‘Visit Alex Stanton: instruct him to administer his remaining diaketamine to Dai Evans.’
That was it, that was my mission, simple enough – but it begged several questions:
‘Why do you need me to do this?’
‘How do I ‘visit’ Alex?’
‘Why Dai Evans?’
Hands clasped, fingers interlocked, South acknowledged each of the points with a nod. ‘Of course, I could do this myself,’ she replied, ‘but I would be confined to the dream spheres – you, on the other hand, will not be so confined.
‘The second question: I’ll send you directly to his dream and from there you will use your laptop to send him to this Lake District which currently represents the lowest and most lucid dream sphere. After he awakens, use the computer here to convince him that the dream was real.
‘And thirdly: Dai Evans will be my twelfth–’
‘I’ll be in the computer room!? With the gorilla!? ... It’ll rip me apart!’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘You are a normal human being, why should your own immune system attack you? If necessary I will distract the gorilla, but if you remain active for less than half a minute, I’m sure you’ll be ignored. Look, Geoff, there is no other way, any other method would take weeks or months to enact – and that is simply far too long.’
I wasn’t happy. Not just about sneaking past the gorilla, but also about hacking Alex Stanton’s waking mind. That must be what was entailed here. Furthermore, the scheme sounded fraught with difficulties:
‘Can I really convince him to do this? What sort of control will I be exercising in his waking mind?’ I asked.
‘There won’t be enough time for complete mind-control, but you will have total body-control, which is all you need,’ replied South, confidently.
So it boiled down to persuasion, rather than any form of brainwashing. Persuading him to do anything like this in the real world would be nigh on impossible at the best of times. What arguments could one employ? There’d be more than a few questions from Alex, that’s for sure! I shook my head: all I’d have to work with would be a dream and several seconds of ‘possession’. What could I do in those few seconds..?
‘Soften Alex up in the dream,’ continued South, ‘give him all the details there. You’ll find him to be both receptive and relatively lucid. When you have worked on him as much as you think you can, use the laptop to force him awake; you will be brought back here to occupy his waking mind. You will leave a clue, an obvious physical clue, that will demonstrate the veracity of his recent and remarkably vivid dream and that it must be enacted upon.’
Easy as falling off a log! ‘Well then, let’s give it a go!’ I replied with sardonic enthusiasm. I couldn’t see this working.
South nodded. ‘Good.’ She led me out of the house and back to the summit of Lingmell. A thick, drizzly cloud covered the area obscuring even castle’s towers and completely obliterated any view of surrounding Lakeland.
‘There is another part of the plan that bothers me,’ I replied, ‘Dai is very anti-drugs, getting him to take diaketamine won’t be easy. Are there no other ‘omegas’ we can use?’
‘Not in Preston. And not anyone you know. I have confidence in Alex Stanton: he is resourceful and once he commits himself to act he will find a way to succeed; and Evans does not need to know what the drug is, he merely has to imbibe it.’
‘We could put it in his drink!’ I exclaimed positively.
‘No!’ replied South, with force. ‘That would guarantee failure, the language centre would be deactivated, but only gradually, with the requisite cerebral crisis failing to occur. Mr Evans must either inject the drug, or inhale it.’ The woman regarded the leaden skies. ‘It is becoming late, you must visit Alex now.’
I’d run out of objections or questions. It was time for action: ‘Okay, I’m ready, send me to Alex’s dream.’ I declared, with a stiff upper lip.
‘It lies to the north,’ replied South, ‘throw yourself over the cliffs.’
‘What!? Is there no other way?’ I bleated, with a tremulous upper lip.
‘This way is the most direct; the alternative is to reawaken in your body, find the will to exit again and then project yourself into Alex’s dream via his sleeping body. How long do you think all that will take, hmm?’
I walked tentatively towards the edge of the nearby northern cliffs. Brock wanted to follow, but South called him back. I glanced down into the cauldron of swirling and impenetrable mist, unable to discern any recognizable features below. I’d surely be dashed against the rock wall within seconds...
‘Hurry, Geoff!’ called South.
Oh fuck it, I thought, as I hurled myself into the abyss.
I closed my eyes as an outcrop of rock emerged from the mist and accelerated towards me. The snack counter of the university refectory revealed itself when I finally found the nerve to reopen them. The place was full of chattering students, many of whom I knew, but there was no sign of Alex.
