Dreamworms Book 1: The Advent of Dreamtech

by Isaac Petrov

  “Romulus!” he says, as the German shepherd leaps in, puts his front paws on his belly and begins to whine. “What are you doing here, boy? Ugh.” He rolls his eyes with exasperation and sighs. “Theo left the gate open again, didn’t he, boy?” He scratches the brown fur behind the pointy ears, and closes the door.

  The dog taps on the door, asking to be let out.

  “Sit there and stay quiet, you,” he says sternly, pointing to the corner of the room. “You should’ve stayed home, boy. It’s gonna be a long, boring night.”

  A sudden, insistent pounding on the door makes Elder Aaij startle.

  “Martijn, open!” The call comes muffled through the door.

  Elder Aaij frowns. “Jeroen?” He stands and opens the door. “What—?”

  “It’s the tournament, mensa! Come.” The excited man, also in his mid-twenties, takes Elder Aaij’s sleeve and pulls him out of the Joyousday House and onto the open grass field. “They’re about to begin.”

  The field is full of small tables, more than a dozen, each with two people facing each other, a chess board between them. Electric spotlights make the pieces gleam in the middle of the night. Elder Aaij gapes at the sight of hundreds of people standing in excited silence beside the tables, watching the players open their games.

  “Let’s go watch table one,” Jeroen says, putting his arm around Elder Aaij’s shoulders. “Regina Milling is playing there!”

  “The world champion? In Lunteren?!”

  “It’s the Century Tournament, mensa.” Jeroen smiles widely at his friend and pushes him over to the table where more people stand. “Everybody is here!”

  Elder Aaij shuts his eyes and purses his lips. “Sorry, Jeroen. I’m on duty.” He turns around and begins to walk towards the Joyousday House.

  “What? Are you seriously going to miss this?!”

  Elder Aaij shrugs with resignation. “You make sure to note Milling’s game, all right?”

  “Don’t you dare, mensa. Just lock the goahdamn door! Who’s going to break in with all this going on out here, and the Century Festival down there?” He points down south.

  Elder Aaij turns a sidelong smile towards him. “Say, wanna come home tomorrow to analyze the games together behind a beer?” He enters the building and shuts the door.

  “That was close!” Edda says, frustration drenching her voice. She waves an impatient hand at the chess tournament, and the people, the tables—even the spotlights—all vanish in the quiet of the night, leaving the pristine lawn behind.

  “Perhaps for the best,” Aline says. “I would think getting Elder Aaij out of a building should be easier than haunting the dreams of the chess federation brass to organize a tournament here.”

  “I’m not so sure, sister.”

  “That is some work ethic,” Aline says, staring at the closed door. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

  Edda turns to Rew, standing next to them near the entrance to the Joyousday House. “Why don’t you just, you know,” she wiggles her fingers, “use your persuasion thing on him? That was so close that I’m sure if you increase his enthusiasm, or his boredom, just a tiny bit, it will prove too much even for him to resist.”

  “I shall not solve your conundrums, Redeemed van Dolah. My assistance outside the required Second Wake activities is forbidden. The trial is aimed at gauging your skills at manipulating reality to your advantage, not mine. Do leverage your humanity to the limit, that is all I dare advise.”

  A single knock on the door takes Elder Aaij’s attention off the chess board once more. With a heavy sigh he stands, takes the few steps towards the door and opens it.

  There is nobody there. Except—

  Elder Aaij frowns and leans down to pick up a bowl filled with nut cookies. “Who…?” he mutters, before noticing a small piece of paper with curvy feminine script. Eat me before 2400 or endure a hundred years of bad luck! A set of small exes sign the note, and then two large Ms.

  Elder Aaij smiles, takes a cookie and nibbles. “Mmm!” he says and gobbles it whole before shutting the door.

  “So sexy!” Edda says, and high-fives the laughing Aline. As Edda then turns to high-five Rew, the alien just stares back at her with her usual empty glance. “Don’t leave me hanging, Elder Rew!” The alien slowly raises her arm until her three appendages touch Edda’s palm. “Yes!” Edda says, satisfied. “So there we have it. Finally, a plan that works.”

