The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome

by Serge BRUSSOLO

  The great dream that had stopped the war had sat enthroned on Bliss Plaza for five years. Though it showed a few tiny signs of fading, it was far from withering away. Its presence had driven up the apartment prices in the neighborhood, everyone wanting to live close to the work to benefit from its soothing emanations. Health services had conducted statistical studies that proved residents in buildings overlooking Bliss Plaza were wholly free of psychosomatic complaints, and enjoyed excellent health. Better still: incurable diseases had completely vanished in a three-hundred-yard radius around the oneiric object. The lucky few lived with their windows open, naked most of the time to offer up as much of their bodies as possible to the miraculous rays it gave off. A stroll in the nearby streets was all it took to tell the people here were much more beautiful than anywhere else. Their flesh was sound, their features lissome and easeful. Not a single line showed on their skin, and a trace of gray hair was the exception that proved the rule. Visitors were dumbstruck by the sight of children playing naked in midwinter in the snow along the avenue’s balconies, but no one around here feared colds, throat infections, pleurisy anymore. Their bodies no longer knew the tyrannies of such afflictions from a darker age. There was always something slightly dreamlike about the sight of these nudists of all sexes wandering past open windows in luxurious interiors appointed by the best decorators, but not a single one of them would’ve run the risk of concealing some part of his body, having it miss out on the rays from the sculpture and, as a result, age faster than the rest. Those without the means to rent apartments nearby made pilgrimages to Bliss Plaza whenever their schedules allowed. Sundays the museum esplanade was carpeted by a silent, naked crowd sprawled on the steps and grass. They exposed themselves to the benefits of the sculpture just as they had once persisted in sunning themselves on beaches colonized by paid vacation time. David found the silent, smiling crowd slightly alarming. Like all professional dreamers, he was impervious to the power of oneiric objects. Draped in his wrinkled old raincoat, he tried to beat a path through all the breasts, all the members generously offered up. Weren’t these people cold?

  “At least now we know what art is for,” an old woman had told him. “Back in the day, we used to say, ‘It’s beautiful.’ But what does that even mean? Beauty never stopped me from getting hemorrhoids. Now it’s different, there’s nothing to understand. It’s like vitamins. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be, but it does me good!”

  David made his way slowly around the dream. Though he admired it as a feat of prowess, he felt in no way flooded by euphoria or good health. This aspect of things remained unavailable to him. He was like a deaf worker who made hi-fi stereos. He knew all the mechanics, but couldn’t enjoy them because of a mysterious infirmity that no doctor was able to explain.

  As he readied to head toward the museum, he suddenly spotted Marianne coming toward him, a case file under her arm. She was wearing her usual gray outfit: shapeless skirt and sweater, worn-out flats. Her bun made the bones of her skinny face stick out.

  “I saw you from the window in my office,” she said. “This is a better place for a chat.”

  David frowned. What was she hoping for? That the sculpture would elate them both, easing the passage of an especially bitter pill? Or maybe she was the one who needed some fleeting anesthesia from her stress to deliver what David could already tell was bad news?

  “Your last dream was designated a no-pass,” she blurted, mumbling slightly. “It didn’t survive the anti-allergy injections. The biohazard tests weren’t encouraging either. Apparently you had a close brush with nightmare during that last dream? You were scared, and the dream object was suffused with adrenaline, something the lab is afraid will have a negative effect on potential buyers.”

  David grimaced. A no-pass meant it would never leave quarantine.

  “You know the mandatory precautions,” Marianne murmured. “Too much adrenaline amounts to saying your work is poison. Unfit for consumption. Safety standards are very strict. We don’t want customers traumatized by high-stress radiation breathing down our necks. You’re tired, David. All this dreaming is wearing you out. You have to stop and take some time off for a while.”

