Chapter 38
The Museum
He was part of my dream, of course—but then I was part of his dream, too.
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Kaitlyn Carter stood a bit unsteadily when she shoved her bass into the overhead compartment, and she clutched tightly to her stuffed turtle pillow when she scooted over to the window seat and sat down. She buckled her seatbelt with hands that trembled only slightly, positioned her travel bag under the seat in front of her, and hugged Tal the Turtle as she looked out the window at all the other airplanes.
She knew airplanes were safe. She’d looked up the crash rates for this airline and this model of airplane before she left home just to be sure. She had investigated the credentials necessary to become a pilot. She researched the many failsafe mechanisms and precautionary features of the modern aircraft. She had even utilized Bernoulli’s principle of fluid dynamics to solve a number of different potential equations for calculating lift on airfoils.
She knew airplanes were safe. But she had never been in one before. And however unlikely, an event classifiable as unsafe was always a possibility. One which she should be ready for. So she read the safety card in front of her and memorized it in one go.
She knew airplanes were safe. But she had the broken chess piece with her—the dead McFinnium butterfly. Who knew what that might do to an airplane in flight? What if it caused the altimeter to read incorrectly and they crashed into the ocean? What if the navigation systems glitched and they ended up in Morocco? What if Callie appeared onboard and caused a ruckus partway through the flight?
She hugged Tal tighter and glared out the window with fierce concentration. Yes, airplanes were perfectly safe, not to mention a marvel of human ingenuity. Many people rode in them all the time without problems, such as Heidi, or Aunt Becky.
Others didn’t, such as her father.
Music! That was her plan: she would listen to music and fall asleep. But she wasn’t allowed to do that during takeoff, apparently. But she needed to fall asleep, one way or another. She needed to dream, one last time.
She was one of the first to board. She took inventory to distract herself while she waited for others to fill the plane. Bass? Of course; it was right above her. Butterfly net? Check; it was in its specially-made pocket in the bass case. Mikhail Tal? Check; the green turtle pillow looked up at her with big friendly eyes. Lab coat? Check. It was in her bag. Music and headphones? Check. Dead McFinnium butterfly? Check. Her diary and book of notes about the Museum? Check. Spare glasses? Check. Rainbow snowflake scarf? Check. Chopsticks? Check.
There wasn’t much more than this. Few toiletries and no change of clothes. She didn’t think she would need them.
A young bearded black man sat down in the seat beside her as she went through her checklist. He mostly ignored her, but Kate saw him do a double-take at the scar on her left neck and cheek and shoulder. To him it probably looked like a bizarre tattoo. It made her hug Tal a little tighter.
She re-read the safety manual in her mind, and she paid close attention when the flight attendants demonstrated the procedures, unlike the man beside her who was writing something on his phone. She removed the crystal butterfly from her pocket and squeezed it in her fist as the airplane taxied out onto the runway.
“Nervous?” said the man next to her. He smiled encouragingly. She opened her mouth to reply, but then shut it and nodded. He looked pretty cool and she didn’t want to stutter in front of him. She hurriedly looked out the window again. It was the middle of the night, so everything out the window was dark except for the lights. There were so many lights! Red, green, blue, white, making straight lines for runways and curved lines for taxi lanes. Lights of vehicles and airplanes driving out in the darkness. As the airplane turned, the lights of Heathrow Airport itself swung into view. She saw the big windows, and could make out people standing in front of them, looking out at the field of lights.
She got through takeoff by humming quietly to herself and hugging Tal with her eyes closed. It turned out to not be as bad as she’d feared. In fact, the sensation of liftoff was exhilarating.
She donned her headphones as soon as it was allowed. She put on relaxing music, yawned, and placed Tal the Turtle behind her head as she reclined her seat. It would be easy to fall asleep. She only hoped she could learn something before everything changed.
Without opening her eyes, Kate became aware of her surroundings. Yes! She had made it. Sometimes just wanting to “wake up” here wasn’t enough. She still didn’t know what exactly caused it, and had met with only mixed success after trying to arrive here by her own efforts.
She opened her eyes. It really wasn’t like waking up. It was like suddenly jerking back to awareness after dozing off. One second she was closing her eyes on the airplane, listening to music through her headphones, and the next she was here, startled into alertness by a myoclonic spasm.
Kate saw that she sat on a plush red chair in a fancy foyer. A sparkling white fountain glistened in the center of the room, and the spray of the water made the air rich and humid. The foyer, with wood-and-gold-paneling and lush red carpet, extended high overhead to a dome glowing with stained glass. She had been to places like this before, but not this exact same one. It was always different. That was one of the rules. She had it written in her notebook.
This room had two doors: a large double-door in front of her, and a smaller one to her left. To her right, an archway carved in floral pattern opened onto a long hallway lit with buttery yellow lights.