  “Okay, hold on,” Aline says, and draws a deep breath. “Let me recap, okay? Just to make sure that what we’re simulating here will work hundred percent in real life next Friday.”

  “Sure, recap away, sister. And we can practice all you want. We are playing with fire here, literally,” Edda giggles, “and we don’t want any accidents or last-minute surprises.”

  Aline raises a thumb, “First, we prepare cookies. That is my part.”

  “Elder Rew,” Edda turns her face to the alien, “are you really sure that the cookies that Aline willed into the dream will be identical in taste and texture to those she bakes in real life? Elder Aaij’s got to like them if he’s going to eat them, yeah?”

  “They shall be identical, if woman Speese does indeed possess a deep understanding of the ingredients and the chemistry involved in the transformation. A permascape does emulate the wake with high fidelity in the hands of a master of both the dream and the wake.”

  “Here,” Aline raises her fingers at Edda, and a cookie materializes between them, “try it.”

  Edda does. “Goah’s Mercy!” she says, covering her half-full mouth with a hand. “You’re good, sister.”

  Aline shrugs. “Old family recipe and tradition. We always bake a ton of them, all together on aws Gift’s Eve. Only for the family. They never last long,” she chuckles. “This year we didn’t though.” Her expression darkens. She blinks and looks away.

  Edda puts a hand on her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Aline. On the bright side, I have no doubt in my heart that Elder Aaij will devour the whole lot in the blink of an eye.”

  “Okay, then.” Aline sighs, and raises a thumb and index finger. “Second, we inject the cookies with some sort of sleeping drug. That is your part.”

  “No problem. I’ll get the herbs.”

  “Your dowry sister-to-be, I guess?” Aline squints at Edda.

  “Yeah. I’ll ask her as a personal favor.”

  “And she will just take the herbs from her pharmacy and give them to you, no questions asked?” Aline sounds skeptical.

  “And she will prepare the infusion too, no worries, girl. That’s what family is for. I will of course say it’s for me, to fight insomnia; caused by er… inner demons or what not. I’ll make up something plausible. I’ll ask for enough to last several weeks, and then we inject the whole of it in your cookies.” She claps loudly. “Done!”

  “Hmm, I don’t want to bet the entire plan on the moods of your future dowry sister. I don’t know her. What if she refuses to help? Or she asks too many questions? Or tells your father or brother and they take the herbs away from you? So many things can go wrong.”

  “Oh, come on. You leave that to me, okay?”

  “Hmm, I don’t know. What about if we go to Elder Zeger’s dream next—”

  “Woman Zeger,” Edda corrects.

  “—and simulate you asking for the herbs. I want to see her true reaction.”

  “Sure.” Edda smiles and shrugs. “Good call. Should we go now? Elder Rew,” she turns to the alien, standing next to them in her usual stoic silence, “could you—?”

  “Wait, we are not done yet here.” Aline raises three fingers in the air. “Third, we drag Elder Aaij’s sleeping body out to the fields—at least fifty yards away to be safe.”

  “Yeah, of course. Let’s go to Isabella’s then and—”

  “Wait, have you seen the size of Elder Aaij? I’m not sure we can drag him out on our own.”

  “Come on, between both of us we can. Let’s try.” Edda waves a hand and a dream copy o
f Elder Aaij materializes on the grass-covered ground, seemingly unconscious. “You take that arm and I take, er, from here.”

  Ximena—and many of the students in the auditorium—laugh at their pathetic attempts. No matter how hard they pull—or push, they try everything—the body barely budges.

  “Pure sin!” Edda says between her teeth as she drops the massive arm of Elder Aaij’s body in defeat. She meets Aline’s gaze. “If we can’t move him, we have to think of another plan where he moves by himself. But what, Goah’s Mercy? No matter what we throw at him, he refuses to leave his post. We are back to square one, sister.”

  “No, we stick to the sleeping plan,” Aline says, still panting from the effort. She turns a studious gaze at the guard’s simulated body. “In essence, it’s an engineering problem like any other. We just need to find the right tool for the job. Hmm…” Her half-open lips curve slowly into a smile. “I know what,” she says with a giggle. “We call the cavalry!”

