by Mitch Benn
Lbbp stared at his slate. He was looking through someone else’s eyes. The image blurred and flickered, phasing from full colour to monochrome and back again.
He seemed to be flying, high above unfamiliar and yet very familiar terrain. It looked like everywhere he’d ever been and nowhere in particular. He was following some sort of blue avian creature, which had . . . was that someone riding on its back? What was going on?
- Are you seeing this, Postulator?
- Yes, yes I am, but I don’t . . . That animal, it doesn’t . . . There are elements from various avian species but they’ve just been thrown together into something that makes no evolutionary sense . . . That creature not only doesn’t exist, it COULDN’T exist . . .
- So what are we looking at then?
- I have no idea . . . And Lbbp genuinely didn’t. He watched in utter bewilderment. The picture continued to phase and blur . . . He set his slate to save mode, recording the pictures so that he could study them properly in due course.
What WAS that animal? There wasn’t a single species of flying creature recorded anywhere in the galaxy that was big and strong enough to be ridden like a gnth-sh’gst. And who was that riding it? It looked like a child . . . in fact, didn’t he know that child . . .? Wasn’t he at the Lyceum with . . .
A voice was heard. The voice of whoever owned the eyes through which Lbbp was now looking.
- Pktk, have I ever shown you my planet?
TERRA!
It was Terra’s point of view he was seeing on the slate, confirmed now as the eyes glanced down at the speaker’s own hands. She was also riding a great flying animal, green this time, and as she stroked the back of its head Lbbp saw those hands; small, pink, unmistakable, unique on the planet.
Lbbp ran to Terra’s room. The sleep-well was inactive and Terra was nowhere to be seen. Seized with panic, Lbbp ran back to get his comm. He had to raise the alarm, to set out in search of her, to . . .
He saw the image on his slate. It had changed. Pktk and Terra (through whose eyes he still saw) were now drifting in the vacuum of space, looking down on the planet Rrth.
- Look, there it is, said Terra’s voice. Just the one moon I’m afraid. Shall we make some more?
Lbbp’s mind reeled. Rrth? Rrth was over twenty opticals away! She couldn’t have got there since last night! And no one could survive in space without an environment suit, you’d be dead in a few blips! This couldn’t be happening! It just couldn’t be happening! It couldn’t . . .
It WASN’T happening.
It wasn’t happening. Any of it.
The main room light was on.
Lbbp opened the door. There she was. Flat on her back, asleep with the Interface dome over her head. She was there, she was home, she was safe. The wave of relief almost banished Lbbp’s confusion. It returned after a moment.
Lbbp’s fingers fumbled with the comm.
- Postulator? Are you still there, Postulator? Chfl’s voice had been squeaking from the comm all this time. Lbbp hadn’t noticed. He answered him now.
- I’m here. Look, I think I may know what’s going on and it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll explain everything when I arrive in the morning.
Lbbp switched off the comm and sat beside Terra’s sleeping form. The dome of her new Interface pulsed away. Couldn’t wait, could you? Silly girl. Silly, brilliant girl.
He glanced down at his slate. Rrth now had a whole network of moons, of various different sizes and colours.
- Shall we do another one or is that enough? asked the Terra on the slate. The one in the room slept on peacefully.
It’s all going on in her mind as she sleeps, thought Lbbp. She sees things and has adventures as she sleeps. She goes to places that aren’t there, she sees creatures that have never existed. Things happen that don’t happen. What an extraordinary concept.
Fnrrns don’t dream. Not adult Fnrrns anyway. Baby Fnrrns have visions in their sleep, sometimes happy ones, sometimes scary ones, but as their minds mature and develop into sensible, logical Fnrrn minds, they grow out of such things and sleep each night in a state of soothing oblivion. Lbbp remembered how Terra would sometimes wake up crying and frightened when she was tiny, but that hadn’t happened for orbits now. Did she still dream? Do Ymns dream all their lives?
