Dreamworms Book 1: The Advent of Dreamtech

by Isaac Petrov

  “I do—” Edda begins to speak, but Willem’s expression stops her. Tears of frustration begin to well in her eyes.

  “Marjo, please forget all this. It’s not worth it.” Willem takes her hands. “Tonight is the most important moment of your career.” He forces a smile. “You alone brought the New-Year’s Festival—no, the Century Festival—here to Lunteren. All Germania will listen to your words. It is your moment!”

  Marjolein’s expression softens. “Will, you cannot begin to imagine how many favors I had to call to get us selected. But I didn’t do it for me,” she says louder, looking around, meeting the glances of the staring crowd with her practiced, professional smile. “I did it for all of us. This honor doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to Lunteren!” Some bystanders clap spontaneously, but soon the frenzy of the celebration takes over, and the crowd dissolves into smaller groups, mixing, dispersing.

  “Don’t worry, Will,” Marjolein caresses his cheek, “immature words don’t offend Goah.”

  The Forum is now considerably more crowded, which would have seemed impossible to Ximena a moment ago. The music thumps louder, the mood more expectant; even the colors feel more vibrant. Midnight is close, Ximena thinks, and begins to tap on the bench with impatience.

  Edda gives the ticking, mechanical hand-clock an anxious glance. “Shit, it’s almost eleven,” she mutters, and puts the clock back into a discreet pocket as she turns to her family. “Sorry, I need to do something.”

  Before Willem and Bram have time to react, she slips through the crowd, and the auditorium scene begins to follow her frantic trot westwards, towards the entry streets into the Forum.

  But the progress is slow as she pushes against the current of people still flowing en-masse into the Forum. They are strangers, many of them—in Lunteren just for this one night. And those occasional greetings of the few known faces she crosses, she simply ignores.

  With a final gasp, she turns into a narrow, quiet alley off the busy street.

  “Goah’s Mercy, about time!” Aline says, looking relieved and anxious at the same time. “I thought you’d changed your mind.”

  “Sorry, it took me forever to… Wow! You look… yummy!” Aline is wearing a long, pale-blue tunic, open on her legs, that shapes her body suggestively. Her long black hair, expertly curled, frames her rosy, beautiful face. “Don’t let Piet see you, if you want to keep your tunic on.” She laughs.

  Aline blushes. “Thanks, you look stunning too, but no time for that.” She is holding a clock in her own hands. “Less than a minute to eleven, sister!” She takes a heavy-looking radio receiver out of a cloth bag on her feet and places it on the ground. “Prepare to synchronize.”

  Edda retrieves her own clock from her pocket and takes it in her hands.

  “Wind it up,” Aline says, turning the receiver on. Both listen intently to the radio broadcast while Edda turns a knob on the top of her clock.

  “… heavy rain is not stopping the brave Tczew colonists from joining in droves their Imperator by the imperial palace, Goah praise their devotion. Imperator Castimer Cisek is waving at the faithful. The coordination ritual will begin any second now. Switching over to his microphone…”

  “Aws Blessings to you, Hansa.” A strong, masculine voice soars over the background noise. The roar of an enthusiastic gathering replies. “It is my duty, it is my privilege, once more, to fulfill the ancestral tradition of the annual coordination!”

  The crowd cheers again.

  “Goah, guide my words as I mark the twenty-third hour of the last Day of Light. Let the same exact time rule inside the borders of the Hanseatic Imperium, from the Atlantic to the Urals. Ready for countdown!”

  The crowd noise dies down, slowly replaced by an expectant murmur.

  “TEN—NINE—EIGHT—” The crowd joins the count, loud and cheerful, as it progresses down. Edda and Aline listen in silence, fully still, each tightly holding their clock in their hands, their right thumbs ready on top of a protruding knob. “—TWO—ONE—NOW!”

  Edda and Aline both press their thumbs at once, as the crowd roars.

  Aline turns off the radio device, removes a bundle wrapped in a checked cloth from her bag and hands it to Edda. A delicious warm smell makes Ximena’s mouth water. “Nut cookies ala Speese, freshly out of the oven. The note is also in there.”

  “Goah, the smell is… irresistible!”

  Aline laughs. “That’s the intention. Piet should be there already, waiting for you.”

