by J. K. Norry
FIVE
On the one hand, there was the fear of not taking enough. The real moment of clarity and control had begun with him taking two pills, and Link had no interest in playing an observer’s role when he could play an active one. Whatever this dream was going to present, as far as options, he wanted to be the one choosing his own adventure.
On the other hand, he only had the one prescription. It had not been marked for automatic refill, and he hadn’t even checked until after he had taken the two so close together. Three months’ worth of pills would only last six weeks at that rate, unless he figured out some way to get more.
In the end, he laughed himself into a compromise. He had no evidence that the dream would even be the same when he went back to sleep, or that the effects of the drug would not change quickly as his unique body chemistry adjusted to the shift. Sunday had been a dreamless respite, after all; perhaps that’s how his sleep would go, from here on out.
He’d take two pills, and fall asleep. When he woke up, he would know how to proceed.
Link laughed at himself again, for being so excited about what awaited him on the other side of unconsciousness. Just today, he had gotten a touch closer to someone he had been admiring from afar for as long as he could remember. If it had been yesterday, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep for thinking about the deeper meaning of the brief and meaningless exchanges they’d had. Now, he was afraid he wouldn’t nod off for all the excitement he was having about a dream he could only visit by sleeping.
As he took the pills, Link wondered for a brief moment if one explained the other, and that he perhaps deserved to be alone if all it took was a fantastical story manufactured by his unconscious mind to get him to unplug from what little life he had.
Getting ready for bed, the thought washed away like so much toothpaste foam. Everyone’s got reasons they don’t deserve anyone, and everyone’s got reasons why they do; some folks, they just get lucky.
The lonely little bed was comfortable, and his excitement was not such that he could not sleep. Almost immediately after shutting his eyes, Link began to see lights in the darkness. His first thought was that they were of an altogether different hue from any of the lights he had seen on Earth. As he felt himself moving towards them, his thoughts seemed to drift alongside him in some kind of visible form. Link thrilled at the gossamer strands of drifting nothingness, and then they were gone.
His next thought, somehow, was not his own.
“Only a fool,” he muttered, “would not take defensive action.”
Link found himself staring at a log book. He knew it was a log book because it had ‘Admiral’s Log’ printed across the top in bold letters. Otherwise, it was an object that was simultaneously familiar and foreign. Slim and pliable, it was really a sheet of metal stretched over a desktop. It felt padded, thin as it was, and gave way under his touch to make incoherent marks on the surface. The marks appeared under the words that had already been written, in neat printed form, likely using the pointed device he was holding over the sheet in the other hand that wasn’t his. It could only be described as a stylus, and had a glowing blue dot halfway down the slim barrel. Link touched it to the surface, and another meaningless mark appeared. He set it down, and the light went off immediately.
The log was not much thicker than a piece of construction paper, and Link couldn’t resist toying with the edges. They came up easily, and he was able to roll the sheet into a metal scroll of sorts. He unrolled it, smoothed it out flat, and tried folding it over. Biting his lip as a crease formed on the fold, he smoothed it out quickly once more. No new line or bend or flaw of any kind marked the screen, and the words that had been written there were still in the same perfect neat form. Link shrugged, and folded it over on itself again. He kept folding it in half, until it was a neat rectangle of metal he could slip into his pocket like a folded sheet of paper. Unfolding it, he was able to smooth the surface out into its original flat shape; his palm didn’t leave marks, but a single finger would.
All of the random smears from his efforts were slight, or under the words that had been written in the log. The words were naturally in a language that he couldn’t read, until he tried to read them. When he made that effort, he found that the words now didn’t make sense from a contextual standpoint. They were all brief entries, made in a kind of shorthand that left out many of the words that they would have needed to form full coherent thoughts.
-Engineering detected new gravity pull; investigating.
-Fleet differences growing more pronounced; dangerous.
-Mining operation damages; assess risk.
-Magnetic fields affecting memory; potential opportunity?
-Platinum Star team leader losing ground; make an example.
-Silver Star team leader showing
The last entry ended midway through, and made as little sense to him as the rest of them had.
He wasn’t sure what chilled him more: reading the entries or watching the flashing images behind his eyes as he did. Link was completely himself, somehow, in an entirely different body. He felt a tension in him, at his center, where he usually felt a dull distant ache. It was a strange thing to make note of, since he had never even made note of the pain before. Now it was gone, and simultaneously replaced with a fire that felt like it would burn him if he did not somehow stay out in front of it.
Pushing himself away from the desk, Link stood and looked for a reflective surface. He watched his own mind, as he moved, racing through useless thoughts like it was so accustomed to doing. Reading in dreams is not possible, even if the language it’s written in is one you grew up reading; that’s what the dream experts say, anyway. Also, the way thoughts come to you is totally different; he knew that from his own experience. No matter how lucid his dreams might have been or seemed, nothing had plunked him so completely into another reality like this.
