They were lost, and it was Nadin’s fault. It had to be Nadin’s fault; Adren didn’t get lost. Not in the woods. He must be using his magic somehow. That and he kept accusing her of changing direction when she wasn’t.
“Just because I walk around a tree so I don’t hit it doesn’t mean we’re suddenly going west,” she told him.
He gave the sky a nervous glance, but didn’t reply.
This is what happens when you grow up in a town with streets; you never learn to keep yourself going straight. The roads do that for you.
“And, if you would stop distracting me, I’d be able to navigate.” Since he clearly couldn’t.
Still, he dragged his heels. Adren wished she could leave him behind, just turn invisible and head off without him being able to follow. But, as luck would have it, Nadin could see through magic of that variety. She was stuck with him.
“I thought we would arrive long before the sun set,” he paused to duck under a branch which hadn’t hung quite so low when Adren had passed by it. Odd. “So if the sun’s setting and we’re still here, then we have to be going the wrong way.”
“And?”
“Shouldn’t we stop for a moment and get our bearings? Maybe retrace our steps?”
“No. We’ll get there faster if we keep going.”
Nadin stuck his hands in his pockets and frowned. “Or we’ll keep getting further away.”
“Look, Nadin, the man said to head south and, if we miss the town, we’ll hit the river. We both saw it on the map. Now, do you see a river anywhere?”
“No.”
“So south we go.”
Nadin mumbled something else, but Adren ignored him. For a few blessed moments the only other sounds she heard were their footsteps, the twitter of birds, and the rustle of squirrels in the underbrush. She had just begun to enjoy it, too, when…
“But what if we—”
“Nadin. I’m hungry. I’m tired. The sun is going down,” she indicated the orb to her right, “and if we’re going to sleep in an inn tonight like you wanted, we keep going.”
“Except that’s not where the sun is.”
At this, Adren did stop and spun on one heel to face him.
“Do you not have eyes?”
“Adren, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time: the sun isn’t there. It’s there.” He pointed ahead.
Chuckles and shushing came from the trees around them and then died down. Oh no.
“We’re heading west?”
Nadin nodded.
Adren’s shoulders fell, at which moment the trees filled with laughter. The sky shimmered and the sun disappeared. When she turned back, it had reappeared where Nadin had pointed.
Some days, Adren really hated fairies.
Note from Thea: This story takes place in between the first two books of my White Changeling series. The first, Hidden in Sealskin, is already out, and I'm currently running a Kickstarter for the second, Like Mist Over the Eyes. Pledge at least $25 CAD to get both ebooks (and more!).
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Storm in a Graveyard
A storm growled eagerly on the horizon as she passed through
the iron gates. The wind could have been the voices of the dead, and she puled
her coat tighter around her. Headstones wove in drunken lines, leading
inexorably towards the one person she’d sworn she’d never see again. The storm
reached the bounds of its patience and broke, fat drops pelting down like
bullets. The vibrant red of her mother’s dress ahead seemed even more garishly
out of place.
The storm changed the tone of the wind: now, instead of
haunting, it sounded angry—or perhaps merely irritated, she amended, listening
as it rattled the trees impatiently. She dragged her fingers along the cracked
ridge of a headstone, noticing the reddish flecks of hematite embedded in the
gunmetal grey. Red had always been her mother’s favourite colour; she hadn’t
worn it in twenty years. The red-lipped smile on her mother’s face was equally
rare.
“Hello, dear,” her mother called over the storm. “Don’t worry.
The police don’t suspect a thing.”
Thursday, August 11, 2016
When the Ground Met The Sky - Liana Brooks
CONTEXT! World-building is often thought to stop after an author names the mountains and rivers, but it's actually runs much deeper than that. In one of my series a character quotes a popular children's book that everyone would know... which meant I need to write at least part of that book so I could quote it properly. That's where this short story comes from.
~ Short
Stories For Small Spacers ~
Once, when the universe was
very young, Sky was born between the places of nothing. Out there in the
darkness thoughts and ideas rushed around, all seeking something marvelous. Sky
went with them, rushing away from the center of the universe to find something.
Sky searched in all the dark
places, trying to find the something everyone was searching for. One day, he
saw something that was not air or darkness. This new thing was not light or
void. It was strange and new, so he went to it.
