You Trick the Waking Mind

The woman they call Lu sits upright in bed, the dream still eddying about her temples. She reaches in the dark for her little black notebook, knowing where it will be. The only way you survive in this business is by being precise. She taps the wall for soft light and scribbles hastily on a blank page, trying to capture the essence of the dream before it slips from her grasp.

She remembers flight, the sky a trampoline beneath her corvid wings. She remembers scintillating colour, the gold of open fields and the brilliant emerald of a distant horizon. So unlike the bleak grey and black of the outside world. She remembers the smell of ochre dust rising on the thermals, and the hush of the sea pulling her to the left. She remembers the sense of infinite freedom, the joy of muscles working, the glee of feathers splitting air. Then she had become aware, consciousness settling into place. To better sample the nuances of the dream. To better wake and remember it.

Lucid.

Lucie.

Lu.

She snaps the small book shut and replaces it exactly on the bedside table. The room is black as pitch but that doesn’t mean it is night outside, not with the amount of soot in the air. A clock blinking in the far corner reads 2:03 am. Lu rubs her brow bone. She won’t be able to sleep now. She settles her bare feet on the cold floor, fingers fishing for the vape in her drawer. Puffs on it absently, lilac vapour coiling from her lips like an octopus’ questing tentacles. The blackout curtains are twitched aside, the jagged city rising below. Down there are the Nulls, most of humanity. The ones that can’t feel anything, unless they shoot, snort or smoke it in the form of synthetic emotion. Up here are the elites, and the ones like Lu, playing pretend. Camouflaging themselves. Because to feel emotion is to disappear.

She settles herself in the little window alcove, bare legs propped up, long fingers tapping.

When she was seven, she could feel other peoples’ emotions like they were colours and sounds, smells and sensations. For the most part, the streets were crowded with walking voids, their loss sucking at every light around them, gaping black holes. Occasionally, there would be a glimmer. A splash of yellow, shining like sunlight, buttery. A fleck of red, rising hot, burning her retina. An arc of cobalt, fierce, zingy like lightning. Joy. Fury. Adrenaline.

There and gone. Because to feel was to disappear.

Lu can’t remember her mother, except for the length of her blonde hair, tickling the small of her back. She remembers the sense of her though - lilac calm, mixed with frequent orange terror. Then nothing.

When Lu was ten, she could successfully swamp her emotions, the way her mother and others like her could not. She could draw up a charcoal curtain, and shroud herself in it, so that when she was scanned by the multitude of eyes in the city, she came up as blank and empty as everyone else around her. She was invisible. Untraceable. Bare foot, running ragged in the streets with other lost children.

When Lu was fifteen, she could remember her dreams. They had always been there, hovering on the edge of being known. But her waking mind was so quick to snuff them out, recognising the danger in them. Until Mac showed her how to catch and keep the dreams, fireflies in a jar. Huddled under leaking shelter, stomach hollow and aching, other children sleeping close together, their body heat a holed blanket.

You build a net around them, he had said quietly. You trick the waking mind. You remind yourself that you’re awake when you are. When you dream, you do the same. The waking mind becomes the net. The net catches the dreams.

She’d smiled and snuggled closer. Safe.

Home.

When Lu was sixteen, Mac disappeared. The ache of it was bruised purple, pulsing like a sore tooth in the back of her mouth, keeping her up at night.

When Lu was nineteen, she could finally control her dreams without them breaking apart beneath her touch like gossamer wings. She could channel the events, compartmentalise the emotions, so pure and clear in dream where they were sullied in waking life by the constant press of self-preservation. She could distill and bottle them, ready for sale.

At twenty-one, Lu has made a name for herself.

There are Nulls with enough power, prestige and cash that crave a different high and have the clout to pay for it. And there are Empaths like Lu who survive by selling their emotions, the way people used to sell their flesh. The secret to Lu’s slowly growing success is her dream-tapping. Whispers are spreading through the web that no-one else can build sensation so sweet. They have been finding her, following her digital breadcrumbs, craving an audience. And every transaction puts her that much closer to her goal.

North. Beyond the border. Where it is rumoured that Empaths walk free.

For years she’s been hopping and skipping cities, never putting down roots. Settling in the topsoil for scant moments, long enough for one or two hits, and then onwards. The trick is to be quick, like a dragonfly stealing kisses from a lake. To linger is to disappear.

Lu pads across her generous apartment, sparsely furnished and sleek. Settling in her chair, she boots up the system, its blue glow the only light in the gloom. She rubs a hand over her cropped close wheat hair. The nodes are attached, small needles punching into the skin on her skull across twelve different places. She barely feels the sting now. A section of her mind opens to the web, hiding safe behind her layers of binary code and VPN screens, little doorways into darkness. She sends a pulse out into the aether, the last breadcrumb falling from Gretel’s hand.

Another voice shivers into her mind.

