AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maxwell slides down a soft wall until he’s sitting on the floor in a pose that reminds me of when he was locked in this room in his memory. “No one knows we’re here. We could starve.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I say. “We’ll die of thirst long before that.”
Valerian casts a furtive glance at Mom’s bed.
“We’re not stealing Mom’s nutrients, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I tell him sternly. “And if it is what you’re thinking, shame on you.”
Valerian folds his arms across his chest. “I fleetingly considered using the contraption as a battering ram but instantly dismissed the idea.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “That’s even worse than stealing her food.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to steal her food in the first place,” he says.
“Children,” Maxwell mutters. “Focus on workable solutions. Please.”
Stroking Pom’s fur to calm myself, I thoughtfully study my father. “You’re from here. You must have dream connections with someone. Why don’t you dreamwalk in a local and ask them for help?”
Maxwell theatrically smacks himself on the forehead. “How did I not think of that? My only excuse is that I’ve only recently remembered that I know people who live here.”
I scratch my chin. “I hadn’t thought of that before. Who did you think they were when you saw them in your tower of sleepers? I bet even I was there…”
“What’s a tower of sleepers?” Maxwell asks.
As I explain, a slow smile spreads over his face. “What you call a tower of sleepers is just your own personal dream construct to deal with the problem of dreamwalking in someone you’ve made a connection with. Mine is just a room with paintings of the people whose dreams I’d like to visit.”
“I use paintings too,” I say. “But for my memory gallery, which is a way to revisit the memories I like.”
“There you go,” Maxwell says. “But to answer your original question, if you don’t remember someone, they won’t appear as a dream contact, regardless of how you represent such things in your dream world. It’s not like a phone that has a list of contacts stored in its memory. Dream constructs use your mind—so if you forget a person, they won’t appear in your tower of sleepers.”
“That makes sense,” I say. “Mom must’ve had a dream connection with both me and Asha, but I bet that after her exile, she never saw the two of us in her version of the tower of sleepers, only me.”
“All that is fascinating,” Valerian says. “But could you shelve dreamwalk theory until after we’re freed?”
Maxwell stretches out on the floor. “Put me in REM sleep.”
I do, and Valerian and I both pace as we wait.
After what feels like many hours, my father sits up. “I just spoke with your grandmother. Help should be on the way.”
My grandmother.
I’m about to see her.
The idea makes me breathless—that or we’re running out of oxygen in this room.
After what feels like a few more hours, a man walks up to the glass. Wearing a helmet and a chrome bodysuit, he looks like he’s stepped off a set of a show about deep space exploration. He even holds what looks like a space gun—a long, sleek rifle-like thing.
Valerian makes LEGO letters appear in my line of vision: That’s one of the guards. Most of them are illusionists and therefore don’t usually need to use weapons. Do you have any idea why your grandmother would send one to escort us out like this?
I shrug, as does Maxwell—who must’ve seen the same question.
“Stay away from the door,” the guard says.
As we back away, Maxwell explains about Mom’s bed.
The guard unlocks the door and orders us to walk in front of him in the direction he says.
We oblige, with my father controlling the bed to make it ride ahead of us.
As we walk, I can’t help but notice something I didn’t realize when experiencing other people’s memories of Soma. The surroundings have a definite spaceship vibe. I don’t know if it’s the silvery walls that lack any decorations or the very basic furniture and the guard’s uniform.
When we exit the structure with the “jail,” the spaceship feel grows stronger. The buildings around us are silvery and overly geometric in their shape—like someone had printed them out in one shot instead of building them with metal and cement, the way it’s done on Gomorrah and Earth.
Spotting Valerian looking up at the sky, I follow his gaze.
How cool. Though I’ve seen this sky arrangement in the memories, looking at it live is that much more surreal. The road we’re currently walking on seems to lead into the sky that looks like a circle. To the side of us, the ground seems to slope up, with forests and more buildings above our heads.
“So trippy,” I breathe, my neck aching from the strain of looking up at such a steep angle. “I avoid these types of environments in the dream world because they seem too unrealistic.”
