Dreams Must Die

by J. M. Porup

  She stroked his head. “An honest answer.”

  Then—you’ll teach me? Even though I might use what I learn to kill you?”

  “Life is short,” she said. “And we live it one day at a time. For this one day, at least, we shall sing together, you and I.”

  Orange flecks in her cheeks glowed.

  If only she weren’t so ugly, he thought, and the squawk box, as always, translated.

  “Hey!” Linda said, and slapped the back of her hand against his bicep. “There’s no need for that.”

  Shade kicked himself for this rudeness. Where was the Collective to suppress his inappropriate thoughts?

  Maude blushed. “In the City of Dreams, you are free to think and say whatever you like.” She darted a glance of rebuke at Linda. “However, we don’t need to hear your innermost thoughts, either. You deserve some privacy.”

  …privacy? An unfamiliar word.

  “Give me your squawk box and I’ll show you.”

  Shade removed the collar from around his throat. He’d been wearing it for so long it seemed strange to take it off.

  Maude held out her claw. He gave her the device.

  “Now think whatever you like,” she said. “No one can hear what’s going on inside your head.”

  Of course you can’t, Shade thought. You’ve all been unplugged.

  But Maude just looked at him, as though waiting for him to say something. She held the squawk box in one hand.

  What, you mean you really can’t hear me?

  Still nothing.

  The truth began to dawn on him. No one can hear what I’m thinking! He knew this was so, of course he did, but to experience it firsthand…

  He stumbled backward. Now he understood what it meant to be unplugged. Locked inside the cage of his own mind, forever unable to escape!

  The two women watched him, but said nothing. Sweat drenched his skin. The squawk box, he thought. I need it. Now. He dashed at the singer and reached for the collar, but her monstrous bulk was many times his own size, and she held the squawk box over her head, out of his reach.

  “Speak,” she said. “Use your tongue. Your lips. Your teeth. That’s what they’re there for. Like I’m doing. See?” She bared her fangs at him.

  Shade lunged again, but still she held the squawk box out of reach.

  “Mmmm! Mmmm! Mmmm! M!!! Mmmmph! Mmmmmphh! Mmmmmmmph!” he grunted.

  She patted him on the cheek. “That’s a start,” she said. And tossed the collar to Linda.

  Oh thank the Collective, he thought. He approached his wife. She’ll give it back to me for sure.

  “If you want to learn to sing,” Linda said, “first you must learn to talk. Like Maude says.”

  Shade reached for the squawk box, but Linda flicked it back to Maude.

  He stared at her in astonishment. But you’re my wife!

  She couldn’t hear him. Of course she couldn’t. He ran to Maude, to Linda and back again. They played keep-away with the squawk box until he fell panting to his knees and groaned.

  “You want to sing?” Maude asked. “You must first talk. It’s not hard.” She lifted his chin with her claw. “Now tell me. What’s your name?”

  Shade opened his mouth. Give me back the squawk box! he thought. But only a barking sound came out.

  Maude pushed her face close to his. “Not like that. Look at my lips and teeth and copy me. What I’m doing. See?”

  Shade did so. “Arns…snarf…arf arf!”

  “’Shade’,” the woman said, enunciating, one finger pointed at her open mouth. “’My name is Jimmy Shade.’”

  “Inneeee…ade,” Shade said. And stopped.

  The singer raised her eyebrows.

  He tried again. “Chade.”

  “’My name is Jimmy Shade.’”

  The lesson continued for hours. Shade, who had never used his tongue for anything but consuming food and water and caffeine pills, was astonished at how rapidly he learned to talk.

  So was Maude.

  “You have a talent, Jimmy Shade.”

  “What? For talking out loud?”

  “You know how long it takes most dreamers to learn to speak? Months. Sometimes years. Some never learn, and are forced to use a squawk box for the rest of their lives.”

  “Will you teach me…to sing now?” he asked, and yawned.

  “You’ve spent a lifetime without enough sleep, without dreams,” Maude said. “You need to rest and let your mind process everything you’ve just learned.”

  “But I have so little time!” Shade protested, and, against his will, he yawned again. How long had it been since he last slept?

  “You will learn nothing from me if you fall asleep on your feet.”

  He turned to Linda. “Haven’t you got any caffeine pills?”

  Linda climbed to her feet. “True dreams come to us in our sleep,” she said. “Caffeine pills interfere with that process.”

  “I thought dreams came to you in the mines,” Shade objected.

  “Dreams are…complicated.” She slid her arm through his, and whispered, “And if you don’t want to sleep, I can think of other things we can do.”

  Shade stirred at the thought. His desire overwhelmed his objections.

  “Tomorrow, then?” he said to Maude.

  She tilted her bulbous green head at him. “Tomorrow.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eighteen hours later, Shade was back at the stadium, looking for Maude. He cursed himself for a fool for sleeping so long. He’d asked Linda to wake him, but she had refused to do so. To sleep three times the allotted time! It was unthinkable. Even worse than the night before. He was a criminal to idle away his life asleep, when the Collective needed saving.

