Dream Chasers (Dystopian Scifi Series Book 1) (3 page)

Artificial sunlight poured from
artificial windows, which he had two of on either side of the door.  Without
them, the room would have been nothing more than a tin cage with a mattress, a
cooler, and a toilet. The artificial windows, which looked like paintings, were
made of synthetic silk and were powered by cables running through the wall,
making them shine a bright morning color and come alive with animal sounds.
Artificial birds flew over the window and chirped. The window zoomed onto a
mountain and glided over it. The sun appeared, and it casted a bright yellow wave
over Peter, who was lying flat on the ground, face down on his sketchpad.

Somewhere between consciousness
and deep sleep, he heard the birds in his room, their chirps dancing from corner
to corner, wings flapping. Behind closed eyelids, darkness turned into light.
It was morning and a part of him registered, but a part of him had no
motivation to switch on the gears of his body. All he wanted to do was keep his
cheek warm on the ground, think of nothing, listen to the birds flying around
him, and … how is it already morning? he thought. How did night turn into
light? He wetted his lips, a plucking sound, and turned away from the windows.
At first he thought it was his neighbor, Hakari, the man who enjoyed nothing
more than fried vegetables and bad TV, that was knocking – no, banging – on the
wall next to his mattress. The illusion of sound tricked Peter for a few
seconds more until it moved behind.

‘What the …’ He tried opening
his eyes and failed. He was trying to think who would be knocking on his door
so early in the morning. Maybe it was already afternoon, a thought reminded.
His eyelids felt like castle gates, broken, the ropes unable to pull. He
convinced himself that the knocking must’ve been coming from somewhere else. He
lived at the back entrance of Lower City Tokyo, where the streets were like
veins running through smaller veins, houses tightly packed against each other. Everyone’s
business,
everyone’s business
.

Please let it be someone else’s
door, he thought, the ringing in his ears turning into a throb. When the
banging didn’t disappear, he opened his eyes wide, frustrated, not the way he
wanted to wake up. Birds flew across his artificial windows, greeting him with
a
chirp! chirp! chirp!
A wonderful morning sunshine, yellow and bright,
washed over his face and gave him a headache.

‘Deactivate morning,’ Peter said.
The windows went offline. Sunrise turned into a beach with waving palm trees,
washing everything a relaxing blue in the room. Not that this was helping his
headache in any way. He pushed himself from the ground, leaving a trail of
saliva over his night’s work, and stumbled toward the door.

‘I’m coming!’ He tried figuring
out who it could be. He had been living on his own since the age of ten, and
during all that time only once had someone knocked, and it had been Hakari suffering
from some kind of epilepsy.

The rattling key stopped the
person from banging. For some reason this made Peter angrier. He looked at his
artificial window and saw waves washing onto the shore. He took a deep breath,
preparing himself for an outburst, and swung the door wide. Air whistled
through his lips; confusion made him forget about his anger.

Ohko was standing outside his
door, his arm stretched against the side, as if posing for a picture. He
already had his hair slicked in a black shine. He had the same leather jacket
on from yesterday, and the only thing different about him was his collar, which
was down.

‘What the hell are you doing
here?’ Peter asked, wondering if he’d travelled all the way from his side of
shithole city.

With a monstrous grin, he
pulled a lone cigarette from the inside of his jacket, his hand shaking a
little. ‘Why you look so
supiiized
, friend?’ His shaky hand found his
mouth and dived back into his jacket, and a toy the shape of a shark, his
favorite lighter, appeared.

A lack of people on the street
told Peter it had to be early morning. The rain had stopped, but water still
dripped from roofs as if it hadn’t. Peter stuck his head out and looked around.
A gray fog lingered above. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever been here in the
morning.’

He inhaled the cigarette and
kept the smoke trapped in his cheeks. He kissed at Peter, waited a few seconds,
and blew the smoke past his face. ‘That because we work all year, work like
rabbits on hamsta wheel. You
viting
your friend Ohko inside?’

Peter made way. ‘I don’t see
why not. Come in.’

Ohko sucked his cigarette
before walking in. The door clicked shut and Peter folded his arms. Before he
could say anything, his friend jumped around, extending his arms to the sides,
smiling a clownish grin.

‘Did you miss me?’ Ohko asked.

Peter bit the side of his mouth
and walked past, bumping into his friend’s shoulder. ‘Not really. I still don’t
get why you—’

‘Oh, don’t be so wrangry. You
not morning person. I get it. Ohko gets it.’ He glided his hand over his
slicked hair and made his way to the cooler. He snapped the lid open and pulled
a bottle of milk. While screwing the cap, he pointed one finger at the windows.
‘Me like very much. I have a few of those back home, but mine is of naked women
dancing on a pole, not a beach. You gay?’ He cocked his head back and downed
the bottle. He wiped his lips, leaving a line of white on his cheek. ‘I hate
milk.’