  The young man stood before her, staring right into her eyes. She didn’t blink. The nearness of the sculpture cleansed her of her habitual tics. Her lips weren’t pursed, like usual. Her whole face seemed relaxed, at voluptuous ease. She was even almost … beautiful? She spoke in a slack voice, making no attempt for once to browbeat her listener. It’s her, and at the same time, someone else, he thought, a kind of twin sister who just slipped out …

  “I’m sorry, David,” she said, “but we’re taking you out of the running for a while. Your last few dreams have all died in the incubators. Plus, the objects you’re producing are just getting smaller and smaller; what they bring in barely covers the warehousing costs. We can’t put them up at auction anymore, and gift shops rarely carry them. If you can’t get ahold of yourself soon, it’s big-box stores for you from here on out; your dreams will be sold in the aisle with the air fresheners. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

  David shrugged. “Quarantine’s a slaughterhouse,” he grumbled. “Any dream that’s at all delicate doesn’t make it. Your batteries of tests would stop a tank dead in its tracks.”

  “You know that’s not true!” the young woman said with aggravating patience. “Besides, that’s not all there is to it. Most dreams are sold with a one-year warranty. Yours wither so fast we had to cut it back to six months. Now we’ll have to reduce our coverage to ninety days. People just don’t trust objects with really short warranties, you know that. They feel like they’ve just sunk their money into rubbish. You aren’t selling, David. You have to get back in shape. Give up diving for a year; it’ll do you a world of good.”

  “You can’t just turn it on and off. You go where it leads you.”

  “Don’t be such a romantic! Even if we don’t fully understand the ectoplasmic creative process, we can at least suppress it. All it takes is an injection, a quick shot, and you won’t be able to dream for twelve months. Of course, we can’t force it on you. But from now on, you won’t have psychological monitoring during trance periods. No one will come watch over you while you’re dreaming. You know what that means?”

  David nodded. To dive unassisted was to run the risk of sinking into a weeklong trance, sometimes more, with no medical supervision. That meant no glucose drip, pure fasting, dehydration. Many divers had died that way, starving or dehydrated, while deep in a dream.

  “The Ministry’s policy gives priority to big dreams,” Marianne murmured, turning to Soler Mahus’s ectoplasmic sculpture. “I know the government would like to install similar monuments at every intersection. We’re looking for the next Soler. You make trinkets, David. Fashion isn’t on your side. Trinkets belong to an age when the public conceived of dreams only as an intimate and solitary experience. These days, people gather together to enjoy works collectively. They commune in a shared passion for serenity.”

  “No, keep going,” David snickered. “Don’t hold back. Say what you were thinking. I know the military’s interested in dreams. Ever since Soler Mahus stopped that war, the top brass has been busy trying to figure a way to weaponize dreams. I know some of them even wanted to materialize nightmares capable of scaring potential enemies to death.”

  “Those are just rumors,” Marianne cut him off with a frightened blink. “I’d advise you not to share them with anyone.”

  “Another rumor is that the nightmare objects were so terrifying they resulted in the deaths of the divers and the officers overseeing the experiment. True?”

  Marianne put her hand on David’s arm. “I know you think I’m a pain in the neck,” she said with a sad smile, “but I’m very fond of you. Don’t try to dive alone. You know what’ll happen: you’ll fall into a coma and your vital functions will fail one after another. Let me give you the shot that will keep you from going under.”

&nbs
p; But the young man was no longer listening. Fists shoved deep in his pockets, he gazed at the great sculpture through half-lidded eyes. “So that’s what you go for, huh?” he jeered. “Art that soothes and pacifies. Above all, nothing tortured, nothing that comes out of a crisis, nothing fed by despair. That’s what quarantine is for: triage. You poison everything that might potentially disturb the public.”

  “Don’t get paranoid! Some dream objects are harmful to your health. There have been cases of contamination. People who went into depression after being exposed to rays from an unauthorized novelty.”

  “If you won’t have me, I’ll go work for the parallel circuit.”

  “The black market? You’d be working in a complete breach of the law. Dreams marketed without veterinary sanction? That’s like what controlled substances used to be. Don’t get caught up in that trap; you’ll wind up in prison. It’s not our fault if your dreams keep withering away ever faster. You know the rest cure won’t cost you a dime; it’s in your contract. You have a right to a six-month stay at a therapeutic establishment every five years.”