‘Hello, Geoff, you’re out of hospital,’ observed a phantom engineering student called Robbo.
‘No, not yet, but don’t worry about it – you’re not even real.’
‘Oh, alright,’ said Robbo, looking rather put out.
‘Where is Alex Stanton?’
‘He’s over by the window, near the door, I think.’
‘Thanks.’ I summoned up the laptop and walked past a small interior wall that blocked my view of the entrance. There he was. Alex sat with two other students, one of whom was... me!
‘Whoa!’ I ducked back to the counter and out of sight. What the hell was I doing here? I wondered, taking a few surreptitious glances in Alex’s direction. I grew concerned: what were the consequences of being sighted?
Out of earshot, ‘I’ chatted to the other student, Jordan, Alex’s classmate. But he was no mate, Alex hated him. Personally, I hardly ever came into contact with Jordan, but I knew of him: Alex, and Cube for that matter, droned on about him all the time.
I considered my options: approaching the table was just too risky, Alex might wake up, and as for ‘my’ reaction – that just wasn’t worth thinking about. I decided to use my laptop and get ‘me’ away from the others.
Hmm, how to phrase this?
I typed:
Send the phantom me to the counter for a mug of tea.
I glanced over and noticed ‘me’ rising up and walking over. I hid behind a group of giggling girls and typed again:
Remove the phantom me.
I waited for ‘me’ to reach the ‘hidden’ counter:
I watched as I went away before I stepped into my shoes and took over from me. I walked ‘back’ to Alex and Jordan, sat down and glanced at the other two. Alex absentmindedly gazed out of the window and Jordan gazed at me.
Jordan, a wannabe retro-punk who seemed to style himself on nineties icon, Tank Girl, had toned down the act recently. The nose rings, the makeup and the ripped jeans were gone, but he still retained some of the other paraphernalia, most notably the close-crop, bottle-blonde hair. From a distance you might think, as I always did, that Jordan was a harmless show-off, but up close it became instantly clear that Alex and Cube were right about this guy. Jordan had a malicious glint.
I prepared to bring Alex down to the deep dreaming sphere of the Lake District, but then thought: hey, there’s no rush, let’s see this Jordan in action.
I returned Jordan’s gaze...
‘Where’s your tea?’ he demanded, fixing me with his large, close-set, deep blue, dilated eyes.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Why, what have you done?’ Jordan smirked. ‘Where is your tea? You went up to get some tea – where is it?’
Ah, the penny dropped, I’d carelessly forgotten to get myself a cuppa.
‘I changed my mind,’ I said.
Jordan shook his head. ‘You’re a real loser, Christie, you know that? A real dead-beat.’ He turned to Al
ex. ‘Hey, no wonder you’re such a fucked-up, drug-addled tosser, Stanton – you hang around with worthless turds like this.’ He gestured at me, and then returned his full attention. ‘You’re a waste of shit, Christie, a total waste of shit.’
Quite a performance, it exceeded my expectations.
‘I’ve thought of a new nickname for you, Christie – JCV.’
‘I don’t get it,’ I replied, noticing that the surrounding students were beginning to take an amused interest.
‘No, that’s because you’re stupid, JCV. It stands for Justifiable Coma Victim – good, init?’
Several of the other students began to snigger when they heard this, but stifled their laughs as I shot them a furious look. I would enjoy what came next; I reached for my laptop and started typing.
‘What did you bring that in here for, JCV?’ Jordan demanded, stabbing a finger at the computer.
‘You’ll see, It’s time you felt the loving touch of–’
My laptop bleeped and a message flashed up on the screen. This had never happened before!
‘Don’t fight Jordan!’
I had been reminded of my primary purpose here.
‘The loving touch of what? Your cock? I knew you were a fuckin’ queer.’
Bollocks to South’s message, Jordan was going to get whacked.
‘The loving touch of this.’ I held my aluminium baseball bat aloft for all to see. To my disappointment Jordan did not seem unduly concerned, in fact he just laughed.
I stood up and took a mighty swing at Jordan’s head, but as the end neared contact, a hand – Jordan’s hand – intervened and held the bat steady. The sudden shockwave that travelled down the bat forced me to let go.
