Do we build castles in the sky?

The city flew by in pieces as he fell, floating jigsaw buildings, hovering crafts, and other people, caught in a current he couldn’t even feel, his movement slow and aimless by comparison. He dodged a shining balcony crafted of suspended sea-water and took of towards the horizon.

He tried to take it all in, but the the city bounded beyond the limits of his mind. Without a sense of direction or location, he spun like a diver in free fall and the city whirled around him.

A craft he had taken for a palace at the edge of the world, rushed past him in a heartbeat. An orb of water that seemed close enough to touch shot up into the sky, proving itself to be massive and miles away. The sound was worse. All kinds of horns, shouts, music, thunderclaps and explosions scrambled for space in a soundscape as congested as the city itself.

Despite the unrelenting insanity around him, the fear he had felt on the rooftop was gone, and it took a few mania-fueled moments to realize why.

He believed. This was another world, another dimension, and these people had travelled through reality into another kind of existence, just like him. That other Gradie in the Real would remember none of this, and that separated them, now and forever. His real self, what Michael had called the spirit, was here, flying through the city. It felt like waking up, becoming lucid in a dream. It felt like being born. Tears fell from his eyes and he tried to look at everything at once.

He flew past a vertical ribbon of ocean, where people surfed on the waves and danced on the long bands of white sand beach. Towers of sculpted clouds cradled stone castles and swimming pools, and a cluster of crystal skyscrapers pulsed with hologram advertisements for Hardworlders, trips to Vaporworld, immersion in an imperial harem, and memory extraction.

As he soared between two floating flat plains of double-sided city blocks, things called out as if they had just noticed him. Messages jumped out of signs, dancing lights, and radiated off buildings and sculptures. They spoke with that dream knowledge Michael had used in the vision, promising sex of all kinds, kingdoms to rule, movies and books to live through, people to kill. There were things offered that would be illegal almost anywhere on earth, that just the offering of sickened him, and the messages went silent, as if sensing his revulsion, while others grew louder.

It was horrifying. Everything was alive. Even the molecules in the floating pools and walls were aware of him. It was a world made completely of living, moving, consciousness, all in motion. Vibration. Information. Assertation of existence. A thing wasn’t just there, it stated that it was. The crafts, the furniture, the lights, the clothes, all constantly communicating.

“I am being a drop of water.” “I am being the light of a winter sunset on this who is being a stone balcony” “I am being the softness of a woman’s skin.”

He remembered what Michael had said.

“The mind is not confined to its shell in the Otherworld. It can touch things directly.”

It was more than that. The mind was made of the same thing as everything else. All connected. All inescapable. It was suffocating.

He screamed and looked up to the sky, an unwavering plane of blue that also spoke of its blueness. He knew there was darkness behind it, darkness and silence. The sky heard his thoughts and the blue melted away, exposing a black void. He shot up with a pure desire to fill his eyes with blackness, to be alone in a silence that could not speak of its nothingness, or so he hoped.

The glowing ring of the Allworld fell away. The lights in the void spoke only of a dim light, quietly. He took a deep breath and tried to keep it all out. The breath calmed him before he could remember there was no air here, no lungs. He closed his eyes, and even the subtle whispers of the stars disappeared. The first thing he thought was, if he had no eyelids, how was he able to close his eyes? In a reflex, he tried to look through his eyelids, and panicked for an instant at the thought of being unable to shut out the speaking light of this place ever again.

Nothing changed. The darkness remained. He opened his eyes.

The rounded form of the Allworld lit up below and the lights blinked out in the black, but their voices seemed to have faded. He touched his chest. He was once again separate from the rest of it. His relief shocked him. What about this place did he hate?

It was the people. The magic of a living dreamworld was in its possibility, its potential, but whenever he got close to it, tried to discover what that potential held, someone else had gotten there first, waiting to take something from him. This world felt like other people. Like a loud noise or a bright light that made focus impossible. All of its promises were tainted.

The line of twilight at the edge of the world reminded him of the gas station, of Michael and the woman walking across the lot, and the blackness beyond recalled the vision Michael had shown him, of Hardworlders, moving with total freedom in a real world. A world resistant to the wills of other people. He saw himself there, free, flying down the highway, like a younger Michael had in the vision.

The fantasy took over his mind until a craft, shaped like a stone castle swimming on a lava bubble, floated casually up from the planet and broke his focus.

This is supposed to be a world of dreams made true. Let’s find out.

He took out the card and pressed the logo. It blinked and a chime, like a bell rung high above a cathedral, echoed in the black dead air around him.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“That was fast.” Michael’s voice came out of the card.

“Does this god damned city ever get better?”

“What? Oh, yea you get used to it. So, what’s on your mind?”

“I want to be a Hardworlder.”

“I’ve heard that before, but never from someone with less than a day in the Otherworld. I want you to give it some thought, be sure—”

“I’m sure.”

“I don’t think you are. Once we do this, you might wish you took more time.”

“Time to do what? It’s all bullshit.” He thought about being stuck in this world, dodging spiritual sales pitches for what could be eternity. Fuck that.

“There’s really nothing out there that interested you?”

He took another glance across the surface of the planet.

“Flying around is pretty fun.”

When Michael spoke again, there was laughter in his voice.

“Alright. I’ll be right there.”

Eventually, a light separated from the glow of the Allworld and shot towards him, then split in two. Headlights. The rest of it morphed out of the darkness and slid to a stop next to him, smooth as butter. A midnight blue 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Convertible. It looked like it had been poured in place. A glittering slab of gloss and chrome, blue plasma glow jetting out of the back grill and lower taillights. The coolest thing in sight for about two seconds.