“What are you?” ask Sky.
“I am Ground,” said Ground as
she spun around herself.
Sky watched her form into a
perfect sphere. “You are not expanding,” Sky said. “You are not reaching. You
are not searching.”
“I have done my searching,”
Ground said. “I have found what I wanted. Now I will stay here and grow
beautiful things and make new things the universe has never seen.”
Sky watched Ground for a time,
but then he traveled onward, searching for the thing that would give him
meaning.
After many years Sky returned
to Ground and she looked much as she had when he left.
“Ground” he said, “how did you
know when you found what you were searching for?”
“How can you search for
something if you don’t know what it is you want?” Ground asked in reply.
Sky considered this. “I want to
find the place where I belong,” he said.
“Yes,” Ground said. “That is
good. I belong here, because here I can grow things and create great things.”
“I should find a place where I
can make great things,” Sky said, and so he went off into the void.
He searched in the darkness,
and in gas clouds, and in nebulas. He hunted for his purpose. Near great
gravity variations and on the edges of black holes, Sky sought the place where
he could grow new things and add something wonderful to the universe.
Again, he returned to Ground.
Ground was crying.
“Why are crying?” Sky asked.
Ground showed him the barren
soil, dark and scarred by the ravages of creation. “My beautiful creations keep
dying. I build mountains and they tremble and fall. I create oceans and they
evaporate. All my beautiful things are destroyed. I can create, but I have no
way to protect my beautiful things.”
Sky hugged Ground and held her
tight as she cried. He watched ripples turn into mountains, and green grass
began to grow. “Look!” Sky said. “Look how beautiful this is! You have what you
wanted!”
“But only when you are here,”
Ground said sadly. “When you leave, all these beautiful things will fall away.”
So Sky held her tighter. “I
will stay.”
“You should go,” Ground said.
“Go and find the thing you are searching for.”
“I have,” said Sky. “I was
searching for you. I was searching for a place to belong, and it is here, with
you. I was searching for a purpose, and it is here, helping you make beautiful
and wondrous things for the universe. I was searching for love, and it is here.
I love you, Ground.”
“I love you, Sky,” said
Ground.
And that is how the ground got
an atmosphere.
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
The Curious Case of Spontaneous Green Felines
A pile of green cats mews from the centre of my living room floor. I’m not sure what to do. When you’re experiencing a case of spontaneously existing animals—not to mention animals of entirely the wrong colour—it’s difficult to remember your own name, never mind figure out what to do with the creatures. I run over my recent actions, trying to discover some kind of explanation for this occurrence.
I made myself a Pop Tart. No. I check what’s in my hand. A Pizza Pop. Breakfast. Maybe the microwave did it?
One of the cats yawns, little pink mouth and little pink tongue in a verdant fluff face, and plops out of the pile. They’re kittens, really, now that I’m paying attention. The shock must be wearing off. Except—and I’m sure of this, I think—the pile was larger when I first entered the room. Not because there were more kittens, but because they really were cats before.
The wee kitten stumbles over to me and headbutts my ankle. It rubs its face into the hem of my pants before it curls up on my foot and falls asleep.
It looks older than the others. Weren’t they the same age only moments ago? These other kittens are week-old babies. Cat infants, not like the lime-hued toddler currently warming my toes.
The pile continues to shrink as the kittens do, the impossible animals growing younger and younger before my eyes until they contract out of existence, a feline singularity with an unfortunate dye job.
The kitten on my foot is still fast asleep. It bats at neon dream-mice (I assume they’re neon. It seems only logical, under the circumstances).
I still don’t know what to do, so I eat my Pizza Pop and wonder when would be a good time to call a psychiatrist.
And that's why I'm unable to come into work today. Do you happen to know of anyone who wants a green cat?
I made myself a Pop Tart. No. I check what’s in my hand. A Pizza Pop. Breakfast. Maybe the microwave did it?
One of the cats yawns, little pink mouth and little pink tongue in a verdant fluff face, and plops out of the pile. They’re kittens, really, now that I’m paying attention. The shock must be wearing off. Except—and I’m sure of this, I think—the pile was larger when I first entered the room. Not because there were more kittens, but because they really were cats before.
The wee kitten stumbles over to me and headbutts my ankle. It rubs its face into the hem of my pants before it curls up on my foot and falls asleep.
