Jimmy was tapping his foot nervously.
“It’s cool man, calm down.” the huge bodyguard next to him said.
The car rolled to a stop and the door was opened. I got out and stood next to him.
“This way please.”
Jimmy stepped out and followed the man into a small, square, concrete building. The outside was a dull unpainted grey.
“I’m meeting the boss here?” I asked.
We walked into the building and I followed the bodyguard down the main hallway.
“This place is pretty crappy.” Jimmy quietly said from behind me.
“Shut up.” I whispered back, although I had to agree. The interior was positively filthy, the floors were covered in dust and dirt and the walls were stained. The bodyguard led us to a room off from the hallway and pointed for us to go inside.
I went inside the room and was taken aback, this room was thoroughly cleaned, every speck of dust had been swept away. In the middle of the room stood a large medical apparatus. It had pipes and tubes connecting to several chairs that were placed in front of it.
“Umm…” I said hesitantly. “Where is the boss?”
A thin, sickly looking man in a lab coat stepped out from a door on the other side of the room and strode forward.
“I will take you to him,” the man said. “Now come sit.”
I hesitated again then reluctantly sat in the middle chair. Jimmy sat next to me and the labcoat guy began to put a helmet on my head. He finished then moved on to Jimmy. The big man who I came here with started strapping tape onto my limbs.
“Put these on.” He said, giving me gloves.
I put the gloves on and looked over and saw that the helmet Jimmy was wearing had a large binocular-like object on the front of it. It was on a hinge, which the man flicked down. He walked over to me and tilted my head back upward. He pushed the lenses down onto my face and through an extremely inhibited lens, I saw him drag a tall lamp thing over. It had a box on top of the body instead of a lightbulb.
“Wait.” Jimmy and I said at the same time.
“What does this do?” He asked desperately. Jimmy was breathing hard.
He has claustrophobia. I remembered.
“Do not worry.” The labcoat man said. “You are going to the dreamscape.”
He opened my mouth and placed a cotton ball between my teeth before instructing me to bite down. I did so and saw him cracking open a small package. He held the package beneath my nose and my vision began to fade.
Where am I? I wondered, dazed and disoriented. What happened to my body. My shirt was gone. I looked down and my pants were gone too, not only that, but there was nothing there. My body ended slightly above my waist. Actually, my body seemed a bit small, I noted.
“What just happened?” I said out loud.
“We are in the Dreamscape.” a voice said. It was the bodyguard, but instead of him, all I saw was a glowing orb. “I will be acting as your mentor and guide for now.”
“I guess I just call you Teach?” I said offhandedly
He nodded, somehow, and another orb appeared next to him.
“Oohh, my head.” The second orb said in Jimmy’s voice.
“Jimmy,” I exclaimed.
“Yeah?” he responded. “This is so weird, you are just an orb.”
“Wait, you don’t have eyes, how are you able to see me?”
“We are on the clock. Now listen to my instructions.” Teach said. “First you must focus your mind onto your body. You must strongly imagine your legs and arms.”
I focused as hard as I could and heard a pop. I looked down again to see that my legs were back. I looked up again just in time to see Jimmy balloon out from the orb he was in. His arms untwisted, like a butterfly’s wings when it emerges from a cocoon. I looked away, grossed out a little and saw that the bodyguard was standing next to us, already fully formed.
“Take it slow.” the bodyguard instructed. “You should be able to move some, your ability to move around and control your avatar depends greatly upon your level of focus, discipline, and your mental strength. Some must train for years just to take a step while others can run effortlessly.”
“You are quite strong,” He told me as I moved my hands over my body. It felt like both jello and steel at the same time.
“Why you… no clothes.” Jimmy asked, his voice strained.
“There is no need for clothes inside the dreamscape, as the only parts of your body that will appear only do so when you use them.” Teach explained “You were sitting when you came here, which is why you likely did not see your legs. If you want to wear clothes, you can, but it will take more focus.”
I closed my eyes and thought hard. After a few seconds, I managed to make a plain t-shirt and basketball shorts appear.
