Alternative Reality 2

He could never remember when the dreams first started, so he couldn’t be sure if they were connected to what was happening around him at the time. He was nearly sure that it was after Star One and his separation from Liberator, but not completely so.

Which meant that he was never sure if they were independent of his experiences or produced by them, though he rather hoped it was the latter. The idea that he could generate some of the things he saw in his dreams, that he could and would imagine such things for people he had once known and relied upon, without outside influences, was more than a little disturbing. But he accepted that his subconscious mind had suffered just as much as his conscious mind at the hands of the Federation; yet he also knew that the temptation to blame the Federation for all of his kinks had to be resisted as just too damn convenient.

He had to accept that his dreams might still be his own, that the images they showed and stories they wove had some form of meaning, and last night’s had been particularly vivid.

***

The images of destruction had merged and intertwined in strange and unlikely patterns. The sight of people dying, wrecked buildings and blood spattered streets, starving children and wailing women mixed with the other image that had come with increasing frequency, the image of Avon staring down at him with a gun in his hand.

“No!”

Blake woke with the shout still ringing in his ears, sitting up so quickly that the muscles of his back protested.

Slowly the world around him reshaped itself, familiar items emerging and reassembling themselves from his confusion. His room, he was still in his room. He looked around him seeking reassurance that everything was as it had been before he slept. It seemed to be, on the desk lay his stylus, a Liberator bracelet and his daybook; his jacket hung from the back of a chair. As uncomfortable as hell, the chair was used for little else but keeping his clothing off the floor, he rarely seemed to find time to put things away, maybe it was as well that he had so little that needed to be put away.

With a sigh he laid down again, staring up at the bulkhead above him wondering where the dreams were coming from why now. The people in them were unfamiliar to him, the lives they led inimaginable, their hopes and fears as alien as any rim world culture; and yet they kept coming. What was it they were trying to tell him? Because there had to be a message from his subconscious buried in them, why else would he imagine something so bizarre?

But then why shouldn’t he? People were always looking for signs and portents, had been since the beginning of time, why should he be any different? In the privacy of his own head he could admit that he had wondered what history would have made of him, would make of him in the years to come.

But they weren't from the years ahead, nor were they drawn from the past, they couldn’t be, because history knew nothing of the Federation and even less of Blake. No long forgotten school lesson, no once encountered book or visplay explained these dreams; something from within his own mind was producing them, probably some fear he had still to recognise. Yet he couldn’t see the pattern.

But despite their strangeness they were so real to him those people who had watched him and discussed him with such unflagging interest, he almost felt as if he knew them. People inhabiting a world he had never known, a world that had never existed to the best of his knowledge yet aworld so vivid and complex that he felt like he could walk out of the base and into its streets and malls.

It was a world both desirable and repellant at the same time. That drew him on the one hand while dismaying him on the other. A world where people had no faces for the most part, and whose names, so familiar in sleep, were fading as wakefullness returned.

Yet even as the dream paled he knew that they would be back, they always were.

But it was just a dream, whatever its meaning, and so were the people who lived within it. Eventually he turned over and went to sleep again. Even so the memory of it remained with him the next day.

***

He was still mulling it over when Deva joined him over his breakfast coffee, so lost in his own thoughts and deliberations that he didn’t realise he had been spoken to until the other man set his cup down with a snap.
“Blake if you don’t want to hear the security report over breakfast you only need to say so. This lofty abstraction isn’t necessary.”
Deva sounded as close to annoyed as he ever got and Blake smiled in apology,
“Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.”
“So I noticed, somewhere you’d rather be?”
“In some ways yes, in others most definitely not!”
Deva sighed.
“Blake I can’t face decoding cryptic remarks until my third cup of coffee and this is only my second. What the hell are you on about?”

Blake glanced at the man opposite him, noting the weary patience and hollow eyed fatigue and looked a little shamefaced,
“It’s not important,” he said.
Deva’s eyebrows rose and Blake gesticulated an apology with his coffee cup,
“Alright, I had this dream, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s trying to tell me something.”
Deva widened his eyes slightly, a look of pained patience on his face,
“Is it going so badly that you need to rely on dreams?” he said.
“No of course not, but it was so strange and yet so real that I can’t help but wonder if my subconscious is trying to get my attention.”
Deva looked interested for the first time since Blake had acknowledged him.
“Oh, one of those. What was it about?”

Blake leant back in his chair and narrowed his eyes,
“Us, and yet not us. And others." he frowned as he tried to put his impressions into words,
"People who were interested in us and what we do, interested in what made us tick." He shrugged, "and some who just wanted the power to play with us, make us what they wanted us to be.”
That brought a frown to the other man's face and he put his coffee cup down sharply enough to spill some of its contents.
“Federation people?” Deva sounded suddenly concerned.

Blake knew what Deva was concerened about, it was the first thing that had occurred to him, and shook his head slightly,
“No, that’s what was so strange about it. It's nothing they would have constructed because it would serve no purpose. At least not any I can see. These dream people could never have known about us even if they existed, which as far as I’m aware they never did.”
“Past tense then?” Deva asked, relaxing a little and taking another sip of coffee.
“Yeeess, very past. At least I think so?”
But was he sure? Blake lapsed into silence, suddenly uncertain about the wisdom of telling Deva any more. After all it might set Deva wondering in the same way it had made him wonder about himself, and that would not, necessarily, be a good thing.

“Still,” he straightened and refilled his coffee cup, “it was just a dream. I probably ate somethign that didn't agree with me. If there is some message in it my subconscious is going to have to make it a bit more obvious than that. Now, lets hear that security report and I promise that you have my full attention.”

***

HOME