Dreamworms Book 1: The Advent of Dreamtech

by Isaac Petrov

  And Edda, oh how her body radiates life, a dazzling blue aura glows over her skin and scintillates intensely, in high contrast with the gray vividness around her. Ximena knows that Edda’s blue sparkling reflects her inner world—she is dreaming intensely, and it shows.

  And, as Miyagi promised, she is not alone.

  And, as Mark promised, it’s aliens.

  A tall, elongated figure, vaguely humanoid, is standing next to Edda. Its skin—white and hairless, almost of silky quality—emanates an intense red glow that glints even more wildly than Edda’s blue halo. Ximena cannot see the front of the head as it is leaning over Edda—obviously inspecting her closely—but the back is as featureless as the rest of the body: no clothes nor ornaments, no hair, just the thin trunk and four, long, boneless limbs resembling two arms and two legs, none of which touch the floor.

  “That’s Rew,” Mark whispers. “Finally.” He is smiling, eyes locked on the alien.

  Ximena frowns at him. “You mean Yog, right?”

  Mark gives her a strange side glance. “Where do you get your history from?”

  “First Contact is near,” Miyagi says before Ximena can reply, “but it is not happening tonight. You’ll have to be patient. These are just the preliminaries. People,” he waves a hand at the creature, “meet Rew.”

  Rew? Never heard the name, Ximena thinks as she shoots an annoyed glance at Mark’s smug smile.

  “Rew is looking for candidates for First Contact,” Miyagi continues. “Worthy candidates, for there is a plan for them. She has already selected a few dozen humans and is almost ready to execute her plan. But there’s still time for one or two more. And Edda’s recent activity in the Joyousday House has caught her attention. She is wondering, isn’t she? About Edda. Can you imagine her thoughts?” He turns to his captivated audience. “Anybody?”

  Several hands shoot up in the air, including Mark’s.

  “Yes?” Miyagi points at a Lundev student close to Ximena who is wearing retro-glasses. His full name appears in bright, bold letters over his head. “Qiao, what is Rew thinking?”

  “Uh, what about: is this human motivated?”

  “Motivation. Essential, yes.” Miyagi nods. “To do what?”

  “Hmm, rebellion, I guess,” Qiao says.

  “Uh-huh.” Miyagi nods again. “Rew is indeed looking for rebellious humans, but… let’s face it: half the teens in every place and age fit that description. There is something special she believes to have found in Edda. Anybody want to…? Er…” Miyagi points his finger almost directly at Ximena, “… Mark?”

  Mark stands. “Rew is looking for raw potential—for talent. Not many people have that. Look at Edda’s halo, it’s… spectacular!”

  Edda’s halo? Ximena squints at the fierce blue refulgence around her sleeping shape. What about it?

  “Ha!” Miyagi claps once and points a finger back at Mark. “You are a Walker in the Shadow, aren’t you?”

  Mark bows. “At your service.”

  “Wow,” Miyagi laughs. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be—I don’t know—earning tons of karma in the dreamnet?”

  Mark chuckles. “There’s more to life than karma, Professor.” He seems to enjoy the undivided attention of the auditorium. “There’s also girls,” he says with a wink at Ximena, who blushes instantly. “And history!”

  “Oh so true,” Miyagi says, students laughing. “Now, Mark, what do you think? How can Rew figure out if Edda is First Contact material?”

  “By testing her, of course.”

  “Of course,” Miyagi says, “let’s watch.”

  Mark sits and smiles widely at Ximena, very satisfied with himself, as Miyagi gives Ank a curt nod.

  Rew begins to move. Gently. She leans closer to Edda, ever closer, until their halos—red and blue—touch!

  Ximena leans back with a gasp as the scene seems to explode across the auditorium, shattering into pieces as if made of colored glass, and then rejoining into a fresh scene.

  Colors are a notch more… intense. And textures are off somehow. Edda is there, much younger, appearing to be around eight years old. She is sneaking into a large room with a big glass window that looks over the backyard and the vegetable garden of the Van Dolah’s house.