Lbbp was pondering how he might safely extricate Terra from the Interface when the machine itself solved the problem for him. With its test programme having long since run its course, and no further instructions forthcoming, it switched itself into standby mode. Lbbp’s slate went blank.
Terra smacked her lips and blinked. She peered sleepily up at Lbbp.
- Oh dear, she said.
- Oh dear indeed, concurred Lbbp.
- I couldn’t wait, said Terra pleadingly. I just couldn’t wait to test our theory. But I fell asleep before it started working. Nothing happened.
- Well, not exactly, said Lbbp.
- What?
- I’ll tell you about it in the morning, said Lbbp. Now get back into your sleep-well and go to sleep!
Terra slouched guiltily back to her room. Lbbp watched her go. Go where? Once she was asleep, what adventures awaited her?
Lbbp was more than a little envious.
2.18
- So go on then, what did happen last night? asked Terra as she settled down to eat her configuration 6 the next morning. Am I in trouble?
Lbbp put down his plate of configuration II and paused. - Not in trouble, really, no . . . it’s just.
There came an angry hammering sound. They turned to look towards it.
Pktk was hovering outside the window, and he didn’t look at all happy. Pktk rarely looked happy, but this was a whole new level of not-happy that he seemed to be experiencing at the moment.
- Well, you’re not in trouble with me, anyway, said Lbbp warily. Shall we let him in?
- I think we’d better, said Terra.
The window pane slid open and Pktk bounced angrily into the room, his bubble still active.
- What did you do, Terra? he asked as he bounced off the floor. And how did you do it? He bounced off the ceiling. And most of all, WHY did you do it? He bounced off the floor again, finally remembered to switch his bubble off and landed in a heap at Terra’s feet.
- I don’t . . . understand, said Terra, feeling hurt, confused and trying desperately not to laugh.
Pktk sat up. - Last night when we were all asleep, my father’s comm goes off. Apparently there was some live visual feed coming over the Source, showing ME flying around on some sort of monster, then floating off into space! My mother wakes up screaming, running round the apartment shouting help help my baby’s in space, I wake up, she sees I’m okay and THEN starts screaming at ME, asking when had I been off in space and riding flying monsters without telling her, and then I look at the pictures on my slate and it’s me and YOU, you’re in space as well and what is GOING ON?
- It’s on the Source? asked Lbbp, a note of panic in his voice.
- It’s all over the Source! said Pktk.
- WHAT’S all over the Source? asked Terra, confused and distressed. Could one of you please tell me what you’re talking about?
Lbbp sighed, picked up his slate and retrieved the recording from the previous night. - This, he said, and handed the slate to Terra.
Terra watched, Lbbp waited, Pktk watched them watching and waiting and fidgeted with anger and anxiety.
Terra watched the blurring, phasing images. It all looked weirdly familiar for something so indistinct. Then suddenly she knew where she’d seen these pictures before, and she felt horribly exposed, almost violated.
After a few moments, Pktk found he could contain himself no longer. - Well? he asked.
- It’s my dream. My dream from last night. Oh no, the Interface . . .
- You confused the Source, said Lbbp. Not an easy thing to do. You plugged your brain right into the Lyceum data bank and then started deluging it with images from your unconscious mind.
&n
bsp; - You still dream? asked Pktk, incredulously. Terra, you still dream? Like a baby?
-Yes, said Terra, and that, she said, pointing to Pktk, is why I’ve never told anyone. She turned to Lbbp. When I was tiny, I learned how everyone dreams when they’re very very young but that you’re supposed to grow out of it as you get older. Well, I never did . . . I kept waiting for the dreams to stop but they kept coming. At first I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want people to think I was still a baby . . . you know what it’s like when you’re little, you want to grow up as soon as possible.
Lbbp nodded. Terra went on: - And by the time I realised that it’s different for Ymns, that we just keep on dreaming our whole lives, well, then I didn’t want anyone to know because there were already so many things about me that were different to everyone else. I didn’t think they needed to know about this one.
