by John Gordon
more relaxed, open style, because it is for my eyes only, not for the public, Martin has penned.
`Please put in a secure place for possible retrieval.'
Under the note is a page of hieroglyphics. I look through it carefully, fold it back into the envelope with the odd postage in the center. Here the postage and the address appear to be entwined like eternal lovers. Humming a melody from some musical out of the past, I enter my home. There are eight levels inside this home, and all but the third one up are filled with light from outside. The third level has a miniature sun in the center of it. It is where I contemplate the mysteries of the universe. I head for the top level. In my study, a solid looking black box sits on the corner table. I touch the box on two sides and it swings open gently, evenly. Inside, with several other papers and my contract with DTI, I place Martin's envelope.
Today, if I walked into that remarkable house and into that room and reached into that box, everything in Martin's envelope would be secure and the contents would be identical to the day I placed it there. I would only need to touch it or smell the peppermint oil that Martin dabbed on a corner of all his letters, perhaps even just glance at it and it would be enough and the formula would be as easy to read as my morning edition of the Dayton Herald.
Before I understood this, before the Dream Travelers, known in this world as D.T.Investigations, I struggled with the mechanics, but they still worked. Since investigating this realm of dreams I've discovered that there are many people that instinctively function very well in what to them is only a fiction but to me is the core of reality itself.
That first night, the image of Martin's formula sat in the inner chamber of my consciousness longer than I wanted, much longer. It seemed to be hooked there with bonds I had no way of breaking and I couldn't sleep, my blood pounded and my body seemed more a cavern of flows and movements rather than something I fit into snugly like a familiar sweater.
The formula changed colors and then light poured toward me as if it were coming from an invisible vessel, it was the fractionated light of prisms multiplied into thousands of tints and a humming melody flowed with it.
Fantasy or Fantastic?
For the first time in my memory I stood in another world, another laboratory, to be exact.
I was wearing a lab coat and nervously ran my hands down over the pockets. It was not new and the pocket edges created loose caverns for items to be placed in them. I felt real and solid though I knew this had to be a dream.
It was a laboratory even though there was nothing lab-like about it. A huge computer stood against one wall like the cockpit of an airplane, and a screen fully eight feet wide curved over the operator's chair. The man who turned from the computer was very familiar to me. We had talked earlier in the day.
"How did you get here? Ed, you shouldn't be here!" Martin Asgard wore his brown rimmed glasses that made his eyes bug-like and huge in the thin face. The ever familiar smudged lab smock with its one torn pocket hung on Martin's thin frame like a coat on rack. He came to me and shook my hand. It was firm and dry, definitely Martin's hand.
I nodded at the computer screen. "What kind of computer is that?"
"It's part of a project." Martin smiled. "I don't understand how you got here. You are the last person I would have expected to dream jump."
I ignored the comment. It was the computer that interested me. Martin followed me to it, reached past me as I stood before it and flicked a key. Symbols popped up on the screen and were quickly replaced by an image.
We looked at a scrub desert scene under an amber sky. Pale purple clouds billowed over the land flowing from and over nearby mountains and hills. They seemed to be drifting toward us and toward the odd building at the bottom of the screen.
Martin settled his gangly frame in the chair. "This is fine equipment Ed; but I have a better computer... there." He pointed at the screen.
The building looked like the fat turret of a medieval castle. Storm clouds boiled off the distant peaks of the brown and maroon mountains that looked as real as the Colorado Rockies, only the colors were off.
"That is where we're doing research. It's a new science, the perfect research setting." Martin touched another switch and manipulated a joystick. The image shimmered. I was sucked along with Martin as though we were flying into the screen like pilots in a video game. The landscape surrounded us, folded around us. The tower had spiny grass growing in cracks around its base. The detail of the trowel work was clear and sharp as we drifted to a stop at the entrance. I could smell something like sage in the breeze and hear odd sqwauks from a copse of small scrub trees a distance behind me. I was no longer in the laboratory.
When Martin fingered a keypad set in the stone wall, the door opened like an iris. Inside, an atrium, domed with crystal, extended to the height of the inner tower. It was flooded with light and a faint purple cast from the approaching clouds.
In the center of the huge room, a patch of trees, like a shady forest pulled out of time, reflected rich green hues around the room. The oasis was surrounded on every available wall by large computer screens, with workers clicking keypads and people chattering over laser holograms. Martin talked as we walked into the impossible forest in the center.
"If the scientists on Earth believed this was possible; it would be the cutting edge for every discipline. Working with the essence of the mind, we shaped everything you see here."
Martin led me along a path of inset, green stones that looked like multi faceted gems. The path wound through the forest and opened into a glen. The electronic sounds and hum of human workers ceased, replaced by the gentle twittering of birds. In the clearing at the center, a man and two women shared a low hill of mossy grass. One of the women was sunning on a beach blanket, wearing dark glasses and the barest hint of a string bikini. The man and other woman were dressed in lab smocks. They talked softly and made notes on lap pads.
"With the materials provided by my partner, and the training we've gone through, we shaped everything here using imagination, just imagination." Martin's face seemed to expand with the glow of his enthusiasm.
"Who's that?" I nodded toward the near naked girl.
"That's Elise, from your computer department."
I settled on the bench and a wave of dizziness hit me. The scene flickered and the sensation of being in a whirlpool with no up or down breezed through my body. I concentrated on the image of Elise, on the perfect arc of her back and the rounded curves of her bare buttocks. The universe steadied.
Elise spotted us, sat up, arched her beautiful body, and headed our way across the clearing. Her walk had my full attention. This was the same Elise that barely said hello to me at the University.
"The effect that you just felt is what we call transient wavering." Martin's equine face was sober, his gray eyes alertly focused on me. "It's a temporary effect that every dream jumper goes through in the beginning of their training. All of us are trained to work here and are totally committed to the project."
"Committed is right Martin." Elise settled next to me on a bench. Her smile was radiant and I was suddenly unconcerned with transient wavering. "I tried to imagine myself wearing something else a while back and it didn't work. I was stuck with this bikini. It was the only sun suit I had in my room. No one else seems to be interested in sunning." Her face reddened "I usually don't wear this kind of outfit." She said it for me. Back in the computer department she hardly gave me the time of day.
Martin tried to clarify Elise's reference to imagining a different outfit. "That's the effect of being here so long. We have, as a group, set up a field that perpetuates itself, and the field shares the laws of this planet. It would take an exceptional change in our systems for us to dream jump out of here. We are a part of Landine until we go through re-training. All of us are here as much as we are on Earth in our normal lives."
Martin stood abruptly and paced in front of the bench.
"And that may pose a problem. The Brack are through discussing our situation at the Council level. Resnik did his best but we may have to evacuate."
"Leave? We haven't finished our work." Elise’s voice rose slightly at this news. I could see her beautiful eyelashes that emphasized her amber flecked green eyes. I never noticed her eyes in the office. And here her voice was soft and pitched lower than I remembered.
"It's very close to finished. Ed memorized the formula for me so it's in a secure place back on Earth as well as in my lab. That's what brought him here, I'm sure of it."
I forced my eyes away from Elise, embarrassed by an involuntary scan of her beautiful figure, and returned my friends gaze. "I don't know Martin. But I remember having a rough time falling asleep because of that formula of yours."
Martin's face grew sober. "We don't have it stored in a lot of places and in that final version only a few. I wanted it to be with someone who wasn't involved in this operation, just an additional precaution. We are one theoretical step away from what we set this up for ... the completed formula."
"We came here for medical research of a sort. The Brack governor of this planet, agreed to let Resnik set up this research center for certain personal trade concessions. The planet is thinly populated, almost barren and useless