  “Okay.” Edda draws a deep breath and smiles silently at Aline.

  “This is it, Edda. The point of no return.” Aline’s voice is calm, her expression serious. “We can still turn around, return to the Festival, and nobody will be the wiser.”

  Ximena feels Edda’s hesitation as the significance of the moment begins to truly sink in. Because it is true, this really is the point of no return. After tonight, lives will be altered forever, beginning with their own. But they can still return to their normal lives and never look back to these crazy rebellious days of youth. They can still live placid, safe lives under the Gift of Goah. Short lives, though. And lonely—Edda thinks of her father with sudden grief. Powerless lives.

  “We are so doing this, sister,” Edda says, a sparkle in her eyes. “This is really happening!”

  Aline nods curtly and gives Edda a bright smile.

  “Let’s be quick about it, yeah?” Edda says. “We need to be back in the Forum long before midnight to avoid suspicion.”

  They high-five each other and walk away in opposite directions.

  Twenty-Eight

  Happy New Century!

  Professor Miyagi paces the stage of the auditorium, hands clasped behind his back. Ximena awaits with increasing impatience, her eyes staring with anticipation at the frozen scene, where the two teenage girls walk away from each other in a semi-lit alley.

  “As historians,” Miyagi says, “we all know how the conquest of the Americas by the European powers played out, don’t we?”

  Some sidetracking, Professor! Ximena thinks, and gives Mark a baffled frown. He shrugs in silence.

  “But I’m sure,” Miyagi continues, “that few of you are familiar with the story of Pizarro and Atahualpa in Cajamarca.”

  Ximena chuckles loudly.

  “What?” Mark whispers in her ear.

  “So funny!” she says, meeting his oh-so-blue eyes. “I watched a sensorial about it just before the seminar! The professor himself—”

  Miyagi’s words interrupt Ximena’s explanation. “You are probably asking yourself what the sixteenth century Incan Empire has to do with the twenty-fourth century Hanseatic Imperium.” He spreads his arms for effect. “You all know the old Twain adage, ‘history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.’ Well, Cajamarca and Lunteren are an excellent example. Anybody know what happened in 1532?”

  “Here, Professor!” Mark shouts, raising Ximena’s arm in the air with frantic enthusiasm.

  “Ximena, great!” Miyagi’s smile widens. “I’d love to hear your take. Can you summarize Cajamarca?”

  Ximena stands, trying—and failing—to rein in her blushing. “Er, Pizarro and his men were outnumbered forty to one. But they managed to capture Atahualpa after massacring his court.”

  “Yes, in a nutshell,” Miyagi says. “They shattered the Incan Empire with a single blow. How did they pull it off?”

  “Well, uh, I would say a combination of factors.” Ximena shifts her weight from one foot to another. “First, hmm, Pizarro and his men were desperate, out of options: they could not engage Atahualpa’s army directly, but they could not flee either. Second, Atahualpa’s arrogance. He was too sure of his power—his divinity—to even conceive a betrayal, let alone a defeat. And third, technology. Pizarro had horses, gunpowder, cannons, tactics…”

  “Desperation, arrogance and technology.” Miyagi smiles at Ximena. “Very well put. Thank you, Ximena.”

  He paces the stage, hands behind his back, as if lost in tho
ught. Always the showman. “Desperation, arrogance and technology,” he repeats, nodding slowly, and then raises his head at the floating Edda and Aline. “Ring a bell, anybody?”

  Cody stands up with a raised hand. “You are surely referring to Edda’s desperation to save her father, Mathus’ corrupted arrogance, and of course, dreamtech. You are implying, Professor, that Edda’s usage of dreamtech against the Hanseatic Imperium was analogous to the usage of gunpowder-age weaponry by European powers when they civilized the Americas.”

  “Civilized?!” Sky stands not far below Ximena and folds her arms. “For fuck’s sake, they killed fifty-five million people—ninety fucking percent of the population!—and wiped out a culture extending back thousands of years. And then, to fill the gap, they fucking imported millions of slaves from Africa! You call that civilized?!”

  What in Goah’s Name is she talking about?! Ximena gives Mark a frowned glance, but he doesn’t seem at odds with Sky’s nonsense. Even Miyagi, down there on stage, is watching Sky with professional attentiveness. Why doesn’t he intervene? Is he being polite?