Even the pills came to mind, and how he would definitely be taking two at a time as long as he continued to get these mysterious results. It was followed by the clear thought that he should really not be thinking of such things so clearly. By the time Link found a mirror to inspect himself in, he’d had all kinds of thoughts that seemed an awful lot more like waking thoughts than sleeping thoughts to him.
None of them disturbed him as much as the reflection.
The face was his, only it wasn’t. Much like the colors had seemed slightly off, as he passed through whatever doorway his mind had thrust him through, so did his features. His eyes were still brown, but the dullness had been replaced by a stark shining luminosity. The lines on his face were smooth, the flesh full and tight, while somehow looking as though this face had weathered a good many more years than his own. He tried to smile, and immediately let it fall. Link’s smile was awkward, and unnatural; this one was severe, and humorless. Resting, this face had a fierce expression that Link had never seen shape his own features; his resting face looked sad, from what people and pictures told him.
The only things he had noticed in the room were the items that seemed familiar in some way: the journal, the bunk, the books, and the mirror he had found at last. A sound came from somewhere in the room while he was inspecting the similar features, and he turned toward it involuntarily.
It wasn’t a beep or a ring, the way a beep or a ring might sound; nonetheless, it had some quality of an urgent tone to it, and he wondered what it might be.
“Hello?” Link said. “Is someone there?”
His voice sounded strange to him, in much the same way everything else did. Instead of being completely different than his own, or exactly the same, it landed somewhere in between that he wasn’t sure he liked.
“May I enter?”
The other voice was coming from the same wall as the sound had come from, and Link moved another step closer to it. He looked around, seeing the scattering of unfamiliar objects as if for the first time. He shook his hea
d.
“Uh, sorry,” he said. “It’s not a good time.”
Link sighed, assuming it would not be transmitted along with his message. It was comforting to know that he had control of the room, and that he could explore it at his leisure without interruption. He moved to the first unfamiliar object, reaching out tentative hands that looked so much like his own in the direction of the strange item.
Another sound came behind him, and Link spun in place to see a part of the wall disappear. Nothing slid aside, or opened up; and as far as he could tell whatever created the opening had not caused the sound. That was coming from the other side of the opening, a collection of new noises as unfamiliar as the object Link had been about to grab. There was a figure framed by the sudden opening, and the strange din filled the space behind it; the figure was completely silent, standing there, until it spoke.
“The Link?” it said. “Is that you?”
He felt his own strangely familiar eyes go wide, at the sound of his name. The thing he was looking at was not the same thing he had spoken to before. It was a bit too much for him to process in the moment, and Link stood there staring wide-eyed at the collection of gears and mechanisms a moment longer than it had patience for.
“Of course,” it said. “It is you.”
It made noise now, other than talking in that tinny inhuman tone that this particular speaker had taken on. Gears moved, and it trundled into the room with a distinctly strange hum. The wall formed again behind it, and it began speaking once more as soon as it did.
“I knew it was you,” it said, “when I saw you toying with the log and looking at yourself at length in the mirror. The Admiral wouldn’t do those things, like that. It had to be you. Don’t worry, I was able to remotely erase the marks you made. Your presence must remain undetected.”
Link had never imagined that he would be describing the sound of a robot’s voice to himself, in his head; he certainly never thought he would have called it gleeful. This collection of what could only be called metal definitely sounded gleeful, even if it was a tinny-sounding glee. He frowned, darkly, as an angry thought grabbed at his mind.
“You were watching me?” he demanded. “In private?”
He wasn’t sure what it was using for eyes, or if it saw him in the traditional sense at all. The feeling that the thing was looking at him could have been completely in his head, from what he knew of the odd mechanisms at work in the smooth reflective surfaces.
“Private?”
It repeated the word, as if it were an unfamiliar one. The next sound that issued forth could only be described as laughter. Being tinny, like nearly every other sound the thing was making, the laugh put Link off more than a little bit.
“A primitive and ancient concept,” it said. “In our society.”
Link felt his hand began to shake, and spoke the first words that came to mind.
“I want to destroy you,” he said. “I know I can, and I feel like I want to. I have to admit, I don’t know if I can resist the urge.”
It felt good, to threaten the thing, although he didn’t know why.
Rather than wheel away, the collection of alien mechanisms moved closer.
“That is the thought pattern of the body you are inhabiting,” it said. “You can resist that, and you can learn to take complete control of both the thoughts and actions of the body. That is what you are here for. It is what your mind tells me would be called a destiny, by your people. This is your destiny, to stop the man you appear to be from doing many others great harm.”
Link stared at the thing, trying not to laugh. This was a little heavy for him, even if it was a dream.
“I’m sorry, little robot,” he smiled. “I don’t think I’m the guy you’re looking for. From my perspective, this whole world is just a dream. Dreams are for fun, not for being bossed around by contraptions that talk about silly things like destiny.”
