Dreamworms Book 1: The Advent of Dreamtech

by Isaac Petrov

  “Please, Mom. Please, I beg you.” Aline looks up at her mom. “Call this off.”

  Rozamond’s eyes look concerned, but her smile widens.

  “Oh, what a scandal. What would our guests say?”

  “It isn’t funny. Please!” Tears begin to well up in Aline’s eyes.

  “My love, I know that you have doubts, but I don’t. See?” She opens her arms, radiating happiness. “It will all be fine. Trust me. You will have to assume more responsibility at home, but you are more than ready,” she says proudly.

  “Mom, please. I’ve never seen anybody with Dem. You haven’t either!”

  Rozamond’s smile mixes with a sudden hint of sadness.

  “Just because you haven’t seen something, it doesn’t mean it’s not a thing, love.” She takes Aline’s hands. “I knew somebody that has seen it. You never had the chance to meet my mother, Saskia—you were too small. I loved her so much. I hope you love me half as much.”

  “Mom, I love you, you know that.”

  “My mother is waiting for me. And I know in my heart that she is eager to see me, as I will be to see you in eleven years.” She beams. “I remember her Joyousday as vividly as if it had been last week. It was wonderful! It was right here as well, but it was spring; sunny and fragrant.” She takes a long look at her daughter. “I want you to remember mine with the same love and hope.” Rozamond’s eyes seem to shift away as she remembers. “Right after the prayers, during the evocation, only the family was gathered around Mom. She was recalling the events of her life that she chose to share with us, blessing them in Goah’s Eyes.” She paused, looking deep into Aline’s eyes. “She shared a sad memory. But beautiful in a way. Mom described the suffering of her family when her father lost his mind, day after agonizing day. Dem is a terrible, terrible thing. I don’t want that for any of you, my love.”

  Aline opens her mouth to say something, but Rozamond puts a finger on her lips.

  “The first days it was barely noticeable,” she continues her tale, “but as the weeks passed by, he forgot everything. Absolutely everything. First it was his profession. He was an engineer, obviously, so he had to stop working soon after. Then it was the community. He forgot names and faces. Then his closest friends.” She pauses, her smile fading, eyes far away. “One day he forgot his own name. His own name! Everything was gone. That was his last day. He was mercifully taken to the Joyousday House. But you know what your grandma Saskia’s most precious evocation was?”

  “What?” A tear runs down Aline’s cheek.

  “When her father was being taken away after the final farewells, he turned back one last time and smiled fondly at her. ‘Daughter’, he said. ‘Saskia’, and then he left forever.”

  The scene freezes with Aline and Rozamond holding hands. The entranced students look down to the stage of the auditorium where Professor Miyagi is smiling up at them.

  “Nice touch, don’t you think? You may wipe your tears away now.” Ximena laughs softly and actually rubs her eyes. Even Mark, beside her, passes a finger across his cheek. “You may think that is some cheap drama dreamed up for the final dreamsenso. But no. Everything you see here, it really happened. That conversation between Aline and Rozamond, it did really happen. It was all documented by Speese-Marai herself, many years later.”

  Some students raise their hands.

  “Hold on a sec,” Miyagi says. “Before opening the Q&A, I want to show you another exchange that happened a couple of hours later. It is relevant for our analysis.”

  He whispers something at Ank, who in turn gives Bob a sidelong glance. In an instant, Aline and her mother disappear, and a new scene takes their place.

  It is Edda again, walking away from the grass field. More people in the background are leaving as well. Her pace is quick on the paved street that links the Joyousday House with the rest of the colony. A greeting that comes her way from a passing horse and cart goes unanswered. She also ignores each of the returning Speese guests that cycle past her with a raised hand. With a scowl that threatens to turn the next saluting passerby into ashes, she reaches the outermost houses of the colony—red-bricked, double-story, some with sizable vegetable gardens. Unchanged for countless generations.

  “Edda, wait for me!”

  Edda’s frown deepens, but she slows down a notch. “I hate you, Dad,” she says without turning. Not true, Ximena feels. But oh, she’s mad.