Lbbp was saddened by the thought of Terra having to keep something so innocent a secret for so long. - You could have told me, he said. I thought you knew you could tell me anything . . .
- I just thought you’d worry, or worse than that, Terra said, with a pointed look at Lbbp, I thought it might arouse your scientific curiosity.
She knows me too well, thought Lbbp. Much too well.
- I was afraid that if I told you about the dreaming, next thing I knew I’d be in your lab at the Life Science Hub with wires poking out of my head, said Terra, with a smile.
- So instead of that, you did it to yourself by accident. What a family, laughed Lbbp. He looked Terra right in the eyes. If there’s ever anything on your mind, you can always tell me. We don’t need to keep secrets from each other.
Pktk had been silent for so long they’d both rather forgotten he was there. He spoke, and they remembered.
- Wait, said Pktk . . . you’ve got your own Interface? How did you get your own Interface?
- It’s a long story, said Terra. But yes, it does have spaces for my ears.
2.19
Lbbp noticed the clock; epoch-shattering scientific breakthrough or no epoch-shattering scientific breakthrough, they were late for the Lyceum. The Lyceum had a list of circumstances under which lateness could be excused. Lbbp was fairly certain that epoch-shattering scientific breakthroughs weren’t on that list.
They hurried to the window and floated away as quickly as they could. Lbbp came with them; it might be necessary to make some sort of excuse for their tardiness, he thought, and besides, he also had the distinct feeling he hadn’t heard the last of this dreaming business. If the images had ended up on the Source, why by now they could have been seen by . . .
Everybody.
When Terra and Pktk arrived at the lectorium, late (to Bsht’s evident annoyance), the rest of the class immediately forgot what they were doing and rushed to greet them (to Bsht’s evident extreme annoyance).
- What were those flying things?!
- Where can I get one?!
- How did you get into space?!
- How did you get back?!
- EVERYBODY SIT BACK DOWN RIGHT NOW!
Everybody sat back down.
Lbbp let the silence bed in for a blip or two then whispered to Bsht.
- Have you got a moment?
Bsht turned to look at Lbbp with an expression combining all manner of emotions, none of them positive.
- Of course! Why not, it’s not as if I have anything else to do right now . . .
Lbbp and Bsht retired to the corner of the room. The lectorium visualiser, which really was becoming too clever by half, Terra thought, had begun playing the recording of last night’s visions. The class watched it all over again, fascinated and not a little envious.
Terra took the opportunity to address her classmates.
- It’s a dream. That’s all it is. It’s a dream I had last night, and . . .
- A dream? asked Shnst.
- Like what babies have? asked Thnst.
Terra sighed. - Fnrrn babies, yes. Ymns keep dreaming all their lives.
General astonishment.
Terra explained the whole sequence of events, as best she understood it; how she was practising with her Interface (- yes, I’ve got my own Interface, yes, it has spaces for my ears, no, it hasn’t set fire to my hair again, not yet anyway), how her dream made its way into the Lyceum data banks and onto the Source (no one was yet quite clear how that had happened) and how poor Pktk’s parents had been awoken with terrifying reports of Pktk floating in space (Pktk smiled ruefully at the laughter this provoked – a lot of his classmates had met his parents).
Fthfth was thoughtful. - So it didn’t happen. Any of it. It just sort of pretended to happen inside your head . . .
- That’s right, said Terra.
- And you get this sort of thing happening inside your head every night? Must be terribly confusing.
- And tiring, mused Yshn. What’s the point of being asleep if you’re still busy inside your head? Might as well just stay up.
- That’s . . . not really how it works, said Terra, who’d never had to explain all of this before and was finding that it wasn’t quite as clear in her own mind as she’d thought it would be.
- How do you know when you’ve woken up? asked Fthfth.
- You just sort of do, replied Terra, immediately aware of what a weak answer that was.