Something started whirring in some part of the metallic housing, and the thing shuddered while remaining in place.
“Does this feel like a dream?” it demanded.
Link laughed, and looked around. He couldn’t name more than half of the things he saw, or pair them with a purpose in his mind; the only thing that seemed more unlikely than his surroundings was whatever he was having a conversation with, which seemed to be doing everything it could to get on his nerves.
The anger didn’t feel natural, to his way of thinking; but the body he was in had acutely tuned into it. Link relaxed his hold on it, and surprised himself utterly when he did.
His hand leapt to his side, unbidden. It snatched a small weapon of some kind from the belt at his waist, aimed and fired in less than a startled breath. In the same automatic motion, he holstered the sidearm. The waist-high collection of moving parts exploded into a dozen pieces in front of him, and Link moved abruptly to sit at the seat he had vacated earlier in his search for a mirror. He watched the hand he was no longer in control of complete the last sentence he had glanced at in the log.
-Silver Star team leader showing promise; test her.
After the words had been written, Link read them. He had a brief moment where he felt as though he was getting smaller, somehow; then he disappeared, and tumbled into a different kind of darkness.
SIX
Before the pills, Link had considered himself an expert on tuning out and getting through. The knowledge of any impending situation was enough to start the anxious twist in his belly, and he tolerated it when it came by embracing the anxiety. He was well practiced at shutting off the connection between his brain and his face, and had the habit of wearing a slight frown when his own features wanted to twist along with his emotional center.
Now, it was different.
A thin veneer of dream haze was painted over his entire experience now, and Link was able to tune out and get through like never before. Becoming aware of the knot of tension within him had made him both a casual observer to his own pain and a fully engaged participant in it. Watching it tighten within him was a full-time job, and he found that he had little attention to put towards anything else.
He knew he was at work, and that the tasks he needed to complete were on track to be finished when the clock was. Otherwise, he could not have been more dimly aware of the moments that passed or what events they trundled past his senses. The office buzzed with the usual sounds, phones ringing and people chatting idly. Link tuned it all out, drifting through the day in a pleasantly detached cloud.
Most of the day was spent at his desk, building columns in a digital universe or surfing the internet to kill all the hours in the day he didn’t need. At lunch, he slid his cooler from under his desk and ate the fare he had brought from home. The only place Link needed to go where he couldn’t avoid people was the restroom, and that’s where he found himself engaged by one.
“Hey.”
Link was standing in front of the urinal, doing his business and paying very little mind to much else. His skull felt like an empty chamber, with cotton clinging to every surface like soft stalactites and stalagmites. The dullness was like a sound, and the sound itself was dull; for a long moment of quiet calm, he thought a voice in his head had escaped through his mouth.
He realized, suddenly, that it had been someone else entirely.
Turning his head was not an option, no matter the state of his sluggish mind. Link continued to keep his eye on the task in hand, and frowned. He wanted to say that this was not the place for conversation, or for any kind of interaction whatsoever. A part of him wanted to voice his thoughts on shared restrooms, and how he thought it was a strange concept to begin with; but, after all, this was not the place for voicing thoughts.
“Hey,” he echoed, instead.
There was not a full second between his single word ending and the other man’s next sentence beginning. Like a wire tripping a mine, the sound set off a long rattle
of a response. Link finished before he was done, zipping up and flushing. He walked past the man, frowning as fiercely as he could, and stopped at the sink.
“I’m Steve,” the guy said. “I just started this week. I haven’t seen you around. Are you one of the cubicle rats? I am. Are you in sales or data entry? I’m totally happy with the data entry job, so far, They don’t expect much, but I plan on really wowing upper management. And middle management. Especially that one, Sherry I think is her name. You know who I’m talking about? Of course you do. She’s single, right?”
Link caught his own eye in the mirror, while washing his hands. He exchanged a look with his reflection, as if to say ‘can you believe this guy’ without saying anything at all. Steve zipped up and moved between Link and the paper towel dispenser, and stuck out his hand.
“What’s your name?” he said.
His eyes darted to the man’s hand, outstretched and waiting. Link looked at his own, still dripping from the washing. A whole string of appropriate things came into his mind, that he might say to Steve: this was not a place to make friends, or even to talk to friends you had already made; or that there was no way on Earth he was ever shaking that hand, under any circumstances.
Link didn’t say any of them; he opted for a single word, instead.
“Ugh.”
Link wiped his hands on his slacks, stepped past him and pushed the door open with his shoulder. As it sighed shut behind him, he said it aloud once more.
“Ugh.”
He was paying as little attention to his surroundings as he had been all day, and Link didn’t realize that he was not alone in the hallway.
“What was that?”
Link turned at the voice, his hand poised to wave away the comment. When he saw who it was, he kept turning. His wave of dismissal turned to a friendly little wave of greeting, and he felt as much like an ass as he must have looked while putting on his most realistic smile.