by Stark, Logan
Peter swallowed. ‘Why kill him?’
‘The past—’ Midori peered at the roof, smiled, and waved his hand in an arch ‘—is like a toxic river, my friend. Let’s not think about it and get on with more important matters.’
More important matters? Peter saw the blood in his peripheral and wondered how he was supposed to move on from this when his friend lay dead not far away. As he thought that, the door where he and Ohko had walked through slammed open, and in came the cleanup men with mops, buckets, and trash bags. They were going to wipe his friend away, put his punctured body in a trash bag.
‘What’s missing from the Dream Machine?’ Midori Kuro asked.
Peter heard this question while gazing at his friend’s face being kicked with a broom, his lips bobbing forward, blood frothing out each time. He contemplated sharply what the fuck he had gotten himself into. A knock on his shoulder. It was Midori asking the same question: what is missing from the Dream Machine? ‘Are you going to kill me?’
Of course he was, a thought laughed.
‘Kill you?’ He snickered through closed lips. His dragon arm slithered around Peter’s neck and tightened until it was like a father’s arm giving comfort. ‘You are part of us now, Peter. Look around you. Tell me what you see?’
Peter looked at his dead frie—
Who was not on the floor anymore. He was fetused into a bag. That’s right, Peter thought. Fetused: squeezed and molded into a fetus position. Someone tried picking up the trash bag and had a hard time doing so. Another man joined in to help. Both carried the bag away, leaving a trail of red watery drops. The mop crew started doing their job.
‘Where are they taking my friend?’
‘I have already told you, Peter, stop thinking about the past.’ How long was this nice-guy act going to last? That gun on his hip was the same as the other ones; the ones that sounded like a spray of thunder. Get your shit together, Peter thought. Get your shit together now.
Peter eyed the Dream Machine and said he didn’t know. His heart scraped at his chest. His friend was dead. He was going to die. What was he doing here? What did he get himself into? There was—
Midori pushed Peter against the steel bed, a forceful one that made the steel frame shake. Time was up; the time for idle chatter and pleasantries a thing of the past. The side of Peter’s hip throbbed. He thought Midori was going to push him again and readied himself mentally, eyes closed. But then the sound of a click, and Peter knew what that was. He opened his eyes and turned, hips aching.
‘See my finger?’ Midori asked, tapping the gun’s trigger. ‘All I have to do is give this … some pressure. And you’ll look like your friend, holes and holes. Is that what you want?’
The machine gun’s snout was a tiny hole. Something so little, Peter thought, with so much potential for chaos. Staring at the gun brought a fresh, horrible awareness to surface, one that made him want to faint.
With a click, he could be gone.
Peter tried his best to forget about his dead friend and mustered enough courage to look Midori in the eye. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘You work for us now.’ The gun lowered. ‘You will do as the Yaramati tells you to do. Is that clear?’ Silence. He waved his gun at the steel frame. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go through a little initiation. Think of it as an interview.’
To Peter’s horror, a gun fired. The bang made his head jolt up. The first thing he did was study his legs, chest, and face for any holes. He patted his neck and heard another bang! bang! He turned his head and saw the ball shooting through the hoop.
Midori must’ve found this funny, because he was looking at the roof and laughing. He cut his laughter short and waved his gun at the Dream Machine. ‘You ready for the interview?’
Each time they bounced the ball on the court, Peter felt his heart throb. ‘What interview?’
‘Listeeen, listeeen,’ Midori said, pronouncing each word with a smile. ‘You should feel proud. You are the Yaramti’s Dream Chaser. But first, we need to see if Ohko was right about you. He said you had a good imagination, that you’d be a great candidate for our newest asset. Now tell me, Peter, do you have a good imagination?’
He was going to Dream Chase. He was starting to see where this was heading. The interview Midori spoke of was going to be his ability to effectively use the machine. But what happens when his imagination isn’t strong enough to harvest energy from dreams? Will that mean he failed the interview?
Boof, boof, boof, the ball bounced. ‘Good throw!’ someone shouted. Laughter and high fives followed.
