Cerulean Dreams

by Dan O'Brien

There was another hesitation and then a series of locks disengaging. Finally the door opened. Pharaoh stood eye to eye with Dana, his thin frame would have had them fighting at the same weight. Dark hair, spiked and uneven, sat atop pale features.

  He opened his arms as if to hug.

  “Marlowe, my man, what brings you to the Portrait?”

  Jabbing a thumb back at Dana, Marlowe stepped through into the notoriously shadowed room. Even on a bright day, shades were drawn and covered to allow no light to grace the room, except that of an artificial nature.

  It was a cramped one-room enclosure. A couch lay trapped beneath a mountain of clothing and various paraphernalia. The wall to the left of the covered window housed nine monitors, each showing something different. Pharaoh swept his hand for Dana to enter. “If you please….”

  Dana obliged and moved past him. Closing the door behind them, he engaged the locks with a flawless precision. “Please have a seat,” he offered, gesturing to the overflowing mess that had once been a couch.

  She smiled and pushed off a corner of the couch, settling into a mass of unknown. “So, what is it that you do, Pharaoh?”

  He seemed to brighten immediately, diving into his seat and spinning all the way around back to face her again. “I am a cyber-warrior, taking down the man one pixel at a time,” he announced.

  Marlowe moved next to him, his looming figure knocking a knuckle on one of the monitors. “Have you been watching the network?” he grumbled, itching at his arm.

  Pharaoh spun to face the screens once more. “Oh yeah. They want you pretty bad, don’t they? What did you do this time?”

  “It is my fault,” replied Dana, standing from the couch.

  “What could a pretty little thing like you possibly do?”

  Marlowe scowled at Pharaoh. “I was looking into the missing girls, the ones who show up dead all over Messiah. I got a lead from Jackson. He sent me to some building. In that building, I met her and then I got disconnected. We’ve been on the run ever since.”

  “Whoa, disconnected? That’s not possible, bro,” exclaimed Pharaoh.

  “Not a matter of possibility, it happened. The link’s not there anymore. I came here to get some answers about what the hell is going on.”

  Pharaoh frowned, his disbelief evident.

  “Answers to what?”

  Marlowe sighed, sitting on the ground. “I need to sleep. I can’t keep running like this. I feel like I haven’t slept for days.”

  Dana was immediately at his side.

  “We don’t have time,” she reasoned.

  Marlowe felt the world slip away.

  His words felt distant. “Just for a little while….”

  *

  He awoke with a start.

  The room was dark.

  Was it day or night?

  He stood slowly, not recognizing the room. And then it came back: Cedars Tower, the girl, the hallucinations. And they came back as well. Slithering across the ceiling, they watched him. Their faces were empty, but their bodies twisted in ways that were not possible, craning to get a look at him.

  The hum of the monitor drew his attention. “Pharaoh?” he called, not wanting to look again at the crawling denizens.

  He spun in his chair to face Marlowe.

  “What’s up, big man? Nap work out for you?”

  Marlowe rubbed his face. “How long was I out?”

  “Three, four hours. Girl followed suit. Didn’t catch her name.”

  “Dana, her name is Dana,” replied Marlowe, rolling up his sleeves and running his hands back through his hair. He stopped, however, when his forearm was visible.

  There was something wrong.

  A black spot had emerged.

  It wasn’t irritated or angry, but instead looked like it had been imprinted into his skin. Symbols surrounded it, runes of an order and language he did not immediately recognize. “What in the name of the Maiden is this?” he marveled. Turning his arm over, he revealed more black lines. They were set into quadrants like a map.

  Pharaoh looked back at him.

  “What’s the deal? You want answers or what?”

  Marlowe stood and thrust his forearm toward Pharaoh.

  “Let’s start with this. What the hell is on my arm?”

  He grabbed Marlowe’s forearm carefully.

  “Got some ink and didn’t share?”

  Marlowe pulled his arm back. “Didn’t do this to myself. My arm has been itching ever since the disconnection. When I woke up, there it was. What is it?”

  Pharaoh shrugged, his hair flopping every which way.

  “No idea. Skin rash?”