  Willem reaches Edda slightly out of breath, his right hand clumsily nudging a pair of thin glasses in place. “I love you too, girl,” he says with the smile of a tantrum-hardened parent. “Do I perceive a hint of anger?”

  “Very observant. Leave me alone.”

  “Please, Edda. You must learn to accept the world as it is. You cannot change it.”

  She abruptly stops and turns. “I don’t want to change the world. I just want you to stay in it!”

  “I know.” Willem’s resigned smile broadens. “Nothing would make me happier as well.”

  They walk again, slower now, side by side.

  “I admit I feel strange,” Willem says. “Rozamond’s Joyousday was…” he searches for the right word, “… disturbing. I’m happy, Edda. I love my family.” He caresses her hair. “I even love my students.” He laughs. “I love my life. And I admit I’m not ready to leave it.”

  “Then don’t!”

  “But what do you expect me to do? Even if there had been poison in that bottle, what could I…?” He swallows, and softens his voice. “Do you know what would happen to our family’s standing if I cancel my Joyousday?” He speaks almost in a whisper. “Our prestige would be in shatters.”

  “I don’t care. We don’t care.”

  “You must!” Willem stops and puts his hand on her shoulder. “Bram and you will soon be the Van Dolah elders. You must never forget our standing in the colony. Your lives, little Hans’s life, all your futures will soon be in your hands, Edda.”

  They walk on in silence. Ximena feels Edda’s anxiety, the pressure—the fear. He’s dead serious. He never calls her by her name.

  “And what for?” Willem continues. “A few more months? A year at the most? Dem will inevitably catch me…”

  “But Dem is just a lie!”

  “Edda…”

  “You know I’m right, Dad. Have you actually seen anybody with Dem?”

  “No, but come on, girl. You are smarter than that. Nowadays everybody strictly observes the Joyousday when they turn twenty-seven. Dem never has a chance to take hold.”

  “But think about it, who’s really benefiting from all this… death?”

  “Hush!” Willem looks nervously around and remains silent for a few seconds. “Let’s walk home,” he finally says. They get moving. “I also have my doubts…” he whispers.

  “Then why—?!”

  “But,” Willem interrupts, “that doesn’t change the fact that our family will suffer if I do not attend aws Call.”

  “I don’t give a damn about our reputation!” Edda yells at him. “Let’s take the family somewhere else if we need to; another colony, on the frontier.”

  “What good would that do? Joyousday is Joyousday, and I’m turning twenty-seven here and in the frontier. There’s no escaping it. Besides, there have been worse regimes in history than aws Imperia if you really think about it.”

  “You are not possibly defending—”

  “Why not? If you leave your emotions aside and try to be objective, you will realize there’s much we have to thank Goah for.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, er, we’ve got aws Gift and aws Compacts for starters. And nobody lacks shelter nor sustenance. That’s an incredible achievement for any post-collapse society. What else? Uh, we are reasonably free, have families and stability, meaningful work that matters, and even enough free time to… whatever.”

  “Wonderful regime, yeah. With just a few tiny caveats, like inequality, the arbitrary distribution of karma, the lies and propaganda, aws Head’s absolute power.
Am I forgetting something?” She taps her chin. “Ah, yeah. The fucking killing us all. Goah’s Mercy, Dad. I don’t want you to die in two months!” She is close to tears. “Remember when in Mom’s Joyousday—?”

  “Enough!” His shout freezes Edda in place. “I will not hear any more of this. You will respect my decision. I expect to have some peace in my last weeks of life.” Any trace of tenderness in his voice is now gone.

  She stares at him for a few seconds, her mouth ajar. “I hate you!” she finally says. “You don’t have the right to leave us!”

  She begins to weep sourly and runs away.

  Edda is in her room, sitting on the desk by the window, tending the potted cactus with a cotton gauze. No blooms. Her thoughts flow unimpeded to Ximena, as she inspects the hard, spiny surface of the plant. She’ll ask Isabella for some nitrates, maybe that would help. Dad made a good catch when he proposed her for a dowry bond, she admits. The Zegers are a good family.

  Edda’s attention is caught by Willem passing by on the sidewalk with a baby stroll chair. She can barely see Hans’s light-brown hair from the distance. She follows them with her eyes until they move out of sight.

