She takes a sip of red wine and looks around. The restaurant is popular with couples. Aris loves first dates. There are few things more enjoyable than the thrill of discovering a new person. It’s like unwrapping a present—before discovering the flaws, the nasty habits, the trite dramas. For that reason, she doesn’t do second dates.
A serial first dater, Thane once called her. Why not, when the food is always better? She looks at the dinner menu and gasps at the entertainment points for each item. She thinks she will forego dessert this time.
A black-and-white-clad server droid assigned to her table comes by with a pitcher of water and refills her half-empty glass.
“May I take your order?” he asks.
“I’m still waiting for my date.”
He’s fifteen minutes late.
The droid stares at her blankly, his eyes unblinking.
“Come back when he’s here, please,” she says.
The droid nods and walks off. Even though their eyes and smiles lack the warmth of humans, Aris likes them. They do not judge. The Planner created them to serve the functions no humans wanted to—waiting on other humans and cleaning up after them. Together with the AIs, they run the infrastructure and maintain consistencies in the Four Cities. They are what allow the four-year cycle to work.
The energy in the room changes. She looks up and sees a tall man entering the room. Heads turn as he passes. The light from the ceiling catches his golden-brown hair, and Aris catches her breath. He sees her and smiles.
He makes his way toward her, strolling with the calmness of someone walking through an art museum. Her heart skips a beat, and she thanks the accuracy of her proclivity tests.
One of the pretty ones.
She wonders if he’s an artist. The best of them live in the city of Lysithea, in a section with beautiful and grand Victorian “Painted Ladies.” The painters, the sculptors, the poets, the actors, the musicians. In the Four Cities, where creativity is celebrated, the good ones are discovered quickly. The great ones become stars.
He stops at her table. “Hello.”
Aris clears her throat. “Hi.”
“You look just like your picture,” he says, obviously pleased. He takes the seat across from her. “I’m Benja.”
“I’m Aris. It’s nice to meet you.” And your cheekbones.
“So, you’re a scientist,” he says.
“Something like that. And you?”
“I write.”
“Anything I know?” she asks.
“Not yet. I still have half a year left.”
“What story are you working on now?”
“It’s a quest of a sort. The main character is on a long journey home, and he meets all kinds of monsters that delay him.”
“Like the Odyssey?”
“It’s an influence.” He smiles and leans back in his chair. “‘We come too late to say anything which has not been said already.’ If La Bruyère felt this at the end of the seventeenth century, what hope do I have?”
“Everyone has a unique perspective,” she says.
“You’re sweet.”
“Tell me more about it.”
“You don’t really want to know, do you?”
“I do.”
He gazes at his interlaced fingers on the table. “It’s about a man searching for his way home. He wakes up in the middle of the desert, not remembering his name or where home is. He only has this urgent feeling that if he doesn’t get back, something bad will happen. So he treks across the desert. On his way he encounters strange visions—hallucinations from thirst and hunger. But he realizes they are clues and learns to use them as a map.”
“You thought up all that?”
He shrugs.
“Why did you decide to be a writer?” she asks and sips her wine.
“There are words inside me trying to break out. My job as a writer is to birth them and raise them into responsible adults,” he says.
She looks blankly at him, and he guffaws.
“Too melodramatic?” he asks.
“Yeah. I was deciding whether to walk out.”
“A more honest answer to your question is ‘Hell if I know.’ Aren’t we all clueless most of the time? I mean—how can we not be?”
She decides she likes him. She leans in. “Now that we’re being honest, I think we should skip the boring first-date conversation. Let’s just cut the crap and talk. We only have four years at each life, and this one’s almost gone.”
“Aris.” He gazes at her with glinting eyes. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard from a date this cycle.”
An empty bottle of wine sits between plates scraped clean.
“Would you like another bottle?” the server droid asks as he clears their plates.
“No, thank you. We’re good here,” Aris says.
After he leaves, she says to Benja, “Any more, and I might get in trouble.”
“Trouble is a good place to be in,” he says and winks.
She rests her chin on one hand and studies his face. Candlelight reflects off the gold flecks in his hazel eyes.
“You want to know a secret?” he asks.
A corner of her lips curls up. She tugs a lock of stray hair behind her ear and leans in. There is a light scent from him—something familiar that she can’t put a finger on. The back of her neck begins to feel damp. She gathers her long hair and moves it over one shoulder.
“Sometimes I dream about places I’ve never been to. Faces I’ve never met,” he whispers, “Do you know of the Dreamers?”
She shakes her head.
“They’re a group of people who believe their dreams are manifestations of their past lives, and they use them as clues to lead them back.”
She thinks of the angry man. The one taken away by the policeman. “Are you one of them?”
He laughs. “No. But I’m looking for them.”
“How?”
“They meet occasionally.”
