by E. J. Mellow
My eyes widen. “Really? Why?” I ask curiously rather than nervously, given that that sensation has recently been removed from me.
“I have some theories.”
“What kind of—”
“Come,” Elena says with a quick smile, closing that particular conversational topic and patting the seat between us. “Like I explained before, this is a Memory Chair. We’ll be simulating certain past Dreamers’ memories to merge with your own. This is so you can learn faster and pick up skill sets you otherwise lack. It’s how we catch each Dreamer up to speed on fighting techniques, uses of their power, and situations that have come before them. Think of it as an advanced study session.” Her mouth twitches with a grin, and I’m impressed with her attempt at a joke.
“So I’ll be able to see the Dreamers that have come before me?” I ask, astonished that such technology exists.
She nods. “Yes, you will inherit their memories, their talents. It will feel like your lives are merging into one. That’s why we have to pace these sessions. It’s a lot to take on—another’s thoughts and feelings. If done improperly, it can have severe consequences for the active Dreamer, mainly in their waking life.”
I work my bottom lip, wishing I could find my uneasiness again instead of this detached interest. I’m starting to think Elena had ulterior motives in doing that little calming trick of hers. “What kind of consequences?” I cautiously touch the white material of the chair.
“If oversaturated, you could become confused of whose body you are in possession of, inducing schizophrenic or bipolar tendencies.”
My gaze whips to hers. “Uh, what now?”
Elena smiles. “Don’t worry. This is not my first time doing this.”
“Still.” I glance warily back at the seat. “That’s not exactly news that has me jumping into this thing.”
“You’ll be fine, Molly. I promise we’ll be pacing these sessions properly.” She gestures for me to sit. “Now, please.”
I eye her a moment more, weighing my options, but ultimately end up crawling onto the recliner—probably after more of her voodoo calming magic. Elena presses a panel in the floor, and a square podium rises next to her. The top surface glows, revealing a keyboard with strange symbols—all straight lines and edges.
“What language is that?” I ask as certain panels lining the walls illuminate with similar lettering as she types.
“It’s a form of Latin,” she explains. “I will need you to relax on the headrest, Molly.”
I do, not liking that I’m limited to the view of the domed ceiling. I turn slightly and watch four small boxes with glowing script pop out of the wall like drawers and float toward us. Besides the fronts, the rest of the containers’ sides are see-through glass revealing the swirling blue-white liquid that fills them. As they draw nearer, the hair on my arms jumps, and I know this is Navitas, but something about these particular boxes has the power in me thrumming.
“This is one of the rooms where we store the memories of the past Dreamers. It’s a sort of library,” Elena says as she gently plucks the floating objects from the air and places them on their own pedestals that have risen around her.
“So these walls are filled with Dreamers that have come before me?” I rake my gaze over the hundreds of panels lining the space, unable to keep the awe from my face.
“Their memories and minds’ power,” she specifies. “Parts of their energy. I’m sure you felt the presence of so much Navitas when you entered.”
I nod. So that’s what those shivering sensations were all about. Man, talk about ghost chills.
“One day your memories will be held here too. Adding to our history and the chosen Dreamers’.”
I swallow, wondering how they’ll retain those memories and how much of my personal thoughts would be revealed in them.
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask, about the last time I was here with Dev in the—”
“Yes.” Elena nods. “Dev spoke with me earlier about what happened with the energy wall and the Metus. All of it will be explained soon.”
I worry the ringless spot on my index finger at the mention of the creatures that create and live off of nightmares in Dreamers. How long will I go before running into one of those lava-goop things again? With the memory of their decaying stench forever clinging to my nostrils, I hope not very soon. But something tells me acquiring Dreamers’ memories will be dashing away this hope in mere minutes.
“Look forward please,” Elena instructs as she continues to type.
Change that to seconds.
Taking a deep breath, I turn back to the ceiling, trying to come to terms with everything I just learned, as a projected grid screen wraps around my face and locks my head into place, an invisible barrier holding me down.
Okay, so I’ve found that misplaced unease.
“The grid is a transmitter,” Elena explains. “It’s nothing to fear, merely keeps your head steady against unwanted movement when you’re receiving memories.” A cold material touches the tip of my finger. “I will be monitoring your heart rate as well.”
Something tells me that if this were as safe as she says, none of these precautions would be necessary.
“Will it hurt?” I ask, my voice sounding small.
She places her warm hand in mine. “There will be no actual physical pain.”
Not very reassuring.
“We’ll start slowly with one Dreamer, let you get used to the transmittal sensations before I send you a few more. Does that sound agreeable?”
“Um, s…sure,” I breathe out, a tightness clenching my chest.
The gleaming screen pulses above me, and a blue-white liquid inches across to cover its surface. It’s thick like oil but as beautiful as refracted light from a crystal. In a trance, I watch it move, when two areas of liquid directly above my eyes begin to drip down. Panicked, I push my head farther back, trying to close my eyes, but I’m unable to.
“And now let us begin.” Elena’s voice comes out muffled at the moment the strange liquid touches my eyeballs, latching on and forcing them open.