Jordan hooted a loud, sneering laugh and stood up, brandishing the baseball bat like an expert Samurai. He jabbed it into my chest a few times, and then, without warning, smashed it into my legs, which shattered like porcelain.
At last, Alex, who had up until this point remained passive, suddenly jumped up:
‘It’s time you died, Jordan!’
He launched into the now-fearful Jordan and proceeded to violently beat him up. Other students joined in, on both sides, and the whole dream descended rapidly into a chaotic farce.
I hobbled over to the laptop, avoiding a flying chair, and managed to type the command I should have entered at the very start of this nightmare...
Alex and I returned to the Lake District, back to the grassy upland expanse of Glaramara. Always Glaramara, did this mountain hold some symbolic significance, like Lingmell? Beyond its central location in Lakeland, I couldn’t see one, and I was in no mood to ponder, I felt too disgusted and angry. I should have followed South’s instruction and left Jordan well alone, but it had been impossible to resist the urge of teaching that bastard a lesson. How had Jordan been able to grab the bat and then break my legs with such ease? This reminded me... I glanced down and saw that my legs were no longer broken.
I understood that the Jordan in the refectory wasn’t real – but something had operated through him: but who? ... Alex? South? The real Jordan? My angry thoughts were interrupted by a bleeping sound and I studied my computer screen:
You were working through Jordan!
Now get on with the job!
Well, that told me!
I sat myself on the grass and attempted to calm down; after a minute I turned to Alex. He deliberated over a map and occasionally looked to the north. What was it about these dreamers? Hargreaves, Cube and now Alex – they all loved their maps. Ironic really, considering the bogus nature of... North!
I turned abruptly to face north only to behold my cowpat impostor. Along with my telescope, the changes that I’d brought about here appeared to be permanent. I even noticed, nearby on the grass, the remains of one of Cube’s half-eaten sausage rolls.
I turned back to Alex, and proceeded to ‘get to work on him’.
I followed all my laptop’s prompts, but, even so, it turned out to be arduous work. The first awkward task involved convincing Alex that he was merely dreaming; then I had to build up his real waking environment for him. This proved to be the most difficult job: Alex had been quick to recognize all of this as a dream, but he insisted that when he awoke he’d have to go to school – in Leeds.
Following South’s prompts, I took Alex closer to Lingmell – to improve his lucidity.
Ultimately, I felt I’d done enough. Alex knew his ‘assignment’. I made him repeat it several times, and, like all dreamers, he accepted the preposterousness of it at face value.
I glanced down at the silent laptop for several seconds before typing:
Alex wakes up.
I never noticed Alex go; I simply returned to the central hall of South House to be greeted by South and Brock. The dog seemed happy to see me; the woman looked annoyed.
‘Yes, I’m sorry, I lost my cool, it won’t happen again,’ I sheepishly offered.
South glared at me: ‘If Alex had awoken from the refectory dream we would have lost our only chance; but, no matter, after your rush of blood you settled down and performed some effective work. Now, to the computer room – come.’
As we followed the same convoluted and confusing route I took the chance to ask South about Jordan. He was still bugging me.
‘If I was operating Jordan, then how come he became so strong?’
South, striding quickly ahead of me, replied without turning: ‘You don’t know Jordan, do you?’
‘In real life? No, I’ve never spoken to him.’
‘No, all you had were Alex’s exaggerated stories, and you believed them. You accepted Jordan as malevolent, cruel and invincible, and so that’s what he became.’
‘But Alex defeated him in the end.’
‘Yes, when Jordan broke your legs, Alex’s fear evaporated, and Jordan, thus, could be vanquished.’
‘Yes, but–’
The high-pitched scream of the irate gorilla interrupted my next question. We had arrived outside the computer room; the beast stood by the opening, snorting. This was the moment I had been dreading.
‘Here, take this,’ whispered South, as she handed me a small printed sheet of computer instructions. I glanced at them: they looked straightforward.
‘Right.’ I took a deep breath and squeezed past the livid gorilla which continued to ignore me; its attention remained focused exclusively on South as I sidled towards the console.
1) Switch on the computer.
I flicked a large red switch on the front and waited for the machine to ‘boot up’.
‘What are you doing?’ came a voice from behind – a female voice.
