by Martyn Ford
‘Chester. It is not normal dream. We are in dreamscape together, you see?’
Perched on my elbows, I looked up at him. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘What can you remember?’
‘Um … leaping off a roof … Oh, wait, am I dead? Oh, no. I remember landing. Oh yeah, the dart. Some people shot me in the neck with a dart. Tito fell asleep. The animal-control people. I … I tried to jump into your mind.’
‘Yes. And I attempted to jump into your mind also.’
‘So we swapped places?’
‘Not quite. Best to explain with diagram.’
The wall suddenly changed into a blackboard. Two circles drawn in chalk appeared on either side.
‘Imagine if I throw a ball to you, you can catch it, yes?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
One of the white circles flew from left to right, like an animation, across the board. Then it went flying back.
‘But imagine we both throw ball at same time. The balls hit each other in the air and fall to the ground between us, you see?’
The chalk circles illustrated this.
‘So what, our consciousnesses have collided and fallen down into …?’
‘Into dreamscape.’
‘Is this bad?’ I said.
‘No, it is fine. Sometimes it is even fun to do. You can share information, meet in secret, you see.’
‘Can we wake up?’
‘We can’t, not yet.’ Vladovski stroked his beard. ‘You have been tranquillised. Sadly we are trapped here until Tito regains a little consciousness.’
‘Why should I trust you?’ I said. ‘You’re behind all of this. You’re involved – you know where my body is.’
‘No. I do not.’
‘Well, why did you run away then?’
‘I did not realise it was you in the gorilla. Your sister said Cold Rain sent you. I thought you were there to kill me.’
‘Why would Cold Rain want to kill you? Why would … Actually, fine, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Listen. I’m looking for Wise Earth. He is the key to all this. Please, please tell me you at least know where he is?’
‘What do you mean, where?’
‘It’s not a trick question, Vladovski. Where is he? Tell me where he is. Point on a map. Address. Give me his mobile number, whatever. I just need to find him.’
Vladovski turned his head sideways and squinted. It seemed like he didn’t trust me – like I was the dodgy one in this conversation. ‘You really don’t know?’
‘Why would I lie?’ I yelled. ‘Tell me!’
‘I can show you where he is … if you really, really want?’
‘Yes please,’ I whispered, frowning and nodding as though he was stupid.
‘Open the door.’
‘What? No.’ I sighed. ‘I’m running out of time. I’m forgetting stuff. I’m losing myself. Why won’t you just TELL ME WHERE HE IS?! Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!’
The room burst into flames.
‘Relax.’ Vladovski waved his hand and the fire disappeared. ‘The answers to questions that truly matter are always closer than you think.’
‘No. No more riddles. I swear if the next thing that comes out of your mouth isn’t a postcode I’m going to …’
‘Follow me.’
Dr Vladovski started to float. The ceiling vanished and he flew up into the air.
I was shaking with anger but I had no other choice than to do as he said. I breathed for a few seconds to calm myself, then followed him.
As this was a lucid dream, I knew I could fly too, so I jumped and glided towards the sun. We went up and up into the air, right up to the white clouds above. But they weren’t clouds, they were the tops of waves. We turned upside down and were now sitting, bobbing about in a boat on the surface of the water. It was as though the blue sky was actually the sea. As though space itself was a deep ocean and the entire earth was contained in a bubble.
I peered over the edge of the wooden boat. When I stroked my hand through the water, it was warm and glittered and glowed with a thousand dots of white light. A shimmering noise vibrated below us every time I touched it.
‘That’s quite cool,’ I admitted.
‘The process of the waking brain and dreaming brain is the same,’ Vladovski said. ‘Dreaming is what your mind does when it lets go of its senses. When you are relieved of the burden of objective reality. You understand? Here, today, we share control. Here, in lucid dream, we are gods. You want a new house.’ He clicked his fingers and an entire house appeared, then fell into the water with an almighty splash and a brilliant rumble of music and light. Our boat rocked from side to side. ‘You want to live in tummy of great whale.’ He clicked his fingers again and a gigantic sea monster lurched up, or down, turned above us, or below us, opened its mouth and swallowed the boat whole.
