The Dream Cloud, page 17
part #2 of Akropolis Series
No…he couldn’t believe that. The science had obviously progressed in the past century. If it wasn’t perfect, it was very nearly so. The boy was proof of that.
And he couldn’t wait. That was the crux of the whole thing; he just couldn’t sit back and wait another ten or twenty years, maybe even decades, to have his daughter back when she was so close.
“I have a condition as well,” Talbot said.
“Of course you do,” Trey replied.
“You would have to move to the Outer Zone. It will be safer there, less people to notice or care about your comings and goings.”
“That would be wise, I guess,” Trey acceded. “How many more ‘conditions’ are there?”
“Only the one, but again, nobody can find out about this.”
“You mean until you are on the council?” Trey asked.
“Until I am on the council,” Talbot agreed. “And can convince them the validity of the doctor’s project.”
“That could be indefinitely.”
“It could be,” Talbot agreed.
Trey looked down at his untouched plate of food. He could hear Hannah’s musical laughter, like little bells ringing, in his ears.
It was an easy choice.
When Trey awoke in the transport, it was to the dinging sound signaling his arrival at the destination. It took him a moment to realize that he was awake, the jumbled images of what were disturbing dreams scattering like leaves in the wind. He tried to grasp onto a single one, knowing that if he did there would be some sort of hidden revelation.
Flashes of barely remembered people, situations, words and phrases floating as if in the Ether, but he couldn’t hold onto a single one. He felt…no, he knew that the dreams/memories had something to do with his latest revival, the downloaded data that was corrupted and faulty.
Were they lost in his subconscious, and if so, what would that be to a synthetic? Were they retrievable or was the data corrupted beyond repair?
Trey knew that there was one person who might help…Dr. Byrne. The name had not been recognizable so he had done a search in the ASF database, coming up with the moniker but nothing else, no first name, address, or even a picture.
The only explanation for that was the doctor worked in the sub-levels of the Pantheon, perhaps on projects that were considered of the highest clearance. That meant the only ones who had access to his file needed authorization from the council first.
There was, however, another heading labeled ‘filed report’ beneath the name. Trey opened the link and saw that it was from a couple of days before. The short passage stated that there had been an unauthorized travel excursion, whatever the hell that meant, and that two ASF guards had made a preliminary visit to the ‘subject’. Apparently the incident was deemed a technical malfunction due to interference, and that was the end of it. There was a timestamp, and finally, at the very bottom, an address.
“So that’s where I’m at,” Trey said aloud, still blinking past the cobwebs that the dreams had spun in his head.
“Would you like to choose another destination?” said the male robotic voice in the transport.
“No. Just tell me the address of my current destination again.”
“Your destination is 4116 India 38th Street,” the voice responded.
Trey opened the transport and stepped out, squinting against the late afternoon light while scanning the street. He spotted the house just fifty feet ahead and across the street, a nondescript colonial job, much like the majority of the houses on the Outer Zone. Unlike the others though, this one was paired with a picturesque white picket fence and a red door. It seemed like it had sprouted from the pages of magazine or advertisement right out of the Old World. What was even stranger was that it seemed…somewhat familiar..as if…
It had taken six synthetic guards to restrain him, and even then he had almost broken loose. Snapping one’s arm and dislocating another’s shoulder, he freed a hand and gouged an eye out of Stevens, a veteran of the ASF who was fond of old knock knock jokes, and was just reaching for Ballot’s throat, when at the last moment someone grew wise enough to withdraw their EMP baton and that was it, lights out.
When Trey woke it was to find himself in restraints with not even a millimeter of wriggle room, arms, legs, torso, chest; there was even a head restraint with a strap across his brow. His eyes scanned an unfamiliar room, a tech lab of sorts, with rows of screens on the walls, monitoring equipment, and servers filling out several racks.
