As role models for his new lifestyle, Cedric had the other inhabitants of his flophouse. He had expected his fellow sleepers to be vicious father-rapers or congenitally brain-damaged droolers or polycaine addicts. But to Cedric’s surprise, his fellow sleepers represented a wide range of intelligence and character, as extensive a spectrum of personalities as could be found anywhere else. In the short and desultory conversations Cedric allowed himself with them, he learned that some were deliberate holdouts against the a-som culture, while some were ex-members of the majority, like Cedric himself, professionals who had somehow lost their hold on the a-som pinnacle.
And then you had Doug Clearmountain.
Doug was the happiest person Cedric had ever met. Short, rugged, bald-crowned but with a fringe of long hair, Doug resembled a time-battered troll of indeterminate years.
The first time Doug made contact with Cedric, in the grotto-like lobby of the flophouse, the older man introduced himself by saying, “Hey there, chum, I’m Morpheus. You want the red pill or the blue?”
“Huh?”
“Not a film buff, I see. Doug Clearmountain. And you are?”
“Cedric Swann.”
“Cedric, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Let’s grab a coffee.”
“Uh, sure.”
Over coffee Cedric learned that, before settling in San Francisco, Doug had been an elder of a religious community that featured, among other tenets of its creed, the renunciation of a-som drugs. The community—a syncretic mix of Sufism, Theravada Buddhism and TM—had struggled in the wilds of Oregon for approximately fifteen years before bleeding away all its members to the siren call of 24/7 wakefulness. Doug had been the last adherent to remain. Then one day, when he finally admitted no one was coming back, he just walked away from the empty community.
“Decided it was time to do a little preaching amidst the unconverted.”
Cedric took a swig of coffee, desperate to wake up, to dispel the funk engendered by his nightly bad dreams. “Uh, yeah, how’s that working for you? You convinced many people to nod out?”
Undaunted by Cedric’s evident disinterest, Doug radiated a serene confidence. “Not at all. Haven’t made one convert yet. But I’ve found something even more important to keep me busy.”
The coffee was giving Cedric a headache. A tic was tugging at the corner of his right eye. He had no patience for any messianic guff from this loony. “Sure, right, I bet you’re really busy working to engineer a rebellion that nobody in their right mind wants. Down with the timebrokers, right?”
“Hardly, Cedric, hardly. I’m actually doing essential work helping to prop our incessant society up. It can’t survive much longer on its own, you know. It’s like a spinning flywheel without a brake. But this is the course that the bulk of our species has chosen, so me and some others are just trying to shepherd them through it. But I can see that you have no interest in hearing about my mission at the moment. You’re too busy adjusting to your new life. We’ll talk more when you’re ready.”
Doug Clearmountain left then, having paid for both their coffees.
At least the nut wasn’t a cheapskate.
For the most part, Cedric resisted the impulse to reconnect with his old life, the glamorous satisfying round of timebrokering, gambling and leisure pursuits. He spent his time giving mandatory Palimpsest interviews to his freethinker probation officer (whose federally approved facial was that of a sweater-wearing kiddie-show host who had retired before Cedric was born). He roamed the hilly streets of the city, seeking to exhaust his body and hopefully gain a solid night’s sleep. (Useless. The nightmares persisted.) He watched sports. He tried to calculate how long it would be before all his debts were paid off with the court-mandated pittance being deducted from his welfare stipend. (Approximately eleven hundred years.)
Once he tried to get in touch with Caresse. She couldn’t talk because she was in the middle of a massage, but she promised to call back.
She actually did.
But Cedric was asleep.
He took that as a sign not to try again.
Six months passed, and Cedric resembled a haunted, scarecrow model of his old self.
That’s when Doug Clearmountain approached him again, jovial and optimistic as ever.
“Congratulations on the fine job you’re doing, Cedric.”
Cedric had taken to hanging out at Fisherman’s Wharf, cadging spare change from the tourists via Palimpsest transactions. He was surprised to see Doug here when he raised his dirty bearded face up from contemplating the ground.
“Go fuck yourself.”
Doug remained unfazed. “I’m not being sarcastic, son. I was just congratulating you on half a year as a sleeper. Do you realize how much of our planet’s finite resources you’ve saved?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re using a third less energy, a third less food than your erstwhile compatriots. I’m sure Gaia appreciates your sacrifice. When the a-som society came fully online globally, it was like adding another America to the planetary eco-burden. Ouch! Despite all the fancy new inventions, our planet is heading toward catastrophe faster than ever. All we’re doing lately is staving off the inevitable.”