I screamed, but when I looked again, we were standing in the entrance to a palace. A huge, shiny, grand reception area made of marble. It was like one of those posh hotels you see in rich deserty countries. You know, where everything is mega new.
‘Can we just stay in one place for a bit?’ I asked. ‘It’s getting confusing.’
‘Fine. Here is my palace,’ Vladovski said. ‘I have built it in my mind. I have imagined every detail, furnished all two thousand rooms and weaved in my memories of old country and new. All the wisdom I have. All the knowledge I learn. Here, in shared dreamscape, we can exchange ideas. So I give it to you, Chester. You are free to explore. To know all that I know.’
‘An imaginary palace?’
‘An imagined palace.’
‘Gee, thanks. Look, this is all very nice,’ I said. ‘But did I mention I was in a rush?’
‘Time goes as fast or as slow as you wish.’
‘OK,’ I said, staring at the painting on the ceiling. It was like the top of a cathedral but instead of little naked baby angels and Jesus stuff, there were bears. ‘I want it to go faster. I want it to whiz to whenever you just tell me where Wise Earth is.’
Dr Vladovski gestured around the grand palace. ‘Young minds, you always look too far for solution.’
I yelled. The palace crumbled to dust and disappeared. Then we were standing in the desert.
‘This is getting silly now.’ I fell to my knees in the hot orange sand. ‘Please. Just. Tell. Me.’
‘No, I cannot. You must see for yourself.’ He pointed over my shoulder.
There was a tall door with the word ‘Memories’ written above in neon lights. They buzzed on and off. A door to nowhere. Just a rectangular piece of wood sticking out of the sand dune.
I stepped over and the door opened automatically. Inside I saw a room with screens. TV screens almost. Or like mobile phone and tablet screens. Thousands of them. Millions. Trillions. Stretching up an infinite wall and over an infinite ceiling and across an infinite floor. We were floating like astronauts in the very centre of this place.
‘So are these my memories?’ I asked. ‘Just on TV screens and phone screens and stuff? Why are they displayed like this? Seems a bit … I dunno, naff?’
‘Your mind is presenting it this way – maybe you spend lot of time looking at screen?’
Yeah, true, I thought. Loads of them were broken, like the signal was weak.
‘Why are so many of them fuzzy?’
‘As you said, you are losing yourself. Soon they will all go blank. Chester, look.’
There was Amy. There was Dandelion. There was Mum. A mad collage of memories and light and colour. Recent ones had a lot of gorilla stuff in them. It was strange, I didn’t have to look at them to see them. They were all visible to me at exactly the same time. Obviously this wouldn’t work in the real world, but in the dreamscape impossible things happen all the time. Rules like physics and even time itself just don’t apply.
‘Pay attention to this one,’ Vladovski said.
One screen expanded, taking over the entire wall, taking over my entire body, taking over the entire universe. The memory was so
vivid it was real. As real as real had ever been.
I was living it. Watching it unfold in real time.
A sunny day. I am an old man. I look at my hands. So old. Frail. I am angry. I am in hospital. I have a cut on my arm. My back is sliced to bits. Oh, I’m a mess. I’m dying. I know that. My long grey hair is red with blood. My black robe is in tatters. I limp down the hospital ward, wincing in pain with every step. I look behind me – there are footprints of blood. This is not good. Blood footprints are a bad sign on any walk. Above me there are long lights and hospital signs. They’re buzzing. Fizzing like pylons in summer. I follow them. Then I arrive where I need to be. The maternity ward.
There’s a room full of pregnant women to the side of me. I can see them through the glass. Then, on the other side of the hall, there’s another room. This one is full of newborn babies. I can see little pudgy legs and arms wiggling in small cots. I step inside – smells like hospital chemicals and fabric softener. So many to choose from.
I feel bad. I don’t want to do this again. But I have no other choice.