  Edda sighs. Why can’t Dad see how important he is to them? She is not ready to manage the family alone. Okay, yes, a poor excuse. She can sure as Dem manage anything on her own. And she’s not alone. Bram might be her little brother, but he can hold his own as well as anyone.

  Edda sighs again, puts the gauze in the desk drawer, and moves the pot into the daylight. She smiles sadly to herself. What a pitiful thing she has become. So psychologically dependent on her father. Yes, so what? Friends and lovers come and go, come and go, but fathers… they only go, don’t they? She scoffs and tries to repress the pinch of self-pity behind her eyes.

  Fathers—and mothers—they only go.

  She remembers Mom, so solid, so powerful, so warm. Then she remembers her look that day, the last time she saw her. It’s just a flash, more a sensation than an image, but it is enough to... Ximena’s own stomach seems to contract at the sudden pain. Goah, it has been two years already, and is still so vivid, so… No, Edda shakes her head, trying to dispel the memory. She can’t afford to lose herself in that rabbit hole again.

  Dad is so naive. For her he plays the role of the brave Elder—family first and all that—but he is not as strong as he thinks, and surely not as much as her mother was. Goah’s Mercy, he even admitted to having doubts. Mom never showed any doubts, and yet…

  The familiar bite of fear crawls up her spine. And this time it’s not her usual fear of being left alone and parentless. This time she’s terrified that Dad will not make it. At the end, it is only dignity that you take to aws Embrace, and Edda fears that Dad will not be strong enough. Mom wasn’t.

  Edda takes a deep breath and blinks her eyes clear of threatening tears. Dad needs to see that his life is too valuable to sacrifice in the altar of aws Head’s power game. No regime is worth his life. She’ll make him see how corrupt they really are. She’ll make everybody see. Then, perhaps, he’ll reconsider. Yeah, but it has to be something big. No, not big. Huge. Something that resonates way beyond Lunteren, beyond the whole fucking Geldershire. Something that sows doubt—and resentment. Edda knows her history. Empires have fallen for less than doubt and resentment.

  Six

  Sex and Collapse

  “Okay, wakey, wakey, people.” Miyagi chuckles at the overused permascape joke. “Q&A time! I want to hear your thoughts, especially,” he waves a finger across the section of the amphitheater where Ximena’s fellow GIA students sit, “from our new friends from the New World—you people are being way too shy. Shoot!”

  A few hands raise, but none of them from GIA students. Miyagi ignores them and keeps his smile locked at the sea of white-and-blue robes. Finally, a brave hand rises slowly.

  “Ah great, er, Cody.” Ximena knows Cody O’Higgin well. He’s in one of her classes. Smart guy. Ambitious. And always a kind soul. “Please, go ahead.”

  Cody stands. “Thank you, Professor. Sorry if the question is a bit, er, superficial, but I was wondering how old Edda van Dolah and Aline Speese were in the sections we just watched?”

  “Aha, good question, Cody. People, don’t be shy about your questions, all right? There are no boring questions, nor stupid questions. It is the wildest thoughts that usually start the most fascinating discussions. Now to your question. They were both sixteen. But don’t be fooled by their youth. A century ago, when a person reached your age,” he drives a finger across his audience, most in their upper twenties, “they would have accomplished a basic education, learned and perfected their family profession, ordered two babies at aws Womb, led a family as an elder, and died.”

  He paces the stage in silence to let that sink in. Ximena is twenty-seven herself. She would have been killed already if she were born four generations ago. Goah, how did they manage? There was no time to pursue any meaningful life project. She wonders… Perhaps they were indeed happy while it lasted? Free of the worries of career and uncertainty?

  “A person entered adulthood at ten,” Miyagi continues, “as they reached sexual maturity. Fun fact: did you know that at the end of the golden age, right before the first collapse of the 2080s, humans matured at least two or three years later than we do now? Yes, an unexpected side-effect of the Dem-Pandemic of the twenty-second century was the natural selection of humans with ever earlier sexual maturity. Can anybody guess why?”

  Ximena scoffs. It’s obvious. But nobody raises a hand.