Peter remembered what his
friend had said last night, something about wanting to go somewhere. There he
was thinking it was all a joke, that his friend couldn’t have been serious.
‘Ohko, don’t tell me you were serious last night.’

He rested the milk bottle
against his side and gazed at Peter. ‘Of course I’m serious. You think I was
joking when I said—’

‘I already told you I’m seeing
my mother today. And why’s your hand shaking like that?’

‘Need a cut down on my bad
habits.’ He rummaged his leather jacket and pulled out a cell, spilling two
packets of white powder by accident. ‘Speak of devil’s momma.’ He quickly
snatched the packets and stored it away.

‘You need to cool it on the drugs,’
Peter said. There was no point in saying that, really. When it came to his
friend, it was like telling a bird to stop flying. But a part of him felt
obligated, as a friend, to let him know of the dangers.

‘Drugs are Lower City’s milk,
Peter. You must know this by now. Anyway. Where I was.’ He played piano on his
cell. ‘Get dressed. We leaving soon.’

He was not leaving this room
with his friend, and that was a fact. Anger made him bite his lips. ‘Okay,
you’re starting to annoy me. First of all, I don’t even know where you want to
go. Second, I don’t really care because I’ve got other plans for the day.’ Peter
turned around and adjusted the mattress covers as if that was the place where he
had slept for the night. With his back to his friend, he waited for a response,
and the response came flying onto the mattress – Ohko’s cell upside down.

‘Take look, friend. Got nice
little pic for you.’

Peter stopped adjusting the
covers and stared at the cell. Curiosity reached for it. At first he didn’t
know what he was looking at, a dark room with something inside. There was light
streaming from closed shutters. A lot of dust. More shadow than light. And then
his eyes registered the silhouette of … of … no, he thought. This couldn’t be
right. This wasn’t possible. A part of his brain could feel his facial
expression expanding: eyebrows up, mouth down. His chest felt hot. His eyebrows
began to twitch. He turned his neck and—

‘Now, look at that pretty
face,’ Ohko said. ‘You still wanna go see momma for the day? Or you wanna come
see your first Dream Chasing machine?’

Too many questions ran through
his mind, some of them wanting – needing – to know how such a thing was
possible. Lower City was eerily quiet today. Maybe it was the early morning
that made it so, but Peter knew this wasn’t the case. Life in Tokyo would
usually start at three in the morning and end at two in the morning, giving the
streets an hour’s rest. The only reason it was this quiet was because of the
day off. People in Lower City were either sleeping their depression away or
wide-eyed awake, staring at the roof, fueling their depression.  

Last night’s downpour had left
the streets a watery mess. Gutters were overflowing, spurting at some spots,
pushing the sewage from below out, making some areas smell of wet, soggy food.

They were walking through a
market that was abandoned for the day, and the rain hadn’t been able to wash
the stench away. Yellow banners with red lettering hung from stalls, saying that
they were closed for the day, and some of them spray painted with vulgar words.

‘That one says, “Fuck the
government,”’ Ohko said, pointing at a banner hanging on for dear life. ‘I need
to meet that person.’ He laughed and slapped Peter on the back. ‘Why you so
quiet?’

Peter looked at him and wanted
to say something, but looked away at all the rubbish on the floor. Trash bags
leaning against an electronics shop shook violently, and a cat jumped out and
chased something with a long wiry tail. ‘Where are we going? How far is it?’

Ohko rubbed his hand along the
brick wall. ‘If I tell you, I kill you. Is that right?’

‘Yeah, something like that. But
I’m serious. Is that …’ Peter swallowed. ‘This isn’t legal, right?’

A homeless man crawled out from
under torn blankets. His forehead was painted in soot and his eyes tired. His
arm stretched while he coughed. ‘Please,’ he said, and stared at the two
approaching young men.

‘How you doing this morning?’
Ohko asked, stopping. ‘You had a good time last night?’

Homeless man coughed a reddish
liquid from his lips. He smeared it on his blanket, a filthy brown sheet with
black dots all over. ‘Please? I’m hungry.’

Ohko doesn’t do charity, Peter
thought. ‘Just leave the man, and let’s go.’

‘I need to readjust my karma
levels,’ Ohko said. He gave the homeless man a pat on the head and asked him if
he was hungry, to which the man quickly responded with a nod. ‘You ever try
this?’ He pulled out a packet of white powder. ‘Won’t get any better quality,
my friend.’

The man looked at them both, trying
to understand, his quivering eyebrows full of dirt. ‘Anything to … help me
survive, is good.’ His hand wriggled from under the blankets, revealing a wooly
glove with five holes, one for each poking finger. He begged for the white.

