Fearless Dreamer

by Linda Marr

  I saw another policeman heading up the stairs.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “They’re searching the house. They never find anything.”

  “What about all the bunk beds?”

  “They think they’re for the workers we hire during harvest season.”

  Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better.

  “Next they’ll want to talk to us, wait and see,” Kavan said.

  And sure enough, Jeff called us over.

  “Kavan, Elle, this is Detective Chapin. He wants to ask you some questions.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the detective said, trying to look as if he wasn’t lying. “I hear you’re both home schooled. How do you like it?”

  “It’s okay,” Kavan said, running his fingers through his blue hair, “but frankly I’d be fine with not going to school at all.”

  Detective Chapin laughed. He seemed relaxed, but I couldn’t forget that other policemen were searching through the farmhouse. There were a lot of people living here. The odds against one of them leaving some kind of clue to their existence seemed overwhelming.

  “What about you, Elle?”

  “I like it fine,” I said.

  He pulled out his smart phone and his fingers scrolled across the screen. “There’s no mention of a teenage girl from the last time my colleagues were here, Elle. Why do you think that is?”

  I blinked. “I don’t know…” I desperately searched my mind for some kind of believable response. “Maybe ‘cause I was sick, I was at the doctor’s?”

  “Hmm…” He checked his computer again. “Sorry to hear that. What’d you have?”

  “A cold.”

  Detective Chapin arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t you get vaccinated?”

  Everybody was staring at me. Obviously I’d said something wrong.

  “Yeah… well… just my bad luck they don’t always work.”

  The room was so quiet I could hear the trees rustling outside.

  But then Detective Chapin laughed. “Isn’t that a fact.”

  He glanced back down at his phone. I took a deep breath. I’d passed some sort of test.

  “There’ve been reports of unusual people in the area. With you two around all day, I’m wondering if you’ve seen anything.”

  “What kind of unusual people?” asked Kavan.

  “They’d be in wheelchairs.”

  My heart started beating so loudly I was sure the detective could hear it.

  “No. I haven’t seen any ‘unusual people’ in wheelchairs,” Kavan said.

  “How about you, Elle?” Detective Chapin asked.

  I shook my head, my rapidly beating heart felt like it was inching up my throat, but when I answered my voice was its usual calm, “Nope.”

  Detective Chapin studied me for a moment. What if donors had some kind of special aura? Maybe the detective could see it in my eyes. But he just smiled, “I have a daughter about your age. How old are you, Elle?”

  That I answered truthfully. “Sixteen.”

  “That’s a great age. When was your birthday?”

  “Little over three months ago.” Why did he care?

  “That’s a real milestone. What’d you get?”

  He was testing me. What do sixteen year olds want in the future? Was it different than in my old world? I took a breath and said, trying to be cute, “I told them I wanted a car, but that I’d settle for a bike.”

  “So you have your license?”

  I had a sinking feeling. Somehow I’d managed to paint myself into a corner again.

  Before I could say anything else, the uniformed policeman who’d gone upstairs, strode into the room. He stepped up to the detective and whispered in his ear.

  The detective nodded, and smiled at me. “I had to get my twelve year old a motorcycle as soon as he got his driver’s license,” he glanced over at Jeff. “I feel for you.”

  Somehow I’d managed to dodge that bullet.

  After that, they simply left instructing Jeff to call if he saw anything unusual. By that I guess he meant people in wheelchairs.

  We were quiet until we heard their cars pull away. When I first came here, I would have been ecstatic to see the police. But now I was incredibly relieved they were gone. I’d succeeded, I’d fooled them. Without even realizing it, my life had changed that much.

  “Has that detective searched the farmhouse before?” I asked Kavan.

  “Not him,” said Kavan, “others.”

  “Because you’re rescuing donors?”

  “Because the police suspect we’re rescuing donors. Or refugees, as people call them.”

  “Why are they called that?” I asked.

  Jeff joined us, “The donor program is secret, Elle. Only certain people in the government know about it. Except for the detective, the others who were here have probably never even heard about it.”

  “Who’d believe it?” Kavan shrugged.

  “How come rescued donors don’t just tell everybody what’s happened?”

  “They can’t, and for good reason, Elle. As soon as you – or anyone – leaves the farmhouse, they’re inoculated to prevent that.”

  “Inoculated? How can they possibly do that?”

  “It’s like a vaccine. If you talked about being a donor to the wrong person, you’d be killed. And the rescue would be in vain. This is a safe place. But few other places are.”

  “What about the fact that donors don’t have belly buttons? All we’d have to do is show our stomachs and talk about those huge tanks and people would believe us.”

  “That’s part of telling people you’re a donor and putting yourself in danger. If somebody sees you, you’ll say you had surgery. The vaccination reprograms your responses to those kinds of questions.”

  “That’s awful,” I said.

  “No. It’s designed to keep you safe.”

  “Well I don’t want some kind of vaccination,” I was getting angry. I couldn’t see what keeping this all a secret was doing to help. “I’ll do it, I’ll take the chance. I’ll tell what they did to me, what they’re doing to all the others!”

