《DREAMSCAPERS》 Chapter 1 - SEVEN ¡°They invaded our thoughts, so we escaped into our dreams¡­.for good." - a hand written note found after The Final Collapse. Chapter 1 - SEVEN In between dreams, I often catch a glimpse of my cage. It is not a bar and lock prototype. Or, a ten by ten cell. I wear this cage like I would a costume or a body suit. It resembles a modern iron maiden. Trapped inside of it, I float because of it, my limbs flailing like a swimmer on the surface of a pool of water. Wires and feeding tubes line the metallic armour, from head to foot. They puncture my flesh by needle point, but not painfully. It was a mere flash, the sight of my body suspended in the cage. A quick snapshot. And then my mind adjusted my perception, and I was scaping again, into another dream. I am thinking out loud just in case you are trespassing onto my mindscape, Andri. If you are, you must know by now it is considered a crime in our new reality. Ever since The Final Collapse, we are only permitted to travel, or what we like to call Scape, to places in our own subconscious. The act of trespassing onto another¡¯s mindscape is like an invasion of privacy. And since we don¡¯t own anything anymore, or walk a real landscape, our mindscapes are all we have left. The reason I am explaining all of this is because I¡¯m not sure if you are trespassing onto my mindscape again, by accident. When I first met you in the War Scape, I thought you were a criminal, trespassing onto my mindscape on purpose. But now, I¡¯m not so sure. Maybe this is why I am thinking out loud. I want to find you again, Andri. Or I want you to hear my voice. I¡¯m not sure why I selected the War Scape in the first place. You see, every Scape, no matter what story arc it creates, is a virtual reality simulated by my subconscious. I can enter it rather easily too, by a train of thought. If you are listening to me, Andri, this is how we exist now. I think of a place, or a situation, or a scenario, and I am immediately transported there. Once I land in the Scape, I believe it to be real. It was once explained to me by a fictional character in a Nostalgia Scape. His name was Adam. He called it suspension of disbelief. He said the effect resembled the experience of watching a film in a theater, from our origin lifetimes. Once the story kicked in, you believed it to be real. The film could make you cry, or angry, or it could frighten you into a physical reaction, all because you were suspended in disbelief. You couldn¡¯t separate the two, the reality of you sitting in the theater, from the story on the screen. The perception became synchronized. You were projected into the story and the realities were blended into one. Do you remember how we met in the War Scape, Andri? I¡¯ve returned to the scene and I can¡¯t find you. If you¡¯re looking for me, I¡¯m searching for you in the rain stained piazza. Maybe if I recall our first encounter, you will reappear. Okay, here goes nothing. The setting of the War Scape resembled something gothic in architecture, perhaps European. I had joined a vigilante group of specialized combat fighters. To validate my value to the troop, I had to demonstrate my hand to hand combat skills first. And in order to earn a spot on the team, I had to defeat each of them, one by one, without weapons. The last of seven to join them, I earned the nickname ¡°Seven¡± from General One, the leader of the troop. I decided to keep it. I liked being a number in a game of numbers. In a War Scape, the virtual reality was always mathematical, and I appreciated how it made sense. Eliminate as many enemies as possible. Weed out an assortment of evils, like greed, abuse of power, or rape. Stifle maniacal aspirations of world domination by an invisible dictator. Ultimately, create a utopic peace with acts of violence. The mission of the vigilante team was to find and eliminate the source of power creating the war. I had joined the troop with the common goal to assassinate this source. But the journey, as in any Scape, was the real adventure. And this one began with the clot of us walking through a bomb ravaged city square. The buildings were bitten into by the teeth of multiple explosions, although they remained erect and resisting collapse. I could see inside the rooms. The symbols of domestic security were visibly disabled, represented now by unmade beds, splayed water pipes, smoke stained walls and charred furniture . I tried not to peer in any closer. I knew if I did, I would detect evidence of casualty. Blood flowed by me like a stream from one of the broken pipes, and I had already walked over shards of splattered innards and limbs. I decided to keep my eyeline straight and focused on the darker distance ahead of us. I walked the tail end of the upside-down V. My duty was to cover the vigilante in front of me by securing the possibility of a surprise attack from behind. ¡°It¡¯s abandoned,¡± General One announced, as he assumed the point position of the upside-down V. He was a thick, grizzled man with red skin and a poodle curled beard. His feet sunk into the tarry ground leaving enormous prints. ¡°But not clear,¡± indicated