It looks older than the others. Weren’t they the same age only moments ago? These other kittens are week-old babies. Cat infants, not like the lime-hued toddler currently warming my toes.
The pile continues to shrink as the kittens do, the impossible animals growing younger and younger before my eyes until they contract out of existence, a feline singularity with an unfortunate dye job.
The kitten on my foot is still fast asleep. It bats at neon dream-mice (I assume they’re neon. It seems only logical, under the circumstances).
I still don’t know what to do, so I eat my Pizza Pop and wonder when would be a good time to call a psychiatrist.
And that's why I'm unable to come into work today. Do you happen to know of anyone who wants a green cat?
Monday, August 1, 2016
We're back! Well, nearly. Keep an eye out later this week for the newest member of the blog, Thea van Diepen - hurrah!
Stories should hopefully resume posting weekly, though we may take the fourth week of each month off. Consider that pending. But in the meantime, you get to enjoy our fabulous, unedited, messily glorious fiction on a mostly weekly basis. Yay!
After 12 months off, it's good to be back :) Turn the lights on, find yourself a cushion, and pass around the cookies: It's story time!!
Stories should hopefully resume posting weekly, though we may take the fourth week of each month off. Consider that pending. But in the meantime, you get to enjoy our fabulous, unedited, messily glorious fiction on a mostly weekly basis. Yay!
After 12 months off, it's good to be back :) Turn the lights on, find yourself a cushion, and pass around the cookies: It's story time!!
Saturday, July 9, 2016
RETURNING IN AUGUST!
The Darkness and Good blog will be reopening in August, and we are thrilled to introduce to you all a new contributor! Stay tuned for further info, and enjoy your mid-year! ;)
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Dream Away
"Sir, how would you like to take your dream vacation today?" The women, really no more than a girl, smiling at Jazin was a perky little thing. Cute button nose, cinnamon colored hair, and pale gold freckles on skin a few shades darker than her hair. She waved a synthpaper brochure at him. "Where do you want to go?"
"Home," Jazin said. "My bank account doesn't match my dreams."
She stepped in front of him, her ivy green skirt flaring a swirling as she moved. "I have dream vacations for all budgets."
"Yeah?" And he was going to get a promotion to a corner office. Just as soon as the moon turned blue. "Does this dream vacation come with paid leave 'cause my boss isn't the type who likes to give people time off." Company CEOs weren't famous for caring whether their worker bees had rest and relaxation. The only thing that mattered to the boys calling the shots upstairs was the company's bottom line and their fat quarterly bonuses.
The girl smiled impishly. "No leave time required. This really is a dream vacation." With a touch of her finger the brochure projected a hologram of him on a white sand beach. "Do you know the average dream lasts less than five minutes? With Dream Away's new REMtech Dream 6K you can have a week's worth of luxury in five minutes."
Jazin pushed the brochure away. "Thanks, but no thanks. I can't afford a vacation, real or otherwise."
"Oh, but you can!" the girl insisted. "Give me a minute, I'll give you the perfect day. Give me five minutes, and I'll give you a week in paradise. Give me an hour, and I can give you a lifetime!"
"You'll give me a sticky chair to nap in that stinks of other people and hasn't been sanitized in a week. Pass."
Her face lit up in an infectious grin. "Don't be that way!" She hit him playfully in the chest with the brochure. He noticed her brown eyes were luminous as sunlit topaz, and for just a moment he wanted to stay.
Shaking his head, Jazin tried to sidestep her again. Pretty girls were easy enough to come by in the beauty capital of the system. But he knew the sales pitches and the tricks. The way the sellers would befriend you, ask you your name, create a need. Oh, they were good, it's what kept the companies in business and the populace in debt.
"Come on," the girl cajoled. "What would it hurt to try it?"
"I'd like to pay my rent this week, thanks all the same."
She licked her lips. "What if I... gave you a taste? For free."
"Sounds like you're pedaling hard addictives, lady."
"Oh, no!" She shook her head and her beaded earrings jingled a soft melody. "Dream Away's product is one hundred percent non-addictive."
Jazin rolled his eyes. "I bet. I nap, I walk away and the dream's forgotten in ten minutes anyway. Everyone knows dreams don't last."
