“They invaded our thoughts, so we escaped into our dreams….for good." - a hand written note found after The Final Collapse.

Chapter 1 - SEVEN

In between dreams, I often catch a glimpse of my cage. It is not a bar and lock prototype. Or, a ten by ten cell. I wear this cage like I would a costume or a body suit. It resembles a modern iron maiden. Trapped inside of it, I float because of it, my limbs flailing like a swimmer on the surface of a pool of water. Wires and feeding tubes line the metallic armour, from head to foot. They puncture my flesh by needle point, but not painfully. It was a mere flash, the sight of my body suspended in the cage. A quick snapshot. And then my mind adjusted my perception, and I was scaping again, into another dream.

I am thinking out loud just in case you are trespassing onto my mindscape, Andri. If you are, you must know by now it is considered a crime in our new reality. Ever since The Final Collapse, we are only permitted to travel, or what we like to call Scape, to places in our own subconscious. The act of trespassing onto another’s mindscape is like an invasion of privacy. And since we don’t own anything anymore, or walk a real landscape, our mindscapes are all we have left.

The reason I am explaining all of this is because I’m not sure if you are trespassing onto my mindscape again, by accident. When I first met you in the War Scape, I thought you were a criminal, trespassing onto my mindscape on purpose. But now, I’m not so sure. Maybe this is why I am thinking out loud. I want to find you again, Andri. Or I want you to hear my voice.

I’m not sure why I selected the War Scape in the first place. You see, every Scape, no matter what story arc it creates, is a virtual reality simulated by my subconscious. I can enter it rather easily too, by a train of thought. If you are listening to me, Andri, this is how we exist now. I think of a place, or a situation, or a scenario, and I am immediately transported there. Once I land in the Scape, I believe it to be real. It was once explained to me by a fictional character in a Nostalgia Scape. His name was Adam. He called it suspension of disbelief. He said the effect resembled the experience of watching a film in a theater, from our origin lifetimes. Once the story kicked in, you believed it to be real. The film could make you cry, or angry, or it could frighten you into a physical reaction, all because you were suspended in disbelief. You couldn’t separate the two, the reality of you sitting in the theater, from the story on the screen. The perception became synchronized. You were projected into the story and the realities were blended into one.

Do you remember how we met in the War Scape, Andri? I’ve returned to the scene and I can’t find you. If you’re looking for me, I’m searching for you in the rain stained piazza.

Maybe if I recall our first encounter, you will reappear. Okay, here goes nothing.

The setting of the War Scape resembled something gothic in architecture, perhaps European. I had joined a vigilante group of specialized combat fighters. To validate my value to the troop, I had to demonstrate my hand to hand combat skills first. And in order to earn a spot on the team, I had to defeat each of them, one by one, without weapons. The last of seven to join them, I earned the nickname “Seven” from General One, the leader of the troop. I decided to keep it. I liked being a number in a game of numbers. In a War Scape, the virtual reality was always mathematical, and I appreciated how it made sense. Eliminate as many enemies as possible. Weed out an assortment of evils, like greed, abuse of power, or rape. Stifle maniacal aspirations of world domination by an invisible dictator. Ultimately, create a utopic peace with acts of violence.

The mission of the vigilante team was to find and eliminate the source of power creating the war. I had joined the troop with the common goal to assassinate this source. But the journey, as in any Scape, was the real adventure. And this one began with the clot of us walking through a bomb ravaged city square. The buildings were bitten into by the teeth of multiple explosions, although they remained erect and resisting collapse. I could see inside the rooms. The symbols of domestic security were visibly disabled, represented now by unmade beds, splayed water pipes, smoke stained walls and charred furniture . I tried not to peer in any closer. I knew if I did, I would detect evidence of casualty. Blood flowed by me like a stream from one of the broken pipes, and I had already walked over shards of splattered innards and limbs. I decided to keep my eyeline straight and focused on the darker distance ahead of us. I walked the tail end of the upside-down V. My duty was to cover the vigilante in front of me by securing the possibility of a surprise attack from behind.

