It took dozens of cycles before 62 could convince 71 that it was safe for them to share dreams again. Once they started visiting in sleep, though, it quickly became a part of each cycle.
“I don’t think we have to worry about him for a while.” 62 sprawled out across the broad fluffy Stratocumulus Cumulogenitus that he had imagined into his dream.
“Who, the Doctor from Level 2, or the Maintenance Man?” 71 turned his hand over in the soft denseness of the puffy air beneath him and watched the tiny grey particles swirl between his fingers.
“Either of them, really. I talked to the Maintenance Man before I went into the doctor's dream. He said his orders came from up on Level 2." 62 tried not to feel the emotion that his teacher called 'cocky', but he couldn't help it.
The doctor had awoken from his dream with a slice in his skin from his elbow to the tips of his fingers and had been so panicked about it that he blabbed the whole dream to anyone who would listen. He'd come to 71, begging the teacher for help in curing his dreaming anomaly. He called 71 an "expert" on the subject. A nearby Transportation Aide overheard the conversation and relayed the report to the Community. 71 had simply watched as the doctor was whisked away by his own Nurses, carried off to be treated by the hands of some new doctor on Level 2. 62 wouldn't have believed it when 71 told him about it later on, except that afterwards the Maintenance Man stopped coming to download his data.
"So you're saying that they're in cahoots?” 71 interrupted 62's thoughts with his question. The teacher rolled over and pressed his face into the cool mist of his student's dream.
“Where is cahoots?” 62 practiced closing his mind off from his teacher’s and suddenly surrounded his consciousness with a thick steel box. Everything within the box remained as it was, albeit substantially less expansive. Everything outside of the box became pitch black in the void left outside his imagination.
“It isn’t ‘where is cahoots’. The proper question is, ‘What is cahoots?’” 71’s voice echoed in the emptiness that sprawled between them. As suddenly as the steel beams and thick walls appeared, they vanished and 71 found himself seated on the puffy Stratocumulus Cumulogenitus aloft in a bright blue sky beside his student once more.
“You are getting very good at that.” The teacher noted.
“Thank you. So, what is cahoots?” 62 rubbed his hands together and a small black book appeared with a thin yellow writing utensil.
71 blinked in astonishment. “What is that you have there?”
“A book. I created it to take notes in. I keep it in a secret place in my mind so that I can look through it and remember things.” 62 turned to a blank page and scribbled the word “Cahoots” along the edge of the page.
“Ingenious!” 71 clapped his hands together in delight. Then, remembering the question, regained his scholarly visage. “Cahoots means that two or more Men are in league with one another. That they are working together toward a shared goal or purpose.”
62 scrawled the definition across the page, filling it with unskilled handwriting. It had taken some practice but the words were getting easier to write, and easier to read. 62 hoped that some cycle he would be able to produce text as legible as what he had seen in other books. The definition of Cahoots recorded in his ledger, he laid the writing utensil down, closed the book around it, and pressed his hands together until the journal disappeared with a small pouf of smoke.
“So then, are we in cahoots?”
“I should say that we are.” 71 mused. “But then, what are we cahooting for?”
62 thought for a long time before answering.
“I guess we're in cahoots to try to make being different OK. Like you said at the beginning of class, we all look the same on the outside but we have differences on the inside. Some Boys are smarter or faster or funnier than others. Some of us work hard and others don’t work at all. We all are different in the way we act. And I think that some of us want different things than others.” 62 thought back on all the things that 99 had said about wanting everyone to be the same. The sadness of it made him shake his head.
“I don’t think I could have said it better myself.” 71 nodded.
62 looked up at the bright blue air above him and imagined that he could see the faces of his many brothers smiling and laughing in the swirling sky. He liked to dream about them and promised himself that he would do it more often.
“But how do we teach Men like the Doctor from Level 2, or Boys like 99 that it is good to be different?” The laughing faces above 62 vanished and were replaced with the visage of the Boys trapped behind the fiery door from the doctor's twisted dream. 62 sometimes thought he saw 99's face pressed against the flickering flames.
“It is simple, little Brother. All we can do is keep trying.” 71 reached across the short distance between them and picked up 62’s hand in his own.
"Do you think it's real?" 62 stared at the doctor's steel doorway. Painful cries filled the corners of his consciousness as the specters of lost Boys grasped at the air.
The teacher squeezed the Boy's hand tenderly for a moment and used a surge of shared energy to push the grim scene from the dream. 71 shook his head. "No. Although I doubt our friend, the doctor, had much of an imagination I also doubt that anything like that could be real. I suspect it is just his consciousness teaching him a lesson."
62 sat up. "But what if it is real? What if there are Boys that need help?"
71's cheeks spread into a soft and reassuring smile. “Don't get lost in the terror of a mad Man's dream, Brother. Use your imagination to expand your mind and do good in Adaline. Without imagination we are nothing but a collection of cogs helping to turn the wheels in a giant Machine. It is our dreams, our loves and desires, that make us Men.”
62 looked down at his hand, firmly clasped in his teacher's. The sensation of warmth and transfer of energy between their fingers was shocking in a way that was comforting and wonderful. It was so different from the feeling of holding the doctor's clammy hand. He squeezed his teacher’s fingers in response to the empowering gesture.
“I will always dream.” 62 stated simply. “And I will never give up.”
Next in the Adaline Series:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Denise Kawaii is the author of Age/Sex/Location: Love is Just a Click Away (Brighton Publishing, LLC) and A Giraffe in the Room (KawaiiTimes.com). She is a long time resident of the Pacific Northwest, moving periodically between Oregon and Washington State. When not writing books, Denise plays at being a farmer, feeding her compost bin manuscripts not good enough to show anyone other than the worms.
A woman of many talents, Kawaii also writes fiction for grown-up audiences under the name D.K. Greene. Her crime fiction novel, S is for Serial can be found on her website, KawaiiTimes.com.
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