"Dream Away dreams do." She placed a small, elegant hand on the crook of his arm. "In one minute I can give you the perfect day. You want the corner office? It's yours. Do you want to be the star of your favorite sports team? Done. Do you want a day to catch up on your reading? I have all the books waiting for you. You'll feel the pages in your hands, smell the paper and ink, and when you open your eyes you'll remember the book just as if you'd spent the day reading."
"And then I'll want another hit which will cost me – what – a day's wages? A week's? It's not worth it."
"Dream Away provides no more endorphins than you would get from a thirty minute run at the gym. And while we can't burn calories for you like a run will, we can offer you a reduction of mental distress. Five minutes and you'll feel as if you took a week to relax. Think of it as the perfect vacation, all of the benefits and you've lost no time!"
He frowned skeptically. "Things that sound to good to be true..."
"... usually are!" She pointed at him and smiled cheekily. "I know! Dream Away isn't the real thing. You won't get a real sunburn at the pool in the Jawamai Mountains. You won't really eat draris fruit in the orchards of the Old King. The new friends you meet won't be real. But you'll remember all of it like it was."
"How?" he demanded. "Are you going to dribble fruit juice on my chin?"
"Everything you experience is a secondary sensation as processed by the brain. If the brain misinterprets a signal a sound can become a color, or a light breeze can become a burning fire along your skin. When Allerd Wria first started working on his theory of Unified Brain Function he was looking for a way to address those inconsistencies in damaged brains. Further research allowed him to develop a method of retraining brains after traumatic injury. The REMtech Dream 6K is the delightful outcome of his otherwise serious work.
"While hospital may need Dr. Wria's more serious projects this one was created to let people play."
Jazin's eyes narrowed in thought. "What was the original purpose of the machine? Torture? Interrogation? Punishment?"
Her lips flattened into a frown. "Treating depression." She held the brochure up. "Overworked people suffering from seasonal depression or sudden loss were able to use pre-programmed dreamscapes to work through their difficulties. The commercial model is less structured, you will design your own dream as you dream."
"So you can't guarantee I won't have a nightmare." There was always a catch.
The girl hooked her arm through his elbow and steered him toward the store. Brightly colored travel calendars and pictures of famous buildings lined the walls. "We do exert a little control. The REMtech Dream 6K reads what the brain is dreaming of and enhances the thought by triggering the respective neurons. You think of a fruit and by your first dream-bite you will taste the perfect fruit. Using the same technology we can steer dreams so that you stay in a pleasant and happy state, whatever that may be for you." She shrugged. "Or not. We don't judge."
He watched as the door open and a smiling man accompanied by a blue-skinned woman wearing the same green dress as the girl walked past chatting happily. The man's uniform was of a low-level maintenance worker, someone who did manual labor ten hours a day, but instead of a laborer's perpetual frown the man looked as if he'd never had a bad day.
"A regular customer," the girl said. "He comes in every few days for a three minute dream. Says it's like getting an extra weekend."
"And how much of his pay are you stealing."
"Small packages have small prices," she said. "He pays two credits, only a quarter of an hour's wages for him. Fifteen minutes worth of pay and he gets three days in paradise."
Jazin snorted in disbelief. "I bet he can't tell reality from fairyland anymore."
Her smile grew amused. "Dream Away does complete product testing before putting anything on the market. You'll find, as our researchers did, that it is easy to differentiate from dreams and reality. You retain the memory of the place, but the human mind always knows where it is. That gentleman has been doing classes and training prep during his dream sessions. Dream Away is helping him get a better job."
The blue-skinned girl started chatting up another prospective customer in the busy transit corridor.
He sighed. That was life, wasn't it? Rush to work, hustle all day, rush to catch the next tram home. Every day was regulated down to the minute. His pay meant he had sixty minutes a week of running water, four hours a week of electricity, and a single meal box with seventeen nutritional meals a week. The other meals he either had to skip or spend money on at a company restaurant.
The girl nudged his shoulder. "One minute and I'll make all your cares go away."
"One minute?"
"The perfect day. And the first time is free."
"Fine." Jazin waved to the back of the store. "Fine. I'll try it. It's the only way you'll let me go."
"You won't be disappointed!" she bubbled. Grabbing his hand she dragged him back to a small parlor painted all black. "Don't worry about the color. This is just to keep light reflection down. Please, have a seat."