“I guess more complicated stuff requires more focus,” I said.
“I think I will stick to glowing nothingness.” Jimmy said weakly.
Jimmy’s leg wibbled, then wobbled, then he took a shaky step forward. After a few seconds, he took another one.
“Excellent.” The bodyguard said. “We must set out at once.”
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
We walked through a vague landscape that subtly shifted in different ways all around us.
“Hey Teach, why does the landscape keep changing?” I asked excitedly.
“Just as there are those with weak abilities like your friend, there are those with considerable power here, who have the ability to shape not only themselves but their surroundings. Many studies have been conducted on it, similar to how scientists have studied almost everything else. They found that people with the ability to lucid dream have stronger abilities in the dreamscape. Additionally, the power they wield is proportional to both the percentage of dreams they are awake in, so to speak, and to their mental strength.”
“I guess you like this topic.” I responded.
“Oh yes, I thoroughly enjoy teaching others about this place, not only is it a recent discovery, but as you can probably tell, I am quite adept at it. I used to be a dream diver for Doctor Kipsfeld when he constructed his experiments.”
“No. Way. THE Doctor Kipsfeld? Two time Nobel prize winner?”
“The very same. It was a great year for the science community.”
“That is so cool, right Jimmy?”
“Yeah yeah, pretty cool.” He said distractedly, then asked nervously. “How do we get out? I heard rumors of people dying in here.”
“That should be nothing to worry about.” The bodyguard said reassuringly. “The usual means of entering and exiting is, of course, naturally falling asleep or waking up. Just like when you have a nightmare and wake up screaming, there is little chance of anything bad happening from suddenly waking up. The only problem arises when another person wakes you up. We have a special land pad designed that creates a field powered by mental energy. It saps the energy of anyone nearby but not inside it to create a repelling force to keep them away from the users while it sends signals to wake you up.”
“Oh! Is that what the lights and goggles are for?” I asked.
“Exactly, you may not have noticed, but the helmet you put on has sensors to monitor your vitals and also send electric shocks to wake you up.”
“So there is no danger?” Jimmy asked hopefully.
“Well, not exactly, when I was a dream diver, we sadly discovered that you can be injured by anything people have projected their mind onto. We found this out when one diver died after another accidentally projected his mind. It was a difficult job for many, and some went crazy while inside, causing them to suffer tragic consequences.” Teach said. “I always found it quite fun, but I suppose I am able to handle the stress a bit differently than others.”
“Hey teach, well actually, I should call you by your name, but anyway, how do you project your mind onto something?” I asked.
“My name is Albert.” He replied. “You can project your mind onto something by, you guessed it, focusing. It takes a different kind of focus, and is similar to how you might imagine gravity pulling something towards you, except instead of pulling it towards you, you are pushing your focus out to wrap around it.”
I nodded, deep in thought, then gazed upward at the shifting sky above.
“Hey wait, what is that?” I asked, shocked by what I had seen. Above me, stretched out across a hole in the sky, was a dark void. It was quite different from outer space as it appeared to be alive almost.
“Oh that’s just the nightmare plane. Holes open when people begin a nightmare.” Albert said nonchalantly. “Judging by its appearance, it’s just a falling dream. Oh, we’re here.”
We had been walkin-talkin for several minutes, but now we arrived at a seemingly random spot. Albert manifested a bracelet onto his arm that had several buttons on it. The button he pressed glowed blue then turned off. I gazed around for several seconds before I heard a crackle, a pop, and then a chirp. In front of me, three orbs had appeared, two of the orbs transformed into guards. Instead of glowing yellow like Jimmy, they faintly glowed a dark green, almost black. The one in the middle faltered a bit then transformed into a man in a suit. He straightened his already straight jacket then stepped forward.
“This is Ada and Brian,” He said. “I am the boss.”
In response to his introductions, Ada and Brian pulled back the orb colors from their face revealing stern expressions and thick eyebrows.
I nodded to each of them in response then nudged Jimmy forward.
“I… uh… we’re here to discuss… the thing.” Jimmy muttered.