It’s cold. So cold!
And then it’s nothing as everything around me explodes in white
— 3 —
I’M WAITING IN a matted room for Sensei Sonjirou and stretching as he instructed I do before our sessions. My drape of black hair falls into my face as I bend forward, and I impatiently push it away. Despite my constant complaining to Mama, I’m never allowed to cut it. Holding on to my small toes, I know I’m a young Japanese girl named Riki in my fourteenth year.
I am also Molly looking out of the eyes of Riki. I have no control over my body or emotions. I feel what she feels, I move as she deems to move, yet I’m somehow separate. I know I am not this girl, but at the same time we are one.
I know Papa is a street vendor in Edo, and I have a younger brother who is sick at home. I know the year is 1589 by human standards, for Sensei Sonjirou told me so when I met him in that strange place when I fell asleep, after the terrible flashing that left me alone and burning. I’m awake now and waiting for Sensei Sonjirou in my town at a neighborhood temple school. The monks have given us this room to practice. They seem to know more about what I am than I do. Mama says I have been chosen and have made the family proud, honored our name.
The room I’m standing in shifts into an all-white space with a padded floor. I’m panting and brushing the sweat from my brow as Sensei Sonjirou twirls toward me with his sharpened Ninjatō. I block it with my own, the metal clank vibrating down my arm. He retreats before striking straight, the square-tip blade aimed at my chest. I bend back as it kisses the material of my black clothes, and I roll away, exhilarated with my sure strides.
“Good, Riki,” Sensei Sonjirou calls to me, his bald head glistening with perspiration and reflecting the strange liquid lights above us. I swim with elation from his praise.
The white room drops away, and I’m kneeling by my brother’s bed. His cold, pale body lies lifeless a
s Mama holds his hands and cries. The thickest despair settles inside, and my throat burns. I run from the house.
I’m sitting in a stark white hall, after waking in the strange place again. I don’t care who passes and sees—I wrap my arms around my knees and cry.
Riki cries.
Molly cries. The loss of her brother—our brother—is too great. A hand settles around our shoulders, and though we don’t look up, we know who it is. He gathers us into his arms and we sob harder. He says nothing as he rocks our body, but his presence is everything.
My surroundings change again. Time has passed. I’m older, and there is darkness in both my worlds. My mind burns cold with the sensation of power and anguish. Before me is a giant twirling tornado. I scream like an animal full of rage, seeing red and vengeance as I move the swirling mass to sweep over the orange monsters that spread out before me. I can still see him from the corner of my eye, lying still. His bald head caked with dirt, skin melted to the bone, gaze seeing nothing. I roar, hot tears falling from my cheeks. With one hand controlling the tornado, I move the other to call up the white power and send it barreling into the chest of a monster. It howls and explodes, dripping its burning flesh on my skin. The pain is nothing. The pain is everything. I use it. I channel it. I put an end to it all.
The world goes white. I’m Molly, shaking and standing in emptiness. The anger and utter despair still racks my body. Sensei Sonjirou—how could he be gone? How could they get to him? I drop to my knees, broken. The control of my body is foreign. My hands don’t seem like my own, but they are. No longer are they small and callused, but long and thin.
“Molly, we must continue,” a voice speaks through the void.
Continue?
“That was your first Dreamer. I am sending you another.”
Before I can protest, the blank world is painted with new colors, and we go on.
The memories keep coming in an onslaught of emotion and tactical information. My head buzzes with ice-cold pain, and my joints spasm in random reactions to situations I find myself reliving through another’s eyes. I am a young black man from a small town in Ethiopia, surrounded by a charred landscape, doing back flips away from a group of growling Metus. I’m a little redheaded girl from Croatia practicing her power in an all-white room—the freezing sensation envelops both our minds as she brings forth lightning from thin air.
As soon as one Dreamer’s memories stop, another’s begin, and even though the visuals vanish as soon as I register them, each and every emotion and ability seeps through my cortex, easily becoming my own. Who I am and who they were interweaving with my DNA.
As the experiences of my predecessors zip through my mind, I begin to see a pattern, something they all share. They are all young. The thoughts and images of them don’t extend into any life with gray hair and wrinkles. Some are barely past adolescence. I shiver and push away the idea that none seem to have lived beyond their youth.
Finally, after what feels like forever, and at the exact moment I sense my body rejecting any more stimulation and becoming sick, the images stop. My brain, which was tensing in a panic of frostbite and white light, grows warm. I gasp at the sudden shift, and blink to the empty space in front of me, my eyes released from their prison. Breathing heavily, I take in my surroundings.
I know I never physically left this room, but it’s as if I’ve been everywhere but here. My body feels foreign, my memories fuller. I have lived more lives than I can count, and I’m sifting through which one belongs to my current body. My stomach twists with motion sickness, and my mouth holds a metallic taste. I have a strong urge to close my eyes and experience only blackness. I have an even stronger urge to vomit.
“That will be all for today.” Elena rests her warm fingers to my wrist, activating the strange tugging within me.
“We will feed you a similar amount of Dreamers once your mind and body have rested. Tomorrow we will work on your power.” She smiles gently. “How do you feel?”
