Dreamworms Book 1: The Advent of Dreamtech

by Isaac Petrov

  Willem’s eyes widen in horrific understanding. He keeps walking in frigid silence.

  “Is this how you protect your family?” Marjolein says, keeping his pace. “In two months, the Van Dolah’s will lose you, and then the senior elder might be declared heretic in Goah’s Eyes. Can you imagine how hard that would be for Bram? Alone, responsible for a baby, and with the stigma of heresy hanging over his family? Who could then blame Isabella if she orders aws Womb to abort the dowry bond?”

  Willem keeps his eyes locked forward and says nothing, his face an expression of outrage and fear.

  They walk side by side in frigid silence for an entire block. The core of the colony is already behind them; houses are wider and front yards larger, most with sizable vegetable gardens covered in plastic. There are fewer people now, most returning home for a late lunch.

  As they are about to cross the street, Ximena catches a bulky movement out of the corner of her eye. Marjolein has seen it as well and shouts a curt warning as she holds Willem back with both hands. An old bicycle—one of those heavy ones with a wooden front loader—rushes by, tilts violently as the rider tries to avoid the baffled Willem, and falls on its side in the middle of the street. The rider screams with pain as his body bounces off the surface.

  Ximena squints at the fallen rider, a teen in plain work pants and stained winter tunic, and her eyes widen in recognition: Janson Ledeboer, the image of him diving headfirst through the arena hole still vividly fresh in her memory.

  “Oh, Elder Ledeboer.” Marjolein runs to the street and helps him to his feet. “Did you break something?”

  He shakes his head slowly, eyes confused. There is pain in them too, but not pain of the physical type. Janson is a large, muscular, fourteen-year-old man, for whom a bike fall is a shock to the ego, not to the hips. But his green eyes are reddened, and his brown hair falls flat and out of place—out of care—half covering his broad face, half his right ear.

  “I’m out, I’m out, I’m out,” he mutters, and looks at nobody in particular. “Lost. Gone. Forever.”

  “Your soul aches, Elder Ledeboer,” Marjolein pulls him gently over to the sidewalk and wipes dirt off his tunic, “and Goah has sent you straight into my path. You are coming with me to aws Eye, and you will speak your afflictions to your Quaestor.”

  Willem raises the bulky bicycle straight in the meantime and tries to put it into Janson’s trembling hands, but he doesn’t react.

  “Will, please secure Elder Ledeboer’s loader.” Marjolein speaks with a different tone. She is not the lover now. She is the Quaestor of Lunteren, and her word is to be heeded. “I will send for it.”

  “Uh, of course.” He stands still, hands on the bicycle, and looks sheepishly at Marjolein as she puts a hand on Janson’s shoulder and begins to lead him away.

  She turns her face while walking. “Will, please talk to Edda. Convince her to be more discreet, and mature. Consider this a friendly last warning.”

  “Yes,” he mutters. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, and about extending your stay on this plane,” she stops walking, and looks back at him, “you know where to find me if you change your mind. For you, Will, I’m always open for business.”

  Twenty

  A Mirage of the Mind

  The dream forest rematerializes in perfect fidelity around an irritated-looking Edda. The same leafless birch trees surround her, slightly separated from the space where a magnificent white marble column stands alone. Even Rew is still there, staring at her with her blank eyes while standing in the same bramble bush as before, thorns be dammed.

  “You can see now, Redeemed van Dolah, how much you still must Walk to reach the end of the Path of Light. You are far from ready to resist dream violence.”

  “Violence…” She shakes her head and puts a hand over her chest, while shooting an indignant glare at Rew, “Goah’s Mercy, that hurt!”

  “Piercing flesh, even dream flesh, does indeed signal due pain to the nervous system. And yet, you must learn how to stand firm against violence directed at you, and also how to use violence to impose your will over others.”

  “You mean, I have to, what… fight?”

  “Fight.” Rew seems to relish the word. “A generic, yet accurate denomination of the set of actions required to achieve mastery over violence.”

  Edda blinks slowly, and then draws a heavy sigh as she shakes her head. Ximena feels her unhappiness. Physical violence, even in dreams, is so… uncivilized and dirty. Edda is not hesitant though, nor afraid. She will of course do whatever needs to be done—anything to reclaim the power to persuade. “All right,” she says. “I’m ready for the lesson.”