I turned and made brief eye-contact with the gorilla. It paced back and forth near the opening, still facing South, but it kept glancing over at me.
‘I said, what are you doing?’ repeated the gorilla.
‘Routine maintenance, there’s a problem with the hard drive,’ I improvised.
‘Okay, but make it quick, the anomaly is here, it might try to enter.’
‘No problem, I’ll have this sorted in no time and be out of your, err, hair.’ Oops.
‘Make sure that you are, if this thing makes a move I don’t want you getting in the way. Copy?’
‘Copied all,’ I replied.
I settled back to work.
2) Don the head-cap.
The head-cap, where was that? I located something that resembled an old leather flying helmet and placed it over my head.
The screen flashed up ‘USER PASSWORD’
I tapped in the password supplied.
INCORRECT PASSWORD. TRY AGAIN.
‘You having problems there, Bud?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘has the password been changed recently?’
The gorilla came dashing over to the screen. ‘Yes – use this.’ It typed the new password and then hovered nearby, watching my actions with interest.
‘I think you should mind the entrance, that thing looks ready to try its luck,’ I said, gest
uring towards South.
At this, the gorilla bounded back and let out another ear-piercing scream.
ENTER SUBJECT NAME AND NATIONALITY.
ENTER UK NATIONAL INSURANCE NUMBER.
I entered the details. All that remained now was to press ‘Enter’ and I’d be in full possession of Alex’s mind.
I was leaning up in bed, observing the naked Bridgett as she padded around the grotty flat. I’d done it! Back in the real world! I reminded myself of my purpose here, and of the immediate dangers: presumably to the gorilla’s eyes I’d gone into some kind of trance; it would be obvious that I was up to no good.
I jumped out of bed and searched for a pen.
‘Bridgett, do you have a pen?’
‘You haven’t lost the Parker, have you?’ Bridgett turned her ample body towards mine; she was carrying a few extra pounds, I noticed.
‘No, I just need a pen – right now!’
‘Don’t snap, Alex.’
I gave up and started frantically looking for a pen.
‘What’s the mad rush, babes, it’s only eight o’clock, you’ve got plenty of time.’
‘Look, Bridgett, I need a pen now, for Christ’s sake.’
‘But why, and what’s with the funny accent?’
I noticed Alex’s file, and opened it: something called “statistical mechanics”.
‘Do I have statistical mechanics today?’ I asked myself.
‘Yes, of course you do, you talked about it all last night, remember? You said it was “elegant”.’ Bridgett let out a little laugh as she disappeared into the bathroom.
I spied a red felt-tip – perfect. I grabbed the file on statistical mechanics and wrote on the front page:
Remember the dream, it was real. Make sure Dai gets the diaketamine. Today. (Tonight at the latest). Not in his drink!
Geoff.
For good measure I wrote a similar message on the file’s front cover. I was just about to write on his hand when I was forced out...
I found myself sprawled on the floor of the computer room with the skewed flying helmet covering one of my eyes; South grabbed my arm and threw me out. Seconds later, South came flying out.
The computer room now contained two gorillas, and both were pacing aggressively by the opening, like a couple of heavyweight boxers eager for the start of the next round. The new one kept its enraged eyes on me.
We struggled up and headed back to the main hall.
‘Well, what happened?’ asked South. She fell silent and listened intently as I recounted every detail, but it was hard to tell whether or not she was satisfied that I’d done enough.
‘Do you think he’ll run with this now?’ I asked, after a prolonged silence.
‘Your work is done, Geoff,’ South finally declared. ‘Thank you for your help. You should now return to your body and get some sleep.’
That fell short of an unequivocal endorsement.
‘Is it just a case of waiting now?’ I asked nervously, suddenly doubtful that Alex would heed any of this nonsense.
‘For you, yes, but Brock can do some useful work.’
‘Brock? What will he do?’ I looked down at the enthusiastic black Labrador.
‘He’s managed to strike an alliance with a cat called Gil. From that vantage we can send out some useful subliminal messages.’
I turned to Brock: ‘You’ve been working with Gil?’
Brock let out a low rumbling growl. Obviously the alliance with Gil remained a difficult one.
‘Time you got some sleep, Geoff.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘it has been a long night.’
13