  It is a warm summer day, and the glass windows are open. Fresh air and sunlight are streaming in, flooding the room, and Miyagi’s students’ grateful lungs. A large, square table close to the windows is covered with dozens of miniature soldiers lovingly painted in historically accurate Napoleonic-era uniforms. Two armies face each other on a beautiful model battlefield: farms, hills, woods, towns, rivers, lakes, valleys, all painstakingly recreated.

  A younger-looking Willem stands by the table and stares at the armies in quiet reflection.

  “What are you doing?” Edda shouts from behind him.

  Willem jumps. “Ha! You scared me, girl!” He takes her in a wild embrace.

  “Let me down!” she giggles. “What is this?” She reaches towards a tiny soldier.

  “Whoa, whoa, don’t touch that! This is… war!” He looks at her with open eyes, as if trying to impress her.

  “Looks like toys to me. These tiny dolls are ugly.”

  Willem laughs. “You caught me, girl. The truth is, it’s a game. In a few minutes your mom will be home from work, and we are going to spend the night fighting this… er, war.”

  “You are going to play the whole night? Dad, that is not fair! You never let me! You are a hypocrates.”

  “Hypocrite. Yes, I guess you are right. You know what? Tomorrow is Sunday. Let me talk to your mom, and if she agrees, you and Bram can stay and watch the game. Would you like that?”

  “Yes! I don’t think Bram will like this, though. It’s for adults and he’s such a baby. But I want to learn the game. I want to play with you and beat you like at chess last week!”

  Willem laughs, seemingly pleased. “This is not chess. It is a battle simulation and very realistic, with many rules. Look at this!” He lifts a thick book also placed on the table. “Would you like to read them?”

  Edda frowns at the rulebook. “Uh…”

  “Tell you what, you read it, and you can play with your mom against me. I’m sure she’ll be grateful for the help. Would you like that?”

  “Yes!” she says, radiant.

  The scene pauses and begins to rotate slowly over the amphitheater in full visual glory. Young Willem glows with frozen happiness at young Edda, as she enthusiastically raises her fists.

  “Do you notice the texture of the scene?” Professor Miyagi asks, as he proudly points with a finger, showing that indeed, the entire atmosphere is not quite right. It is thicker, not fully static, as if immersed in an invisible liquid. It appears real, but not complete. The light is strangely unnatural, the colors perhaps too vivid. “What do you think the dreamsenso is telling us?”

  “A dream?” Qiao says.

  “I think so as well,” a female student says—Lora is the name that appears over her head as Miyagi points at her. “At first, I thought it was a flashback, or a memory. But it has a dreamy quality to it.” Ximena and other students nod at her words.

  “Yes! Thanks.” He smiles, satisfied. “This was a tough problem. When producing this dream sensorial, my team had to get very creative to convey a convincing dreamscape to the audience, you know, a dream inside a dream. In my opinion they nailed it, but I wasn’t a hundred percent. Now I am, thank you!”

  Miyagi gives Ank a nod, and the scene shifts again. The room is the same, but later in the night, the garden outside already covered in darkness, glass windows closed to evening mosquitoes. Inside the room, two dim electrical lamps illuminate the table and the surrounding faces, immersed in the imaginary, unfolding battle.

  Willem is on one side of the table, staring at the miniatures and not looking too happy. Opposing him are Edda and an intense black woman—Anika. The name comes to Ximena through the psych-link as if a memory of her own. She is Edda’s mother. And h
er biological mother too, from the looks of her—older by a few years than her brother Willem. Edda’s biological father was an unknown dowry merchant, she remembered reading somewhere.

  Ximena’s own family is Goahn, of course. In the GIA everybody’s is. No exceptions. It’s Goah’s Gift, after all. Even in Hansasia and Botswana most families are also still Goahn. Supposedly. But she has heard that there is an increasing tolerance—and even acceptance—of the barbaric practice of the Sexual Families of old, surely a result of the pagan cultural influence of Nubaria, spreading like cancer across the old world. Ximena gives Mark an involuntary side glance. This Neanderthal, sitting right there next to her, has been pulled out of the vagina of a woman. A woman that had carried him inside her guts for nine excruciating months. Worse, his father had impregnated his mother! Oh, the thought is… She cringes, and can’t repress a shudder of disgust running up her spine. Goahns have sex, of course. Plenty. But just for fun. Or to bond with lovers, for those lucky to have time for that. And always—always—outside the family, Goah’s Mercy!