Peter looked behind at an old man, who wore blue latex gloves and who was scrubbing the floor. The way he scrubbed made Peter think that this wasn’t his first cleanup. The foam on the floor consisted of white bubbles, red bubbles, and a lot of citrus smelling something. Peter looked away from the foam and at the basketball players, and he wondered again: what did I get myself into?
-7-
The cleaners did a fantastic job. They left the floor sparkling, smelling of flowers in the rain, as if nothing had happened. They snapped off their blue-latex gloves and carried the cleaning utensils to the door. As the door swallowed them one by one, Peter lay on the Dream Infiltrator, his heart beating uncomfortably, the inevitable approaching.
You need to lie perfectly still, one of the men in black coats reminded. If you don’t, it could cause disturbances in the energy distribution, something they did not want and had no time in indulging. This was a professional operation conducted by professional people – the Yaramati gang, a proud syndicate aiming for great things, which, of course, had capital green high on its list. Its motto: work with us or fuck off, dead.
‘These aren’t part of the Infiltrator,’ Midori said, picking up Peter’s wrist, which rattled. ‘The cuffs are – how can I put it?’ his lips parted to the side, ‘a security precaution. Are they too tight?’
They were. The metal scratched his skin. The thought of asking Midori to loosen them felt absurd. Midori rummaged the key from his pants and slid it into the cuffs. ‘Let me help you.’ The cuffs tightened, and Peter’s wrist burned.
He yelped. ‘I’m helping you. Why are you making it worse?’
Midori frowned at him, the way you might look at a stray dog. He was going to say something, lips apart, but was interrupted.
‘The machine’s almost ready,’ the man said, checking his cell. Everything he wore was black, his pants, his shiny shoes, his coat, and his glasses, which were resting on top of his head. Midori was the only one wearing a white vest.
‘Where is the needle?’ Midori asked, waving at the Dream Infiltrator.
‘It should be here in five minutes. We had trouble.’
Under the room’s lights, Midori’s dragon tattoo appeared to be moving, alive, with his arm gestures. ‘What trouble?’
‘The tollgate. The police wanted a scan on the cargo.’
Midori swung his arm at the heavens. ‘And what happened?’
‘It was no fucking problem at all,’ the man snickered. ‘We had Jiro scanning the truck for us.’
‘Jiro, the police guy?’
The man nodded.
‘How much are we paying him?’
‘An amount that shuts the mouth.’
‘Very good. I want a visit to his house.’
He stopped typing on his cell and looked up, confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Burn the body.’
‘But isn’t he—’
Midori slapped him across the cheek. The man’s head flew sideways. He stumbled a good distance and looked behind as if worried about something else – maybe a bullet. ‘I’m sorry!’ the man said. ‘I shouldn’t have questioned.’ He got up from the floor, bowed with shaky knees, and rushed for the door.
As if on cue, a stream of people came in, carrying the final piece of the puzzle, the machinery needed to transfer the energy. It was like an IV pole, just a lot bigger with cords snaking all around.
‘Put the headpiece on
him,’ the newest member of the black coats said. He studied Peter’s forearm. ‘This is going to sting. Bite your tongue, boy.’ The man reached for the cord on the machine, pulling a string that made a hissing sound.
‘Wait, what are you doing? What is that?’ Peter heard the fear in his voice. The cord had a thick needle at the end, the size of a finger. For a second Peter thought the needle was going to go into him, but the tip of the needle turned into a bright, sea-blue beam, a barcode with letters.
‘I’m marking you. As I said, you might want to bite your teeth – not your tongue,’ he snickered. Peter had anticipated pain, but he didn’t expect it to hurt this much. The blue beam ran across his forearm, marking red letters on his skin that disappeared a second later, fading into the color of his flesh. It was beautiful to watch shiny red fade into blue and then into skin, but there was nothing beautiful about the pain. Peter screamed – tried to scream – the pain away. Someone covered his mouth with cloth as he screamed.
