The Dreamer Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set Vol I - III: A Sci-Fi Parallel Universe Adventure (The Dreamer Chronicles - Science Fiction For Kids And Adults)

by Robert Scanlon

  “Phew! It stinks. How long did you stay in there?”

  “He didn’t find me, so I won. I don’t remember how long I stayed, but the smell goes away after a while. You’d better take these in case you need them. Daddy always makes me have them. Just in case, he says.” She balanced both an Intensifier and a headshield on top of the machine and held the door open.

  There it was again. ‘Just in case.’ What did he mean by that, exactly?

  Sarina ducked her head and climbed inside. It was smelly and dark. She looked out at Lena. “Go. I’ll be okay.”

  Lena beamed. “I have an idea to get rid of the police. You’ll see.” She leaned in and whispered. “Don’t make a noise! And make friends with the big mice!” She closed the door and Sarina was in the dark.

  Double drat. Hidden in a small space with a dangerous machine ... and rats. She lowered the machine down beside her. How much worse could it get?

  Which was the last thing that went through her mind before she passed out.

  ~ 21 ~

  Terrorist Alert

  Rona thumbed the TV remote, sat back in her armchair and stretched. She’d had another tricky day at the shop, besieged by people who claimed the supplies she had sold them were faulty.

  But they all had the same story: Sudden glitches in their drawings, a slip of the brush, a spillage of inks, opaque shading that was supposed to be delicately light. In short; all manner of issues. None of which she could reproduce when they brought the offending items back.

  Normally she didn't use the TV. In fact she'd considered ditching it, since it played no useful purpose in her creative pursuits—almost the opposite, if she thought about it—but tonight she needed to be mindless, and put the day behind her.

  The truth was, she could reproduce their issues. Not with her customers’ purchases, but in the privacy of her own artistic pursuits. In the last two days, she'd experienced similar problems; a sudden shift, and she was looking at a giant eye; or a big smear of black oil across a pretty pastel still-life.

  At first she'd put it down to a flashback of her own issues, and had experienced mild anxiety that the unexplained blackouts and dizziness would return, but of course, they hadn't. Just bouts of awful, uncontrollable art.

  Something on the news caught her attention and she unmuted the TV.

  "... are now certain the cause of these widespread problems with creativity black-spots are man-made; though some still subscribe to the alien-space-dust-conspiracy." The scene flicked to a group of raggedly-dressed bearded young men, and women in flowery skirts and headbands, all holding up placards with similar slogans. 'Alien Dust Cover-Up!', 'CIA Lies About Alien Contamination!'

  It was ridiculous, irrational, and for anyone to even consider it, she would have thought them stark raving mad; yet it was clear from her own experience, and now the news, that what she and her customers and students were experiencing was not some minor issue, but was indeed a global problem. Though the chances of it being caused by alien space dust were pretty slim. In her view, the human race had, in its brief history, managed to discover some very frightening ways to hurt itself, and it didn’t need any extra help from aliens to manage that.

  She sighed. She'd had a good life and had already survived a very close call. If this really was the bizarre way mankind was about to self-destruct, then so be it.

  Feeling the tension in her shoulders, she wondered if the perpetual doom and gloom pedalled by the broadcasters had infected her usual optimism, and she moved to turn the TV off, when a familiar face stared out at her from the screen. Where did she remember that face from?

  The caption slid in: 'Sarina Metcalfe'. Rona turned up the volume. "... promising young artist, Sarina Metcalfe, aged twelve. Police are asking for everyone to be on the lookout for the girl and report all sightings. Please do not attempt to apprehend her. Sources close to the detectives involved in the case report that she may be involved in a terrorist plot, and may even be in possession of a dangerous device. Locals in the Chelton area are asked to report all suspicious packages."

  Rona drew in a noisy breath and let it out. Something didn't ring true. The girl in the report on the news was the same girl she had met in her shop. But she'd eat her own brushes if that sweet and talented girl was involved in any terrorist conspiracy. "The world is going crazy," she muttered, and turned the TV off to sit back and contemplate what she should do. Her gut continued to tell her in no uncertain terms that something was wrong. Badly wrong.