A black plethasynth chair sat in the middle of the room with a green light shining out of diodes along the headrest. "That's it?"
"The REMtech Dream 6K is a very advanced machine. We don't need wires and cables everywhere to do this. After all, this is the age of nanotech!"
"All right." Reluctantly he shrugged off his coat. "Um..."
The girl pointed to the wall. "There a locker right there. You can code it to your handprint just like the lockers at work."
Quaslin LockerShop lockers than. They were ubiquitous. Seventy years ago Quaslin had been a minor repair company and now a person couldn't turn around without seeing their logo plastered on some piece of metal. That was the advantages of having one of the only metal refineries left in operation in the system.
He tucked his briefcase and coat in, double checked the lock, and reset the code.
"You'll only be asleep for a minute," the girl said. "You're things will be perfectly safe."
Spoken like a woman who wouldn't lose her job if the boss found out she'd been casual with the security of a company briefcase. It didn't matter that he didn't have rank or secrets to hide, the company was in open conflict with three other big corporations and any sign of indiscretion meant a pink slip and your name on the station blacklist.
"Sit here, sir, and I'll adjust everything for optimal comfort."
Jazin eyed the chair and then heaved a sigh. "Fine." He sat down and noticed wrist braces on the arms of the seat.
The girl followed his worried gaze. "Those are there for your safety. About twenty percent of our clients experience sleep-walking tendencies, involuntary and uncontrolled movement, while dreaming. The straps keep you from waking up with a black eye." She snapped the locks shut and a screen on the ceiling lit up.
The words I AM FULLY AWAKE glowed softly in the darkness.
"What's that?"
"That is the voice control panel for the retraints. When you wake up you read the words provided and the machine will release you. Would you like to try it?"
"I am fully awake," Jazin read aloud.
The word RHUBARB appeared in the same soft pink glow.
"Rhubarb," Jazin read obediently.
The restraints unsnapped with metallic click.
"Ready for your perfect day?" the girl asked as she locked him back in.
He settled back into the soft arms of the machine. "Sure, let's do this."
"Where would you like your perfect day to be?"
Jazin shook his head. "I don't know. The beach sounds nice. I've never been there."
"Then the beach it is. Sweet dreams!"
The lights dimmed and he heard the door shut. He took a deep breath, blinked, and he was standing on the beach with a hot sun beating down on his bare arms. A white bird swooped overhead screaming. Just ahead he saw a shack of some kind that looked like it was selling drinks. It seemed like a promising direction, so he walked that way...
Her ear comm crackled. "How is our friend?"
"Dreaming. Permanently. I have everything we came for."
"Then get out. We have another target for you."
Folding the papers she tucked them into a locked carrying case hidden in the garter on her thigh and locked the dream parlor behind her. The nice young lady she'd rented the room from waved as she showed another perspective client the latest in TuyongTech virtual reality. Experience the beach in real time, sand in your shoes is extra!
It was true what they said, people who spent their lives dreaming of a better future never were awake enough to make one.
"Home," Jazin said. "My bank account doesn't match my dreams."
She stepped in front of him, her ivy green skirt flaring a swirling as she moved. "I have dream vacations for all budgets."
"Yeah?" And he was going to get a promotion to a corner office. Just as soon as the moon turned blue. "Does this dream vacation come with paid leave 'cause my boss isn't the type who likes to give people time off." Company CEOs weren't famous for caring whether their worker bees had rest and relaxation. The only thing that mattered to the boys calling the shots upstairs was the company's bottom line and their fat quarterly bonuses.
The girl smiled impishly. "No leave time required. This really is a dream vacation." With a touch of her finger the brochure projected a hologram of him on a white sand beach. "Do you know the average dream lasts less than five minutes? With Dream Away's new REMtech Dream 6K you can have a week's worth of luxury in five minutes."
Jazin pushed the brochure away. "Thanks, but no thanks. I can't afford a vacation, real or otherwise."
"Oh, but you can!" the girl insisted. "Give me a minute, I'll give you the perfect day. Give me five minutes, and I'll give you a week in paradise. Give me an hour, and I can give you a lifetime!"
"You'll give me a sticky chair to nap in that stinks of other people and hasn't been sanitized in a week. Pass."