I’ve heard you’re one of the best. There is no telling the age of this voice, or its gender, or where it sounds from. Data splays itself across the screen, across her senses, instantly reconfiguring into recognised patterns that ring like human sound.

Your request? Lu does not do chit chat. Banter leads to data leaks, leads to trails being left, leads to discovery. Leads to disappearing. There is a pause on the other end. The other half of Lu’s mind wanders idly, waiting. Pleasure in all its forms is the most popular dish. From simple things like birthday cake happiness, to more complicated desserts like lovers twining between silken sheets. Exhilaration is a close second. The snap of fear and euphoria, which she can mix into a heady cocktail that can be sipped for hours. Last on the menu is peace, a hearty draught of gazing out to sea, a wholesome stew of staring at the cosmos, a warm pie of smelling a wildflower and believing all is well.

Grief.

Lu jolts with surprise, ligaments locking in place. Then she scrambles from her seat, grabs her notebook - the nodes snaking sibilantly behind her - before refolding herself in place, flat chest heaving. Her fingers tap its closed cover.

Lu does not deal in anger. She does not deal in hate. She does not deal in emotions that come up scarlett and coral and wrathful sienna. She also does not peddle blue sadness. The violet colours are best left alone. They bring up too many memories, and the memories swamp the connection, muddle the clarity of what she sells.

She’s been silent for too long.

I can make it worth your while, the voice presses. And though she can’t hear the desperation, she knows it’s there. Lu licks her lips. She’s close to the border, in more ways than one. A few more months, and she’ll be able to see those lavender mountain ranges on the horizon, marching off the edge of the world. A few more hits and she’ll have enough cash to splash to cover her tracks, to slip over that red line, to make a new life for herself.

Seventeen-thousand-five-hundred-and-twenty-dollars, and she is free.

Months away.

Hours of dread and constant suspicion and waking nightmares away.

But close.

Twenty K. Up front. Lu’s breath whallops free, a boxer’s punch coming in low. She’s always demanded half before and half after, able to cut and run with something in her pocket should the plan turn south. Clients like a guarantee too, and trust breeds more connections, more flies to her honey pot.

Done, she says. Now. She sends the link, the ghost bank account secure, and mere seconds pass before the digits whir, money spinning in.

Goddamn, she breathes to herself. Freedom sings like a siren in the back of her conscious mind.

I’m ready when you are, the voice says.

Her notebook snaps open. She flicks through the scrawl, searching for a dream. Her pointer stills on a page. Rarely does she dream reality. But this one snuck in, a thief through the window. She hesitates.

But the money blinks in her mind, the timer ticking down. If the minutes run out before she delivers, the client will have a back door exit, will be able to pull their money out with them.

So the dream rises like a master stagehand’s props. A tiny shanty, roofed in corrugated iron. Rain dripping down, melancholy, and bodies whimpering in their sleep. The rain runs upwards, the dream painting over memory with absurdity. The bodies fade into the ground, sprout into grass, the room rustling with a riot of autumn leaves. Mac leans in close, his forehead pressed against hers, green eyes closing as he breathes her in. A tear trickles down one of her cheeks and he smooths a thumb over that spot, touch leaving tingling warmth in its wake.

Run. And don’t stop running. Leap off the edge of the world.

Her eyes flash open as Mac is ripped away, huge armoured figures crashing through their copse of trees. Rain starts to thunder down, lightning skewering the clouds, and she screams loud enough to split the sky. Mac’s freckles stand out like spots of blood on his face as he reaches for her, pushes her away. He’s dragged back, ankle twisting to one side, mouth opening in a silent cry, a baton lifted above his head. When it comes down, she feels the blow herself, feels her chest cave in, feels the vessel of her heart crack and spill forth frothing tempest.

Tears course their way down Lu’s cheeks. The connection trembles, real memories threatening to swamp the link, dilute the transaction. She grits her teeth, nails biting into the soft skin of her palms. Casts her net wide, bundles the grief like a fish, pushes it to the client, slimy and slithering, salty with her loss.

Removed from her, given to someone else, the emotion sputters and dies. Lu presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, struggling for composure. Tries to convince herself that the money is worth reliving that horror, moments drawn into hours.

Firefly? the voice whispers.

Her mind goes blank, hope a fragile keening bell. Mac? she rasps, the impossibility of it all too cruel to be true.

A pounding at the door, metal against metal. Lu’s head whips around.

They’re here, he says, and it is like he is right next to her, like he never left.

Here too.

Silence. And then for the first time, sensory information is being pushed along the connection, pushed to her. A face blooms in her mind. Mac’s face. Older, leaner, a line between his dark brows where there was none before. But the eyes are the same, soft and green and warm, like fresh grass cut during the high heat of summer.

Run. I’ll find you.

Lu terminates the connection, all the screens shutting and locking consecutively. The final door crashes inwards.