“Oh, fine, I’ll do it myself.” I said. “We were going to discuss the creation of a company together. You wanted access to the technology we had created.”
“And I am prepared to offer you five hundred thousand for it.”
“That may seem like a generous offer for what we have right now, boss, but it will hurt us in the long run. Tell him, Jimmy.” I said as I nudged Jimmy’s arm.
“Yh-yeah, that’s right.” Jimmy stammered. “If we sell it now, then we would lose a lot of potential later on. My calculated profit margins for your company after acquiring the stuff we developed would be much, much higher than 500,000. Addidditionally, you would likely acquire legal rights to it, causing us t-to be unable to make changes, updated versions, or second editions.”
“I see.” The boss said thoughtfully. “My estimates were not anywhere near as good. Perhaps we had different ideas of what could be done with it. Would you be interested in working as a consultant?”
“You are asking to hire us?” I asked. “If so, depending on the pay, we could do six fifty.”
As the boss pondered the proposition, there were a couple blips and half a dozen orbs appeared.
One of the orbs transformed into a man and whispered something in the boss’s ear. The boss looked worried by what he heard, but calmly turned back to us and spoke in a clear voice to us.
“I am sorry, but I will have to reschedule, I have some urgent business to attend to.” He said, turning around again. “Albert, get them out of here.”
The orb that was Ada placed a small disc on the ground and it quickly expanded into a circle about seven feet in diameter. The orbs floated over to the disc and the boss stepped onto it. The ring glowed purple and then spread upward, encircling them completely.
“Take us out.” Boss said, gazing upward.
Suddenly, the ground pushed and pulled and the boss fell down. A figure was standing in front of the circle with his hand outstretched. As I watched, he seemed to pull something from the air. The energy field around the disc began to be pulled aside and collected in the palm of his hand.
“Cancel it!” Boss yelled as the field collapsed completely. All of the orbs transformed into people, and they charged forward while Ada and Brian grabbed the boss and went in the opposite direction.
“What’s going on?” I yelled to Albert.
“It’s the Crimson Eagle!” Albert’s face was pale and his clothes had faded a bit, but he stayed firmly in control and grabbed me by the hand. “We have to get out of here!”
We ran away and I turned to look back at the scene behind us. As I watched, the Crimson Eagle sprouted wings from his back and flew up into the sky. Hidden underneath the pointed hood, his glowing eyes were scanning the ground until he found what he was looking for.
“Brandon!” a strange voice yelled. “I have come for your head!”
The Crimson Eagle raised his hand and a double bladed spear appeared in it. He threw it and it pierced one of the people standing next to the boss. Next, he raised his hands to the sky then quickly brought them down in a circle and shot a blast of lightning at the group of people below him.
“What the hell was that?” I exclaimed loudly. The Crimson Eagle’s head slowly turned in my direction.
Another spear flew from his hands but I couldn’t see where it landed. He began to fly towards me and Albert threw down his land pad and then ran towards the Crimson Eagle. I ran to stand on the platform with Jimmy. I looked back to see that Albert had been sent flying, knocked aside by a powerful blow.
The Crimson eagle flashed past me and grabbed Jimmy by the throat. He stuck his hand into the weak body that Jimmy had manifested and twisted his hand before letting Jimmy fall limp to the ground. He then turned towards me and I was already running away from him.
“PULL ME OUT PULL ME OUT!” I yelled, sprinting away.
My vision swam. I was both awake and asleep. In front of me I could still see the Crimson Eagle, fighting fiercely with some unseen foe, but I could also see the chair I was sitting in. I turned to the left and saw Jimmy beside me in his chair, laying still and foaming at the mouth. His eyes were partially opened and seemed to have glazed over.
“Jimmy.” I cried. I was rapidly losing control of my avatar and it quickly fell to the ground. As I watched in horror, the Crimson eagle came up to me and gazed down at my collapsed figure. His eyes gleamed, almost in pity, then he swung his spear down.
I felt a burning pain and looked down. There was a giant slash in my chest. I stared in shock at the blood seeping from the wound.
So this is how it ends I thought dully as my vision began to darken…