  Marlowe huffed and rolled his sleeve down. “Fine, let’s try something that you might be able to help me out with. What is the Lurking project? Dana keeps mentioning it. And that an Agency is hunting us, the Agency.”

  He whistled.

  “Sounds like you have a cyber-babe on your hands”

  “Huh?”

  Pharaoh smiled and spun around, his hands working over the keyboard. “The Lurking Project is big Cerulean Dreams mojo. Some experimentation with the cerebral networking that links Orion.”

  “And?”

  “Well, it goes beyond that. There are some zealots and some otherwise sensible people, myself included, who don’t think the network is broadcast from Orion. Or even that we are alone in Orion.”

  Marlowe sighed, sitting on a pile of disheveled boxes and clothing. “You sound like her. She keeps saying that we have to get out of the city. That our only hope is to leave Orion.”

  “Exactly. Cerulean Dreams is a cover, my man. Behind it lurk some evil people. Why do you think they regulate our sleep?”

  “For health, brain activity.”

  Pharaoh shook his head and poked a finger into Marlowe’s forehead. “Wrong. They want to keep us asleep, keep us controlled so we don’t go looking. When is the last time you slept because you were tired, not because they told you to? When is the last time you saw the day? You ever wonder why?”

  “A conspiracy? Come on.”

  “You do realize that you are being hunted for something you didn’t do, aiding a woman who isn’t coded and talks about the Lurking as though it were real. You are knee-deep in the conspiracy, my friend.” Pharaoh shook his hands demonstratively. “Cerulean Dreams is in the business of business, my friend. It would not be conducive to their best interests to let the truth come out: that Orion wasn’t real; that there were other people out there. That the Water Wars were just cover for what Orion really is.”

  Marlowe itched at his arm, the heat from it annoying.

  “Have you ever been outside the city?”

  “No.”

  “Know anybody that has ever been outside of the city?”

  Pharaoh’s shoulders slackened. “No.”

  “Ever heard of anyone leaving?”

  He smiled, raising a finger. “Yes.”

  “And what happened to them?” Marlowe questioned, dissolving Pharaoh’s glee.

  “Burnt to a crisp or never seen again,” he answered.

  Marlowe leaned back, sighing exasperatedly. “So, why then would any rational person believe that they could walk through the gates of Orion, which in it of itself is a near impossibility, and just stroll into the Desert?”

  “Because there is too much here for coincidence.”

  Marlowe looked at Dana.

  “She seems so certain.”

  Pharaoh pretended to type and then stared at Marlowe. “What are you doing, man?” Marlowe looked at him. Pharaoh repeated himself, pointing at her. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t catch your drift. What do you mean what am I doing? With the girl?”

  Pharaoh sighed, getting out of the chair. “What are you getting yourself mixed up in? I know you are all about honor and justice and all that jazz, but this is serious shit. These people are playing for keeps. Cerulean Dreams isn’t just the fluffy company. They are a business; a powerful entity that controls
everything in this city. You stand against them and you are standing alone, my friend.”

  Marlowe continued to stare at Dana.

  “She is all alone.”

  Pharaoh laughed, his hands moving in erratic directions. “I get it. She’s cute, man. You don’t have a daughter or a girlfriend or anything. I get it, I really do. But, what can I do? You came here for answers. I don’t have many answers. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be hiding in the dark.”

  Marlowe looked at Pharaoh, his gaze hard. “If what you said is true, that all of this is some control, then we are being manipulated. Something would have to be done.”

  Pharaoh shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about bringing down the man, but this isn’t just bringing down the man. You are talking about something that could destroy the thread that binds us.”

  “How could this destroy Orion?”

  Pharaoh sighed, laughing nervously as he did so. “The Lurking Project is a Cerulean Dreams brainchild. She is a wayward experiment. Get where I am going with this. You follow this? You are talking about kicking the big man in the nuts. The mother ship. Cerulean Dreams will not let word of this get out. You go at them, they will crush you.”

  Marlowe frowned, returning his gaze to the girl once again. Pharaoh pointed at the monitors. Pictures of a surly looking Marlowe were plastered on every screen.