The doors in the Museum were all locked; she had never been able to open one. She thought it was because she needed keys. Or maybe she just wasn’t supposed to be here. But she was never trapped; there were always openings, hallways, places to go. That was another rule.
She didn’t very often try to open the doors. The Dark Man would sometimes come and stare at her if she tried, and the Dark Man was spooky. But even he was not as scary as what she thought was behind some of the doors. In fact, he was probably protecting her.
She hopped up off the chair and realized her feet were bare. That was fine. The rest of her clothes were the same as what she was wearing on the plane. No bass, though. Sometimes she took her bass to bed with her and slept with it, because then it would show up here. And when she played it here…it was difficult to describe, but it created positive feelings. She thought that in some way this Museum liked music, and was somehow nicer to her when she played for it. Like the butterflies. Maybe it made the Dark Man smile. She had mixed feelings about that possibility. In a way, he was the biggest mystery of all.
No bass, but she had her cell phone. That was good. She could still communicate with her friends back on Earth using CHIME. She could text them from here, and when she awoke all their messages would still be there, on her “real” phone. But the timestamps would be all screwed up!
She set off down the long hotel-like hallway, warm and humid and with décor patterned after the foyer she just left. Full of doors, like a hotel, but unnumbered.
She walked for a while, wandering through the Museum. Its variety never ceased to surprise her. While she always began in a place that was something like either a fancy hotel or a museum, thus the name she had given it, she always found something unusual the farther she went. There was a place full of spaceships, which opened onto a dark starry sky totally different from Earth’s. There was a thing like a cathedral, but much bigger than any she knew of, not that she knew much about cathedrals. There was a big dark rainy city full of misty cobblestone streets right out of a Sherlock Holmes movie. There was a dim, cloudy golf course, extremely huge like everything else, stretching to the horizon. She had seen Romanesque ruins on crumbling cliffs, and an enormous proscenium stage. All of this was huge, and dark, and empty. All of it was part of what she called the Dream Museum. All of it was under the watchful eye of the Dark Man. All of it was full of doors.
Kate theorized that this place was a vast conglomerate of fragmentary ideas and set-pieces pulled from someone’s imagination. Maybe it came from people’s dreams, like a castle built of driftwood washed up on the shores of the collective human imagination. Kate was sure Liz could put it far more eloquently. It—the Museum—seemed too stable and well-defined, and maybe too cohesive in theme and tone, to be the result of everybody ’s dreams. But she hadn’t seen it all. Not even close.
She always lost track of time here. Sometimes she’d wake up on Earth after what seemed like only a few minutes in the Museum. This time she found herself in a boundless empty space full of pale blocks, ranging in size from dice to shipping containers, which made up a maze-like landscape of paths, tunnels, and stairs before her. There were some gaps in the floor, and these appeared to open into a black abyss below. There seemed to be rather a lot of black abysses here in the Museum. She had never fallen, and didn’t plan to.
She roved about in here for a while. She began humming at one point, and she noticed that the featureless pale grey blocks around her shimmered with color at the sound. Some experimentation revealed that the blocks changed different colors when she sang or hummed different notes, depending on their size. She wished she had her bass!
She continued and found herself next to a mirrored wall, reflecting her image against the black void beyond. She examined the part of her neck and cheek where her scar would be if she were awake. Injuries didn’t transfer here. She twirled around, enjoying the sight of her rainbow snowflake scarf spinning about.
But something was strange about her reflection. She turned to the mirror and raised her right hand. The reflection also raised its right hand! Not a mirror image. She reached out and pressed her hand against the glass. Her reflection did the same, but instead of their hands meeting, the reflection’s was two feet to the left. The flesh of the reflection’s palm pressed up against the glass on its side. She grinned. So weird! Her reflection smiled back.
Kate stepped back, as did her reflection. The whole image changed as soon as she ceased to make contact with the glass. It blurred and darkened. The image which had been a reflection of Kate became something—someone—else. A stranger stared back at her. This person was about her own height and build, but with grey skin, and wearing a fancy purple and black dress. She (was it a female? hard to tell!) wore a purple blindfold, and violet jewels decorated her forehead and neck as well as down along her arms and hands. She had long black hair, also adorned by the violet jewels. Something dark, either scar tissue or an unnerving tattoo, covered a large part of her face, partly hidden by the blindfold.
It was very rare to see another person! And this was the first one she had seen that didn’t look entirely human. Kate raised a cautious hand to wave at the person, but the stranger did not wave back. Of course! She was blindfolded!
Only then did Kate see that the background in the mirror had changed as well. It looked out into a big stone courtyard with an elaborate fountain and a red sunset sky. The mirror had changed into some kind of window. The Museum was full of windows too.