  She doesn’t get it. There is no upside to the Sexual Family. They are brittle. Short lived. And, inevitably, a bitter source of loneliness and alienation—especially to the eldest. Compare that with the naturality and certainty of Willem and Anika’s fraternal relationship. Watching them playing together over the war miniatures, Ximena projects her own relationship to her brother Juan: unbreakable, unshakable, forever in the same household, from birth to death. So is the bond that lies at the core of every Goahn Family. Siblings to each other, they are parents to the next generation, and grandparents to the next after that. And so it goes on, indestructible, the immortal Goahn Family.

  Ximena turns her attention to Edda and takes in her exultance—the family evening, the belonging, the intense love for her parents, the imminent victory in the game. Yes! But… There is also a pinch of sadness, hiding in plain sight. Something powerful and ominous. Yes, Ximena realizes, observing Anika closely. Burrowed shallow, right below the fragile surface of happiness, there is darkness and rage. Injustice—and death.

  “Our gambit has worked!” Anika says, eyes wide with delight and disbelief. You are a genius, baby. “And you, my dear brother, for the first time ever,” she puts a finger on Willem’s chest, “are toast!”

  Edda giggles and claps. “We got him, Mom!” She excitedly points at one of the miniature sets. “Maneuver this battalion up this ridge into Napoleon’s ass!”

  “Napoleon’s rear, baby.” Anika laughs. “Yes, sure, let’s do that. We are taking Napoleon himself down. Ha! Down goes the tyrant!”

  “A tyrant.” Edda pronounces the word carefully, as if for the first time. “Is he a baddy, Mom?” She meets her mother’s gaze with large, open eyes.

  “You tell me, girl: a defender of the civil rights for the people, but to spread those revolutionary ideas, he first conquered and oppressed those same people.”

  “Hmm,” Edda twists the tip of one of her long braids. “Napoleon was a, er, hypocrite. Did I say it right?”

  “You did, baby Edda! You absorb knowledge like Dad’s troops absorb casualties.”

  “Beginner’s luck.” Willem scratches the back of his head. “Or you are indeed a genius, girl.” He winks at Edda. “Your mother has never beaten me before. And I’m playing the French, who historically won Austerlitz. But your Russians,” he points over at one side of the table, “and Austrians,” he points over at the other side, “are everywhere! Well done! But…”

  “What?” Anika asks. “There’s no way you can turn the tables.” She actually looks worried and scans the battlefield. “What are you hiding this time, you sneaky bastard?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” Willem laughs. “Except that your general Kutuzov down here, by the lake,” he points with the finger, “is in real trouble now.”

  “Let’s save Kutuzov, Mom,” Edda says. “Our victory will be complete!” She touches the miniature rider—wearing a Russian general uniform and leading a cavalry battalion—with sudden affection. Ximena feels it too, like the figure were… Abuelo? “But look, Mom. He is surrounded by an army of retreating French troops.”

  “You can kiss your dear Kutuzov goodbye, dear sister,” Willem says with exaggerated glee. “I may have lost the battle, but I’m sure as Dem taking Kutuzov down with me!”

  And then something snaps.

  What was that? Ximena thinks, as she and all the students next to her sit bolt upright in sudden attention. Ximena exchanges a silent glance with Mark, and then squints intensely at the floating scene. She has felt something strange, a sort of vibration. Something out of place.

  “Look at her face!” Mark whispers in her ear.

  And then she sees it. Anika’s maternal sweetness is gone, her face distended like she were dead, and her eyes—Ximena gasps—the iris and pupils are absent! Anika stares now with blank, almost radiant, white eyes.

  But such is the nature of dreams that changes happen unnoticed to the dreamer. Edda seems too absorbed by the tough situation of Kutuzov’s battalion on the battlefield. French enemy troops on their west, on their north, and on the east; and a lake on their south.

  “We can still escape, Mom,” Edda says, and puts a finger on the table, “Satchen Lake is frozen!”