There was a woman in the car with Michael. Slim, masked, silver hair like razor straight tinsel, black everything, lace and fur and jewelry like a Viking queen. Eyes like subzero sapphires. The slivers of skin he could see were pale as moonlight on marble.

“This is E.P.,” Michael said.

“What’s that stand for?” Gradie asked. She didn’t even move.

“It’s her name. Get in.” Michael must have heard something in Gradie’s voice, as his own held a warning, but Gradie didn’t care.

He hopped in the back.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Gradie.” He held out his hand. She took it in hers, fingerless gloves. Warm wool and soft skin. A subtle squeeze. It was really there. Why didn’t their hands just pass through each other? Wasn’t it all just thought and belief?

“I heard,” she said. A conversation’s worth of mockery in two syllables. Some accent he couldn’t place. Those eyes! The car flew off and the Allworld twirled somewhere. She faced the windshield and Gradie looked down to her toes, boots like a witch, then back up again, tights, lace, silver charms on her ears.

“Can I help you with something?” The eyes came back to him.

Michael looked in the rear-view mirror with an expression like Gradie was twirling a fork around a socket. He thought of what the girl in the club had said. Was EP the type to fuck all around?

“Yea, how does dating work in this place?” He said.

“How does it work?” She said, like drawing a sword stealthily.

“Yea.”

“For you, probably not very well.” She looked away.

Michael raised his eyebrows. Gradie laughed and didn’t take his eyes off her.

“Boss, can you stop by a brothel so we can drop this guy off?”

“Does that sound good, Gradie? Or would you like to stop staring at her so we can get to work?”

“Alright.” One last look, then his eyes were full of surrealist skyline, slicing by, tinted by some kind of forcefield around the car. They must have been going a thousand miles an hour. If he focused hard enough, could he materialize another EP out of thin air? One with a nymphomaniacal desire, wearing nothing but a...

“Feels different, doesn’t it?” Michael said.

“What?”

“All of it, out there.”

“Yea.” Gradie remembered his tears and flinched at the idea of Michael or anyone else knowing about them. The car was a bubble of silence, despite the open top. Michael seemed to be waiting for him to talk.

“The signs were talking to me.” He couldn’t think of a better way to put it. Michael knew what he meant.

“It’s the same way you know things suddenly in a dream. You aren’t just seeing the signs as you would in the Real, photons effecting your eyes. You have no eyes here, no ocular nerves, no neurons even. You see with your spirit. With practice, you’ll learn to block them out.”

Gradie thought about that for a bit.

“Then why can’t I see behind me?” Her blue eyes found him again, but he couldn’t decipher the look. Disdain or intrigue?

“Because your mind has no idea how to process that kind of vision. Think of your spirit like water inside a glass. You take the glass away suddenly, and the water is still in the same shape, just for an instant. But here, the instant can last forever. There’s nothing stopping your mind from expanding. It just doesn’t know how.”

Gradie watched a pyramid of prismatic glass fold open like a paper fortune teller, its insides all green gardens and mirror pools. Is that how they did all this? With liquid minds?

The car slowed. Below, a suburban spread of pastel houses on a disk a mile wide, every backyard in the middle of a house party, shot off fireworks that exploded below the tires. Michael steered with the old arcade double joystick that had replaced the steering wheel and they approached a glass tower, like an office building stretched ten miles in the air. Waterfalls flowed down the four corners from an unseen font at its peak, and geysers threw rainbows on its base.

The sun was still again, its previous motion only an illusion caused by their intense speed. Gradie recalled the address on the card, and something clicked.

“So fourteen thirty is the address, right? Because of the sun?”

“Exactly. It’s at the intersection of the two-thirty pm timeline and the 35 latitude,” Michael said.

They pulled up to a balcony, a wafer thin piece of carpeted floor extending out from the side of the building, as the glass slid apart and a strange soap-bubble-like forcefield expanded out from the tower and enveloped them.

EP shot up out of her seat and floated inside. Michael snapped and the car disappeared. Gradie dropped to the carpet. He hadn’t felt it while flying, but now gravity was constant and familiar. He rolled up and went inside.

The office, more like a lounge, was a haven from the chaos outside. Gentle orange light and muffled white noise, as if somewhere out the windows, a gentle stream was echoing off tree trunks. It smelled of pine, crushed maple leaves, sweet spring water. There was a square reflection pool beneath the sunset skylight, a mirror backed bar, and all kinds of floating seats around a sunken oval den near the windows. There were doors all over the walls at even intervals, of different colors and materials. Even the upper loft was covered in them.

Michael approached one in the far wall that looked like an elevator from Area 51. He pressed a button and three blast doors opened onto a roomy square of metal and glass.

“Where are we going?”

“Before you can join, I have to clear you with our Keeper.”

“Clear me how?”

“You’ll find out.” Michael stood in the elevator and EP floated in beside him. Gradie followed and the doors closed. Inside, his colors clash with theirs in the reflections. He was still dressed in the same light blue oxford and khaki slacks he had been wearing when Michael found him in the gas station. He looked down and focused. His clothes changed color, becoming black and dark grey.

“She’s not going to judge you on your outfit,” EP said.

“Why are you coming along again?” He stared at the side of her face. She turned her blue eyes on him as if being this close was no different than being a million miles apart.

“We might end up working together. I want to see what Lucy will think of you.”

“What do you think of me?”

“Stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Acting like I’m some girl in your dreams. Waiting for me to fall into your arms or something.”

“Maybe you are my dream girl.”

“Gradie. Save your charm for the Allclub,” said Michael.

EP scoffed, and the doors opened.