Ohko threw the packet on the
man’s lap, his karma done for the day. ‘Merry New Year’s.’ Ohko patted Peter on
the back. ‘Let’s roll.’

A part of Peter’s boyish side
had found that funny, but a deeper feeling, a sinking in the stomach, made him
question if that was actually funny.

An hour later, they were in the
eastern part of the city, the old Langh Hai quarters or Time’s Graveyard, as
some of the locals called it. Derelict buildings were everywhere. Some abandoned
shopping centers homes to the homeless, doors made of no-entry tape. When Tokyo
started selling Dream Energy to third-world countries, not only did its economy
shoot up, but the riches of the wealthy. The nice areas in the city turned into
extravagant abodes while the poor areas turned into rat holes. After a while,
the gap between rich and poor had been so wide, the government had begun
treating Lower City like some kind of sick thing, as if Lower City was a person
in need of charitable services.

A bicycle creaked, the chains
that made the wheels turn in need of oil. The man riding, a tired teenager with
a heavy backpack, couldn’t care less about his transport or the state of it. He
raised his chest into the air, gave the pedal a lethargic push down, and seemed
contempt with the new found speed.

‘See that building over there?’
Ohko asked, pointing at broken windows. ‘That’s where we going.’

The puddles were like mines,
and Peter stepped over them. ‘Isn’t that the old basketball court?’

His grin revealed a few white
teeth and a few yellow ones. ‘Not a anymore. Now we the playas.’ They stepped
into the parking lot, where cars had once come to drop off their children for
basketball lessons. There were no cars today, except one abandoned SUV, a white
scratch the only color remaining on the wet steel. While walking past the SUV,
Peter peeked inside its open door. Inside, a big cat with emerald-green eyes
glanced at them.

Glass crunched under their
feet, welcoming them inside SJBC (Shai Jang Basketball Court). A cabinet with
no trophies was the first thing Peter saw. Its glass lay shattered on the
ground below, and the only thing remaining in the cabinet were crumpled papers.

‘What are we doing here?’ Peter
asked. He knew why they were there but was playing it stupid. The thought of a
Dream Infiltrator in this building made him feel dizzy and excited at the same
time.

‘We gonna shoot them hoops for
a bit, you know,’ Ohko made a hoop-throwing gesture, ‘like the old Magic
Johnson. Do it good.’ They came to a closed door. There was sign on it that
said
Court Entry A-1
. Ohko slapped his hand on it, and before pushing
the door open, he glanced over his shoulder and grinned; this was the door to
Narnia, that grin said. ‘You ready to see?’

Peter shrugged, not knowing
what to expect. The door swung wide, clapping against a steel frame. This was
no Narnia, just a filthy court that had been abandoned when the rich got richer
and the poor poorer. But farther in, people in black jackets stood around what
looked like a hospital bed. Machinery with a lot of wires were dotted around
the bed. It took Peter less than three seconds to realize one of them, a Neo
Infiltrator, a headset strapped around the head that is used to balance energy
frequencies in the brain. Peter’s mouth fell to his knees. A part of him didn’t
believe Ohko, a part of him laughed at the idea of something like this being
real, but there was no denying what was in front of him, and all the equipment
seemed to be there as well: the Neo Infiltrator, the cables, the heart monitors
(both the wristbands and ankle ones), the dream cage, which was the bed itself,
a carefully designed bunk able to lock all necessary body parts: the head,
ribs, wrists, and ankles.

He found himself walking faster
than his friend. He needed to feel the bed with his own two hands, to make sure
it weren’t a dream or some kind of foolish prank. It was neither a dream nor a
foolish prank, it was—

‘Real,’ Peter said, minding his
way through the heavy coated men, who were looking at Ohko, pleased. ‘How is
such a thing possible, Ohko?’ Only in his wildest imagination had he seen such
a machine, which appeared to be somewhat intact, only a few loose ends hanging
here and there. He caressed the light-blue steel with a few fingers, feeling
his heart grow warmer. He remembered the first time he saw a Dream Infiltrator,
he was a young boy, around the age of five, and his mother had bought a TV for
the first time. One of the first commercials was of scientists in orange coats
presenting the power of Dream Chasing, how a Dream Chaser could go into a dream
and see what they saw.

Peter picked up the headset and
played with the dials scattered around the steel. The headset was smaller than
what he’d expected. Two red stripes, which looked like equal signs, were on
either side of the eye sockets; they emit just enough light underneath to
induce active sleep, to make the mind wander between awareness and deep sleep.
Two round steel plates were the ear pieces. Peter tilted the headset and peeked
inside the hallow space, amazed at the black emptiness of it.