Through a glass partition I notice a man sitting on one of the chairs. He can’t see me but I am free to watch him closely. He has a small child on his lap. She’s maybe six or seven. She’s fast asleep. She looks a bit like Amy. No. That is Amy.
Under my robe I find a leather-bound book. A journal. I step into the hallway and hand it to the man. He takes it and frowns.
There are nurses at the end of the hall now. They are rushing towards me, following the bloody footprints. This is it. Now or never.
Behind the man a door is propped open. Inside this room a woman is asleep. A midwife is wrapping a small baby in a towel. I know now that the baby is called Chester. I take a deep breath in and, for the last time, I jump.
An old man collapses to the ground and dies.
All at once I know the truth. All at once I know that I am Wise Earth.
I stomped my foot and everything disappeared. It was just me and Vladovski floating in total whiteness. All dreamy and soft.
‘Whoa. Hang on,’ I said. ‘Wise Earth is … me?’
‘Yes, you see now.’
‘Right. OK. Let’s just take a moment to think about this. Can we go somewhere nicer? Somewhere more comforting maybe, like home?’
I blinked and we were sitting in the middle of a jungle. There was a family of gorillas milling about nearby and a river moving slowly on the other side of some huge green trees.
‘Ah. Interesting,’ Vladovski said, touching some hanging vines. ‘You consider this home – see, dreamscape can tell you a lot about yourself.’
I could hear that unique jungle music – singing birds and buzzing insects and distant howling wildlife. Leaves rustled above in the warm breeze. The whole place seemed to be moving – like everything in sight was alive. Even the ground.
‘This is not a good sign. I am not a gorilla. I am … I am … I am a nine-hundred-and-ninety-year-old mystic bodysnatcher called Wise Earth …?’ I walked over to some rocks near the river and sat down. Vladovski perched by my side. He stroked the moss.
‘Vivid,’ he whispered. ‘You dream well.’
I noticed he had a Mr Whippy in a cone, flake and everything. ‘Can you take this seriously please?’ I said, and his ice cream disappeared just before it got to his mouth. This lucid dreaming would have been fun if it wasn’t for all the worrying stuff I’d learned.
He pouted. ‘Fine. I suggest you look at your thoughts.’
‘OK. Thoughts. My thoughts. Right. I … I have such mixed feelings about this. I’m angry at Wise Earth. But … but then I am him, so … who can I blame? Wait. I don’t remember founding the star swimmers? I don’t remember anything before about my third birthday.’
‘We tend to hide things we do not wish to remember,’ Vladovski explained. ‘It is called repression. Can cause big harm. Here you could explore your past, if you wish.’
A wooden chest had appeared on the jungle floor. Above it a neon sign said, ‘Repressed Memories’. Near the keyhole a note read, ‘DO NOT ENTER (seriously, don’t even peep in here – very bad stuff inside)’.
‘Looks like I don’t want to,’ I said. ‘What if I just want to be Chester Parsons?’
‘You are Chester Parsons. Wise Earth has dissolved into you – do you understand?’
‘No. NO. I do not understand.’
‘He is part of you. Think of him as … as seasoning in a soup. He has woven into your psyche, like you have woven into the gorilla’s mind. Elements of his personality shine through – you may have spotted them?’
‘Uh, maybe, I dunno. What was he like?’
‘Wise Earth had a short temper. He was known to be impulsive. For most of his lives he has done mischievous things – you ever see this in your mind?’
‘Actually, yeah, I have. Sometimes I want to do really mean stuff to Amy. I get tempted to steal and, like, I hit some people with a sack of potatoes which I knew was not cool. But I laughed.’
Vladovski turned his hands over and tilted his head. ‘You are good to notice – pay attention to your thoughts. Never let them take over, never get lost.’ Then he faced me and made eye contact. ‘But your character, it forms with time. The genes your parents have given you and your upbringing – everything you’ve seen, smelled, tasted, heard, every memory, every sensory input – it all goes into the pot. Remember, Wise Earth is just one of many ingredients in recipe of you.’
‘The point is to live forever, right? So I can remember everything Wise Earth has ever done?’