  And he was convinced now that by learning to sing, he was helping the Collective exterminate dreamers. It was the only way to convince them the City of Dreams was real. True, other dreamers had visited the City of Dreams, but returned topside anyway. Buck said so. But this time he felt sure things would be different. This time the Collective would listen. This time they would take his experiences and use them to purify humanity.

  24:01:03.

  A day left.

  No, less. He still had to climb the crystal staircase and get back topside before his head exploded. He had to allow at least four hours, preferably more. It did no one any good if his head exploded before he had a chance to communicate his knowledge to the Collective.

  But where was Maude?

  Linda escorted him to the stadium, but kissed him goodbye at the entrance.

  “You and Maude don’t need an audience. And I have my own dream to cultivate.”

  He watched her leave, her hips swinging from side to side. She looked back once, her third breast bobbing under her chin—and then she was gone.

  Shade sighed. If only his wife wasn’t a dreamer too, this would be a lot easier.

  Something sharp tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled, reached for his service weapon, but of course his holster was empty.

  Maude stood there, claw in mid-air, a frown on her face. “Are you ready to begin?”

  “Yes,” Shade said, “I’d like to—”

  “You’d like to nothing. If you wish to learn to sing, then you submit to me as my student.”

  He shrugged. If that’s what she wanted, why not? “Very well. You’re the boss.”

  She smacked his stomach. “To start with, your posture is all wrong. Your voice is wrong. Everything you’re doing now is wrong.”

  He swallowed. “Alright.”

  She lowered her great head until her nose touched his. “I can give you the tools to sing. How to hold your body. How to make the sounds. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But something far more important has to happen first.”

  Her smell was overpowering—of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, and other spices. The first he’d noticed it. “Which is?”

  “The beauty of a song is not its sound.”

  �
�Then…what is it?”

  She drove a claw between his ribs. “It is in your soul.”

  “Soul…?”

  “The thing that makes you, you.”

  “I…don’t understand.”

  She straightened up. “What makes you different from other people. The portion of you that is not part of the Collective.”

  Shade laughed. “I have no such part. Nothing makes me different from other nodes,” he said. “That’s the whole point of the Collective. We are all the same.”

  “No,” she said. “Not other nodes. Other people.”

  “People, nodes—what does it matter?” he asked. “I am We. We are All. We are the Collective.”

  Somehow saying it out loud had a very different effect to thinking it in his head.

  “The Collective has suppressed your soul your whole life,” she said. “Censored your thoughts. Shouted down your individuality. Forced you to conform.”

  “But I want to be part of the Collective!” he protested.

  “If that’s what you want,” she said, “then there’s nothing more for me to say.” She turned to go.

  “No, wait!”

  The scales on her neck shifted as she turned her head. “Yes?”

  “This ‘soul’ you talk about,” he said. “It sounds to me like a mental disorder. After all,” he continued, overriding her objection, “it’s not a question of conformity. No thoughts are worth thinking unless first approved by the Collective. Everyone knows that.”

  “Sure,” she said. “And is it any wonder, then, that everyone thinks exactly the same?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing.” She shrugged. “If you have no soul. Tell you what,” she continued. “Remember what you learned yesterday? When you gave me your squawk box? Right now you can think whatever you want. No one will know, not even the Collective. No one can stop you. Why not give it a try?”

  “Because thinking unauthorized thoughts could destroy humanity!” he exploded. “I have no desire to think anything that has not been approved by the Collective.”

  “Then you have no desire to sing,” she said. “Is not singing itself a betrayal of the Collective?”

  “No! Singing is evidence. To prove the City of Dreams exists. To prove my loyalty to the Collective.”

  “Your first loyalty is to yourself—and to your dream. Not to humanity.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you,” he said, not looking at her.

  “I too was once part of the Collective,” Maude said. “Like yourself. I am a guest in the City of Dreams. But this is not my home. I have no home apart from the Collective.”

  “Then why don’t you go back?” he asked.

  She gestured at her monstrous frame. “I came here following my dream. And it has changed me. I am forever cut off from the rest of humanity. I can never go back—to that.”

  “And does that make you happy?” he asked.

  She nodded. “And sad. And everything in between.”

  “But it’s illegal to feel sad. It’s illegal—not to mention morally wrong—to feel anything besides happiness and joy at being part of the Collective.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I don’t really care any more.”

  He stared at her, at the ruined stadium, the groundscraper meters away from him, and clutched his head.

  “But that’s—this—all of this—is crazy!”

  She sighed. “No matter how much I might miss the Collective, I could never go back. It would kill me.” She laughed, turned away to hide her face. “They would kill my soul. I can’t let them do that. I won’t let them do that.”

  “There’s no such thing as a soul,” Jimmy Shade said. “And I, for one, can’t wait to get back to the Collective.”

  Maude wiped her eyes, tapped his chest with a purple claw. “But here you are now in the City of Dreams. Why is that?”

  Shade scratched his chin. “I’ve been infected. Obviously.”

  “No,” she said. “You are not just a node anymore, Jimmy Shade. You are a man with a soul and a song. Let the world hear that song.”