  “I fear you are mistaken, my esteemed fellow Sky,” Yes, Cody. Put her in her place! “There was no culture in the Americas. Not in the civilized sense of the word. There were of course loose tribes of barbarians, fewer than a million in number, but certainly no civilization. I suggest you double-check your facts.”

  “I can’t believe this!” Sky throws her hands up in the air, eyes locked on Cody. “What a fucking—!”

  “That’s enough, Sky!” Miyagi hastily interrupts. Right on time, because judging by Censor Smith’s stern expression, he seemed about to intervene. “Sit, please,” Miyagi says. “Everybody, chill!”

  It takes him a considerable amount of patience and soothing gestures until the indignant chatter that has gripped the auditorium finally wanes to a murmur.

  “Thank you. Fascinating discussion, but outside the boundaries of this seminar. Please, get your focus back on our two ladies, all right?” He gestures at Edda and Aline, frozen in midair. “Look at them, people. So innocent. So hungry to change the world. That hunger that is the eternal curse of youth. And its prerogative. As many youngsters before and after them, Edda and Aline are challenging the status quo. A classic, right? You push, and the establishment snaps you back in place, your young and tender feelings be damned. That’s the way of the world. That’s how it’s always been. Except,” he turns around theatrically, looking at the GIA section of the auditorium, “crucially,” he turns to face the Lundev section, “this time it will work!”

  He takes a few more steps in silence. Ximena shifts in place with increasing impatience as she follows the professor’s stroll on stage.

  “Oh! Their plans will shatter, of course,” he says. “The outcome will be far different from what anybody could have reasonably expected. That’s the way of history, after all. Capricious. Never playing along. Chaotic. So much so that it’s always a challenge for us historians to pinpoint all the factors that lead to world-shattering changes. Take the French Revolution, for example. Why did it happen? Class oppression? The new ideas of the enlightenment? Poor harvests? Which events made it unavoidable? How would history have unfolded if lesser talents than Napoleon had been put in control of a country surrounded by a sea of hate and hostility? With the Lunteren of the Reformation, we historians fight with equal passion about cause and effect. But it is this one night in Lunteren,” he raises his finger at the scene, “when all of us, without exception, finally agree that the Leap-Day Reformation is truly underway—blatant, vicious, unstoppable. Let’s watch.”

  The scene switches back to the Forum, where Willem and Bram are engaging in casual conversation with neighboring families, while Edda keeps mostly to herself, only giving a polite nod to the occasional greeting.

  But she is burning inside. Ximena can feel it in her guts. She is constantly mustering her Walker discipline to rein in her emotions, deep breath after deep breath, diluting the tension into raw awareness—focusing on the now.

  The crowd of colorful colonists surrounds them all the way to the edge of the Forum, and to the streets beyond. The music hammers loud and stimulating. People dance, clap, laugh, and shout words of celebration into each other’s ears.

  Mark points a finger at the central stage on the Eye’s terrace, attracting Ximena’s attention. An attractive man is walking forward to one of the standing microphones.

  “Aaand… we are back!” the man says, his perfect teeth sparkling under the spotlights. “This is your Master of Ceremonies, Alwin Geissberger, transmitting live from Lunteren, in the beautiful Geldershire of the Dutch Province.” His expertly smooth voice—multiplied by loudspeakers scattered around the Forum and neighboring streets—electrifies the crowd to even higher tiers of frenzy. He wears a tunic of flamboyant design with metallic undertones and splashes of screaming colors, and a hat that looks like a fountain of red, yellow and green jelly.

  “That was Consul Levinsohn live from Fulda. We thank you, Consul, for your inspiring blessings. In this corner of the country we are surely inspired, aren’t we, mensas?!”

  The crowd roars across the Forum. Across the colony. Ximena exchanges a nervous glance with Mark. She feels like she is really there, next to the Van Dolahs in the crowd, about to witness history first hand.

  “I wish you were here, Germania. Oh, I wish you could see this. The wonderful people of Geldershire are having a very good time indeed! Make some noise, Geldershire!”

  The crowd goes mad, as Alwin’s laughter bursts over the loudspeakers.