  Pieter gives Elder Aaij’s simulated body a glance and says, “I thought I was disqualified from participating in the trial?”

  “You are not a candidate, Elder Ledeboer,” Rew says. “You are a tool.”

  “Hey!” Pieter scowls at the alien.

  “Not any tool,” Aline hurries to say. She embraces his muscular arm. “My tool.”

  “Double hey!” Pieter redirects his scowl at Aline.

  Aline embraces him and puts her cheek on his broad chest. “You know how much I love my tools, don’t you, pretty boy?”

  Pieter’s expression softens, and a sidelong smile distends his lips. “Actually, I’m happy Elder Rew came for me. I was having a nightmare, anyway.” He squats down on his knees and pushes Elder Aaij face up. Then he stands, places both his feet firmly behind the guard’s head, and takes both his arms by the wrists. “Why am I doing this again?”

  Edda clears her throat. “Uh, well, the thing is—”

  “Just pull, Piet,” Aline says. “We’ll explain later.”

  Pieter flexes his legs, stretches his back and begins to pull vigorously, stepping slowly back. Elder Aaij’s body jerks along, a few inches at a time.

  “Where do you want this?” Pieter asks, effort in his voice, as inches turn into yards.

  Edda and Pieter lean forward to stare at Aline as she expertly glides the thin, blue flame of the blowtorch over the exposed circuits of the device. Rew is standing in the corner of the cabin, separated from the rest, observing in silence.

  The cabin looks like a technical maintenance room of sorts to Ximena. Electricity—or rather, the attempt to control it with technological means—is the obvious theme of the place. Thick, plastic-coated cables run into the room from a hole in the roof and join a large metallic body covered with translucent disc-shaped protuberances. Smaller cables run amok over racks attached to the ceiling, only to disappear inside a set of large lockers that stand against a wall.

  Aline shuts the device’s metallic box, connects a cable and turns a protruding knob all the way to the right. “Okay.” She sighs, visibly satisfied, and turns towards Edda and Pieter. “I just hacked the generator to discharge all the batteries’ juice at once for the few seconds we need. That should make it work now. Ready?”

  “Sure,” Edda says, and walks towards a connected device on a stool nearby, small and rectangular, covered in dials and knobs. “Say the word.”

  Aline flicks a switch on the device she was working on, which begins to emit a faint but constant hum. “Do it.”

  Edda pushes a mechanical button repeatedly. “Yeah, I see a needle jumping on the large dial now,” she says, as she keeps clicking the button. “It jumps up every time I—”

  “Yes!” Aline claps, takes Pieter’s face in her hands and plants a kiss on his lips. “It’s working!”

  “Oookay.” Edda turns around, face as confounded as Pieter’s. “If you say so.”

  “Of course I’m assuming that all this,” Aline gestures with a hand across the room, “dream machinery works exactly as their real-world counterparts.”

  “It better!” Edda says. “This contraption of yours is crucial, sister. It’s the most important part of the plan. The fire in the Joyousday House will be for nothing if your machine doesn’t go off at precisely midnight.”

  “I know,” Aline sighs. “But it’s looking good, sister. So far everything—the tools, the machines, even the physics—appears to work exactly like they would in my real-world workshop.”

  “A permascape does indeed provide a high-fidelity simulation of the wake,” Rew says from her corner, “as long as the Walker masters all involved mechanics, and there are no conflicting wills to disrupt their natural functioning. Woman Speese does seem to display a deep understanding of the concerned technologies.”

  “I sure as Dem do,” Aline gives Edda and Pieter a reassuring smile. “It will work.”

  “Where is this place?” Pieter asks, looking at the shut door. “In the real world, I mean?”

  “Ah,” Aline says, extending her arms, “welcome to electric maintenance cabin four, at the south end of Colony Street. It’s the perfect place: plenty of discretion and energy, and close to the colonial repeater. Nobody ever comes here unless a big storm breaks something. So a couple of days after the Century Festival I’ll just come here on my shift, clean everything up, and nobody will ever know what hit them.”

  Pieter looks around at the mesh of electric devices merged in a confusion of cables. “And how in Goah’s Name are you going to get all this stuff in the real world, love? It looks very expensive.”