  She reached for the phone.

  ~ 22 ~

  The Spider

  Sarina woke stiff and cramped, what felt like hours later. She listened for any sounds, heard nothing and opened the door a crack. She peeked out. It was still light—that was something—but the place was deserted. Whatever Lena’s idea was, it had worked. She climbed out and stretched. And remembered that she had passed out. Thank goodness it hadn’t happened in the middle of directing the kids to make the portal. She shuddered to think what might have happened.

  She pulled the collider out of its hiding place and sat down against the wall. She felt dizzy again, then jumped in fright as a rat scampered over her leg and ran up her side, using her head as a jumping board to leap onto a small window ledge. “Yaaayyye!” She brushed at her head frantically and stood up, away from the wall. Her head spun like crazy and she staggered against the wall.

  What was happening? Did she get accidentally sent to the world of dark rem and now she was condemned to live in her own nightmare?

  She sat down heavily, succumbing to the dizziness. Not wishing to be the rats’ newest climbing frame, she managed to grab the nearest thing to her and put it on her head to protect herself. And the dizziness stopped. Just like that.

  Shocked, she looked around for a clue. It was as if someone had flicked a switch.

  Puzzled, she took off the headshield to scratch her head and nearly vomited at the sudden return of the dizziness. She managed to put the headshield on just before she would normally have blacked out, and once again, normality resumed.

  It dawned on her it had something to do with the headshield. ‘Just in case’, he had said. And not only to her, but to others. What was she was supposed to understand by that?

  Her mind turned to Nathan. She’d seen him with the headshield on one occasion too. When was that? She strained to remember. He was coming out of the odd-looking room in the lab. That must be where they had kept the machine. She looked at the device next to her and tried to think. She needed to think like Nathan, so she sat up straight and tried to be a smarty-pants.

  The machine could make rem-particles. Check.

  It sometimes made too much. Or something. Or spikes. Check.

  It was unstable. That she knew full well. Check.

  Rem-particles affected creativity. Check.

  Some very creative people were sensitive to rem. Check. Could possibly influence it. Like her, and maybe Nathan. The Professor had said she and Nathan were ‘his best hope’, though she wasn’t sure what for. She assumed he meant they were both good manipulators of rem. But she was the only artistically creative one of the two. Did that mean she must be super-sensitive to rem-particles—more than normal? Perhaps. Anyway ...

  She sat and let the facts circle in her brain a while and looked at the machine merrily flashing its ‘-00:56’.

  Nathan would do something with those facts, wouldn’t he? That’s right. He’d hypothesise something. He’d even made her memorise the word in a rhyme.

  ‘You must hypothesise

  You must not guess

  Then you must test

  And let the facts confess’

  By the proud look on his face, she guessed—no, she hypothesised—that he’d made up the rhyme himself.

  Back to the facts. If the headshield was being worn ‘just in case’, then it must be shielding someone from the machine. So ... if someone highly creative was extremely sensitive to rem, they might be affected more than others by the spikes and instabi
lity. Something clicked and a horrible realisation descended. What if her hypothesis was that her dizziness and blackouts were nothing to do with madness at all. But before she let the angry side of her speak, she had to test. And what better way than to try to paint something. With and without the headshield on.

  She wasn’t at all certain, but she was prepared to hypothesise it would be much worse being in the machine’s vicinity. So she would test from the other end of the warehouse.

  She walked to the opposite end from where she had left the machine and looked around. What to use? She noticed a crate against the wall. She could draw on that. She walked over to it and saw a crude picture had already been drawn on one side. It said ‘Daddy’. Lena. But she couldn’t see what the girl had used to draw with. She looked around again, then slapped her head. Doh! In her pocket were some of the best hand-made pastels she’d ever used!