  “They are looking for you right now. You haven’t even done anything yet. Imagine what will happen if you starting pulling cards from their house. They will bury you. You, me, her, and anyone else who gets in their way.”

  “I have to. This girl didn’t do anything wrong. She shouldn’t be crucified for them. If they get me, she will disappear. You have to see that, don’t you? Who is going to look for a woman who doesn’t exist?” reasoned Marlowe, his voice heavy.

  Pharaoh sighed and sat back into the seat. Raising his hands, he just shook his head, words not coming. “What? What do you want me to say?”

  Marlowe looked at Dana.

  She moaned, shifting in her sleep.

  “How would I get outside of Orion, in theory?”

  Pharaoh laughed. “Out of the city, right. Of course you want out of the city. That is a perfectly normal thing: to want to flee the city. Are you loco, man? Do you not see that this is a bad idea?”

  “Weren’t you just babbling about us not being alone? That Orion is a house of cards? Now you are trying to dissuade me? Grow a pair and pick a side.”

  “Recognizing there might be something else and trying to exit Orion are two entirely different things. I’m all for the destruction of mind control, but I’m too damn scared of the consequences to try something like that. What you are talking about is spitting in the wind, man. Lone Gunman shit. That is just crazy.”

  Marlowe rose, flexing his hands, feeling refreshed despite the ringing in his mind. And, of course, the persistent shadows and creatures that infected his vision. “If you saw what I’m seeing, you might think otherwise, my friend. How would I get out if I wanted to?”

  Pharaoh threw his hands up, rolling his eyes and turning back to the computer. Deft keystrokes ignited the screens, shifting them from pictures of Marlowe to schematics of all kinds.

  He pointed at the screen. “There. That is the gateway facility. Eight hundred meters of steel separating you from the desert and whatever the hell you think is out there.”

  Marlowe leaned in close.

  “It is through the Cerulean Dreams compound?”

  Pharaoh nodded rapidly.

  “Yeah, like I said: madness,” he replied, throwing his hands up and wriggling them. “You would have to walk through Cerulean Dreams, the most fortified, well-guarded installation in Orion and then through a tunnel with one exit into the desert. It might not come as a surprise that they don’t list the infantry detail for the tunnel. There could be five guys or five thousand guys.”

  Marlowe mused, his hand stroking his chin. He needed a shave, and a drink. “So, in theory, if I could find my way through this building…”

  “With her in tow,” he interrupted.

  Marlowe nodded irritably. “If we, Dana and I, could make it through Cerulean Dreams and then out this tunnel, we would be free of Orion?”

  “In theory, yes. Orion protocol dictates that no one leaves the city. This means all personnel and citizens. If you could make it, there would be no pursuit. OrionCorps won’t go into the desert and CDCC won’t either. There are no supplies in the desert, no water. It is a deathtrap. Even Orion mucky-mucks know that.”

  “You still have my weapons?”

  Pharaoh looked at him incredulously.

  “Did you not hear what I just said?”

  Marlowe pretended like he didn’t.

  “And my bike, gear?”

  Pharaoh jumped to his feet, waving his hands in front of Marlowe’s face. “Earth to crazy man. You can’t do this. You couldn’t spit on the building without a hundred OrionCorps goons on you. You certainly aren’t going to go gallivanting through the building, out the other side, and through a tunnel into the wild blue yonder. Those stats I gave you were conservative, man. They could be ten, a hundred times that. Not to mention, you are a wanted fugitive. Rule one of being a wanted criminal: you don’t go to where the police are.”

  Marlowe reached down and jostled Dana, waking her.

  “Dana?”

  She opened her eyes slowly and then jumped.

  “Where am I?”

  “We are at Pharaoh’s, remember?”

  Dana pushed herself up, rubbing her eyes and looking over the room. “The little guy with the computers?”

  Marlowe nodded.

  “Yeah, that would be me. Maybe you can talk some sense into him. He seems to think breaking into Cerulean Dreams is a good idea,” replied Pharaoh, his voice moving fast. His pitch rose higher and higher.