  “Go ahead, Ximena,” Mark says. “Answer that.”

  Ximena shakes her head, blushing—oh she hates her compulsive blushing, even in dreams she cannot control it.

  Mark grabs her hand and raises it shamelessly. “Here, Professor,” he yells.

  “Ah, please…” He points his finger at Ximena and reads the name that pops up over her head. “Oh Epullan, so happy to have you in this seminar. Loved your take on raw power in that Post-Columbian paper you published. People, this is Ximena Epullan, a sharp mind.”

  Ximena’s cheeks are on fire. She tries to smile, and fails.

  “I would like a word in private after the seminar, if you don’t mind.”

  “With… with me?”

  “Yeah, there is something I stumbled on during my research that might interest you. But more of that later.”

  Miyagi turns his face to the stupefied students. Even Mark looks at Ximena like she had just turned into crystal.

  “This seminar is not just an academic event, people,” Miyagi says. “The Global Program is first and foremost an intercultural exchange.” He claps at Ximena. “Bravo, you totally embraced the spirit by sitting with the Lundev gang. You should all heed Ximena’s example, and mix more, people. Now, Ximena, please, answer the question. Why the selective pressure for earlier sexual maturity?”

  Ximena clears her throat. Twice. “Yes, Professor. Before that, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the truth is that I arrived late, and this was the only free spot.”

  “Really?” Miyagi laughs, together with most of the students. Oh Goah, Ximena thinks. Ground swallow me up. “Well,” Miyagi nods at her in appreciation, “I have to apologize then, I didn’t want to put you on the spot. Love your honesty, though. Perhaps the most important trait of a historian. Now, your take on the sexual selection?”

  “Yes, Professor.” Ximena clears her throat again. “The selective pressure began in the 2080s, as the first collapse gained traction. More than a billion people were killed in a single generation.”

  “Tell us about that, Ximena. What killed them?”

  “Hmm,” she raises her thumb in the air, “the immediate cause was the environmental breakdown, especially in the tropics, which then,” she raises her index finger, as she counts on, “precipitated famines and migration waves like never seen since antiquity. That in turn,” she raises a third finger, “wrecked the global and national networks of trade,” another finger, “collapsing country after
country into smaller nativist grouplets. And the cycle repeated: more famine,” she keeps raising finger after finger, “more xenophobic massacres, more splitting into ever smaller groups. And on and on went the first collapse, killing millions upon millions of people.”

  “So you’re saying,” Miyagi asks, “that it was the higher mortality that created evolutionary pressure for earlier sexual maturity?”

  “No, no. Not the higher mortality. Rather, the earlier mortality.”

  Miyagi smiles. “Please clarify.”

  “Yes, Professor, er, it was the Dem-Pandemic, of course. Dementia Furiosa has always been killing people, even before the first collapse, but it has always been in a relatively small scale, and only affected the most elderly. But all that changed with the high mortality of the first collapse.”

  “How so?”

  “Hmm, the more people died in the first collapse, the higher the proportion of Dementia Furiosa that affected the elderly. Nobody knew why back then, but soon everybody over eighty perished from Dem, which then began spreading through those in their late seventies. And when they in turn were dead, Dem began to ravage those in the mid-seventies, and so on it went, killing the oldest humans alive, and killing ever younger, mostly hidden from the public view behind the curtain of the horrors of the first collapse. Until, at some point, there were no elderly left in the world, and Dem kept killing on and on, relentlessly.”

  “Can you give us some numbers?”

  “Not from the top of my head, sorry, Professor. I only know what everybody knows: that the human lifespan shrunk rapidly during the twenty-second century.”

  “I’ll give you some numbers, people.” Miyagi paces the stage while speaking. “Lifespans went down from sixty years in 2100 to forty-five in 2120. Can you picture what that does to a civilization? And it didn’t stop there. Dem kept ravaging the oldest layers of society, decade after decade. The second collapse, indeed. Billions die as the fabric of society dissolves simultaneously worldwide. First go the nation-states, then the cities and towns, then even the timeless institutions of tribe and family begin to falter. Which brings us to one of the key human adaptations that allowed us to survive.” He turns and points at Ximena. “Which is…?”