“Big whoop. So I’m a tiny positive line-item in the carbon budget.”
“Well, yes, your sacrifice is negligible, regarded in that light. But there’s another way you can be of more help. And that’s by dreaming.”
Cedric shuddered. “Dreams! Don’t say that word to me. I haven’t had a pleasant dream since I went cold turkey.”
Doug’s perpetual grin gave way to a look of sober concern. “I know that, Cedric. That’s because you’re not doing it right. You’re trying to go it alone. Would you like some help with your dreams?”
“What’ve you got? A-som? How much?”
“No, not a-som. Something better. Why not come with me and see for yourself?”
What did Cedric have to lose? He let Doug lead him away.
The authorities had marked the small waterfront building for eventual demolition, as they continually enhanced the system of dikes protecting the city’s shoreline from rising sea levels. For now, though, the structure was still high and dry. Doug pried back a suspiciously hinged panel of plywood covering a doorframe and conducted Cedric inside.
The place smelled like chocolate. Perhaps the Ghiaradelli company had once stored product here. But now the the large open twilit room was full of sleepers. Arrayed on obsolete military cots, two dozen men and women, covered by blankets, snored peacefully while wired cranially to a central machine the size of a dorm fridge.
“What—what the hell is this? What’s going on?”
“This is a little project I and my friends like to call ‘Manhole 69.’ Ring any bells? No? Ah, a shame, the lack of classical education you youngsters receive. Well, no matter. The apparatus you see is a REM-sleep modulator. Invented shortly before the introduction of a-som tech, and then abandoned. Ironically unusable by the very people who needed it the most. Basically, this device provides guided dream experiences within broad parameters. The individual’s creativity is shaped into desired forms. Non-surgical neuronal magnetic induction, and all that. Everyone you see here, Cedric, is dreaming of a better world. Here, take a look.”
Doug borrowed Cedric’s Palimpest and called up a control channel to the dream machine. A host of windows filled the flatscreen. Cedric witnessed pastoral landscapes populated by shining godlings, super-science metropoli, alien worlds receiving human visitors, and other fanciful scenes.
“Are you totally demented, man? So you can give people pretty dreams. So what? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a few hours under your brain probe, just to get some relief. But as far as helping the world become a better place, you’re only kidding yourself.”
“Oh, really? Would you care to discuss this over some coffee?”
“Coffee? What’re you talking about?”
Doug didn’t answer. He was too busy sending instructions to the dr
eam machine. All the flatscreen windows formerly revealing the variegated dreams of the sleepers changed at once to the same realtime image: the interior of the very building Cedric and Doug stood in, captured by Palimpsest cam. But the screen-views held a difference from reality: a steaming paper cup stood atop the dream machine cabinet.
“This should only take a second or two.”
“What should take—”
Cedric smelled the coffee before he saw it. There it rested, just where the dreamers had envisioned it.
Cedric walked in a daze to the cabinet, picked the coffee up. The cup and its contents warmed his fingers.
Doug’s manner altered to the serious affect of an expert in his field with something to sell.
“Two dozen people programmed to dream the same thing can instantiate objects massing up to ten ounces. I expect that the phenomenon scales up predictably. Something to do with altering probabilities and shifting our quantum selves onto alternate timelines, rather than producing matter ex nihilo. Or so certain sleeper scientists among us theorize. But we’re not interested in such parlor tricks. Instead, we want to shallowly engrave a variety of desirable futures into our local brane, thereby increasing the likelihood that one of them will become real. We’re shifting the rails that society is following. And as Thoreau once ironically observed, rails rest on sleepers. There are places like this around the globe, Cedric. And the more sleepers we enlist, the greater our chances of success. Are you onboard, son?”
Cedric regarded Doug dubiously. Had the manifestation of the coffee been a trick? Maybe that cabinet was hollow, with a false top, the coffee concealed inside. Should he ask for another demonstration, or take the old man on faith? Why would anyone bother to try to hoax him into simply going to sleep? And what else was he going to do with his life?
“Here,” said Cedric, offering the coffee to Doug. “You take this.
“I guess I’m finally ready for a little shuteye.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Editor Lou Anders, who commissioned this piece, has a knack for bringing out the best in me, it seems. His various original anthologies are conceptualized so clearly, and feature such intriguing conceits, that I’m inspired to go all out, creating universes that are a little more complex than I might normally strive to create at this short-story level.
Anyone who’s ever tried to keep up with our hectic 24/7/365 culture should be able to relate to this story—which also draws inspirations from R. A. Lafferty’s classic “Slow Tuesday Night.”
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