  She pulled out one of Rona’s beautiful pastels and started to draw on the crate. What a shame to use such a lovely implement on a scrappy old crate. She sighed. It was an emergency. She hoped Rona wouldn’t mind.

  Within a short time, it was clear her drawing skills were, so far, unaffected.

  Now for Nathan’s test. ‘Let the facts confess’.

  If what she suspected was true, the test wouldn’t be pleasant, but she knew of no other way to confirm it. She removed the headshield and started to draw with one hand, the other still holding the headshield, ‘just in case’, but it was undeniable. She was already swooning and her hand was heading all over the side of the crate, trying to draw goodness knows what. She slammed the headshield back on and felt the dizzy, faint feelings vanish.

  The two drawings didn’t compare. The same thing exactly as before. One moment she was happily painting or drawing, the next ... well, it didn’t bear thinking about. Creative art versus sloppy green paths or roughly-drawn evil eyes. She felt her teeth grinding and the tension in her jaw. Those dratted scientists! All this time she’d been convinced she was going mental and was stressed and scared—and it was all their fault!

  Those meddling idiots. She had a good mind to stop right there and let Nathan spend his days in the company of Makthryg and his band of thugs ... but then she remembered the wood piled high and Makthryg’s threats, and her anger abated. A little.

  Boy, they would get a piece of her mind. If any of them survived. But for now, the headshield was going nowhere except with her, and firmly on her head. She didn’t care how silly it looked.

  And the kernel of a plan, happy to be nurtured in a newly-found bright mind, began to take shape. She walked back to her small hidey-hole, picked up the yellow Intensifier Lena had given her, and turned it over in her hands, thinking. If she could use the power of the dark rem to project herself into Paolo’s world and help them, find out what was affecting Nathan and maybe even help undo it, she would buy them some time, and maybe even help them escape long enough to get Nathan back.