Her face lit up in an infectious grin. "Don't be that way!" She hit him playfully in the chest with the brochure. He noticed her brown eyes were luminous as sunlit topaz, and for just a moment he wanted to stay.
Shaking his head, Jazin tried to sidestep her again. Pretty girls were easy enough to come by in the beauty capital of the system. But he knew the sales pitches and the tricks. The way the sellers would befriend you, ask you your name, create a need. Oh, they were good, it's what kept the companies in business and the populace in debt.
"Come on," the girl cajoled. "What would it hurt to try it?"
"I'd like to pay my rent this week, thanks all the same."
She licked her lips. "What if I... gave you a taste? For free."
"Sounds like you're pedaling hard addictives, lady."
"Oh, no!" She shook her head and her beaded earrings jingled a soft melody. "Dream Away's product is one hundred percent non-addictive."
Jazin rolled his eyes. "I bet. I nap, I walk away and the dream's forgotten in ten minutes anyway. Everyone knows dreams don't last."
"Dream Away dreams do." She placed a small, elegant hand on the crook of his arm. "In one minute I can give you the perfect day. You want the corner office? It's yours. Do you want to be the star of your favorite sports team? Done. Do you want a day to catch up on your reading? I have all the books waiting for you. You'll feel the pages in your hands, smell the paper and ink, and when you open your eyes you'll remember the book just as if you'd spent the day reading."
"And then I'll want another hit which will cost me – what – a day's wages? A week's? It's not worth it."
"Dream Away provides no more endorphins than you would get from a thirty minute run at the gym. And while we can't burn calories for you like a run will, we can offer you a reduction of mental distress. Five minutes and you'll feel as if you took a week to relax. Think of it as the perfect vacation, all of the benefits and you've lost no time!"
He frowned skeptically. "Things that sound to good to be true..."
"... usually are!" She pointed at him and smiled cheekily. "I know! Dream Away isn't the real thing. You won't get a real sunburn at the pool in the Jawamai Mountains. You won't really eat draris fruit in the orchards of the Old King. The new friends you meet won't be real. But you'll remember all of it like it was."
"How?" he demanded. "Are you going to dribble fruit juice on my chin?"
"Everything you experience is a secondary sensation as processed by the brain. If the brain misinterprets a signal a sound can become a color, or a light breeze can become a burning fire along your skin. When Allerd Wria first started working on his theory of Unified Brain Function he was looking for a way to address those inconsistencies in damaged brains. Further research allowed him to develop a method of retraining brains after traumatic injury. The REMtech Dream 6K is the delightful outcome of his otherwise serious work.
"While hospital may need Dr. Wria's more serious projects this one was created to let people play."
Jazin's eyes narrowed in thought. "What was the original purpose of the machine? Torture? Interrogation? Punishment?"
Her lips flattened into a frown. "Treating depression." She held the brochure up. "Overworked people suffering from seasonal depression or sudden loss were able to use pre-programmed dreamscapes to work through their difficulties. The commercial model is less structured, you will design your own dream as you dream."
"So you can't guarantee I won't have a nightmare." There was always a catch.
The girl hooked her arm through his elbow and steered him toward the store. Brightly colored travel calendars and pictures of famous buildings lined the walls. "We do exert a little control. The REMtech Dream 6K reads what the brain is dreaming of and enhances the thought by triggering the respective neurons. You think of a fruit and by your first dream-bite you will taste the perfect fruit. Using the same technology we can steer dreams so that you stay in a pleasant and happy state, whatever that may be for you." She shrugged. "Or not. We don't judge."
He watched as the door open and a smiling man accompanied by a blue-skinned woman wearing the same green dress as the girl walked past chatting happily. The man's uniform was of a low-level maintenance worker, someone who did manual labor ten hours a day, but instead of a laborer's perpetual frown the man looked as if he'd never had a bad day.
"A regular customer," the girl said. "He comes in every few days for a three minute dream. Says it's like getting an extra weekend."
"And how much of his pay are you stealing."
"Small packages have small prices," she said. "He pays two credits, only a quarter of an hour's wages for him. Fifteen minutes worth of pay and he gets three days in paradise."
Jazin snorted in disbelief. "I bet he can't tell reality from fairyland anymore."