“Different.” My voice sounds unfamiliar after speaking through so many others.
“Drink this.” Elena extends a clear liquid in a glass tube.
I eye it dubiously.
“It will help,” she explains.
Trusting her words, like I always seem to, I shoot it back. It’s sweet but refreshing.
After a moment my body quickly settles into itself, feeling grounded. Even so, I am not the same as I was before I sat in this chair. I have fought countless battles, created things with my mind I have never dreamt possible, and experienced the shock of becoming what I am over and over through many different lives. A strange peace and confidence settle over me, but with them a heavy foreboding of what’s to come. I am no longer just Molly Spero, yet I have never felt more like myself.
“I must warn you,” Elena says, taking the empty tube from my hand, “when you wake in your world after these next few days, you will be very different.”
I swallow. Will I like this different me? Will my friends and family?
“I know there is a popular saying ‘ignorance is bliss.’” She eyes me sympathetically, as if she knows my thoughts. “But I also know there is a better one that says ‘knowledge is power.’”
I’m currently unsure which one I agree with.
As the Memory Chair folds into the ground Elena, explains that the next stage is meditation. I must calm my mind and body, center myself, and learn to compartmentalize the memories of those who have come before me. The liquid I drank expedited the process, but I must still go through this exercise.
It’s an understatement to say that I’m not very good at this. I’m not an avid practitioner of yoga, and the few times I go, I always fall asleep during the meditation portion at the end, usually nudged awake, by a disgruntled participant, for snoring.
Namaste to you too, lady.
Elena instructs me to concentrate on my breathing, which I do, but not without seeing flashes of another Dreamer doing this exact thing. I find myself traveling into Riki more than once, Sensei Sonjirou replacing Elena. I worry this is a sign of the schizophrenia she was talking about earlier, but again, I’m susceptible to bouts of hypochondria.
Eventually I find my center, and pieces of my own life come to the forefront. My parents, my best friend Becca, my boyfriend, the house I grew up in, they all push forward, allowing the memories of the past Dreamers settling like multicolored sediment below.
Elena’s soothing voice stirs my eyes open. “You have done wonderfully, Molly.” We both sit cross-legged in the center of the room. Her body emits a beautiful shine, even more than it did prior to our meditation.
“Do you feel up to your physical training now?” she asks as she gracefully stands.
“I think so.”
She smiles. “Good.”
As if on cue, the airtight door on the far wall poofs open, and Alec stands in its frame.
“I’ll see you for our second session, and please be sure to eat and get some rest after training,” Elena says.
“Yes, I will. And thanks for um…this.” I awkwardly gesture around the room.
She nods. “Of course.”
Walking up to Alec, I stop when Elena calls my name, and I turn to meet her bright-azure eyes. “Remember,” she says, a secret grin in place. “Go easy on Rae.”
—∞—
The training room Alec brings me to is large, white (surprise, surprise), and void of anything but a wall-to-wall thinly matted light-gray floor, reminding me of a gym without the equipment. The space is vaguely familiar, but I’m almost positive it’s because of a memory I’ve just gained and not from personally ever being here before. A lot on the walk over had the same sense of déjà vu. It was rather unsettling.
Rae stands off to the side, stretching. He’s barefoot, wearing loosely fitted black pants and Terra’s standard black T-shirt. The lighting in this space is dimmer than in the Memory room, and my eyes travel to the ceiling, which is lined with panels of swirling liquid. For the first time
I realize why I always feel like I’m looking at something secretive while watching this energy. It’s the very energy of the imagination, raw and pure and vulnerable to my abilities here. The memories I gathered from Elena allow me to understand how I can call upon the Navitas in this room and use it to my will. How it whispers to me currently, almost pleading to be freed and created into so many wonderful things. But within that light I also sense a darkness, a tempting snake that curls around ideas and desires that are black and twisted, that murmur of a strength surpassing all creation but used at a great cost. Even with that hint of a demon, and maybe because of it, I yearn to join with the light, to take care of it, and keep it hidden. The feeling is similar to when Dev and I were standing in the protective ring against the Metus, but not as all consuming. I wonder if the change in the level of my desire is from the experiences I was just given.
A throat being cleared dashes away my entrancement with the Navitas, and Rae stands before me, hands on hips, wearing a questioning expression. “Doing okay there?”
I blink, removing any last remnants of those strange feelings. “Yup, doing great.” I walk forward. “Just trying to get used to about a handful of other people’s memories in my brain.”
Rae grins. “And this is just day one.”
— 4 —
STRETCHING ON THE mat, I find myself more flexible than normal. An ability I’m pretty certain was also retained from the past Dreamers, as if my body also took on their collected muscle memory. Whatever the cause, it’s pretty sweet, and as I bend forward, easily grabbing my heels, I glance to Rae, wondering if he’d laugh or yell at me for pausing his warm-up to see how truly bendable I really am.
“You’ll need to do these stretches before and after each session,” Rae explains, his tone serious and professional. “The training you’ll endure will be intense, and if you don’t properly—Molly, what are you doing?”