  “You won’t, because no good would come of that. They’d just shut us down. That’s why we have places like the farmhouse,” Jeff said.

  “Not if everything changes,” I protested.

  “Until the wars end, that’s not going to happen.”

  I started to interrupt, but he overrode me.

  “We just have to keep on with what we’re doing. So far the police haven’t been able to prove any criminal action. All they can see is that we’re a working farm.”

  I was shocked by what he said. What was criminal was what was done to me.

  I watched Jeff and the other men leave the living room, and unlock the door to that secret room. Whatever that was about. Something else he still wasn’t telling me.

  “Who are they to tell me what I can and can’t talk about?” I said to Kavan. I felt blindsided.

  Kavan only shrugged.

  “If I ever leave this place, I’ll never be able to talk about it or what happened to me,” I persisted.

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Yes it is. I’d be living a lie all over again, just like when I was a donor.” It made me sick.

  “It’s not like that,” Kavan said flatly. “You’re living a real life now. That was nothing but a dream.”

  “It was a dream and a lie. And I’m sick of lying.”

  “Don’t make such a big deal about it, Elle. There’s a good reason for it. It’s called staying alive.”

  He could probably tell by the look on my face that I didn’t agree with him at all.

  “See you later,” he actually grinned. “You know where to find me when you calm down.” Kavan headed back to his room, but I just stood there, seething.

  I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop myself from wondering - were my rescuers controlling me, but just in a different way from the people who’d made me? It was a heavy thought, that
people created me, manipulated me. Who was I really? And would I ever be free? Was life just one long manipulation?

  My head was spinning. I didn’t want to talk to Kavan or anyone. I headed for the stairs; I just wanted to be alone for awhile.

  As I climbed them, I saw Jeff standing in front of that locked room. The door was partly open. To my surprise, it looked like a large closet or a small foyer, not a real room at all.

  I froze where I was on the stairs.

  Jeff’s back was toward me as he stepped inside that room. I saw his fingers tap on a key pad on the far wall, and then the wall slid open, and I realized what it really was. Jeff pressed another button and a door opened.

  A steady stream of people poured out of what must’ve been an enormous freight elevator. Many were in wheelchairs. So that’s where Jeff had hidden everyone when the police arrived. Where did that elevator go?

  I pressed myself back into the shadows. When all the people had left, the elevator closed, and Jeff tapped the wall keypad again. Then he shut the hall door behind him, and hurried away. He left so quickly that he didn’t notice what I did - the hall door had not completely closed.

  That seemed like a sign. As soon as Jeff’s footsteps receded, I slipped down the stairs and stepped through the door, closing it behind me. CHAPTER NINE

  I touched the key pad and the elevator opened. I knew Jeff wouldn’t like this, but I didn’t care. I stepped inside and pressed the button. My palms were sweaty, and I wiped them on my jeans.

  The elevator descended a long way, and then the door opened to an enormous room that must’ve spanned the entire length and width of the farmhouse. But it didn’t look like the rooms upstairs.

  It was more like some kind of a high tech control room. It was windowless, with dim recessed lights in the ceiling that provided just enough illumination to see. Clear plastic counters ran along the walls. There were computer monitors every few feet. The screens were filled with hazy images I couldn’t quite make out. In the center of the room there was a massive hard drive and an enormous screen that showed some kind of graph. The figures and lines changed every few seconds.

  The room was empty. Lucky for me, I thought. I didn’t know how long I had before someone found me or what they’d do to me when they did. Knowing I wasn’t supposed to be here made me move quickly.

  I started with the screen in the center of the room. The lines moving across it were like the vital signs monitors they have in hospitals. All that was missing were the beeping sounds those machines made.

  Next, I turned to the individual monitors. The first one was showing a warehouse-like space with pipes tangled on the ceiling. My breath caught in my throat. I knew those pipes, I knew that place. It was a donor center. The enormity of it, the loneliness. It all came rushing back. I could barely breathe for a moment. Beneath the pipes were hundreds of enormous clear plastic boxes.

  No, not boxes - vats, filled with fluid and single, living, sleeping donors.

  They twitched in their dreams. They were dreaming of families and friends and jobs and happiness. The way I’d dreamed about my prom, my soccer team, my brother. They were all dreaming their lives away. Until what? Until they were so old their blood was no longer good? I never thought of that before. Until they died in their dreams and their donor bodies were replaced by newer, fresher donors?

  I remembered when my grandfather died. At home in his own bed, the family gathered around him. It was a serene and peaceful passing, as perfect as death can get. The perfect end to a perfect life that wasn’t real. Where had he gone?

  My eyes spilled bitter tears. I forced myself to stare at the screen. That’s what I looked like. A donor. A universal donor. Now for the first time, I could actually see.

  My feet felt like lead but I forced myself to move on to the next monitor. There was another donor center. I hurried from screen to screen. They were all focused on donor centers.

  How could I have lived like that? How could anyone? Me, my parents.