‘Bring in the host,’ Midori, a patient observer, said, standing a few feet away from the table. He waved his fingers at the door. There was commotion. The first thing Peter saw were legs kicking, then a body of a man. It was the homeless guy from earlier, the one Ohko had given cocaine to.
‘What’s this?’ Homeless protested. ‘I got no trouble with you authority!’ He was carried in by three men. When Homeless saw Peter, his eyes widened. ‘You,’ he said, spit dripping from his lips. ‘You tricked – you tricked me!’
‘No I didn’t,’ Peter said. Before he could tell the man to calm down, Midori head-butted Homeless with his gun, knocking the man dizzy.
‘I … wha-I, I.’ Blood snaked down Homeless’s nose. They sat him in a chair next to Peter, where he lay slumped with his head back.
‘We don’t need him fully conscious,’ Midori said. ‘Just half awake.’ He slid his gun into his waist and turned to Peter. ‘Now listen to me carefully.’ He stepped closer with his finger raised. ‘You are going to infiltrate his dreams, and I want you to do whatever is necessary to harvest the dream.’
The pain in his forearm was only a nibble now. He watched them scan the man’s neck with the blue laser, marking him as the host. ‘I don’t know how.’ Peter shook his head and bit down on his lips. ‘For fuck’s sake, I’ve never done this before! How do you expect me to harvest his dream without training?’
Midori waved Peter’s outburst away. ‘All you need is a strong imagination, something Ohko said you had. If that’s the case, you should be fine.’ He rested his one hand on the gun, using his other hand to emphasize his words by waving it around. ‘Let me remind you, if you don’t succeed in our little interview, you are going to end up dead, bleeding, lost and prone in a trash bag. Is that understood?’
Fuck you! Peter screamed in his head.
‘Was’s going on?’ Homeless asked, reaching for his bloody nose. They strapped him with cuffs. His eyelids fluttered open, trying to fathom, trying to remember, but he went back to painful sleep.
‘If you fail, this man is going to die as well.’ Midori pointed at Homeless. ‘So you better—’ he twirled his hand in a graceful bow ‘—learn on the job, as they say.’ The machine next to him lit up in wonderful rainbow colors. A man appeared with a laptop. The machine made a smooching sound. Peter could feel heat coming from somewhere, maybe from within.
‘Vitals steady,’ the man said, tapping the keyboard. ‘He should be under in one minute.’
Another man appeared from behind, reading on a tablet. ‘Did you give him the procaine?’
‘What’s that for?’ the man asked, looking up from the laptop.
‘They give Dream Chasers procaine tablets to numb their mouth, something about numbing the lips, otherwise they run the risk of biting their tongue off.’ Laptop guy was the first one to laugh, and then everyone chuckled. Midori approached the bed.
‘You are going to be fine,’ he said, putting his hand on Peter’s forehead. ‘You’re getting really hot, son. You okay?’ With his hand still on Peter’s forehead, he looked at the guy with the laptop. ‘How far?’
Suddenly, Homeless Man began to bob in his chair. His legs shot up like wooden planks. Retarded words left his lips, something about death and clouds and that he was coming home. Peter watched in horror as Homeless frowned, a forehead squeezing every muscle possible. His eyelids fluttered, revealing eyes without irises – two white balls trying to jump from a skull.
‘I don’t know if this is how it’s supposed to go,’ the man holding the laptop said. And that was the last thing Peter heard before his vision turned white.
-8-
There were over two hundred offices in this magnificent building, which towered over Tokyo’s landscape like an elder brother; the city below was a young boy looking up at his older brother. You trust that older brother because family would never betray. Blood is blood, the invisible contract signed by families. Today, the sun gleamed over Yoamo Corporation, the first company of its kind to start synthesizing Dream Energy for market potential.
Even though there were two hundred offices all stacking up toward the sky, Noni Makaratzi, the hardworking Tokyo citizen who had a family of one, was not high up in one of those offices. This never deterred his soul. Noni Makaratzi had big plans and ideas for the company. His father had always said, “A company is nothing without its people,” and with this in mind, he was going to share his ideas with his boss, Kiln Mayn, who must’ve known that Noni was coming, because the secretary called for him over the intercom:
Would Mr Noni Makaratzi please make his way to the head office.
