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Boom.
Her chest a charred mess, the second me smashes into a wall and slides down, dead.
Hey now. Why is everyone dreaming about killing me?
The dream world changes again.
Maskless and without his scar, a younger Dr. Cipactli is standing next to a ginormous machine made up of steam engines, levers, and pistons indicative of technology even more primitive than that of Earth.
An older gnome shoots a section of the device with a lightning ball—powering devices is how gnomes usually use that ability of theirs.
“The number values will be represented by gear wheels,” the elder says as the ball flies at its target. “Each digit of a number has its own—”
As the ball lands, something explodes.
“Oh, no!” the elder gnome shouts.
A hissing liquid splashes Dr. Cipactli in the face.
As he screams, I realize this nightmare is a memory. This is how he got hurt.
The dream changes yet again.
This time, Dr. Cipactli is his current age, but still without the mask and scar. Nightmarish creatures that look like the images in his office appear all around us. This isn’t a memory, at all.
“This is enough.” I turn the nightmare beings into fluffy kittens. “You wanted a demonstration of my power, so here it is.”
Dr. Cipactli gapes at me, openmouthed.
“This is a dream.” I turn the kittens into tiger cubs to illustrate my point.
He rubs his eyes. “I can’t believe it.”
“Don’t you remember giving me consent to go into your dreams? I heard you ask me who I was and what I wanted.”
“I asked what?” He shakes his head. “This is so much stranger than I thought.”
“Yeah.” I take us to my cloud office and gesture for him to sit where my clients usually would. “Now, about my mom.”
“Right.” He sits and assumes his usual professional demeanor. “I reviewed all the records and concur that she needs to be awakened from inside her dreams.”
I plop into my own chair. “As in, by me?”
“Not necessarily.” Probably without realizing it, he makes his scar reappear on his face, followed by the mask. “We can use the same medicine on her as I used on myself.”
I sit up straighter. “The one that puts you into REM sleep?”
“Right. What I forgot to tell you is that it does more than that.” He pauses. “As you noticed, I had nightmares. That’s not a coincidence. The medication—Koshmar—is very consistent in eliciting that response.”
“Your drug gives its users nightmares?” I make my hair fiery.
His eyes widen, but he quickly composes himself and nods. “Koshmar was specifically formulated for that purpose, so it’s much more potent than a drug that merely has that as a side effect. It’s invaluable to my research.”
I frown. “You want to give my mom a potent nightmare?”
“Yes,” he says eagerly. “Koshmar nightmares get progressively worse until the sleeper wakes up, which is what we want in this case. Furthermore, an interesting aspect of these specific nightmares is that the first one always features whatever the sleeper experienced last—in your mom’s case, a bad car crash. I bet she’d wake up just from that.”
I regard him thoughtfully. “So this is why your first nightmare was set in the room where you fell asleep. It was your last experience—and the starting point of a nightmare where the dream version of me was choking you.”
“Exactly. I didn’t even realize I was sleeping. It was as though my brain had erased the memory of spraying myself with the drug, and then my surroundings took a dark turn. That’s how it works every time.”
“And you’re suggesting I give this horrible drug to my mother?”
He shrugs. “If she can be scared into waking up, this would do it.”
“But what if she can’t wake up? With the nightmares escalating, she’ll end up in the worst hell imaginable, with no way out.”
“Then you have to wake her using your power, after all.” He doesn’t bother hiding the disappointment in his voice. He must’ve wanted another subject to test the drug on. “Speaking of your power,” he continues, “do you mind another experiment?”
I stare at him warily. “Like what?”
He stands up. “I’d like to see what happens if I withdraw my consent.”
“Oh, that’s fine.”
He nods and scrunches his face, tensing—
I find myself back in the waking world, in the empty room where Dr. Cipactli is lying on the bed.
Looks like gnomes can take away their consent for dreamwalking—impressive.
Dr. Cipactli opens his eyes and sits up. “That was fascinating.”
“Yeah,” I say with a lot less enthusiasm.
“Can we do another experiment?”
I gesture to activate my comms and glance at my messages.
Valerian just replied, and I’m eager to know what he said.
“I’m sorry, maybe another time,” I tell Dr. Cipactli. “I hope what we did thus far is payment enough for your time.” Especially considering how unhelpful you were, is what I don’t add.
“Fair enough,” he says. “If you ever need a job, please keep us in mind. Someone with your powers could be invaluable when—”
