different. Every person—a world unto themselves!
He shuddered in horror and loathing.
Were they really people like us? he asked.
“Of course.” She looked at him sideways.
But to let this happen. To do this to themselves.
“The same people—or rather, the same race,” she said, “also created the Collective. I’m not sure which was worse. The nuclear holocaust or the reaction to it.”
Shade stared at her. How can you say that?
She shrugged. “Which is worse? Death and extinction of the species? Or the rise of the Collective and the end of dreams, human beings become no more than ‘nodes’?”
Nothing is worse than death, Shade said.
Linda smiled sadly. “You have much to learn.”
He puzzled over this. How can anything be worse than death?
She gestured at the lifeless city far below. “They were dreamers too,” she said. “And they preferred to kill each other rather than sacrifice their dreams.”
You see? Shade said. Why dreams are so dangerous? The Collective is the best thing that ever happened to humanity!
Linda pointed to the golden spire, its light burning just below the Crust. “They did not know how to manage their dreams.”
Without warning, Maude’s song rang once more inside his head, transfixing him.
Terrifying him.
But your dreams are your masters and you their slaves, Shade pointed out. He understood this now. You said so yourself.
She chewed her lip for a moment. “You’re right. I never thought of it that way before. But still,” she continued, wrapping her arms around his waist, “If global annihilation is the price to pay for dreaming, then maybe even then it is worth it.”
Shade pulled away. Are you serious?
“Worse things than death,” she said. “Remember?” She batted her eyelashes and reached for him, but he brushed her hands away.
So you would let dreamers destroy the Collective? Let them end the species as we know it?
“As we know it, yes,” she said, with a casual shrug of her shoulders. “It is better to suffer a second, final holocaust than to live as automatons, mere particles in the Collective Will. How horrible!” She shuddered. “There are conditions under which life becomes not worth living.”
What, he said, just because you can’t dabble with paints you’d rather die?
“Yes,” she said. “I would.”
Again the song raged inside his head, and he winced, torn between temptation and doing what he knew was right. I just don’t understand, he said. How come the Collective doesn’t know about this place?
Buck replied, “The Collective knows everything it wants to know, and nothing that it doesn’t.”
You keep telling me that, but how could they not want to know? Shade demanded. Dreams threaten all of humanity. The Collective should have exterminated you vermin thousands of years ago!
Linda stared at him. “You would wish that on your wife?”
You would wish the world to end?
Her mouth opened, closed again.
Shade knew he was right, but he could not meet her eye. I am We, he said at last. We are All. We are the Collective.
“Dreams are dangerous,” Linda said. “That is true. But they are the only thing that gives life meaning. I would rather live down here than be dead up there.”
Not waiting for an answer, she turned and continued to climb. She disappeared around the turn in the stairs.
Chapter Thirteen
Buck gestured for Shade to follow her. “She speaks the truth,” he said. “We vermin, as you put it, are a safety valve. Weak dreams get killed, their dreamers ChemLobbed. But some dreams are too powerful, too dangerous to confront.”
What do you mean?
“The Collective needs to dream or it would go insane. Deep down, some part of the Collective knows this. If they ChemLobbed or killed every dreamer, they would destroy part of themselves.”
Shade snorted. If they ChemLobbed or killed every dreamer, the Collective would finally be safe.
Buck shrugged. “Believe me or not, as you wish. But ask yourself: Why does the Collective go to all the trouble of unplugging dreamers if they know we’re going to rescue them?”
But they don’t know, Shade thought. I didn’t know. So how can the Collective know?
“There are two kinds of knowing,” Buck said. “The Collective is a conscious union of humanity. True. But it is also an unconscious union. Deep down the Collective knows, but refuses to acknowledge the truth.”
Shade made a face. He had no answer to that.
“Come. Please.” A goaty smile. A hairy hand insisted.
Shade massaged his temple. His head hurt. I just want this nightmare to be over.
He climbed the remaining stairs to the Crust, hoofsteps keeping pace behind him. Linda re-appeared around the bend. When she saw them, she turned and disappeared through the hole in the Crust.
Shade followed. One moment he was outside, practically floating in mid-air, high above the ground. The next he stood in complete blackness, and he teetered, nearly losing his balance. Buck nudged him forward.
A bright light shone in his eyes, and he squinted, held up a hand. His eyes adjusted.
Linda wore a hard hat, a light attached to the crown. She held out a similar hat to him. He took it and put it on. Together their head lamps darted around the space. Buck took a light stick from a shelf full of hard hats and flicked it on.
“Horns,” he grunted, by way of explanation.
Shade looked around again, and this time he whistled—out loud. Caught himself.
What he saw now he’d been too confused and frightened to see before: The tunnels were carved not by water, but by man. Or monster, anyway. The soft lead was marked by thousands of pick-axes and shovels. As he watched, a group of a dozen tired-looking dreamers stepped into mid-air, grasped the pole and disappeared.
A miner passed close by, pushing a wheelbarrow.
You find your dream? Shade asked the man.