another number from the other side. We inched along without marching, rotating our heads on swivels, surveying the damage, flinching upon any crackle of movement. Unlike some of the others, I refused to speak up, or offer my observation of the rummage. I was new to the group, new to this War Scape. Always shy when I enter an unfamiliar Scape, I wonder why this weaker instinct surfaces before any other. Perhaps it is the uncertainty initially presented by a new dream. I am never sure if a Scape exists without me, or before me, or after me, when I Scape into another. But I do know it happens because of me. The Scapes find their origins in our undiscovered, subconscious spaces, Andri. Whatever is stored there feeds the virtual reality. On this particular mission in the War Scape, I felt like a tourist in my own dream, like there was history between the members of this troop I had yet to experience alongside them. Or maybe this was the premise of the drama, informed by my subconscious collections from an origin lifetime. I was the rookie of the group untested yet by battle. A war virgin on unfamiliar turf. As we continued to walk the cobblestone road, the limestone setting reminded me more and more of a distant, European land I had probably visited in my origin lifetime. This must have been my memory interfering to paint the Scape. Memories Andri, or so I believe, are the content fuel for the Scapes. The dead reality ignites the new fiction, functioning as the program code behind them, or so I remember hearing on another Scape. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Or had I read about a place like this before, a war torn city square, from a history textbook? ¡°Seven, how is the back end?¡± ¡°Clear.¡± I was proud to have finally contributed my say to the mission. I didn¡¯t want to be seen as the weak link in the chain. We needed to eliminate the source of power that had created this tragic damage. For all we knew, that very source could have been hiding in one of the ravaged buildings, or relishing safety in a bunker below us. The traveling, upside down V shattered upon the sound of a sharp click, when General One was shot dead in the head. I scurried into an alley way, apart from the rest of troop. And then gunfire ensued. I searched for my gun, but I had dropped it in the middle of the square. Although I had proven my hand to hand combat skills, they were too limited to be of any use to my troop, who had been ambushed by gunfire. I had a knife strapped to my ankle, but this wasn¡¯t a Gang Scape. I needed to run into the open to fetch my rifle, but bullets pelted the cobblestone like bouncing hail. So I prepared myself for the worst case scenario ¨C I could die. But what did it matter. If I died, I would feel what it felt like to die. The act of losing life in one Scape would transport me to an afterlife in another, most likely staged in another Dreamscape. The only issue would be re-entry into the same War Scape. I wouldn¡¯t be permitted to re-enter this War Scape after my death in it. It would violate the suspension of disbelief laws. I would be expelled for good until the next version of War Scape came out. I would have to wait in a que, or settle on another Scape not as exciting as this one. I remember resolving that I wanted to stay alive in the War Scape, and then you stabbed me Andri. I felt the blade carve into the softer side of my torso, where my kidneys were stored. It tore in hot but cooled like permanent glue once it found a place to stick. I remember turning around to see you for the first time, Andri, and you were a dark skinned, young woman like me, with slanted eyes. You were too exotic to be a warrior in this War Scape. Your fatigues resembled a fashionable costume, tailor slim to accentuate the curves of your body, sexualizing you. When you removed a gun from your holster to finish me off, I disarmed you expertly. I held the gun, and with another deft motion, removed the knife lodged in my back with my other hand. My blood dripped from it. The swiftness of the sequence frightened you, Andri. The fear of the voices of my troop yelping panicked instructions reflected in the glow of your iridescent skin. The voices were fading. They were moving on without me, presuming me dead. I was left with my doppelganger. You resembled a relative of mine by skin and eye colour. ¡°Don¡¯t kill me,¡± you begged, your pink palms up and flat against an invisible wall. ¡°Why not? You were going to kill me.¡± ¡°It was just an instinct.¡± Not intended as an apology, it sounded like one nonetheless. ¡°Have you never died before?