“Where?”
“Places with books. Bookstores. Libraries. I’ve never been in so many libraries. Or maybe I have; I just don’t remember.” He sighs.
Books. That’s what he smells like.
“How you do know all this?” she asks.
“I hear things. I find if you sit somewhere long enough, you become a part of the room. No one sees you anymore.”
Aris doubts anybody would fail to notice him.
“Yesterday I saw a man being arrested,” she says. “He was assaulting people. Yelling for everyone to fight against Tabula Rasa. He seemed . . . dangerous.”
“You’re wondering if he’s a Dreamer?”
“He wanted the past.”
“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t a Dreamer. Or maybe he’s just mad as hell he can’t remember his past.”
Benja draws circles on the rim of his wineglass. She finds it difficult to keep her eyes off his long finger. She wonders how it would feel circling her—
She clears her throat. “Why do you want to meet them?”
“Maybe they can help me, you know, understand myself better. Don’t you ever wonder what your other lives were like? What you were like? Were you different?”
“That’s what personality and proclivity tests are for. They help determine your propensity for liking or hating something.”
“You mean like there is a forty-six point seven percent chance you will like sushi. And a sixty-eight point nine percent chance you will want to see this play.” He mimics the monotone voice of an AI.
He moves his wineglass to the side and leans forward. “What if the person I was when I took the last tests is not the person I am now?”
“We’re always who we are,” she says.
“Are we?” He leans in closer. “What if I only sleep with women because I’m fifty-sev
en point three percent curious?”
“What about the other forty-two point seven percent? Is he curious too?”
Benja reaches over and kisses her.
“All strangers are sexy. You more than most,” he says.
Metis navigates the darkness of his house with one purpose: to resist. The claws of sleep will not get him tonight. He has nothing against sleep. It’s the dreaming he dreads.
Dreams were once a destination he looked forward to visiting each night. Now, they serve to remind him that he is not with her when he wakes. In reality, his wife is as far away from him as if she were on Jupiter’s moons.
Years of searching—an obsession that almost destroyed him—have unearthed nothing. He doesn’t even know her name. Only her face. Her smell. Her laugh. The way her skin feels against his. This cycle she could be anyone, anywhere.
There were times he thought of turning his back on his vow. To find someone else to love. A warm body in his bed. A person to connect with. But he could never bring himself to get there. Each time weakness threatened to overtake him, his wife’s face would invade his mind. He would never be able to forgive himself. That’s the problem with memory.
He snickers. If only the Dreamers could see him—the Sandman afraid of his dreams. The Crone told him the past is what he must bear and the present is not a place for him. But he feels he is in neither place. He lives suspended somewhere in the in-between.
He walks the solitude of his house, trying to evade the sticky grasp of fatigue, flitting between states of consciousness. There are no other sounds but his steps on the creaky wooden floor. The smell of centuries past is in everything: the walls, the ceiling, all the furnishings. Even the shadows.
This house features prominently in his dreams. How many times has he been here? Sometimes he wonders about others who came before him. He does not like the idea of a stranger living in his house, sleeping on his bed, cooking in his kitchen. A home is an intimate place. He has never believed the idea that the Dwelling Council randomly assigns them. A person is always meant to be somewhere, he thinks. There are no coincidences in life. He is meant to be here. Alone.
In a moment of carelessness and exhaustion, his sleepless feet take him to the arboretum. It is a large room at the back of his house filled with giant ferns so tall their tops almost reach the vaulted ceiling. Windows the height of the wall overlook the backyard, now gray from the light of the moon. Ahead stands his piano, black like a crouching panther against its surroundings. He feels its pull, calling him to descend into the bottom of its well.
He settles on a spot where the habit of his body has made an impression on the bench. He stares ahead, fighting against the urge. But he is weak. His fingers find the keys, attracted to each one with the familiarity of an old lover.
Music flows out, and he is helpless to stop it. It is her song—inspired by a dreamed past that stretches back for a length as pliable and changeable as memory.
How many cycles were they together? One? Two? Three? He could never be sure. She is younger than he. Maybe her malleable mind was wiped clean by Tabula Rasa. He, on the other hand . . .
He lets his fingers continue their torment as his mind travels back.
It was the time of the Jinn, the moment before dawn when the sky had not yet prepared itself for the arrival of the sun. They sat on the same piano bench, so close he felt heat rising off her. She wore nothing but her skin, as she did every night they were together. Her long hair gathered to one side. An arm wrapped around his shoulder like a shawl.
“What’s this song?” she asked. The point of her chin rested on his shoulder.
“I’m not sure yet. Do you like it?”
“Very much. It’s beautiful. For a change.”
He stopped playing and looked at her. “For a change?”
She laughed. Her laughter had the crispness of morning dew.