  “You call that a vacation?” David hissed. “They probably think of good old manual labor as physical therapy! Give everyone a pickax and a section of road to build!”

  Marianne remained impassive, even smiling faintly. The nearness of the giant ectoplasm kept her from losing her temper. Her mood stayed even no matter what came out of his mouth. Fuck! he suddenly felt like shouting. You filthy slut! You dumb cunt! You frigid bitch! He knew she’d greet these abominations with the same indulgent little smile. She looked like a patient in preanesthesia. He could’ve hacked off one of her limbs, and she wouldn’t have made a sound. He turned and left before doing something he couldn’t take back.

  In a café, he had three glasses of milk, then went over to see Soler Mahus, but the old dreamer didn’t recognize him, and didn’t open his mouth. They’d shaved his head, and his bare skin betrayed unsettling bumps that distended his cranium. It was as if something was trapped under the glacier of his skull, trying desperately to tear through the seams and make its way outside. David stayed at the artist’s bedside for half an hour, till a nurse shooed him off.

  Miserable and exhausted, he dragged himself to Antonine’s. With an embarrassed look, the baker confessed she’d just chucked one of his dreams in the trash.

  “It withered last night,” she whispered. “It was even starting to smell.”

  [ 9 ]

  Underground Snow for a Secret Burial

  Maybe he should’ve married Antonine, gotten back into normal life, given up the art that had made him live on the margins of the world for too long? He often tried to imagine what his life would have been like with the plump baker. It didn’t take much to see himself in a cardigan, face dusted with flour, kneading dough in the darkest hours of the night. He’d shape the stretchy dough, turning it into even boules, cocoons of crumb asking only to be hardened by the hot breath of the wood-fired oven. Yes, a normal life, one that left you with an aching lumbar and seized-up shoulders, but so very fulfilled. At dawn, with the batch done, he’d have stepped into the courtyard out back for a cigarette and watched the sunrise, watched the windows in the nearby buildings light up one by one. Antonine … or Marianne? Why not Marianne? Didn’t she become strangely sociable as soon as she stepped into the aura of a dream? All he’d have to do was fill the apartment with dream knickknacks. At night, when she came home from work, the dreams heaped on the shelves would wipe the bad mood right off her face. In a few seconds, she’d be carefree as a little girl again, ready to laugh at anything, to have fun at the drop of a hat. Thus anesthetized, she’d become someone else; even her angular figure, all skin and bone, would seem to soften, round out. Yes, maybe he should’ve turned in his art worker’s license, and just dreamed for himself alone, with no end in mind other than lightening Marianne’s chronic bad moods? Maybe … or else quit this filthy habit for good, let his powers atrophy by deliberately refraining from practice, like a bodybuilder watching his splendid musculature melt away as soon as he stops working the barbells? Amputate that unhealthy part of himself; wait for his brain to rust and stiffen till it produced nothing but run-of-the-mill dreams, dreams like the ones that haunted the sleep of Mr. Average Joe? Oh, to dream at last of dumb, inconsequential little things, woolly nonsense that didn’t force its way out of his body to become works of art. To dream of things that would fade away all by themselves when he woke and not stubbornly linger in reality, like ineradicable clues in an absurd crime. Well, then? Antonine? Marianne? A woman of flesh and a woman of bones … either was better than Nadia, that ghost he could never embrace, right?

  That morning, the doorbell yanked him from his thoughts as he mulled, as was his habit, elbows on the table, face bent over a mug of coffee, spying on his reflection in the black liquid. An ill-shaven telegram boy, his hat on sideways, handed him a cable from the veterinary services of the Museum of Modern Art. The rectangle of blue paper informed him that due to medical testing prior to being approved for the market, the dream he had submitted to quarantine a few days ago had just passed away. As per his contract, he had the right to attend burial proceedings for the object.