¡± I asked you, as I pointed the bloodied knife pointed to your mouth, which glistened itself with a fresh application of lipstick. Why were you made up so contrary to the Scape? It wasn¡¯t a fashion show. Which is why I keep searching for you, Andri. You may be lost without the ability to Scape back. You answered my question about ever dying in another Scape with a no. ¡°I don¡¯t recognize you,¡± I admitted. I hadn¡¯t initially recognized any of the members of my troop either, but there was a familiar connection to them. I understood they derived from a part of my mind, whether it was my imagination or a buried memory, or simply an observation stored in my subconscious. But you, Andri, you resembled me physically, although you were foreign to my mind in every way. So I assumed you were trespassing onto my Dreamscape. It is illegal to do so, but maybe you didn¡¯t know and I prejudged you. As I considered every possibility, the vision of you blurred and became fuzzy on the edges. What was happening? Was I losing too much blood? Why was the cement chipped background behind you flattening into a sepia portrait? You inched closer to me with your hands up. This was sleight of hand, a disguised surrender to veil a trick, I assumed. You possessed another, hidden weapon somewhere. But I had misread your body language. Instead, you chose to remove your clothes. And your body was visible proof you were virginal to the Scapes. No scars, no scratches, no tattoos. Clean, smooth, flesh. A beautiful portrait of human art, unscathed, virtuous, innocent. What is your origin? I must admit, I was attracted to your mystery. I mean, I am still attracted to your mystery. ¡°My name is Andri.¡± ¡°Why are you here?¡± ¡°To fall in love.¡± ¡°This is a War Scape.¡± ¡°Love is a War Scape.¡± ¡°How would you know?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t.¡± I dropped the disabled weapons and fainted to my knees. I was dying. I was losing blood. The spirit in the flow of it was funneling out of me. You stepped closer to me. Naked, unarmed. I predicted you would finish me with a strangling hand. Or, you would take one of the discarded weapons and end the experience with the pull of a trigger? I was a witness to your crime. You were definitely an intruder, a trespassing criminal, or even a Scape Fugitive wanted by the Invisible Police. The clack of gunfire seemed to have walked away to dull in the distance. You dropped down and held my head in your lap. You used one of your hands to press against the wound in my back. ¡°Easy, easy. I¡¯m not going to let you die.¡± ¡°You tried to kill me.¡± ¡°I tried to hurt you.¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°To make you feel like I feel.¡± ¡°But it doesn¡¯t hurt anymore.¡± ¡°I know. I¡¯m going to kiss you now.¡¯ Your face hovered over me, your dark hair forming an umbrella blocking out the intruding light. ¡°When I kiss you, escape into another dreamscape,¡± you whispered. ¡°Before you lose your breath in this one.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure what you meant. Were you advising me to escape death by trespassing into another mindscape, thereby making me complicit in the same crime? Or were you asking me to switch Dreamscapes before I experienced the death in this one? If I died, there was a possibility I would never see you again. I wanted to ask you what you were doing, and why you were attending my dream. Most of all, I itched to cough, knowing that if I did so, I would cough up blood. Were you prepared to kiss my bloody mouth? ¡°Ready?¡± I recall sighing. ¡°Are you the source of the power I need to kill?¡± I asked you. You nodded no. ¡°I don¡¯t care for power.¡± You leaned in to kiss me and at once I felt like I had departed the War Scape, like I had ascended into another more heavenly in application. When I opened my eyes, I hadn¡¯t left the rain stained piazza. Andri, you were smiling in the shadowing umbrella of your hair. ¡°It doesn¡¯t look like you are ready to die in this Scape, after all,¡± you whispered, as you pulled further away from the kiss. You helped me disrobe, before pressing your skin to mine for warmth. The connection transcended the War Scape, all the way back to the physical connections lost after The Final Collapse, in their origin lifetime, when touch was real. ¡°Have I entered a memory hole? Are you real, Andri?¡± ¡°No, but we are breaking the law.¡± ¡°How so?¡± You leaned in for another kiss, and I didn¡¯t resist. There was a possibility I could disappear forever in that naked moment. Chapter 2 - Bekks Chapter 2 - BEKKS I wasn¡¯t sure if it was steam, or smoke, clouding the room in my Drug Scape. It moisturized my face, like mist refusing to turn into rain on a cloudy day. I held my hand up in an attempt to catch the drift, but the wet air slithered through my fingers. I stared at my skeletal hand. My knuckles had become swollen for some reason. A purple rash had spread from my elbow to the insides of my fingers, like a choking vine, and it was beginning to scab and flake. But I was still alive in this Scape, despite the ghastly appearance of my exposed skin. And this Scape was familiar, like a home. Other users were sprawled out on the grimy couches, like different versions of me. I wasn¡¯t sure if these personifications of my thoughts would flee away, or did they come and go as friends? They didn¡¯t speak much. And when they did, the words came out disjointed, but emphatic, like sleep talking. I don¡¯t mind random words. Words are more honest this way, when they have no structured order. Like poetry, words challenged me to put together a puzzle worthy of a meaningful moment. Which is why I Scaped here often. This Drug Scape would eventually lead me by chance to The Rabbit Hole. I know I can find it in an Alice in Wonderland place like this. Where people became caricatures by ingestion, or injection, or inhaling. Whatever the drug, I now understand how the end could justify the means. The Rabbit Hole. Instead of sliding into another fantasy, or a popular Dreamscape, I will one day slide back into a true reality. The real reality. My origin lifetime. It is possible, like time travel. I just know it. ¡°You¡¯re not tripping enough, are you Bekks?