The room was empty save for one tech in a lab coat with his back turned to Trey, standing in front of a virtual projection screen that displayed what looked like a synthetic matrix, his matrix. In the middle of the image, near the back was the housing unit for the quantum processor, a small orb suspended in fluids and gels, tiny filaments protruding by the millions, all showing little dots of light that flitted back and forth like racing fireflies.
“Are you set?” came a voice he recognized out of his view.
The chin strap prevented Trey from moving his jaw but he words seethed out from between gritted teeth.
“Blake you son of a bitch!”
The councilman came into view, hovering just above Trey, a miserable but resolute expression on his face.
“It will be over soon, my friend…I promise.”
“I’ll kill you,” Trey growled.
“Would you?” Talbot pondered. “I wonder… if given the chance, would you truly? After what we’ve been through…the Battle of the Wall, the riots…”
Talbot shook his head despondently.
“You don’t understand. What I’m doing is just as much for Akropolis as it is for you. When you wake up you will have forgotten what happened here with…”
He trailed off.
“HANNAH!” Trey screamed, spittle flying from his lips and pressed teeth. "Say her name, damn you! SAY IT!”
Talbot’s face hardened.
“That’s always been your problem,” he said stonily. “You’ve never seen the big picture. You’re a follower, Trey. You always have been and you always will be. In the end, you need me to make the tough decisions for you…they all do.”
Talbot stood up and walked away.
“Do your job well, Doctor.”
And with that he was gone, Trey’s inarticulate scream following in his wake.
Trey strained against his bonds, grunting like an animal, rage suffusing his entire being. If there had been even an inch of give he might have used the strength of sheer frenzy to break free, but it was of no use. He was bound tight, helpless, and with that realization the fury wheezed out of him like a dying breath, replaced with hopeless resignation.
The tech in the lab coat finally turned and walked towards him, and when his face slid out of the shadows, Trey realized it was the doctor who had given him salvation and damnation at the same time.
“I’m so sorry, Major,” he said, and if grief could truly be shared amongst strangers, then here it bridged the gap between the two.
“You warned me,” Trey murmured softly, the guilty tears unhindered and falling from the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t listen. This…this is all my fault. She’s dead because of me.”
“Perhaps,” the doctor said softly. “Perhaps it is my fault; perhaps it is God’s. Perhaps we are just damned, living in the present and the past, with no hope of fixing either.”
“Please,” Trey pleaded. “Kill me…kill me and let me float in the Ether.”
The doctor frowned, shaking his head in regret.
“I’m sorry…I can’t. My son,” he choked on the word, cleared his throat. “My son is dying. His matrix is unraveling, and once it starts it progresses quickly, as it did with Hannah.”
He leaned down close to Trey.
“I need Talbot to keep the program running,” the doctor admitted. “Without him, the council will shut me down permanently…and I’m close…so very close. I can make it work. I will make it work, and when I do, you will have your daughter back, as I will have my son.”
The last was delivered with vehement conviction, and in the doctor’s eyes, Trey saw the same fervent fire that burned within his own soul. It promised another avenue of hope, however slim, but one that he would suffer an eternity to see the fruition.
“How will I know?” Trey finally asked, afraid for the first time in as long as he could remember, fear not for anything as miniscule as life or death, but of losing proof of this promise.
“You won’t,” the doctor professed. “But neither will I leave you in the state that Talbot wants.”
“What do you mean?”
The doctor glanced up briefly towards the door, as if expecting the councilman’s return at any moment.
“I don’t have a lot of time to explain. The procedure is more complicated than a simple wipe, and if I delay too long he’ll know something is wrong.”
He reached into his lab coat pocket, withdrew a node, placed it on Trey’s forehead, and held a button down until there were two loud beeps.
“It’s going to look like a wipe to anyone who isn’t looking too closely. You won’t remember anything, but it doesn’t mean those memories aren’t still there.”
“How will I access them?”
“You won’t be able to. Only I and a handful of people will be able to do that.”
Trey hesitated before saying the rest.
“What if something happens to you?”