  The scene begins to slide slowly, approaching Edda from behind, while she is bent over the drama unfolding on the table. The scene camera passes over her head and begins to glide down onto the battlefield from far above. Now it looks almost like a satellite view. The camera does not stop, like it is falling, ever closer to the ground.

  Ximena dives with the camera down into the cold, fresh air at the edge of Satchen Lake, first feeling the vertigo of the fall, then the smell of the winter fields of old Moravia.

  The shore is teeming with Napoleonic-era cavalry soldiers in chaotic disarray; they look tired, their blue and white uniforms dirty. Only a handful of them are still wearing the high military hat of the Russian dragoons; the horses seem spent, sweating despite the cold.

  And leading them all, the man himself: General Kutuzov, sitting still on his horse, studying the desperate situation with cold-blooded calmness. The French are closing in from all sides, blood-thirsty. Contact is a minute away.

  Kutuzov gives the order. “Over the lake! Spread out to spare the ice. Slow walk.”

  The soldiers immediately abandon their chaotic stance and get into a wide formation behind the general. The horses move in unison, carefully stepping over the ice.

  And the ice holds.

  The disciplined soldiers motion their horses deeper over the frozen lake, the staccato of their hooves echoing across the auditorium.

  The scene zooms in closer to the center of the formation, where three soldiers ride side by side: the general in the center, a captain on his right, and a lieutenant on his left. Ximena leans forward as she recognizes their faces: General Kutuzov is actually Willem! The captain is Edda, her sixteen-year-old self once again, somehow sized to fit the uniform of a gallant Russian officer. And the lieutenant… Ximena leans forward with fascination. The lieutenant is the expressionless, white-eyed Anika.

  They are approaching the center of the lake. In the background, the French have reached the shores.

  “General, the enemy does deploy cannons,” Anika says in a strange voice—still feminine, but flat, devoid of Anika’s warm intensity.

  “Trot!” Willem orders without hesitation. The deafening hammering of hooves against ice grows louder as the horses thump forward. The pressure on the ice creates some cracks, but it is a thick pre-industrial winter ice.

  It holds.

  Edda looks back. Ximena feels her anxiety—her fear of death—in her own guts. Behind them, far away on the shore, the cannons begin spitting smoke. It takes a few instants for the thunder-like blast to reach her ears, and a few more instants for the cannonballs to rain around them with deadly precision.

  The ice breaks mercilessly under the hooves of their right flank. Many men and horses
disappear silently under the ice in an instant.

  “Gallop, Edda!” Willem says with uncharacteristic passion. He is no longer a general, but a father. “Straight to the shore! Anika, take her!”

  Edda obeys with the instinctive discipline of a soldier. She kicks her horse forward, galloping hard over the cracking ice, while Anika keeps up without visible effort, almost like her horse is floating over the vanishing ice.

  As they escape forward, Willem maneuvers the remaining dragoons into a hard turn, aiming deeper into the heart of the lake; obviously a distraction.

  Edda and Anika finally reach the safety of the other side of the lake. Edda stops the exhausted horse and turns around to discover in horror that Willem is not following right behind her but is still deep on the surface of the lake.

  “Dad!” She dismounts and runs to the edge of the lake, fear transforming into terror. Terror of loss. Terror of being left behind. Alone. A fate worse than death, Ximena realizes with surprise.

  Anika, silent as a ghost, stands on her right. With no discernible emotion on her face, she stares at the far shore with her eerie white eyes. She raises her right arm and points at the French troops. “Do look, Redeemed van Dolah,” she says. “The cannons are aiming at your father.”

  Edda exhales loudly, tears of fear and frustration running down her cheeks. She seems unable to speak.

  “Do remain calm,” Anika says with her strange, leveled voice. “Do detach your emotions. You are dreaming.”

  “What?” Edda gapes at Anika with confusion and desperation.

  “You are dreaming, Redeemed van Dolah. Do trust me. I am here to assist you.”

  Edda gives Anika a long gaze, as if just aware of her presence. “Who are you?”

  “That is of no relevance at the moment.” Anika points at the galloping dragoons. “Your father is about to die. Do focus your will on what matters.”