¡± This question came from the adjacent couch, from an unseen atmosphere of dust. It was better when I couldn¡¯t see the source of any advice. It allowed me to think without discrimination. ¡°You can¡¯t even see me, man.¡± ¡°I can see you, Bekks. You are shining like an angel in the mist.¡± This sounded so insincere, like a pick up line. His voice was uncomfortably sensitive in tone, like he was humming while he spoke. ¡°I¡¯m no angel, man.¡± ¡°My name is Juve.¡± ¡°I¡¯m no angel, Juve.¡± ¡°No, Bekks. You¡¯re a self-proclaimed artist?¡± Juve fake cackled. He knew me some way. Invisible behind the clouds of steam, or was it really smoke, he had found a way to speak from the inside of my mind. I had never created art in this Drug Scape, at least not the visual kind. It was just genetic, my artistic mind set. The Scape must have adjusted to my genetic mental matter, which seemed to code this Dreamscape. I decided to play along anyways. ¡°Yes, I am a self-proclaimed artist.¡± ¡°A painter?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°Obsolete, painted art that is, isn¡¯t it?¡± I agreed with him. I had harboured similar doubts prior to the emergence of Dreamscape Domination, even before The Final Collapse. Why would anyone pay me to create, when they could employ an artificially intelligent simulator with the touch of a finger? What value, or perspective could I create in another person¡¯s eyes? It was a lie. Art, my art, was a lie, creating illusions, smoke without mirrors, et cetera, et cetera. It was just a means to gain someone else¡¯s attention, now that I think about, or maybe someone¡¯s obsession, which was far more interesting. ¡°We are living art, no?¡± I responded. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. I played philosophical, an artist¡¯s defence. It¡¯s easy. All you have to do is use abstract words to buy enough time to defend your art. It¡¯s easy to play philosophical when you are high, too. But I was thinking too clearly, so I must have been sobering up. There is nothing worse than being the sober one in a Drug Scape. Another moving body behind the mist grabbed my ankle aggressively. It wasn¡¯t the deep, masculine voice I was speaking to. Juve was across from me. This strong hand grabbed my ankle like he was about to break the bone in two. I didn¡¯t fight it. No need to struggle. He wasn¡¯t trying to hurt me by injecting a needle point into a vein on the top of my foot. I felt it point in and find a blood vein. It made me sigh. ¡°That¡¯s better, isn¡¯t it?¡± Juve offered commentary from the other side of the room. My sitting posture melted into a supine position on the couch. Hardened, crusty holes in it, formed from cigarette ash or some heated liquid spilled from a shaking spoon, scratched the skin on my back. I realized I was naked from the waist up. I felt the fabric below my belt line. Pajama bottoms. No socks. A warmth travelled from that injected foot to my ears, heating them with a flash of fire. ¡°I can help you find it, Bekks.¡± ¡°Find what, Juve?¡± ¡°The Rabbit Hole.¡± ¡°Are you the rabbit, Juve?¡± ¡°Very funny.¡± I was getting itchy on the couch. Why was my skin reacting this way, percolating with imagined boils, as if ignited by an allergy? ¡°You won¡¯t find that Rabbit Hole until you let go. Of everything. You fight it well, the high. And then you settle in the middle, not floating away for good, not plummeting down for ever. You can¡¯t recreate the past this way, without sacrificing your place in the present.¡± Juve¡¯s cryptic words were my words, or at least those translated from my subconscious, which informed this Drug Scape. I saw myself in his words because they became a mirror for me, just like every other Dreamscape. They were mirrors, all of them, the Scapes, just ones reflecting disfigured realities. ¡°I don¡¯t want to recreate the past. I want to recreate pure existence. And I will find where it once was.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have a time machine, Bekks. Why not visit the Nostalgia Nuance, or the Memory Holes? You can revisit your memories there.