  “Yes,” Aline sighs, and nods slowly. “That’s a problem. Edda, I need all your savings.”

  “You got them.”

  “Good, but that is far from enough. I have some extra savings myself since Gotthard Kraker began his own project for the Trial.”

  “What is he doing?” Edda asks. Ximena feels the intensity of her curiosity, but she is not worried by the competition. Edda knows that, unless something goes horribly wrong, the trial is theirs for the taking.

  “I don’t know,” Aline replies, “but it involves lots of expensive electrical equipment as well, which I’m helping him procure,” she smiles wickedly, “for a hefty fee.”

  “That’s my girl,” Pieter says. “Squeeze that asshole dry!”

  “So we have enough karma for all our expenses, yeah?” Edda asks.

  “Yes, I guess… If I borrow some pieces from the Siever’s construction site, hmm, and tools, and cables too. But,” she frowns lightly, “the problem is time.”

  “Time?” Edda exchanges a puzzled look with Pieter. “We still have a week until the thirty-first.”

  “Hmm.” Aline rubs her neck. “My providers of choice for this sort of thing are the Jansens. Very professional. And discreet. They have a warehouse in Oosterbeek, close to the harbor, in an alley off the Pietersberg Way.”

  “Sounds good,” Edda says. “Especially the discreet part.”

  “Their usual delivery time, door to door, is seven days.”

  “Seven…?! Pure Sin! That is cutting it way too short. Especially with the extra pressure on regional logistics that can be expected this year. Can’t you get the stuff from somebody else?”

  “Not discreetly.”

  Edda laughs bitterly. “I hate to risk it all on a courier’s time plan.”

  “I’ll take you,” Pieter says, eyes on Aline. “On my boat. We’ll be back in two days, three max with bad sea. But you’ll have to cover my costs for losing those days of catch.”

  “That is a sweet, sweet offer,” Edda says. “Thanks, Piet!”

  Aline takes his face between her hands, kisses him and then gently takes a nip on his lower lip. “You’ll be handsomely compensated.”

  “Please, my dear professor,” Censor Smith says, standing up. “I think I speak for all our students when I say that I am ready to skip the rest of these preparatory activities and move on to the Century Festival.”

  Oh, yes, Ximena thinks, an
d joins the spontaneous burst of applause that fills the auditorium. Even Mark whistles next to her with loud enthusiasm.

  While Censor Smith sits with a pleased expression on his face, Professor Miyagi laughs on stage and raises both hands at his audience. “I hear you, people, I hear you. Fine, fine. Context is clear enough, I think. So, Ank, 31st of December, please?”

  Twenty-Six

  The Lost Colony

  A scene comes to life across the amphitheater: a bird’s eye view over the colony of Lunteren on a bright winter afternoon. Smoke rises from hundreds of chimneys, the scent of burning firewood intertwines in the fresh air. The sun hangs low over the sea, spreading long shadows over the landscape.

  Ximena wets her lips, trying to rein in her anticipation. It is only hours to the new century.

  Like a bird that has spotted a shiny object, the scene begins to glide down, ever closer to the buildings standing on the south-western edge of the colony. Not far away an extensive array of solar panels follows the sinking sun with obsessive eagerness, next to other structures like wind turbines and what looks like huge silos. Crop fields, barren now in the winter, extend far beyond.

  The scene approaches an imposing building right on the edge of the colony: an old Christian church, solid and still proud. The structure—even the tower that rises at the end of the rectangular main body—is aesthetically elegant, walls of red brick under a black slate roof.

  The scene lands smoothly on the open space south of the church, its bricks bright red in the sun. A large, yellow side door is the only visible entrance.

  Ximena turns her head to a sudden, high-pitched whiz, in time to see a cycling figure turning a corner at considerable speed. She immediately recognizes Gotthard as he skillfully dismounts the bicycle before it is fully at rest, and parks it among others near the entrance. The sturdy—and yet elegant—bicycle carries a large heavy-looking block attached to the frame, possibly an electric battery; a crude one, judging by the size. The other bicycles in the rack look primitive and worn-down in comparison.