  “Very good, Redeemed van Dolah. There are two principles, two core concepts of the Third Step that you must grasp deeply if you intend to impose your will over others.”

  “I do.” Her eyes beam. “I really do.”

  “Only a mind disciplined enough to master both concepts can hope to prevail in the conflict of wills. You do have a disciplined mind, Redeemed van Dolah.”

  “Yes, I do.” She smiles expectantly.

  “Now you shall apply your discipline to internalize the two truths of permascape violence until they are as ingrained in your being as breathing. Do focus on my words now, Redeemed van Dolah, and interiorize them.”

  “Shoot, mensa!” Ximena can now feel through the psych-link what it means to be a teacher that has mastered not only the art of teaching to others but also the art of learning from others. Ximena can feel how Edda’s mind settles into a quiet state of hungry attention, ready for absorption; ready to feed.

  “Truth number one, success in permascape violence is all about pain. A true master of violence maximizes both the capacity to inflict pain to others as well as the capacity to sustain pain from others.” As she speaks these words, Rew begins to float out of the bramble thorns and towards Edda.

  Edda takes a small step back, but then shakes off the sliver of fear and raises her chin.

  Rew stops right in front of Edda, and the alien head tilts down until her two white unmoving eyes meet Edda’s. “Do give pain, do take pain; and so shall you impose your will.”

  “Sounds…” Edda swallows thick, dream saliva, “painful.”

  “Indeed.” Rew slowly, almost tenderly, raises both arms and extends them towards Edda’s own arms. The appendages at the end of Rew’s hands wriggle eagerly towards Edda’s skin. Ximena almost recoils when contact is made. Those appendages are cold to the touch, and sticky. They close around Edda’s wrist with astonishing strength.

  “Ouch!”

  “Indeed.” Rew begins to stretch Edda’s arms. Slowly. Edda tries to resist, but she feels a sudden wave of weakness, and must give in to Rew’s inexorable stretching.

  Rew keeps pulling Edda’s arms apart, ever more, in the same slow motion, until her body forms a perfect cross.

  Edda’s eyes widen, her breathing quickens. “Elder Rew, what are you—?!”

  Rew continues pulling farther. Ximena jumps in her seat as she feels the sudden pain in her own joints.

  “Stop, stop,” Edda says, eyes widening, breath quickening. “Stop!”

  “I shall not, Redeemed van Dolah. I shall rip your limbs apart. And you shall take the pain without piercing the wake.”

  “What?!” She cries out in agony. “Stop, stop! Please!”

  The screams go on as the psych-link’s pain filter kicks blissfully in. Oof, thank Goah! Ximena keeps feeling Edda’s pain inside her own shoulders, but now just as a subdued, warm pressure. Mock pain. The real pain must be… hard to bear, to put it mildly. And indeed, growing waves of wakening ripple across the dreamscape, ever deeper, ever wider.

  “Do not fear, Redeemed van Dolah. Until you do learn the discipline of pain, I shall stabilize the dreamscape for you.” The waves begin to subdue with Rew’s words, until it quietens to a subtle turbulence, never quite going away. “Now you shall not pierce the wake,” Rew says. “I shall not allow any undue interru
ption to your mastering of pain. You are welcome.”

  Edda keeps screaming and begins cursing. Ximena blushes at the words. It seems civility is one of the first victims of agony. Mark and others are laughing loudly at Edda’s colorful expressions. It is a strange, unsettling sound combination: laughs of amusement and cries of torment. Ximena feels sick to her stomach.

  “Do ground yourself in the pain, Redeemed van Dolah,” Rew says. “Do embrace it and follow it to its true source. Do feel how your dream body slowly tears; do listen to it, accept it into you.”

  Edda’s screaming continues unabatedly, her body twirling from both arms stretched beyond their natural span. Ximena doubts she can even hear Rew’s instructions over the excruciating agony. Edda’s thoughts swirl like her mind is short circuiting, like she is going mad.