“It’s abandoned,” General One announced, as he assumed the point position of the upside-down V. He was a thick, grizzled man with red skin and a poodle curled beard. His feet sunk into the tarry ground leaving enormous prints.

“But not clear,” indicated another number from the other side.

We inched along without marching, rotating our heads on swivels, surveying the damage, flinching upon any crackle of movement.

Unlike some of the others, I refused to speak up, or offer my observation of the rummage. I was new to the group, new to this War Scape. Always shy when I enter an unfamiliar Scape, I wonder why this weaker instinct surfaces before any other. Perhaps it is the uncertainty initially presented by a new dream. I am never sure if a Scape exists without me, or before me, or after me, when I Scape into another. But I do know it happens because of me. The Scapes find their origins in our undiscovered, subconscious spaces, Andri. Whatever is stored there feeds the virtual reality. On this particular mission in the War Scape, I felt like a tourist in my own dream, like there was history between the members of this troop I had yet to experience alongside them. Or maybe this was the premise of the drama, informed by my subconscious collections from an origin lifetime. I was the rookie of the group untested yet by battle. A war virgin on unfamiliar turf.

As we continued to walk the cobblestone road, the limestone setting reminded me more and more of a distant, European land I had probably visited in my origin lifetime. This must have been my memory interfering to paint the Scape. Memories Andri, or so I believe, are the content fuel for the Scapes. The dead reality ignites the new fiction, functioning as the program code behind them, or so I remember hearing on another Scape.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Or had I read about a place like this before, a war torn city square, from a history textbook?

“Seven, how is the back end?”

“Clear.”

I was proud to have finally contributed my say to the mission. I didn’t want to be seen as the weak link in the chain. We needed to eliminate the source of power that had created this tragic damage. For all we knew, that very source could have been hiding in one of the ravaged buildings, or relishing safety in a bunker below us.

The traveling, upside down V shattered upon the sound of a sharp click, when General One was shot dead in the head. I scurried into an alley way, apart from the rest of troop. And then gunfire ensued. I searched for my gun, but I had dropped it in the middle of the square. Although I had proven my hand to hand combat skills, they were too limited to be of any use to my troop, who had been ambushed by gunfire. I had a knife strapped to my ankle, but this wasn’t a Gang Scape. I needed to run into the open to fetch my rifle, but bullets pelted the cobblestone like bouncing hail. So I prepared myself for the worst case scenario – I could die. But what did it matter. If I died, I would feel what it felt like to die. The act of losing life in one Scape would transport me to an afterlife in another, most likely staged in another Dreamscape.

The only issue would be re-entry into the same War Scape. I wouldn’t be permitted to re-enter this War Scape after my death in it. It would violate the suspension of disbelief laws. I would be expelled for good until the next version of War Scape came out. I would have to wait in a que, or settle on another Scape not as exciting as this one.

I remember resolving that I wanted to stay alive in the War Scape, and then you stabbed me Andri. I felt the blade carve into the softer side of my torso, where my kidneys were stored. It tore in hot but cooled like permanent glue once it found a place to stick.

I remember turning around to see you for the first time, Andri, and you were a dark skinned, young woman like me, with slanted eyes. You were too exotic to be a warrior in this War Scape. Your fatigues resembled a fashionable costume, tailor slim to accentuate the curves of your body, sexualizing you.

When you removed a gun from your holster to finish me off, I disarmed you expertly. I held the gun, and with another deft motion, removed the knife lodged in my back with my other hand. My blood dripped from it. The swiftness of the sequence frightened you, Andri. The fear of the voices of my troop yelping panicked instructions reflected in the glow of your iridescent skin. The voices were fading. They were moving on without me, presuming me dead. I was left with my doppelganger. You resembled a relative of mine by skin and eye colour.

“Don’t kill me,” you begged, your pink palms up and flat against an invisible wall.

“Why not? You were going to kill me.”