  My jumbled thoughts screeched to a halt. My parents. Troy. What if I could see them on the monitors? If I could find them, I could rescue them, and we all could live at the farmhouse and be a family again. A real family.

  I went from screen to screen, peering at the tiny shapes in the vats. My eyes rapidly ran across the rows and rows of naked donors. So many donors, so many imaginary lives. They had to be there somewhere.

  My forehead glistened with sweat. All I could think about was my family. My search grew more frantic, but I couldn’t find them. How many monitors had I searched? Could I even see the vats they were in? I had to believe that I could find them.

  I’d been almost all the way around the room. There was only one last monitor. They had to be there. I was leaning as close to that screen as I could, trying to make out the tiny hazy images. I was desperate.

  “Elle.”

  Someone had found me. I didn’t even care.

  “Elle!”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jeff. I looked at him, swiping tears off my face. I didn’t care if he was angry at me or not. I didn’t care what he would do to me. “I can’t find them. I didn’t look hard enough.” My voice shook. “I have to look again.”

  I strode to the first monitor; I was going to start over.

  Jeff held my arm. “Sit down, Elle.”

  I wasn’t supposed to be here and now I was caught. And yet I still found it hard to care about anything but finding my family. Let Jeff punish me, I thought numbly. I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all.

  “Please don’t stop me.”

  Jeff pulled up a chair. “Sit down, Elle. Please.”

  I suddenly realized how tired I was. And how weak. My legs were trembling almost as much as when I’d first learned to walk.

  “How’d you get down here, Elle?” His voice was surprisingly calm.

  I swallowed and answered, “The door to the elevator room… was open.”

  “And despite knowing this room was locked for a reason, you decided that it would be alright to sneak in.”

  I examined my hands. “I knew it wasn’t all right, but I did it anyway. I’m sorry.”

  “Because of what you’ve seen, or because you betrayed our trust?” he asked.

  “Both,” I answered honestly.

  And yet, even though I was sorry, I didn’t regret being here. If I’d found my family, it would be worth anything. I could help them. I felt surer of that every minute.

  I glanced toward the monitors. “Did I look like that when Charles rescued me?”

  “Yes. You remember the tube in your stomach?”

  I remembered Charles pulling it out. I remembered it every single day. “Where’d you find me?” I nodded at the monitors. “Which donor center?

  He pointed to one of them. “There -”

  I got up and stood as close to that screen as I could. Wouldn’t it make sense that my family was in the same center I was kept in?

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “In the city.”

  I squinted at the screen. But I couldn’t see them. I stepped back, more dejected than ever.

  “Can you find my parents?”

  “It’s not that easy, Elle.”

  “You found me, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Jeff walked to big computer in the center of the room, and I followed. “You found us.”

  He pointed to the blips running silently across the screen. “These are brain waves. Each line represents a different donor. We’re constantly scanning for donors who are trying to wake up.” He indicated a jagged line that looked like the start of an earthquake. “It shows up as peaks and valleys. Once we find one, we can track it to a specific donor.”

  I thought about Charles – and Kavan. Kavan was so young when he was rescued. “Why don’t you just rescue everyone?”

  “Because we don’t have the capability. We only rescue the donors who are in the most immediate danger.”

  “What do you mean?”

 
“In your dream life, Elle, you were always getting into accidents, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. But what does that have to do with -”

  “Those accidents always happened after you tried to wake up.”

  “You mean after I had what I thought were nightmares. Why?”

  “The nightmares of course were when you were actually awake. And it was happening for longer and longer periods of time. If you woke up fully you would have been disposed of, unless we got to you first.”

  I stared. “They’d have killed me?”

  “Your parents would believe you had a fatal accident. But you always went back to your computer-given life, and so you were spared.”

  That must’ve been what happened to Kavan, even though he would’ve been only a boy then. There was a lot more to him than met the eye.

  And then it struck me. If I hadn’t been rescued I wouldn’t have grown up, or had a family of my own one day. Or dreamed I had all those things. The government would’ve killed me. I would have been dead.

  ***

  I was in such shock that I barely even registered leaving the computer room. All I wanted was to be alone. To try to make sense of it all.

  But there I was lying on my bed, staring up at a crack on the ceiling, without really seeing it, thinking nothing at all. The images of those people, living people, kept in vats – donors like me - wouldn’t go away.

  There was a soft knock on my door, and Blair stepped inside. Another time I would’ve been glad to see her. But right then I needed to be alone.

  “I just wanted to see how you were feeling, Elle. I heard you saw the surveillance center.”

  I kept my eyes on the crack on the ceiling. “Yes, and I’m glad,” I said, although I wasn’t really sure how I felt.

  “Jeff thought you might have some questions. After what you’ve seen.”

  “So he sent you up? He’s done dealing with me?”

  All of a sudden I was angry again. So many donors, they all needed to be rescued. And Jeff knew about them and wasn’t doing anything to get them here. How could Jeff have this information and let those donors stay trapped? He said they had to want to wake up. Why? What difference did that make?

  “Why me? Why did I keep waking up?”

  I turned to look at Blair. Her brow was furrowed. But she didn’t say a word.