The man—or rather, monster, great red humps grew from his back—looked up, jarred from his reverie by the sound of Shade’s squawk box.
“No,” he replied. “It found me.”
And so saying, the man replaced his hard hat on the shelf, leaped into mid-air and, with a shout of joy, grabbed the pole, and slid one-handed out of sight.
Can’t you make up your mind? Shade demanded of Linda. Do you find your dream, or do your dreams find you?
“Both are true,” Linda said. “Living with a dream means dealing with paradox.”
Shade rolled his eyes. Crazy talk. And look at this place! The tunnels! And the miners! Hundreds of them. Why weren’t any of these…people here before? he asked. When I first arrived?
“The king has a dream,” Buck said. “A recurring dream. The most powerful dream any of us has ever had.”
Shade stamped his feet in frustration. I still don’t understand this word. ‘King.’
“He is our leader. Our ruler.”
Ruler?
“He makes decisions for the community.”
What? Shade said. You mean one man rules the rest? Like in ancient times? How primitive!
Linda touched his arm. “The dreamer with the most powerful dream rules in the City of Dreams. He is first among dreamers, and his dream rules the rest.”
Even yours?
She nodded. “Even mine.”
But what does that mean, exactly? he asked. How does a dream rule over other dreams? That makes no sense!
Buck grinned. “That just shows how little you know about dreams.”
”For thousands of years,” Linda said, “Dreamers have fled the Collective, here and elsewhere in the world, to hide themselves in the Cities of Dreams beneath the Crust.”
What! You mean there are cities like this all over the world?
Linda nodded. “Dreamer and Worker forever apart.”
Shade stumbled and nearly fell. So what’s the king’s dream?
“To unite the two worlds,” she said, taking hold of his jumpsuit, whispering in his ear. “That Workers will dream and dreamers will work.” She touched a finger to his lips. “To be allowed to work our dreams openly again, no longer in secret.”
But dreaming isn’t work! Shade protested. Playing with oils? Engaging in illicit throat-based communication? Digging holes in the Crust?
“Following your dream is work,” Buck said sternly. “It requires more dedication than slaving for the Collective.”
Work means serving the Collective, not yourself, Shade scolded him. How does it contribute to the Collective? How does it help to save the world?
“Remember Maude’s song?”
Shade’s face burned. But that isn’t—that doesn’t—I mean…
“Does that contribute nothing to the world?”
He gritted his teeth. The song rang once more inside his skull. Was it pleasure? Was it pain? The sound was so intense…
Linda tugged at his sleeve. “Come.”
He let himself be drawn away from the staircase. They walked amongst the miners, who marched back and forth, doing whatever they were doing with great urgency.
What do you do with all the lead you mine?
“What do you mean?”
Shade gestured at the tunnels. Where do you put it all?
“Oh,” she laughed. “I see what you mean. We leave some tunnels to the surface—the escape tunnels that lead to the Hall of Dreams, for instance—but mostly we just fill the holes up again.”
You dig a hole and then you fill it up again?
“Sure,” she said.
But what’s the point of that? he asked.
“Is it really so different fr
om what goes on topside?”
Sure it is. We must work to save the world!
She crossed her arms. “Like in the Information Factories, for instance? The IF workers? What actually gets accomplished? Can you tell me?”
Shade flapped his hands. The Collective processes vast amounts of data. IF workers manage that data.
Linda pursed her lips. “Indeed. What kind of…data?”
Data data. Valuable data. Important data. You know what kind of data.
“Sure I know. But tell me something.” A feminine forefinger drooped in mid-air. “What for?”
‘What for’ what?
“What’s the point of it all?”
To process the data.
“Yes,” she said. “But why?”
I—I couldn’t say, he said at last. What the Collective needs it for. The only thing I know is that the Collective needs it, and I trust the Collective. A thought. And who are you to talk about pointless work? he demanded. An IF Worker serves humanity. You and your dreams—he waved a hand at the miners around them—now this is pointless. When I get back topside, I am going to lead an army of Dream Police down here and kill every last one of you.
Linda’s face tightened. “That is not the king’s dream.”
The king’s dream, Shade thought, is to wave his arms and legs in the air.
“No,” she said. “A dream is an idea. Something not present on Earth. We long for this perfection, trying to create it in each moment, each brush stroke, each note or a song or movement of a dance. But it is also,” and here she paused, “in some rare individuals, a foretelling of the future.”
Shade made a rude noise inside his head. No one can foretell the future.
“Perhaps foretell is the wrong word,” Linda said. “The king does not see the future, but rather expends all his power to create the future, into bringing that future into being. We believe in that future. It is our destiny.”
Buck waggled a horn. “Of course, one must interpret a dream correctly.”
“What are you saying?” Linda asked.
The goat-man shrugged. “An invasion of Dream Police would be a union of the two worlds.”
“That’s not the king’s dream and you know it,” she said. “Don’t be such a cynic. Humanity could not survive such a holocaust. The Collective and dreamers need each other. Destruction of either would mean an end to humanity as we know it.”