The doctor paused in the midst of turning away.
“Then none of it will matter anyways.”
He walked towards the virtual projection screens, looking back over his shoulder only once.
“I hope to see you soon, Major.”
When Trey woke this time, it wasn’t to find he was sitting in a transport, but rather lying on the ground, stretched out across the sidewalk. He pushed up to his knees and looked around. There were no souls standing around him, concerned or otherwise.
It wasn’t a surprise. In the Outer Zone, people tended to keep to themselves, or ignored what happened outside of their doors. Just because he was by himself didn’t mean he hadn’t been seen.
What troubled him at the moment was not the lack of empathy from fellow citizens, but what was going on with his head. He had never felt such helplessness, such lack of control over his own body and mind. Since he had woken from the last revival he had suffered three of these ‘spells’ or whatever the hell they were, and it seemed that the time between them was decreasing.
Once again he couldn’t recall any details, but he knew they were there, piled up high behind a dam built of flimsy reeds. What would it take to break that damn and flood him with those memories?
Standing to his feet, Trey looked to the house with the red door, his destination. Such a simple detail, that color, to instill such hesitation. He felt that there was something there, something hidden within that was the cause of his procrastination.
Putting a hand on the white picket fence, he traced the ups and down of the individual slats. They were obviously not made of wood, but the illusion was near perfect. Had he done this before, in front of his own house, or this house even? He couldn’t ever remember being here, and being a synthetic meant he could instantly recall any memory, so why did it feel as if he had, and that it was his brain that was lying to him?
Rip the band-aid off fast.
Where had he heard that old adage? He couldn’t recall that either. It was frustrating and maddening at the same time. He wanted to claw at his head with his fingers and tear away at the walls that blocked him.
Trey’s feet had stopped of their own volition. He looked down at them and frowned, willing them to move, but they wouldn’t obey his commands.
What the hell?
He pulled his hand away from the picket fence and stared at the fingers that were starting to shake. Ignoring the disturbing panic that was starting to creep at the edges of his consciousness he reached down and grasped his pant leg, pulling with his hand as he lunged forward with his upper body. His foot took an assisted step this way, and instantly he felt an explosion of pain behind his left eye. It was as if someone had taken a needle and slammed it deep into his temple. He gritted his teeth and began to stumble along, feet shuffling like an invalid, starbursts of agony popping off like fireworks in his head.
How he made it through the gate and up the steps to the porch he didn’t know, but the pain was starting to blur his vision enough that he couldn’t find the doorbell. Instead he reached out with a fist and banged against the door, three resounding hits before his arm fell limply to his side. He swooned, leaning backwards for an awful second, certain he was going to tip over and black out, but at the last moment he regained his balance, leaning forward against the door jamb, only sheer force of will keeping him upright.
From within he heard the sound of approaching feet. It seemed to take an eternity, the steps coinciding with the pounding behind his eyes. He blinked several times, his vision clearing slightly, just as the door opened.
A boy stood there, a boy he recognized. Trey blinked again, and found he was mistaken. It was a young man, fresh into his adult years, green around the gills for certain but a man nonetheless. His eyes were wide with surprise and more than a little fearful.
“Dr. Byrne?” Trey slurred the words, his tongue heavy and leaden, his jaw nearly immobile.
The young man turned his head slightly and called over his shoulder.
“Dad?”
There was the scraping sound of a chair and then around the corner came the doctor, a man that Trey definitely recognized.
“You?” he mumbled, even as his knees finally gave out and spilled him across the doorway to the floor.
Trey heard the boy’s surprised shout but couldn’t decipher the word or meaning. He was fading fast, the blackness rolling across his conscious mind like a bulldozer.
As he succumbed to the dark, the image of the doctor’s face followed him down, the face of the man who had been the first to revive Trey in Akropolis…over three hundred years ago.
End of Book 2
H.C. Edwards lives in Colorado with his daughter.
H C Edwards, The Dream Cloud