There was a disturbance in the workflow. Papers shuffled in the corner and then one loud snap, a stapler biting. Nosy coworkers peeked over their cubicle walls like meerkats, wanting to know what the fuss was all about. The office above almost never called for the ones below, and when it did happen, it was usually for one of two reasons: a promotion up into glory and status and respect and something other than filing papers, or a demotion, which for the lower part of Yoamo Corporation’s workforce meant a permanent goodbye, a pat on the shoulder and a smile good luck for twenty years’ service rendered.
Standing in the elevator with his hand on the button made him want to shed a tear. Makaratzi was alone, and the metal doors were shut. The silence provided a moment of clarity, a realization that today was the day. He had worked all his life for this moment, all twenty years. He had joined the company when he was eighteen, fresh out of school, and slaved his way through mundane work and doing things other people didn’t want to do. He’d always known deep inside of his other nobler qualities, which had to do with his mind. Whenever he saw a complex problem, his mind would attack it with solutions. When he was four years old, his mother had bought him a puzzle with a green “15+ age” sticker on it. It took him five hours and forty minutes to complete. He knew it took him that long because he’d counted the arms on the clock in the living room.
Before swiping his badge on the elevator’s scanner, a darker thought infiltrated his mind. What if he was getting fired? In the silence of the metal box, he stood there, contemplating if such a thing was possible. Of course it was. Tokyo’s business arena was in a world of turmoil and change, all thanks to the demand of Dream Energy. But Makaratzi had a good feeling about today. He had been spouting ideas around the office about what they could do to improve Dream Infiltration. Most of his work colleagues didn’t share his enthusiasm. Most of them waved his ideas away as something that should only be discussed by superiors. Leave the big thinking for the big boys, and let’s talk about why you didn’t come for a drink with us on the weekend.
He scanned his badge through a thin blue line. The machine beeped and requested identification by voice. Makaratzi leaned in, said his name, and the machine said thank you. Before he knew it, the elevator went up, an effortless glide that made him think he was still on the same floor.
Here at Yoamo Corporation, the artificial voice said, we pride ourselves in next generat
ion schematics. Have you heard? We are the first corporation to synthesize Dream Energy for a brighter future, and as a Yoamo employee, we just want to thank you for being part of a—
The doors opened. A secretary holding a reading device looked up. She smiled, revealing perfectly white teeth. She wore a light-brown blouse that had a zip running down the middle, no buttons, a black skirt knee length, and clothes a perfect fit for her slim figure. Maybe a little too tight, but better tight than loose. She stretched her hand for a handshake, which caught Noni a little off-guard because he wasn’t used to it.
‘My name is Alissa Ralph,’ she said. They shook hands. ‘Welcome to floor one hundred. May I get you anything to drink or eat?’
There were two hundred floors in this building, Makaratzi thought, and he was halfway to heaven. His father had been right about him: he did have a bright future ahead, and it was all thanks to him never giving up on his dreams of becoming a better person.
But, the darker thought said, the one at the back of the head that sounded like a shady figure in a dark alley, what if you were getting fired today? You have heard the news, haven’t you? They don’t need people like you anymore working for them.
Noni was a simple man. He wore his peppermint-green overalls clean and tidy. No need for a fancy tie or expensive shirt. Simplicity is the mother of workability. After all, a beautiful flower needs only two things: water and sun, which are nature’s simplicity. He adjusted his name plaque on his chest and gave the secretary a simple smile. ‘No, thank you. Just here to see Kiln Mayn.’
‘Of course, follow me.’
The hundredth floor was nothing like the ones below. Here, the walls that would have separated coworker from coworker were removed. The floor an expensive looking oak. The walls layered with pinkish bricks. They walked past a painting the size of a house door. It was an oil painting of Miyamoto Musashi, a fearless swordsman who excelled in duels. Next to the painting was a three-legged table with a vase on top, which had branches sprouting from it.