  “Something is not right, Redeemed van Dolah. Your heartbeat has quickened beyond the healthy in a human. Do absorb your pain into your mind, away from your body, before it does break.”

  Edda’s cries are guttural, primitive; spit and snot mix down her chin; her eyes wander without seeing. Ximena hears inside her the slow rip of tissue and a sudden soft pop. Goah’s Mercy! Edda cannot wake, nor become unconscious. She can only sustain pain in full awareness. And her heart…

  “Redeemed van Dolah, you are at risk of termination. Do heed my advice.”

  Ximena puts a hand on her chest, as she feels her heartbeat racing to the edge of cardiac arrest. But the slow, rhythmic beating under her fingers makes her realize that it’s just the psych-link’s mock, disturbing sense of Edda’s inners. Ximena watches Edda’s dislocated expression with increasing alarm. Goah, it’s killing her!

  “I do fear that I might have overestimated the human capacity to sustain pain,” Rew says. “Thus, I am releasing control now.”

  In an instant the dream shatters in a thousand pieces, and Edda wakes in her bedroom, pillow wet, weeping in horror.

  “You did require a considerable time to dive, Redeemed van Dolah.” Rew is standing next to the white column embedded in Edda’s dream forest.

  “Well, I’m sorry if I made you wait, Elder Rew.” Edda walks towards Rew and points a furious finger at her face. “I guess your live-dismembering was too distracting, yeah? Silly me.”

  “Do not despair, Redeemed van Dolah. We shall practice until you fully master your pain control.”

  Edda takes a step back. “Are you nuts?!” Her eyes have widened in, yes, fear. Fear of agony. “You almost killed me and now you want to do it again?”

  “Indeed.”

  “B- But what does this have to do with persuasion, Goah’s Mercy? Or even suggestion? I don’t need all this… fighter stuff, yeah? Make love and not war, yeah?”

  “What you say is indeed correct, and yet a Walker must master dream violence to complete the Path of Light. It is the way of the marai. It is what has always been, and the ancestral Path is not to be distorted.”

  “I don’t care about your goahdamn Path. Just teach me what I need to get my way, and I promise I will be a good soldier of your oh so grand plan to save humanity.”

  “That is not possible, Redeemed van Dolah. I am to certify to Overseer Yog either your complete dominion over the Path of Light, or your failure. My Deviss Walkers are equally obliged to do likewise with their assigned human apprentices.”

  “Come on, Elder Rew. All this…” she makes a grimace of pain while waving a hand indistinctively, “torture is so unnecessary. Why don’t you just tell everybody that I learned to fight, and we call it a day?”

  “Alas, I do not lie, Redeemed van Dolah. I cannot lie, in fact. We marai cannot disguise facts, nor distort reason in that marvelous way you humans can. You must face the fact that the last trial is only to be attempted by Light-Walkers. And the fact remains that only a true Walker of the Light can tread the Path in the Shadow. It is the way of the marai. You must cross the Path of Light, Redeemed van Dolah, to reach the Shadow.”

  “There must be something you can do, Goah’s Mercy! Are the others also training like this?!”

  “How your fellow human candidates are being instructed is not your concern, nor mine.”

  “But…” pearls of dream sweat are forming on her brow, “… I don’t think I can take that… horror again. I just can’t.”

  “If that is your assessment, then I have indeed overestimated your skill. A regretful waste of my time. I bid you farewell, Redeemed van—”

  “Wait!” Edda draws a deep breath, and then looks up into Rew’s blank eyes with pleading intensity. “At least tell me how I can resist the pain, yeah? I don’t think anybody can. At least no human.”

  “That is where your mental discipline comes into play, Redeemed van Dolah. And the second truth of permascape violence.”

  “The second… Yeah, right. The first truth was that stuff about inflicting and resisting pain to kick dream asses, yeah?”

  “Indeed.”

  “I don’t think inflicting pain is the problem. I can use,” she gestures at the white column and with a snap of her fingers the column shatters explosively, and scatters a myriad of marble shards across the forested floor, “willpower.”

  “Indeed. You are powerful in the Third Step. It is the resistance to pain that appears more problematic.”

  Edda presses her lips together. “Understatement of the century.”