¡± I had visited those Scapes before, of course I had. But the memories weren¡¯t as pure in the context of a Scape. It was like art imitating life, but not life becoming art. This voice, although speaking on behalf of my own thoughts, was too ignorant to the concept of context. I remembered my obsessions with photo albums when I was a little child, in the origin reality. They would spark memories, but in the context of the album, they remained still. They were not moving and other, interpretive memories from virtual perspectives were not happening at the same time. The pictures were just a snapshot, a limited view of a moment, but not the entire moment I was looking to immerse myself in. I wanted every sensory application at my disposal. Only reality can make me feel again. My body began trembling into a virtual convulsion. My teeth chattered and shivers scaled my skin like an army of insects following the feeder. The thick hand that had previously grabbed my ankle was holding down one leg, while another hand held down another. From some mysterious place above me, other hands held down my arms, while one pressed upon my neck. The hands were thick and the grips heavy as stone, tight as vices. While they held my limbs down, whatever it was traversing my bloodlines funnelled to my head, shattering the light bulb, creating an explosion of luminescence. I closed my eyes and I was inside a coffin, at the brink of it locking. I recognized the interior right away, and laughed out loud. ¡°This is a funny trick. I¡¯m not afraid to be buried alive, Juve.¡± When the coffin closed, the dry air entered my mouth and I was thirsty. I couldn¡¯t stop laughing. ¡°There are so many Drug Scapes to Scape to. One at every corner of my mind,¡± I threatened to whoever was listening, prolonging the joke. When the trick was over and the coffin opened, I was floating in the middle of a familiar setting, a northern lake. The coffin became a little fishing riff. Other coffins floated in the lake. A cemetery floating on the water. I paddled with my hands, from coffin to coffin, past recognizable faces from my past, my origin life. My little sister, golden haired with pink lips and freckles on her nose smiled with big bold teeth. Had I painted this impression before? Was my current high an escape into that part of my brain responsible for juxtaposing images on a canvas? A voice was singing from across the lake, and the sounds bounced off the surface of the water, creating a wind, ruffling the water. Champagne water, or so the permanent residents described it for its golden brown colour under the illusion of blue. Champagne water, as I scooped it into my hands, but blue to my eye. The hypocrisy of the illusion. As I peered into the lake innocently, searching for the possibility of fish or a snapping turtle, I saw the face they could never find in my origin lifetime, letting me know he was there. Chapter 3 - LOOCH Chapter 3 - LOOCH I consider myself a criminal genius instead of a bottom feeder. I had stolen this girl without notice. No Amber Alert necessary. No thought trace available for evidence. A simple abduction, but with no criminal trail. I had violated so many Suspension of Disbelief laws with this one act. But who would dare pursue me? Who enforced the Suspension of Disbelief laws anyways in the Dreamscapes? Contrary to the law abiding propaganda circulating with product placement in each of our Dreamscapes, we are absolutely free to exist a we please. Come on! Who are they fooling. This is Looch and I wasn¡¯t born last night. If anything, we hold absolute freedom, enough of it to say words, or do things that can break feelings. We can even commit acts that steal someone else¡¯s freedom away. Abducting the girl from a Fantasy Scape was easy for me. Her name is Vivi. I had found her first by mind trespassing upon her Scape, the most common crime in the Dreamscape universe. Everyone is doing it. I just mastered it. Because I can be patient, and patience is the virtue of every great criminal mind. I stalked Vivi first. Reconnaissance, or so the word seems to surface whenever I plan to commit a crime. A grown woman by mindset, Vivi likes to become an innocent child in each of the Scapes she chooses to visit or spend time within. Which set her apart from my other victims. Her pattern was predictable but still interesting because there was obsession there, and I love obsessive behaviour. So, I wanted to steal her for my collection of victims. Just as it is possible to trespass onto another¡¯s mindscape, it is just as possible to confine them to yours. I created my mental prison by accident, or by chance, if you want to call it that way. I was traversing an Abuse Scape. I suppose you can say I am a glutton for punishment, or pain. In the midst of my torture, I believe the abuser was lashing my back with a belt without mercy, I concentrated all of my mental power on one thought, the peace of absolute darkness. It appealed to me in the moment, escaping into the tranquility of nothingness. But when I thought upon it, the thought itself transformed into a mental space. A space separate from the Dreamscapes. It was like an ¡°in-between¡± state of mind. Nothing could penetrate it either because it was so dark. But I could come and go as I pleased. And only I could enter it, or guide someone to be trapped there. To this virtual day, it remains unlicenced, unregistered, unknown to any of the Dreamscape versions. This is where I kept Vivi. And I enjoyed experiencing the depths of her panic. Her screams resembled a music melody from my past lifetime, when a crime was equitable to a life sentence. But let me to return to my abduction of Vivi. When Vivi