  He wasn’t really surprised. Marianne had prepared him for this outcome, but still, he couldn’t keep from crumpling the telegram with rage. No-pass. From now on he’d be classified as a no-passer, a dreamer whose oneiric objects couldn’t stand up to quarantine. The crude, stupid stamp would sprawl in runny letters all over his file. To take his mind off things, he shaved methodically with the straight razor his father had left in the medicine cabinet fifteen years ago. A delicate operation, it required all his attention, and even kept him from brooding on dark thoughts. His face wrapped in a hot towel, he waited for the burning in his cheeks to die down, then put on his black suit. The suit he found himself wearing ever more often. He remained seated in his armchair for a long time, flipping with a nervous finger through a little novel whose binding was coming off. It recounted the adventures of Dr. Skeleton in Patagonia. He knew it almost by heart, but was always amused by the part, beloved by fans, when the formidable doctor formed an army of kamikaze soldiers by hypnotizing gorillas from the nearby jungle. He wound up falling asleep in his mourning wear, tie knotted, legs spread, like a dead man who’d broken out of his coffin. He only came out of it fifteen minutes before the ceremony, and had to hurry to the museum. The fat old watchman he so often bribed met him at the service entrance of the veterinary clinic with a fitting scowl. David heard not a word of the usual expressions of commiseration and crossed the storage chamber toward the incubators. The sanitation men were already there, in their black rubber suits, gloved and booted like sewage workers. David knew all too well that many of them were former dreamers dismissed because they’d stopped turning a profit. In order to spare them the vagrancy that usually followed such a discharge, the Administration, like a child seeing dutifully to an aging parent, had suggested they retrain for what was discreetly known as the removal service for withered oneiric objects. A name that seemed to turn them into florists charged with gathering up faded bouquets at the end of official ceremonies. Though he understood their distress and the awkwardness of their situation, David could not help but think of these men as traitors, vandals abusing their status to despoil works of art with impunity. He had sworn never to submit to such reeducation. Even now, the garbagemen of dreams, stuffed into their rubbery outfits, looked like giant frogs trained to stand on their hind legs. A hood perforated with giant glass eyeholes completed the outfit and put a finishing touch on the resemblance. David nodded to them. One of them, Pit Van Larsen, with whom he’d used to hang out, nodded back. They put out their cigarettes, pulled the flabby masks down over their faces, and approached the incubators. The dead dreams sagged beneath the bell jars like limp salads. They were still just as immaculately white, but they had altered in density. Their fine texture had coarsened, and had transmogrified into a gooey substance that was extremely diff
icult to manipulate. Personnel were highly discouraged from seizing a dream bare-handed if they didn’t want to find themselves glued to whatever it had been sitting on. Oneiric objects had frightening adhesive powers. When they were first put on the market, the Ministry had to deal with many accidents, and rescue teams crisscrossed the cities in every direction, twenty-four hours a day, to bail out unfortunate souls who’d found themselves fastened to their mantel or buffet while trying to sweep a withered dream away with the back of a hand. Disintegrating ectoplasmic matter adored human skin and hardened instantaneously upon contact, turning into a fearsome cement. In such cases, careless victims were rarely freed without recourse to a razor and local anesthetic. The instructions that came with all oneiric objects specified that disposing of sculptures at the first sign of rot was highly advised. The recommended method was simple: all it involved was being sure to slip on a pair of rubber gloves (household gloves for washing dishes would do nicely) before seizing the shriveled ectoplasm and placing it in a tear-proof plastic bag. In each building a special receptacle had been installed for express use with dreams. It was a big black rubber cylinder whose lid opened and closed automatically at the press of a red button. The very peculiar nature of persistent ectoplasms had necessitated this amenity, and it would have been naïve to consider it a pointlessly precautionary luxury. Indeed, dreams in full-blown decline were almost unmanageable. Though they lost their shape and their suggestive power—in short, their beauty—their substance survived, incompressible. It did not shrink or evaporate. Grown flaccid and sticky, dreams stood up to the most powerful means of disposal. At first, attempts were made to burn them like dead leaves, but incinerating them gave rise to a pestilential, intensely toxic smoke whose effluvia had resulted in several cases of poisoning, and even a few deaths.