  Unfortunately, it did require the use of a certain person’s sock.

  ~~~

  Nathan looked down at his feet and tried again to understand why the man had tied them to a tree and put wood underneath and around them. The man had looked angry.

  One of the big men in the camp had brought over some tasteless soup, and loosened their hands so they could eat. He slurped and tried to make his mouth and jaw work, but most of the soup ended up down his t-shirt. As the man was coming back to retrieve the soup bowls, a commotion near the cave entrance caused a stir. Both Nathan and the boy leaned forward to see what had happened.

  A crowd of men stood around someone on the ground. They parted momentarily, and Nathan saw it was the man without the finger, the one who had taken over as the leader of the group after the other men had found him and the boy wandering through the trail. He couldn't remember why they had been in the trail, or what the boy had been trying to do.

  He twisted his head to see the boy next to him. Something was nagging at him, and it hadn't stopped since the boy had turned up. He studied his face. Did he know him from somewhere? His head hurt. For the entire trek to this camp he'd been stumbling behind the other boy and wracking his brain. But every time he tried to get his brain anywhere near a state of wrackingness, he came up with a blank. As if someone had removed his brain and stuffed his skull with bananas.

  He'd managed to figure some things out: He wasn't supposed to be here, that seemed obvious, and he was some kind of prisoner. But the boy next to him remained a mystery. He looked down at his feet again.

  Think.

  Can't.

  He couldn't control his mouth either. Most of the time it drooled and dribbled all by itself, and everything he tried to say came out weird and slurred beyond comprehension.

  He sensed the boy next to him tense up, and he looked back up into the forest. He saw something there. Something dark. It sprang out at him. He held his hands up in front of his face and cowered in sheer terror. It was a massive black spider; well over double his height. Its eyes glowed yellow, and it raised its thickly haired forelegs high above him. He cowered more.

  The thing advanced and opened its mouth, revealing glands spitting green venom. He flinched and snatched a glance at the boy next to him, who was unperturbed. In fact, he had a faint smile. The creature moved around behind him and he jumped when it clamped a hairy leg across his mouth. He tensed, waiting for the venomous jaws to sink into his neck.

  Instead the spider spoke. Whispered actually. "It's Picasso. Remember? Here's a rhyme for you:

  'You must hypothesise, you must not guess,

  Then you must test, and let the facts confess'

  The words cracked open a door in his mind that had been closed since the other boy had arrived. He knew the voice of this terrifying creature. A voice from his own world. A girl's voice. What was her name? He strained to pull the door in his mind open, but it resisted.

  "I'm going to paint a picture in front of you. Watch carefully and follow my instructions."

  He tried to relax. The spider obviously wasn't going to kill him just yet, but it was still hard to relax, knowing a massive spider stood behind you. He found it even harder to relax when the spider thrust its forelegs around him and started to manipulate the air in front of his face with shimmering lines. His attention was caught by something in the creature’s hand. He strained to recognise the object. It looked very familiar. A word came to his lips.

  "Thok?"

  The spider said something unintelligible.

  In front of him the creature had already created an intricate web of shimmering lines and shapes.

  The boy next to him kept flicking glances at him, then peering at the group of men huddled around the man still on the ground.

  The spider whispered again and it was all Nathan could do not to scream when he felt the thing's huge hairy head brush against his ear. He tried to calm himself down. What had it said? A distant thought floated into his brain. Didn't female spiders eat their partners? Perhaps this thing was hypnotising him. It was telling him something. To look at the picture in front of him.

  He strained to see. Two men. One with wild hair, the other, younger, and pointing his finger at the first. In front of them both was an odd flickering object. Not solid. It looked like a tube; a very wobbly tube seen from the front. The inside was empty and black, but the flickering was from the pale white energy licking the surface of the tube inside and out.

  The creature spoke again, and this time he understood every word. It said it was going to make the tube come towards him and suck him up. So this was how death by spider happened.

  The mouth of the tube grew, and advanced from inside the picture of the two men until one end of it had stretched to meet his chest. He flinched as the tube-thing touched him, and he froze, expecting the spider’s searing poison to paralyse him ready for eating. Instead he felt brighter. Somebody was pulling the bananas out of his head one-by-one. The spider reached forward and detached the rear of the tube from the picture, and the entire th
ing zapped into his chest like a spring being released.

  His name was Nathan, and he was a scientist. The picture the spider had formed was of Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen; his great-great-grandfather. And that was no spider. It was Sarina. Though curiously, she did look like a spider. Next to him was Paolo.

  On the floor near the cave was Makthryg. And a whole heap of angry men who were now staring directly at him. Or maybe at the spider. They advanced, led by their dentally-challenged leader. He did the only thing he could think of that would save his life.

  He dribbled. All down his t-shirt.

  ~~~

  Sarina held the sock in one hand, and an Intensifier in the other. She had hung the headshield from a post by tying it with ropes the agents had discarded after collecting Valkrog, and now she stood under the headshield to test the height by gingerly easing herself up into it. Her ad-hoc set up was a bit wobbly, but it would work, and she wouldn’t need her hands to put the headshield on. As long as she kept herself sane enough to remember.

  A brief doubt flickered though her head. How much creative power would she be able to sustain wearing the Intensifier and dark rem? She realised she didn’t know the answer to that—and couldn’t know the answer unless she tried. But now she knew the so-called madness was all just a giant mistake—and not even her mistake—she was more determined than ever, and definitely more self-assured. The strong part of herself she’d thought was long gone had been awakened, and if she reached deep inside, she could almost touch it. No, this was not a time to be meek and mild, but to believe in herself, and in her own creative ability.

  It was at moments like this she really felt like painting—and she chuckled. That was exactly what she was about to do. She backed down and out of the headshield and steeled herself. She donned the Intensifier, switched it on and pushed the slider over. She brought Nathan’s now-familiar-smelling sock to her nose and closed her eyes.

  Straight away, she was back in the forest again, flying through. This time with aggression and strength. She punched aside branches and without batting an eyelid, splattered the jellyfish into pieces by turning feet-first and flailing her legs around like a mixing-beater.