The other person hesitantly turned and began walking away. She was very graceful! Kate wasn’t sure she had ever seen someone walk in a way that brought the word “elegant” to mind until now. Certainly neither her father nor Aunt Becky nor her Uncle Riley ever walked like that. (The thought of any of those three walking like that made her snort with laughter.) Was ‘sashay’ the word? Liz would know.
Kate stepped up and knocked on the glass, just in case she might be able to communicate. But it was no good. She could only watch as the other girl wandered off, eventually leaving Kate’s field of view entirely.
Kate waited for a few minutes, but the mirror-turned-window did not change again. She at last departed, continuing on through the land of musical grey blocks. She soon came to a block with an open portal in it. She passed through and found herself in something like an art gallery that had forgotten the art. Elaborate frames hung all over the curved white walls, but they were all empty.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a tall, dark figure disappearing down a side hallway. She shivered. He was always around. Just…being there. He had never threatened her, she had to remember that. But he still made her nervous.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out and saw that Isaac had messaged her. But as she went to reply she noticed something: she had a new contact in CHIME. The name slot was blank, and the number was garbled gibberish. But there it was, next to her five friends, the only other people she knew who used CHIME. Who…?
Oh! Maybe it was the girl she just saw! The one with the purple jewels. She had looked a little lost. Maybe she needed help! Kate sat on a nearby bench and sent a text.
KC: hello!
??: Who is this?
KC: it’s me!
KC: Kaitlyn Carter
??: I do not know anyone by that name.
KC: I don’t think we’ve met :p
KC: but I think I just saw you through one of the viewports
KC: are you a pretty grey person wearing a black and purple dress?
??: That is me.
??: I suppose.
??: Where are you?
??: Are you in...
??: here?
KC: the Museum?
KC: yep!
??: A museum, you say?
??: Strange.
??: Do you know much about this place?
KC: a little
KC: are you new here?
??: Yes.
KC: i will find you!
KC: lickety split!
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
KC: (i hope)
??: Lickety split?
KC: hehehe
KC: it means REALLY FAST
??: I see.
??: In a sense.
??: I have questions.
??: Many.
KC: don’t we all?
KC: hehe ;)
KC: but okay!
??: You don’t know me.
KC: was that your first question?
??: Yes.
KC: no, I am quite sure I would remember you!
??: Then how were you able to initiate this communication with me?
KC: your number was in my phone
KC: which means that we’re connected somehow!
KC: maybe i’m GOING to know you sometime in the future?
KC: which i guess is now?
KC: ?8|
KC: hehe this place is just weird sometimes
KC: you can’t be too concerned about those kinds of things
??: Understood.
KC: :) you talk kind of like Liz!
??: Next question. Describe yourself.
KC: that wasn’t a question either!
KC: ;)
??: What color are you?
KC: color?
KC: um white I guess?
??: I see.
??: Are we asleep now?
KC: you really are new here!
KC: yes we are asleep
KC: we are dreaming
KC: but we are dreaming together!
??: So this Museum is some kind of stable medium with which our subconscious minds can interact? It is a real place in that it exists regardless of whether we are present?
KC: I think so!
KC: something like that
??: Of course, the far more rational explanation is that I am having a peculiarly vivid hallucination.
??: Most likely you are only a figment of my imagination.
KC: hey!
KC: >:|
??: On the other hand, I have been here before. Although I have never before interacted with another.
KC: can I ask a personal question?
??: Yes.
KC: what are you?
??: Can you be more specific?
KC: well you’re not human...
??: What is human?
KC: nevermind, it wouldn’t make sense to me anyway!
KC: instead, tell me about yourself
KC: what do you love? what problems are you facing in life?
KC: oh! And what is your name?
KC: you have a name right?
??: My name is Zayana.
KC: I like that name
ZA: Is it likely that we will never speak again?
KC: I hope not! but you can never tell here
ZA: I suppose it doesn’t matter what I say to you since my acquaintances are unlikely to come to this place and meet you.
KC: oh I wouldn’t tell them anything you told me in confidence!
ZA: Very well. As far as interests, I spend my time studying the stars.
ZA: I used to, that is.
KC: wow! I have a friend who loves astronomy
KC: he’d be so excited if he could see YOUR stars!
ZA: As far as problems, I have recently been blinded.
KC: oh no!
KC: what happened?
ZA: Someone got out of hand. That is all I wish to say on the matter.
KC: <:O
KC: you are very straightforward
KC: just like one of my other friends!
ZA: Are you still trying to find me?
KC: yes, but this place is so big!
KC: and it keeps changing
ZA: Changing?
KC: yes, that is one of the rules here
KC: it’s always changing! things move around
KC: its really hard to get someplace intentionally
KC: or even to know where you are in relation to other places
KC: that’s because
KC: it doesn’t want you to worry about where you’re going!