‘If that is your desire.’
‘What do you reckon? You’re the therapist.’
‘Usually advice is not to bottle things up – can make you go full cuckoo crazy. But you are not usual case.’
After a few seconds I decided not to look in the chest of repressed memories. I was already quite stressed – didn’t want to make it worse.
‘I guess all this explains why I’m so good at mind jumping,’ I said.
‘Good? No, no … you are the best.’
On the ground, beneath the long, dried leaves, curled and spiralled and crunchy, a bug hissed and rattled a bit like a cricket. Then it scurried away, through the mulchy undergrowth, up over a log, and burrowed quickly between some huge tree roots, kicking loose dirt out with its hind legs.
A tall bird fluttered down from the canopy and picked up a twig for its nest. Puffing its chest, it chirped a short song, a melody like a harp. Its feathers were every colour I could imagine, every colour there could ever be and more. After a few seconds it hopped away and flew out through some branches, ducking past swinging monkeys as it went. Clouds moved aside and now the sun shone on to the wide leaves above, lighting the clearing green and filling the air with a warm, damp smell.
Although I hated to admit it, this place really was comforting. It sure felt like home.
‘So what was going on?’ I asked. ‘The day Chester … no … the day I was born, Wise Earth was dying. He had cuts all over his body. I saw footprints in blood on the hospital floor.’
‘He had fight with Cold Rain,’ Vladovski said. ‘They used to be best of friends. But they have big … dispute, yes, big disagreement about how to run the star swimmers.’
All this sounded weirdly familiar. ‘Carry on.’
Dr Vladovski plucked a nearby leaf and picked it apart. ‘This is a sad story, Chester,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you want to hear it?’
‘I am sure.’
He dropped the pieces of torn leaf and they flew off into the breeze, glowing like embers from a fire. This confetti floated in front of us, animating the story as Dr Vladovski told it. Little red and orange lines in the air, like streaks of light painted with a sparkler.
‘Wise Earth founded the star swimmers almost a millennium ago,’ he explained. ‘He was great guru from the east. He meditated for years, decades at a time. He honed the ability – became Daahsuti master. He taught others the skill. He showed young Cold Rain and Red Fi
re how to mind jump. But he grew old. So he shed his skin, he took his first baby. Centuries pass, he replaces body when he needs to, the star swimmers maintain continuity, they help him remember. They allow him to pick up where he left off. But soon they transform into dangerous group. He commands an army of Daahsuti masters.’
‘Why though?’
‘You leap into the mind of priest, of king, of president, of world leader new and old. The star swimmers drive history. Ideas, Chester. Ideas are strongest force in whole universe. Every act, great and small, good and evil, starts with humble idea. Like forest start with seed. You’d be astonished how many of history’s most pivotal moments can be traced back to star swimmers. Imagine having power to change minds.’
‘To achieve what? What’s the point?’
‘Wise Earth wanted to make world a better place … A wiser place. If you walk past a river and see a child drowning, you can jump into water and save them. What would it make you if you stood by and did nothing?’
‘A … a bad person?’
‘Exactly. Wise Earth knew he had power to make bad people good and good people great. He could stop an evil act before it even occurs. His interference with minds started small. A kind deed here, a crisis averted there. And all of it, all of it, with the very best intentions. Star swimmers would be like guardian angels. There to swoop in and out of our thoughts and guide us in right direction. But chaos, it throws up unforeseen consequences. To stop war today risks starting war tomorrow.’
‘Sounds like a lot of work.’
‘Indeed – like spinning plates. Soon, he was just trying to patch up past mistakes. Soon, his guilt was justified. Soon, he really was responsible for more than he could ever handle. And he realised anything less than total control would be insufficient. Wise Earth needed more. More star swimmers. More control. More. More. More. But it became too much. Eventually they spent half their time just keeping the order together, keeping it secret. Then this became sixty per cent of their workload. Then seventy. Ninety. Just a few generations in and the star swimmers served only themselves. And did so with ruthless brutality.’