“Your music is usually very . . . intense. It grabs you by the throat and forces you to see its truth. This one is different. Lovely. Private. Like the secret of first love.”
“Perceptive,” he said and pulled her close. He brushed her hair back, exposing her throat. He nuzzled it and inhaled her scent. “Only love.”
“Do you think you’ll remember this song in the next cycle?” she asked as she played with a curl at the base of his neck.
“I don’t know. If not, then hopefully something close to it.”
She sighed. Her eyes far away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Time.”
“There’s still some left.”
“Not enough,” she said.
“It’s never enough.”
“Doesn’t it make you sad?” she asked.
“I try not to think about it.”
“I wish I didn’t think about it all the time. But I can’t help it,” she said.
He placed his lips on her jaw, tracing its line. His hand found the curve of her breast. He pressed on it, feeling its fullness in his palm.
She pulled back. “That’s your answer to everything.”
He stopped and looked at her. She seemed sad.
“I’m sorry, I’m just . . . tired. I’m going back to sleep,” she said and walked off.
He watched her body meld into the shadows of the house like a ghost.
A creak stirs him. He looks up. There is nothing there but darkness. The old house is restless, like him.
Aris takes in the chaos of her room. Articles of clothing drape over various pieces of furniture. Her dress lies rumpled on the floor. One of her favorite stilettos is on her nightstand. She hopes the other one is nearby. She looks up. Her silk panties dangle like an errant kite on the chandelier.
She feels blood rushing to her face. Last night was exhilarating. She looks at the sleeping beauty next to her, tracing the contours of Benja’s face with her eyes. Dark, well-shaped eyebrows. Enviably long lashes. Nose the perfect shape of a Greek statue’s. Lips—those lips. She fights the urge to kiss them.
The dreamer stirs. She pulls the bedsheet over her bosom. Benja lifts his eyes at her and smiles.
“We’re past modesty, don’t you think?” he says and buries his face back in the pillow.
She remembers last night and feels heat blooming on her cheeks, but she lets go of the sheet.
“You want breakfast?” Aris asks.
“Nah. I’d have to enter my biodata and all that.”
“Or you can just tell Lucy what you like,” she says.
“Lucy?”
“My AI,” She says. “I know it’s a little old fashioned.” But poetic. The Beatles knew how to name their songs.
“That’s a thought. I forget I can just tell people what I like. I expect them to just know,” he says. He feigns incredulity. “How dare you people not have my data? Don’t you know who I am?”
Aris laughs at the absurd truth in the statement.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’ve always liked asparagus,” she says. “The palate changes over time.”
“I hate asparagus. But maybe I used to like it. Who knows.” Benja turns to face her. “Don’t you think it’s wrong to not be able to know your own history? To have your past zapped out of your brain?”
“But it’s for the good of society.”
“That’s what we were taught, but is it really? I once read about a person with multiple personality disorder who would wake up with a different identity, forgetting they were someone else the day before. That’s essentially what Tabula Rasa does.”
“So we’re a society of the mentally ill?” she asks.
“Maybe. But I’m not sure what’s worse—the acceptance of it, or ignorance.”
“Of what?”
“Our fate.”
“I’m not following,” she says.
“We walk through our lives like it’s normal
, knowing all the while that it’s not. So our brains ignore it, making light of our past, shrugging it off like last season’s outfits. What if there’s something there we can’t live without?”
She rolls her eyes and plops onto her soft pillow. “There’s nothing in the past we can’t live without. We’re living now. And quite comfortably.”
Benja turns over and looks up at the ceiling. She reaches for his hair and plays with a curl on his forehead.
“I had fun last night,” she says, feeling warmth between her legs. Perhaps once more before they part ways.
She likes him. But not enough for a second date. No one is worth that. Maybe they would meet again in the next cycle for another first.
“Me too,” he says and looks at her with a serious expression on his face. “I should have been more honest with you last night. I wasn’t kidding about being fifty-seven point three percent curious. At least in this cycle. I can’t vouch for my past.”
She shrugs. “Okay.”
“You don’t care?” Benja asks.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Attraction is attraction. Good sex comes from all places.”
Benja laughs. “Ambivalence doesn’t sit well with some.”
“I’m not one of them,” Aris says.
She feels his index finger running along her thigh under the sheet.
He sighs. “Have you ever been in love?”
She drops the curl. What a way to kill the mood.
“I don’t do relationships,” she says. The heat of anger rises. She does not know why. It’s just a question.
“I’m not asking about relationships. I’m asking whether you’ve been in love.”
She sits up and wraps the cover around her, holding it like a shield. “I’m a scientist.”
“Don’t scientists fall in love?”
“Why, when I won’t even remember?” she says, a little more harshly than intended.
“Because we’re not butterflies in a specimen box,” he says to the ceiling. “Despite this existence saying otherwise.”
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