At this point, Fthfth hit upon the vital question of the moment, the one no one else had thought to ask yet but which was, everyone realised upon hearing it, the thing that everyone ACTUALLY wanted to know.
- Could you do it again?
- I expect so, said Terra. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work again. I’m not sure I want to try, though.
- Why not? asked everybody.
- Well, you see, said Terra, thinking, oh dear, how to explain this, dreams are sort of . . . private. Seeing everybody else looking at my dreams, it’s not . . . it’s not very . . .
- Nice? suggested Pktk.
- That’s it, said Terra gratefully. It’s not very nice having everyone looking inside your head like this. When you’re asleep you have whatever thoughts your brain feels like having. What if I did it again but this time I dreamed about something secret, or something embarrassing, or just something I didn’t want everyone else looking at for . . . whatever reason?
- But would you have to be asleep? asked Fthfth. What if you put the Interface on and just . . . thought about things?
- What, thought about things that aren’t real? said Shnst.
- How can you think about something when it’s not real? said Thnst.
- Well, we can’t, but it looks like Terra can, said Fthfth with the air of a detective solving a mystery. Just last night she invented a new species of flying creature and gave Rrth a whole new moon system. Terra can think of all sorts of things that aren’t real when she’s asleep. The question is, can she do it when she’s awake?
Bsht re-entered the lectorium and the class fell silent. Bsht seemed slightly less angry but still about as confused as when she’d left.
- Right, she began, I’ve had the situation . . . explained . . . and it seems there’s nothing to worry about. But I don’t want to find anyone looking at this, she indicated the dream still playing on the visualiser, again today please. She switched the visualiser off. Terra could have sworn the visualiser made a disappointed aww noise as it deactivated.
2.20
The rest of the day passed as without incident as could reasonably be expected. Yes, Terra was the subject of furtive glances and excited whispers wherever she went in the Lyceum, but if she wasn’t used to that by now she was never going to be.
It was during the morning interlude that Terra had her own little revelation. She was pondering Fthfth’s suggestion that she try to use the Interface to capture dream-images while she was still awake. It was an intriguing idea, she supposed, but it would be an altogether different process. Rather than let her unconscious mind go wherever it wanted, she would be steering the course of events herself. Would it be as inter
esting that way? Could she even do it?
She thought she’d give it a try. She closed her eyes. The end of the previous night’s dream, the one everyone had now seen, seemed like a good place to start.
Terra thought about space. She tried to see herself floating in space, and there she was, inside her head, drifting in the inky void, looking down at stars and distant nebulae.
Terra’s eyes opened. She could do it! She closed her eyes again; the picture was still there. She could summon up images at will.
I don’t need to be asleep! she thought excitedly. I can just think of anything I want, and then with the Interface I can . . .
It was at this point that Terra realised something. A little something that would, within a few short days, change everyone on Fnrr’s life for ever.
I don’t need the Interface.
Not to do this, anyway . . . I could still use it for learning like everyone else does – I’m never going to finish this orbit if I don’t – but I don’t need it to record my dreams or anything else I think about.
I could just write it all down.
Terra found a quiet corner of the yard; the other pupils saw her go and decided to leave her alone, or at least Fthfth made this decision on their behalf and informed them of it. Terra had been having one of her ‘interesting’ days, after all, and probably needed some peace and quiet. Terra was lucky to have such thoughtful friends, Fthfth reminded them all.
Terra sat down and closed her eyes.
In her mind she saw . . .
Space, still space. She was in space, floating . . . no, not floating this time, she’d done that already . . . she was . . . Yes! Flying a spaceship. Much more interesting, and plausible, which suddenly seemed quite important.
So, what sort of spaceship? Lemon-shaped like Lbbp’s? No, sleeker, like a l’shft dart, silver and pointy. She was . . . alone? With friends? Alone. Alone in her sleek silver ship. She was . . . what? Looking for something. What, though? Home? Another planet? What else is in space? She ran back through the last few days . . . what had she seen, heard, talked about . . .