Her smile grew amused. "Dream Away does complete product testing before putting anything on the market. You'll find, as our researchers did, that it is easy to differentiate from dreams and reality. You retain the memory of the place, but the human mind always knows where it is. That gentleman has been doing classes and training prep during his dream sessions. Dream Away is helping him get a better job."
The blue-skinned girl started chatting up another prospective customer in the busy transit corridor.
He sighed. That was life, wasn't it? Rush to work, hustle all day, rush to catch the next tram home. Every day was regulated down to the minute. His pay meant he had sixty minutes a week of running water, four hours a week of electricity, and a single meal box with seventeen nutritional meals a week. The other meals he either had to skip or spend money on at a company restaurant.
The girl nudged his shoulder. "One minute and I'll make all your cares go away."
"One minute?"
"The perfect day. And the first time is free."
"Fine." Jazin waved to the back of the store. "Fine. I'll try it. It's the only way you'll let me go."
"You won't be disappointed!" she bubbled. Grabbing his hand she dragged him back to a small parlor painted all black. "Don't worry about the color. This is just to keep light reflection down. Please, have a seat."
A black plethasynth chair sat in the middle of the room with a green light shining out of diodes along the headrest. "That's it?"
"The REMtech Dream 6K is a very advanced machine. We don't need wires and cables everywhere to do this. After all, this is the age of nanotech!"
"All right." Reluctantly he shrugged off his coat. "Um..."
The girl pointed to the wall. "There a locker right there. You can code it to your handprint just like the lockers at work."
Quaslin LockerShop lockers than. They were ubiquitous. Seventy years ago Quaslin had been a minor repair company and now a person couldn't turn around without seeing their logo plastered on some piece of metal. That was the advantages of having one of the only metal refineries left in operation in the system.
He tucked his briefcase and coat in, double checked the lock, and reset the code.
"You'll only be asleep for a minute," the girl said. "You're things will be perfectly safe."
Spoken like a woman who wouldn't lose her job if the boss found out she'd been casual with the security of a company briefcase. It didn't matter that he didn't have rank or secrets to hide, the company was in open conflict with three other big corporations and any sign of indiscretion meant a pink slip and your name on the station blacklist.
"Sit here, sir, and I'll adjust everything for optimal comfort."
Jazin eyed the chair and then heaved a sigh. "Fine." He sat down and noticed wrist braces on the arms of the seat.
The girl followed his worried gaze. "Those are there for your safety. About twenty percent of our clients experience sleep-walking tendencies, involuntary and uncontrolled movement, while dreaming. The straps keep you from waking up with a black eye." She snapped the locks shut and a screen on the ceiling lit up.
The words I AM FULLY AWAKE glowed softly in the darkness.
"What's that?"
"That is the voice control panel for the retraints. When you wake up you read the words provided and the machine will release you. Would you like to try it?"
"I am fully awake," Jazin read aloud.
The word RHUBARB appeared in the same soft pink glow.
"Rhubarb," Jazin read obediently.
The restraints unsnapped with metallic click.
"Ready for your perfect day?" the girl asked as she locked him back in.
He settled back into the soft arms of the machine. "Sure, let's do this."
"Where would you like your perfect day to be?"
Jazin shook his head. "I don't know. The beach sounds nice. I've never been there."
"Then the beach it is. Sweet dreams!"
The lights dimmed and he heard the door shut. He took a deep breath, blinked, and he was standing on the beach with a hot sun beating down on his bare arms. A white bird swooped overhead screaming. Just ahead he saw a shack of some kind that looked like it was selling drinks. It seemed like a promising direction, so he walked that way...
***
She lifted the ident card off the corpse in the chair. Jazin Reirs, software technician second-class. Middle aged, overweight, single, and stupid as a box of rocks. He'd carried encrypted documents to and from work every day and never known the value. Poor fool. If he'd guessed maybe he could have sold the papers and bought some protection.Her ear comm crackled. "How is our friend?"
"Dreaming. Permanently. I have everything we came for."
"Then get out. We have another target for you."
Folding the papers she tucked them into a locked carrying case hidden in the garter on her thigh and locked the dream parlor behind her. The nice young lady she'd rented the room from waved as she showed another perspective client the latest in TuyongTech virtual reality. Experience the beach in real time, sand in your shoes is extra!
It was true what they said, people who spent their lives dreaming of a better future never were awake enough to make one.
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