  A technician approaches and hands him a mechanical clock. He takes it in his hands, and his smile brightens.

  “The time has come, mensas. I’m afraid the twenty-fifth century refuses to wait any longer. Three minutes to midnight!”

  The crowd cheers. Thousands of beaming eyes stare at the colorful man. Edda’s—and Ximena’s—breathing quickens. Edda quickly reins hers in, her training kicking in. Ximena can’t.

  “Colonists of Lunteren,” he puts a hand around an ear, as if to hear better, “call your Quaestor, if you please!”

  The Forum goes mental, clapping, cheering the name.

  Marjolein! Marjolein! Marjolein!

  The rhythmic call bounces off the far-off buildings and reverberates across the Forum, hypnotically, entrancing.

  The calls turn into screams of delight and awe as Quaestor Marjolein Mathus enters the stage, radiant, sure of herself. She takes her place beside Alwin in front of a second standing microphone.

  “Aaand… here she is, Germania! The one and only Quaestor of Lunteren, Marjolein Mathus. I wish you could see her. Whoa, resplendent! Lunteren is flooded with Goah’s Blessings, if you know what I mean.”

  The crowd laughs and cheers. Edda and Bram glance at their father. Willem is blushing.

  “Germania,” Alwin continues, “it is my honor to receive the new year—the new century!—by the side of Quaestor Marjolein Mathus of Lunteren. Her impeccable organization has made this magical night possible. Aws Head is blessed to have such talent in aws ranks. Get used to that name, mensas. Goah is smiling upon aws Servant. Marjolein, please.” He reaches out to adjust the microphone in front of her down a notch, and then flips a switch.

  “Thank you, Alwin.” Her voice echoes across the Forum, warm and practiced. “Aws Blessings to you, Germania!”

  The crowd goes crazy once more, cheering and chanting her name, drowning the Forum in a tsunami of pride, fanatical reverence, and adoration of their Quaestor.

  Alwin leans slightly to show Marjolein the clock that he is holding in his hands.

  “Ninety seconds to midnight!” Marjolein says. Her voice, vibrant and clean, echoes across the colony-wide loudspeaker system. “People of Germania, the time has come to bid goodbye to the twenty-fourth century with one last prayer of thanks. Please join me, as we are truly blessed.”

  The enthusiastic chaos of the Forum turns slowly into a background murmur of devotion as many heads
bend down in reverence.

  “God Of All Humans!” Marjolein calls. “Your children cherish you. Your children love you. We rejoice in your Blessings. We thrive in your care. Oh God Of All Humans, we thank you for our lives, for aws Gift, for aws Compacts, for aws Head, for Pontifex Fahey in Townsend, for Imperator Cisek in Tczew, for Consul Levinsohn in Fulda. Thank you, oh God Of All Humans. And bless our missionaries in the twenty-fifth century, to spread aws Gift and aws Imperia into every last barbaric corner of the world. Praise Goah!”

  “Praise Goah!” the crowd shouts as one.

  Marjolein is beaming, her smile practiced, her eyes focused. “Germania, join me in the century countdown!”

  A mix of screaming and hushing engulfs the crowd as the last seconds of the century tick along. The thousands of heads that fill the Forum to the brim sway like waves on a troubled sea, swept by the invisible hurricanes of exhilaration.

  Ximena leans forward, eyes wide in anticipation. The century countdown! She knows what is going to happen, and she still feels tense. Even nervous. Mark mutters something beside her, but she is too absorbed to pay attention.

  Alwin pulls the clock closer to Marjolein as the thinnest, longest hand races unrelenting to the top. He expertly raises his left hand with his five fingers extended.

  “Ten on my mark!” Marjolein shouts. Even her professionally tempered voice seems to quiver now with the weight of the moment, like she could sense deep inside her that her life is about to change forever.

  Alwin drops his thumb. Then his index. The middle finger. The ring finger, and as he prepares to close his hand in a fist, a sudden electrical squeak pierces through the loudspeakers, loud and sharp.

  The crowd mumbles words of confusion and pain—many colonists cover their ears.

  “TEN. Aws Head lies to you!” A distorted female voice thunders out of the loudspeakers, unrecognizable, proud; commanding.

  “NINE. Dem is a lie!”