entered her Fantasy Scapes, she elected to do so as her younger self, which made her so vulnerable to predators like me. Nothing sparked my interest more than innocent vulnerable thoughts. It was like sifting out gold pieces from pure water, untarnished by time. I had followed her to an Emerald city, along a yellow brick road. Green and gold and sparkly skies. A storybook Scape was her fantasy every time. She wished to escape into a fantasy story, as one of its characters. She must have enjoyed the art of storytelling in a previous lifetime, probably as a young girl, who once listened to an adult dramatizing the characters in an illustrated tale. As she role played as Dorothy in this Wizard of Oz rip-off, cheapened further by vintage colours instead of high definition applications, I prepared myself to disrupt its fictional structure. Instead of entering as a scarecrow, or a lion, or a tin man, and avoiding the disguise of green witches and fairies, I crossed the yellow brick road disguised as her father. By trespassing onto her Fantasy scape, I was also trespassing onto her mindscape, which made me privy to her private thoughts and memories. So I disguised himself as her father. Her companions on the yellow brick road were confused by my presence. ¡°Why is there a man dressed like a school teacher in the middle of the yellow brick road,¡± asked the Scarecrow, pretending to be dumb again. ¡°Daddy?¡± I removed my eye glasses and flattened out my buttoned cardigan. ¡°Hello, sweetie.¡± ¡°What are you doing here, Daddy?¡± The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°Waiting for you.¡± ¡°You are alive?¡± I nodded yes. ¡°No one dies anymore. At least for real. You know that, Vivian.¡± ¡°My name is Dorothy, here.¡± ¡°No it isn¡¯t. It is always Vivian to me.¡± ¡°You never liked it shortened, not even as a nickname.¡± ¡°Because I named you.¡± ¡°Are we not off to see The Wizard,¡± asked the Lion, sounding dumber than the Scarecrow. But the story had already been broken into, edited, revised, with my interruption. I know how to break a good story, how to kill its innocence, how to rewrite it my way. The criminal act of stealing is as much about narration as creating it is. And I am obsessed with breaking a person¡¯s story for the purpose of rebuilding it my way. And I take such pleasure in watching a life, albeit virtual, fall apart to pieces. ¡°I don¡¯t think you should talk to him, Dorothy. Not until we see The Wizard.¡± How hard the Tinman tried, but his words were unscripted and trailing away. As I approached Vivi in my own costume, they stepped aside, as if about to head to their trailers to wait for the filming of the next scene. Vivi knocked her heals together. She wasn¡¯t asked to, and it was too early in the story to discover this power, but she was doing it instinctively. Was she trying to escape elsewhere? Did she recognize me as an imposter? Was this a reaction to her fear? ¡°Remember when I would read you this story, Vivian. Before we watched it on television together.¡± I extended my hand and she took it by instinct. Her fingers were almost webbed together by the softest flesh. A baby¡¯s flesh. ¡°Follow me, Vivian.¡± ¡°Down the yellow brick road?¡± ¡°Yes. Why not?¡± ¡°Daddy?¡± ¡°Yes, sweetie.¡± ¡°Are you The Wizard?¡± ¡°You can say so, yes.¡± ¡°Then how did you die?¡± ¡°Like I said, you can¡¯t die for real anymore. Death is just another illusion.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s stay, Daddy. And never leave. We will return home when the colour fades. I promise.¡± ¡°The colour is fading right now,¡± I pointed to the black hole I had created with that same, concentrated thought. This act would qualify as more than one crime, I thought to myself. But Dreamscape Domination was too new to cover all of the side effects of living out the reality of dreams. I had managed to create my own black hole in this dreamscape universe. And no one had stopped it, or had found me out for that matter. I was a free criminal inventing new crimes to keep me above the law. ¡°It¡¯s so dark, where you are leading me. It¡¯s so much brighter here, Daddy.¡± ¡°I know. We¡¯ll come back. I promise.¡± Vivi followed me to the edge of the yellow brick road. It was only one step further to walk into the dark hole with me. That was it. But she hesitated. So I pulled her in by force, and the fantasy was over. How she screamed and screamed in the black hole. ¡°Why won¡¯t anyone answer me?¡± I watched her in my mental space, only a few feet away. But she couldn¡¯t see me there, it was so dark. ¡°Is this death? Daddy? Are you here with me?¡± Why not prolong the game, I convinced himself. ¡°Yes. Your Daddy is here.¡± She laughed and cried at the same time. ¡°Is this where you ended, Daddy, in the dark?