KC: it wants you to be more concerned with where you ARE
ZA: It?
KC: the Museum
ZA: It is a sentient entity?
KC: I do not know
KC: but around here, things always happen for a reason
KC: like us talking now!
KC: I’m sure it matters
KC: which is a nice thought, I think
KC: :)
ZA: I would like to meet you.
KC: <3
KC: me too!
KC: meet YOU i mean
KC: hehe
ZA: I think I am waking up...
KC: you need to be careful about opening doors!
KC: here
KC: because you never know
KC: i said that in case we don’t talk again
KC: it’s important
KC: are you still there?
KC: :(
During this conversation Kate had not even managed to escape the endless art gallery with the empty picture frames. She looked sadly at her phone when Zayana stopped responding. She’d never met another person here who was dreaming like her! This place was never boring, but it sure would be a lot less lonely if there were some other people around! Besides him , of course. And Zayana seemed nice. Poor Zayana! Being blinded must be hard, especially for someone who likes to study stars.
Kate became aware of a presence to her left. She looked, and she nearly fell over backwards when she saw the Dark Man right next to her. She backed up a few steps, staring at him with wide eyes. He had never been this close before! He wore a big hat that shadowed his face, and a strange kind of black suit with an overcoat. And the cane—he always had that shiny black cane with the mirrored ball on top. He was already turning around when she saw him, and he stepped into a painting-frame on a nearby wall and vanished as though passing right through the plaster.
Kate put a hand to her heart. It was pounding!
Only after he had gone did she see that he had left something on a bench next to Kate. It was an electric bass with an amp, both sleek and futuristic. She had never seen a model like that. And the Dark Man had never given her anything before. Was this a gift? Did he just want her to play? Maybe it would help her find Zayana! She knew of no theoretical basis for that idea, but neither was she prepared to discount it. For all she knew, simply having had the idea made it possible. This was that kind of place.
She picked up the bass and slipped the strap over her head, holding her hair of out of the way. It was heavy! The heaviest bass she’d ever held. She didn’t think they made them this heavy on Earth. The amp had buttons she did not recognize, but a big obvious switch sat right in front, so she flipped it, hoping it was the power.
The amp came alive. It hummed; little lights blinked to life. It vibrated right off the floor and up into the air, where it hovered at roughly head level, drifting around. Kate gave it a soft push, and it floated over a short distance before coming back as though tethered by an unseen elastic cord. Kate giggled.
She plucked a string. She paused, then tried the rest. The sound made her raise her eyebrows. “W-w-what the h-heck?” she asked. She tried again, just to be sure. And indeed, this was the most horribly out-of-tune bass she had ever tested. It was almost like someone had tried to tune the strings to all the wrong notes!
She dropped down onto the bench and re-tuned it by ear. It took a while, but eventually she thought she got it pretty close. She went right into an improvised melody inspired by the tuning process. It was a little bluesy. Kind-of funk. Slapping the strings was a new thing she had been trying out recently. It made her a little embarrassed because she wasn’t sure she was groovy enough for that kind of thing, but there was nobody around here to judge her.
The sounds came out rich and clear through the levitating amp. She kept her eyes on the strings for the first minute. When she looked up, she saw that the walls bled color in oily streaks. The colors ran down into the empty frames and mixed, gradually coalescing into blurry images. She didn’t stop playing, but she stood up and walked around. The amp followed her like a loyal pet. The more she played, the clearer the new images within the frames became. They depicted rainy cobblestone streets, misty moonlit bridges, empty fields at night, cityscapes over water, and cruise ships on dark seas lit like Christmas trees.
She stopped in front of one painting she recognized. It was the very place she had seen the other girl, Zayana. A cobblestone plaza lit by lamplight, the stones wet as though after a light rain. The red sunset had faded, but it was the same place. She stopped playing for a moment. The painting remained. She reached out, and it stopped being a painting as soon as she touched it. She felt a warm humid breeze blow from the other side of the frame.
She climbed through. The amp followed. She inspected the street and surrounding area for any sign of Zayana, trying very hard to have Sherlock-Holmes-like powers of perception. But she saw nothing; no clues. She looked up at the starry vista above and plucked a string on the bass. One cluster of stars burst with viridian light in response. She played the tune she had just been improvising, and the stars above lit up in sync. Colors swept the dark sky, swirling and shifting as though the stars were tiny windows to a bright, blazing maelstrom of radiant colors. Kate grinned, then laughed.
But wait. Hadn’t she wanted to come here for a reason? Yes, of course! She was trying to learn something. What was about to happen back on Earth? That was pretty important. She had seen a few visions here already. She knew that the things she saw here could be changed; they didn’t necessarily come to pass. They were just possibilities. Which was good, because she really didn’t want to die.