  Dana looked at Marlowe.

  “Why would we have to go there?”

  Marlowe stood, looking at Pharaoh.

  “Because that is how we get out of Orion.”

  Pharaoh gestured with a hand and a tight smile, as if to say there you go.

  “When do we leave?” she asked with a smile.

  IX

  L

  ife was a matter of timing. Had Armon known that he was going to have to pursue the girl and Marlowe, he might have looked harder as he walked to Cerulean Dreams for his visit with Roth. As he walked to OrionCorps, he was struck by the synchronicity of the elements in his assignment, all the clever pieces on the game board.

  Roth and his cohorts at Cerulean Dreams were indeed the rulers of the kingdom that was Orion. Armon knew this and knew it well, though he also knew that very few men could do what he did. The service he provided was a valuable one, not just monetarily, but also in terms of respect. Roth and Crowne feared and respected him, the former worth far more than the latter.

  As was the case with most buildings of great importance in Orion, a statue stood in front of the OrionCorps headquarters. A blue sphere encased by steel fingers supported a phrase emblazoned in steel: guarding the world, one citizen at a time. It was the motto and credo of OrionCorps. It mattered little to Armon that such a sentiment was inevitably a hoax, a fictitious creation of the State.

  The windows climbed and climbed.

  The veneer was reflective in the midday sun.

  He often walked through the city during the day, the relative quiet and emptiness a comfort. The masses were a bore to him, their ignorant, plebian lives so useless and regulated. Watching carefully, he saw the two guards at the entrance exchange looks, only momentarily.

  Their unspoken words wrote volumes.

  Suspicion was fresh on them.

  They saw him and immediately feared him. As they should, they were trained in the laws and practices of Orion. Citizens were very rarely seen during the day, their sleep regulated by Cerulean Dreams. Officers were given rotating shifts, so they as well succumbed to the scheduling that the entire city enjoyed.

&
nbsp; The relaxed gait and easy look of Armon was unsettling to them. They carried handguns, charged with ion rounds that would put you down for good. They carried slender staves as well, electrified throughout except at the base where there was a rubber grip. They drew the staves as Armon drew closer.

  “Citizen, stand down,” uttered the first, his shoulders flexing, the stun rod held in his grip. He brandished it menacingly. And much to their discomfort, Armon smiled. If he wished to disarm them, he would have.

  He raised his hands slowly.

  “There is no need for a lack of pleasantries.”

  The second guard moved closer, his movements like a wary cat. His stun rod energized, his cautious glare brought only a further smile to Armon’s face. “Prepare to be searched.”

  Armon nodded. The glint of his eyes was silvery as he watched the first guard, ignoring the second guard who reached out to grab hold of him. “Are you gentlemen happy with your occupation?”

  The first guard narrowed his gaze. Half of his face was hidden in the visor. The curl of his lip showed that he had caught the sarcasm. He raised his stun rod as if to strike at Armon. “You would do well to keep your mouth shut,” he ordered belligerently.

  Armon nodded, his eyes closing.

  The second guard’s fingers grazed the surface of his suit as Armon’s eyes snapped open. Grasping his wrist, Armon applied pressure and moved forward, driving the guard’s body into a huddled sphere on the ground. He could feel the tendons snap beneath his touch, the shattering of bone from the simplest of movements. The stun rod fell free, electricity arcing as it struck the ground.

  Armon spun as the first guard thrust forward with the sharp edge of the rod. Running his arm along the inside of his striking arm, they linked arms as if to dance. Armon twisted, lowering his center of gravity, taking with him the balance of the guard.

  He tried to scream out, but his breath left him as Armon struck him sharply in the chest with the flat of his hand. The second guard, cradling his useless hand, rose as if to strike Armon from behind.

  Armon ducked underneath.

  He had felt the man’s approach, the heaviness of his footsteps, the labored breathing from the pain in his wrist. Armon stood up so that he and the second guard were shoulder to shoulder. Grasping the other’s man collarbone in his left hand, Armon twisted his fingers underneath the bone. The guard dropped, his shriek of pain silenced swiftly as Armon struck him across the throat.