‘You like what you see?’ the
man asked, his face appearing from behind Peter. He had a white vest on, a
tight fit on his slim body. The lack of sleeves revealed both arms painted in
tattoos. A green and orange dragon swirled around his right arm, its mouth open
and about to breathe fire, which it did on the man’s left arm, where fire and smoke
covered pale skin.

Peter had the urge to ask the
man where he’d gotten the machine from. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder
and saw Ohko talking to a group of others. He returned his focus to the man in
the white vest, who was smiling at him. ‘It’s remarkable.’ He ran his hand
around the steel inside, wondering if it would hurt.

‘My name is Midori Kuro.’ He
extended his dragon painted arm for a handshake, and Peter saw a gun strapped
against the man’s hip. Peter believed it to be a machine gun. They shook hands,
and Midori Kuro continued talking, reaching for the headset in Peter’s hands. ‘You
look very intrigued.’

‘Sure,’ Peter said, still
thinking about that gun. What did he get himself into? These people were
obviously not kindergarten teachers. ‘I’ve always wanted to see a Dream
Machine.’

Midori Kuro continued smiling,
lips more parted to the right. He was a good looking male with hair like
Ohko’s, shiny black and slicked. ‘Try it on,’ he said, his smile like a poster
for a movie.

A voice in him screamed:
do
what the man says, you’ve always wanted to try
. Another voice countered:
all
of this is a bit too good to be true
. ‘Oh, I don’t think—’

‘I insist.’ Midori pushed the
headset into Peter’s stomach. Air left his lungs and whispered through his
lips. His eyes widened. And they widened even more when gunfire sprayed, a
constant thundering clap that lasted for nearly five seconds. Horror struck
Peter in the chest. He didn’t want to look behind because he knew what’d
happened. He looked anyway. He had to. And he was right. The world was a carpet
under his feet, and the carpet had been ripped away, making his kneecaps wobble
and his legs shake. His friend lay in a puddle of his own blood. Ohko’s face
had holes leaking – spouting – wine-red liquid. The men in coats were cleaning
their guns with napkins. Peter heard a voice in his head and thought it was his
own, but it was the man next to him, the man in the white vest, his voice a
peaceful ring.

So much blood on the basketball
floor. So many bullets for one person.

‘Are you listening?’ Midori
Kuro asked.

Peter felt a hot mouth chewing
on his shoulder. He swung his neck sleepily and saw the hand on his shoulder.
Midori wanted to know if he was okay. He wanted to let Peter know that he was
sorry for his loss, but it was the way of the world. You lose some, you win
some. Welcome to the real world. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Peter asked.

‘What happened to your friend,’
Midori looked at the pool of red, ‘was a tragic loss for us all. But you have
to understand,’ Peter felt his shoulder being squeezed ‘when you do bad
business with the Yaramati, when you lie to us, there are consequences.’

Peter swallowed. ‘Why kill
him?’

‘The past—’ Midori peered at
the roof, smiled, and waved his hand in an arch ‘—is like a toxic river, my
friend. Let’s not think about it and get on with more important matters.’

More important matters? Peter
saw the blood in his peripheral and wondered how he was supposed to move on
from this when his friend lay dead not far away. As he thought that, the door
where he and Ohko had walked through slammed open, and in came the cleanup men
with mops, buckets, and trash bags. They were going to wipe his friend away,
put his punctured body in a trash bag.

‘What’s missing from the Dream
Machine?’ Midori Kuro asked.

Peter heard this question while
gazing at his friend’s face being kicked with a broom, his lips bobbing forward,
blood frothing out each time. He contemplated sharply what the fuck he had
gotten himself into. A knock on his shoulder. It was Midori asking the same
question:
what is missing from the Dream Machine?
‘Are you going to kill
me?’

Of course he was, a thought
laughed.

‘Kill you?’ He snickered
through closed lips. His dragon arm slithered around Peter’s neck and tightened
until it was like a father’s arm giving comfort. ‘You are part of us now,
Peter. Look around you. Tell me what you see?’

Peter looked at his dead frie—

Who was not on the floor anymore.
He was
fetused
into a bag. That’s right, Peter thought. Fetused:
squeezed and molded into a fetus position. Someone tried picking up the trash
bag and had a hard time doing so. Another man joined in to help. Both carried
the bag away, leaving a trail of red watery drops. The mop crew started doing
their job.

‘Where are they taking my
friend?’

‘I have already told you,
Peter, stop thinking about the past.’ How long was this nice-guy act going to
last? That gun on his hip was the same as the other ones; the ones that sounded
like a spray of thunder. Get your shit together, Peter thought. Get your shit
together now.

Peter eyed the Dream Machine
and said he didn’t know. His heart scraped at his chest. His friend was dead.
He was going to die. What was he doing here? What did he get himself into? There
was—