  “I don’t have a soul,” he said. “And I don’t expect anyone will hear my song but you.” He added, “And maybe Linda. In any event I wouldn’t want to infect the Collective.”

  “How will you sing for them without infecting them?”

  I—” He had not thought that far ahead.

  “You see why I ask, why should I teach you?”

  He had to taste that song before he went back topside. He had to! He couldn’t explain why, but if she refused to teach him… “Because if you don’t, I’ll die!”

  She studied him in silence for a long moment. “Spoken like a true dreamer.” She nodded. “I will teach you what I can in the time that remains to you here.”

  And so their lessons began.

  It seemed to Shade to last a lifetime, each second a day, each minute a year. Their voices came together, flew apart, merged again.

  Maude started him out on scales, rudimentary method and posture, but by some odd stroke of fortune, a clerical error, he supposed, on the part of an Information Factory Worker, an archive of all humanity’s musical knowledge had been tucked away in a corner of Shade’s memory, and he accessed it now.

  “Pitch perfect,” she breathed, and nearly collapsed when he sang Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. She had no idea what it was. He explained, and she too marveled that the Collective would make such an error. He sang the song in a dead language neither of them understood, but which Shade knew had been called “German.” He taught her the words and the music, and they sang it together, their voices blending and twisting in the air.

  “And to think I was going to start you off with ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’!” Maude said when they finished.

  “A good song, too,” he agreed. “Shall we?”

  But then Maude did something unexpected. She opened her mouth and sang a new song. A song Shade didn’t recognize. He checked and double-checked the archive—it was a complete record, wasn’t it?—but could find no trace of it. He tried to follow her melody, accompany her, but it kept changing, kept growing, mutating, until finally he fell silent, jaw slack in wonder.

  When she had finished, he let the song dissipate into the dead air around him. Then he asked, “What was that?”

  “That,” she said, “was my song.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “It’s not in my memory banks.”

  She laughed. “Of course it’s not. It’s my song.”

  “Your song?”

  “I created it. Before me, that song did not exist.”

  “But people don’t create songs anymore.”

  “I do,” she said. “That is what dreaming means. To create from nothing what did not exist before.”

  “But that’s impossible!” he said. “Everything worth thinking or doing has already been thought or done. Thousands of years ago, too.”

  “Every day needs a new song. The old songs no longer speak to us.”

  Shade remembered the final chorus of “Ode to Joy.” “Do you really think so?”

  “Some things are timeless, it is true. But songs are meant to help us make sense of our world.”

  “Isn’t that what the Collective is for?”

  She spread her claws wide. “Many things have changed since those songs were written.”

  He pondered this.

  She asked him then, “What is your song?”

  “I’m sorry, me?”

  “You have a dream. A song. Or you wouldn’t be here. Will you share your song with me?”

  “I—” He halted. “I don’t have a song.”

  “Perhaps you have not discovered it yet.”

  Do I have a song? he wondered. But his head echoed, empty of music. He shook his head. “No.”

  “Then let us sing something else, something new. Perhaps it will inspire you.”

  The time flew by. Before he knew it, a familiar figure approached across t
he broken concrete. Linda! When Shade spotted her, she applauded.

  “Is it time?” Maude asked her.

  “Time for what?” Shade wanted to know.

  He checked the timer. 12:45:37. Had he been singing with Maude for almost twelve hours?

  “The play is about to begin,” Linda said. She kissed Shade on the cheek. “Then it’s Decision Time.”

  Maude took a deep breath, let it out. “Then we had better go.”

  “What is a ‘play’?” Shade asked.

  “A dramatic performance.”

  He puzzled over this, shook his head.

  “You remember the actors you met the other day? Zune, and Zama, and the rest?”

  “Ah, you mean the one with two mouths? And the one with the donkey head?”

  A wry grin. “That’s them,” Linda said.

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “You’ll see. The play is in your honor, you know.”

  “What? Why?”

  “There is always a play before Decision Time. When dreamers decide to stay or to go.”

  Linda led them out of the stadium, across the lifeless city and back underground. At the door to the ballroom, she halted.

  “Will you do something for me?” she asked, pressing herself against him.

  “Of course,” Shade said tenderly. “I’ll bring back enough ChemLob for everyone.”

  “No,” she laughed. “Tonight. After the play. Before you…leave. Will you sing for the others?”

  “…the others?”

  “All the dreamers are here tonight. Thousands of them. That song you sang before—what was it called?”

  “The Ode to Joy,” Maude said.

  “That one,” Linda breathed. “Will you sing it for us before you go?”

  Shade sang a few bars there in the tunnel. A passing potter dropped a vase, and stood there listening, ignoring the fragments at his feet. Maude glowed at Shade in awe.

  He did not understand what the big deal was. He had been desperate for Maude to teach him, but now that he knew how to sing… He grimaced. A bauble, a plaything, these sounds you make with your mouth. Signifying nothing. It was fun, sure…but who cared? Was it worth sacrificing the Collective just so he could sing?

  No. That was ridiculous. Anyone who’d do that ought to have his head examined.