¡± These words soured my pleasure and the charade began to wear thin. As much as I wanted her to stay, she wasn¡¯t worth collecting as a permanent victim. Or maybe stealing her away was the adrenaline, and not the incarceration. Whatever it was, I wasn¡¯t feeling it, imprisoning her forever. I convinced myself to her escape my black hole. All I had to do was instruct her what to think about. There was an escape route to every Scape, and my black hole was no exception. But she was too panicked and sad to look for it. She would have stayed in the dark forever screaming, if I didn¡¯t release her. I did enjoy my power over her victimhood. Her reliance upon my desires. I possessed her as an evil spirit would, deranging her emotions, tearing her belief system to shreds. ¡°Close your eyes,¡± I replicated her father¡¯s voice, the way he lowered it to a whisper in order to encourage her imagination to settle down and sleep. ¡°Are you going to sing to me, Daddy?¡± It took me some time to read the song lists in her mindscape. Which one would she prefer this time around? She seemed to appreciate all of them with an associative memory. ¡°Close your eyes, sweetie.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have to. It is darker with my eyes open.¡± ¡°But you won¡¯t sleep with your eyes open.¡± ¡°Says who?¡± She was feeling safe and bold again. This emotional connection, her trust in me as her protector, ruffled the feathers of my cold, hard determination to imprison her innocence against its will. I needed to disable it altogether now because it was annoying me, or absolute trust in me as her parental guardian. She was too ignorant. Like her father had the power to make bad dreams go away with good thoughts. The manner in which this belief created hope, even to dark, scavengers like myself. It would make me soft, and genius criminals couldn¡¯t afford to be soft. ¡°Says the bottom feeder who stole you.¡± ¡°The who?¡± I had no other choice but to reveal my true identity. ¡°I stole you to keep as my own.¡± ¡°Like my Daddy?¡± ¡°Yeah, just like your Daddy.¡± And just like that, I realized our relationship would be catch and release. Catch and release. Chapter 4 - SEVEN Chapter 4 - SEVEN I wondered whether I had learned how to fly. After making love to Andri in the War Scape, I landed, without a travel day, on an island surrounded by shallow reef water. Must have been a reactionary train of thought after the love making. Or maybe, my mind needed some space to deal with the intensity of the connection. My tight, curly hair fluffed like fur in the tropical breeze, while my skin had already dried tight with a white sheen in the sun. When I found my reflection in the water, I noticed how my eyes were also wind burned, outlined in red, like I had braved a great sand harmattan, or flown there without wings. I refused to ask myself where Andri was. I didn¡¯t want to know. So I kept singing to myself instead, to avoid thinking about her. If Andri had not followed me to this new Scape, which resembled a Vacation Scape, she had lied to me. She wasn¡¯t a mind trespasser after all. Andri must have been a figment of my imagination instead, or a figment of a past recollection, stored secretly in a corner of my subconscious. Perhaps I was too distracted by Andri¡¯s exotic beauty to see the slightest connection. Or maybe, Andri had originated from a former vulnerability I had suppressed in myself for the purpose of forgetting it. If this was the case, Andri was the personification of a previous pain. Maybe a relationship break up. So I wasn¡¯t about to recall her in this apparent paradise. It might have been a better idea to forget her altogether. Block her out from entering any train of thought, no matter how fast that train was speeding along towards another Scape. Unlike my first impression of Andri, this island was familiar to me. As deserted as it was, I had seen it before. Or imagined it. A large, rocky mountain emerged above the palm tree line. I wasn¡¯t thinking shelter, but I was thirsty and assumed a lagoon situated itself at the foot of the rocky terrain, containing water I could drink. The ocean timed its waves in foaming patterns creating a warm breeze upon my back as I walked away from it. ¡°Stay in the sun, always stay in the sun,¡± was advice that surfaced, randomly, as I walked into the shaded flora. The adage must have resurfaced from another Dreamscape episode, or from one of my previous lifetimes. It sounded sincere. And I believed I could apply the advice to much more than my current situation on this deserted island. If I stayed in the sun, I might see a boat crossing. Or maybe the boat would see me, darkened and dry, but alive in the sun. My curiosity to explore the island in this Scape compelled me to keep walking. I sensed unknowns in the area and they would make incredible distractions. My recent episode in the War Scape had obviously expired. That Gamescape was over. And Andri was just another passing character in the game of these artificial lives. There were many others like her, I concluded, forcing myself to play the devil¡¯s advocate, but none that seemed to understand my instincts so intimately. Wasn¡¯t that the goal in a previous, origin lifetime, when I once possessed tangible realities like family, friends, and physical lovers? Another anomaly from the War Scape I couldn¡¯t explain to myself - I could feel Andri as a physical reality more than a dream reality. There was an awkwardness to our love making. The scents were organic, like our skin could turn sour once we stopped. ¡°Stop thinking about her,¡± I spoke out loud, trying to find a song that could hold the distraction long enough to forget Andri. ¡°Don¡¯t even say her name.