  “That is where the second truth of permascape violence may assist you, Redeemed van Dolah. If you do interiorize it.”

  “Really?” Her eyes widen with hope. “Tell me.”

  “It is a simple but deep truth. There is no physical pain in dreams, only mental. Pain in dreams is but a mirage of the mind. With enough discipline your mind can instinctively feel the difference and thus react differently. So can you avoid the natural stress that physical trauma entices.”

  Edda stares to the distance and says nothing for a while.

  A mirage of the mind.

  Edda keeps gnawing on the concept, letting it seep slowly into herself, feeding on it. Pain is fake. Pain is your mind fooling yourself. “All right,” she finally says. “What can I do to get more discipline?”

  “There is only one way, Redeemed van Dolah: practice.”

  Practice. Ximena can feel gooseflesh crawling all over Edda’s skin. Memories of excruciating pain flash with sharp intensity across her mind, triggering a primitive instinct to flee. But, of course, if pain is a mock mental construct—a mirage of the mind—then the terror that is now taking hold of her is an irrational construct, a relic of the most primitive layers of her brain, an enemy to subjugate. Her rational mind recognizes its seductive delusion. The apparent safety of her mundane life is another mirage. If she gives in to her animal fears, her father will be soon gone forever, and that is the simple truth: that there is no true safety without power.

  Edda shuts her eyes and presses her lips. “What are we waiting for?” she finally says, head sunk, and stretches both arms to the side.

  “Do attack, Redeemed van Dolah.”

  Edda is following Rew through the forest, running as if hunting a rabbit, jumping over bushes and rotten leaves. Rew keeps her distance floating a few yards in front of her, staring directly at Edda and yet sweeping backwards between trees without apparent exertion.

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” she asks between pants, her eyes fixed on Rew’s slim body.

  “You are no threat to me. Do attack to the best of your abilities.”

  Edda raises a hand towards Rew, and a revolver materializes in place, aimed straight to Rew’s head, ready to be triggered. She shoots.

  Before reaching its target, the bullet dissolves in the air as if it were made of salt.

  “Pure sin!” Edda stops and falls to her knees.

  Rew floats slowly towards her. “The canceling of wills,” she says, and points an appendage at a nearby rock. “Do raise that stone in the air, Redeemed van Dolah.”

  Edda stands. She looks tired. She is tired, Ximena feels; mentally exhausted. E
dda gives the rock a casual look and points a finger at it.

  Nothing happens.

  “Pure sin! Not even the simplest dream magic works now. What’s going on?!”

  “I am going on,” Rew says, and makes an awkward gesture at the rock. “You want that rock to raise. I want it not to. Thus, my will cancels yours.”

  “Right, so you are stronger than me, and what you want, happens, yeah?”

  “Wrong, Redeemed van Dolah. That is neither the point, nor the nature of the canceling of wills. Willpower is not analogous to physical power in the wake, where strong overcomes weak. In the dreamscape weak voids strong.”

  “What?” Edda frowns at the mare in confusion.

  “A demonstration might be more effective to convey the meaning. Do use your will to keep that rock perfectly still. Do not allow it to be tampered with.”

  Edda shrugs. “Sure,” she says, and stares at the rock with focused attention.

  “Behold, I am raising the rock now.”

  “But it’s not moving…” Ximena feels Edda’s confusion. She doesn’t even feel a tug of resistance to her desire to keep the rock in place.

  “Your will is weaker than mine, Redeemed van Dolah, and yet it cancels my desire. You are not resisting my moving the rock; that would be the logic of the wake, but in the dreamscape what you are doing is removing the effect of my will altogether from the dream’s natural narrative.”

  “I cancel you…”

  “Indeed.”

  “But you are stronger than me.”

  “Once again you are falling into the trap of reasoning as if this were the wake. You are dreaming, Redeemed van Dolah, and here your will voids mine, and mine yours.”

  “Whoa,” her lips curve into a sidelong smile, “so the weak can stop the strong, yeah?”

  “Indeed. And the strong, the weak.”

  Edda gives Rew an inquisitive look. “Is that what happened with my bullet?”

  “Indeed. As your projectile approached my location, where my will dominates the dreamscape, it was voided.”