“It was just an instinct.”

Not intended as an apology, it sounded like one nonetheless.

“Have you never died before?” I asked you, as I pointed the bloodied knife pointed to your mouth, which glistened itself with a fresh application of lipstick. Why were you made up so contrary to the Scape? It wasn’t a fashion show.

Which is why I keep searching for you, Andri. You may be lost without the ability to Scape back.

You answered my question about ever dying in another Scape with a no.

“I don’t recognize you,” I admitted.

I hadn’t initially recognized any of the members of my troop either, but there was a familiar connection to them. I understood they derived from a part of my mind, whether it was my imagination or a buried memory, or simply an observation stored in my subconscious. But you, Andri, you resembled me physically, although you were foreign to my mind in every way. So I assumed you were trespassing onto my Dreamscape. It is illegal to do so, but maybe you didn’t know and I prejudged you.

As I considered every possibility, the vision of you blurred and became fuzzy on the edges. What was happening? Was I losing too much blood? Why was the cement chipped background behind you flattening into a sepia portrait?

You inched closer to me with your hands up. This was sleight of hand, a disguised surrender to veil a trick, I assumed. You possessed another, hidden weapon somewhere. But I had misread your body language. Instead, you chose to remove your clothes. And your body was visible proof you were virginal to the Scapes. No scars, no scratches, no tattoos. Clean, smooth, flesh. A beautiful portrait of human art, unscathed, virtuous, innocent. What is your origin?

I must admit, I was attracted to your mystery. I mean, I am still attracted to your mystery.

“My name is Andri.”

“Why are you here?”

“To fall in love.”

“This is a War Scape.”

“Love is a War Scape.”

“How would you know?”

“I don’t.”

I dropped the disabled weapons and fainted to my knees. I was dying. I was losing blood. The spirit in the flow of it was funneling out of me.

You stepped closer to me. Naked, unarmed. I predicted you would finish me with a strangling hand. Or, you would take one of the discarded weapons and end the experience with the pull of a trigger? I was a witness to your crime. You were definitely an intruder, a trespassing criminal, or even a Scape Fugitive wanted by the Invisible Police.

The clack of gunfire seemed to have walked away to dull in the distance. You dropped down and held my head in your lap. You used one of your hands to press against the wound in my back.

“Easy, easy. I’m not going to let you die.”

“You tried to kill me.”

“I tried to hurt you.”

“Why?”

“To make you feel like I feel.”

“But it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“I know. I’m going to kiss you now.’

Your face hovered over me, your dark hair forming an umbrella blocking out the intruding light.

“When I kiss you, escape into another dreamscape,” you whispered. “Before you lose your breath in this one.”

I wasn’t sure what you meant. Were you advising me to escape death by trespassing into another mindscape, thereby making me complicit in the same crime? Or were you asking me to switch Dreamscapes before I experienced the death in this one? If I died, there was a possibility I would never see you again. I wanted to ask you what you were doing, and why you were attending my dream. Most of all, I itched to cough, knowing that if I did so, I would cough up blood. Were you prepared to kiss my bloody mouth?

“Ready?”

I recall sighing.

“Are you the source of the power I need to kill?” I asked you.

You nodded no.

“I don’t care for power.”

You leaned in to kiss me and at once I felt like I had departed the War Scape, like I had ascended into another more heavenly in application. When I opened my eyes, I hadn’t left the rain stained piazza. Andri, you were smiling in the shadowing umbrella of your hair.

“It doesn’t look like you are ready to die in this Scape, after all,” you whispered, as you pulled further away from the kiss. You helped me disrobe, before pressing your skin to mine for warmth. The connection transcended the War Scape, all the way back to the physical connections lost after The Final Collapse, in their origin lifetime, when touch was real.

“Have I entered a memory hole? Are you real, Andri?”

“No, but we are breaking the law.”

“How so?”

You leaned in for another kiss, and I didn’t resist. There was a possibility I could disappear forever in that naked moment.