¡± Names inspired thoughts, and thoughts inspired Scapes. As I sifted through the brush, I welcomed the distracting scent of charring wood filtering the salt breeze. My stomach reacted to this atmospheric change in the air with a pang of hunger. I was not the only one traversing the island, but also exploring it as a survivor, or so it felt to my instincts. Whoever created the smoke was doing so for the same purpose, cooking a meal to survive another day. As I wander lusted, I wondered what specific train of thought transported me to this island. It might have been an afterthought because I hadn¡¯t consciously thought my way there. I learned, by trial and error, that when I completely embraced a thought, as I had done with the War Scape, I was practically torpedoed to the Scape instantly. But afterthoughts could also randomly jettison me into a dream I was not motivated to attend or participate in. The intensity of the last War Scape must have inspired this afterthought, so I was trying to piece together the puzzle of this transition to the island. Perhaps my connection to Andri was so strong that the afterthought had focused on finding rest and a place of solace to reflect upon it. The island was Mediterranean in design, or possibly Caribbean. It was constructed as a warm paradise, the direct opposite from the cold, damp, war torn piazza from the War Scape. But what explained the fire, the survival smoke slithering upwards at the top of the mountain, the smell of meat cooking? As always, I resigned to follow my primal instincts. I was hungry, so my stomach would lead the way. And I was interested, so my curiosity would follow shortly behind. If I should encounter danger, it would be worth the risk to satisfy my hunger ¨C the mantra of every castaway. Where the forest met the rock, I finally found the lagoon, as I first anticipated. Cerulean blue and as placid as an iced over lake, I dove into it with my mouth open. I emerged refreshed. My hair had flattened against my back, and my skin had softened in the silk embrace of the water. I breathed in water happily and floated in my lightness of being. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°Don¡¯t think of anywhere else,¡± I instructed myself. I wasn¡¯t prepared yet to leave this Scape, even if it was a reactionary travel. And yet, I found it difficult not to think of Andri¡¯s hair floating over me like the clouded sky up above. The smoke at the top of the mountain seemed to create the clouds in the same hue as the rock mountain. Spurts of sunshine broke through to glisten on the water like tumbling jewels. ¡°Andri?¡± When I called out to her, the name echoed through the caves. No response. No one from the top of the mountain peered over, or dove into the lagoon from the immense height to join her in the tranquility of fresh water. After cupping more water into my mouth, I doggie paddled myself over to a rock to begin my climb. Not as treacherous as I first assumed it would be, I walked by a number of caves that appeared like they were hewn out with man-made chisels from a primitive people. Had I read about this place before, or visited in my origin lifetime? In all of my previous lifetimes, origin or virtual, I had never ventured to an island alone. Not even a resort on an island. I had never experienced respite in any of these lifetimes, only personal tragedy under the illusion that I was happy. As I continued to climb, I anticipated a trick, a sleight of hand, or worse yet, a disappointment lurking at the top of the mountain. The closer I climbed to the peak, the more I detected the salty flavour of the meat cooking over fire at the top. It was definitely an animal being prepared to eat at a civilized temperature, most likely a pig. I wasn¡¯t sure why this thought came to mind first, but it did, and when I finally reached the top, it didn¡¯t surprise me to see a pig on a spic. Surrounding the pig were a group of young boys. They were not primitive or native to the land. They were blond and white skinned, although many of them were tinted orange by the sun. Some wore face paint. Others wore tied rags to cover their privates. Upon seeing me, they reacted defensively with their spears. Although they were threatened by my intrusion, I wasn¡¯t afraid of them, or their advantage in numbers. They were too young, too fictional, and I had realized then and there my mind had relocated me to a story I had read when I attended a traditional school in my origin lifetime, before The Final Collapse, before the Dreamscape Domination. When I waited for yellow busses to take me to school, and when I sat obediently in a self-contained desk. ¡°Are you The Beastie,¡± asked one of the younger boys. I giggled. I couldn¡¯t help myself. I wanted to answer yes with a straight face, just to see how they would react. They would surely rush at me and push me from the cliff, or drop a stone on my head, just as they had done to Piggy in the novel Lord of the Flies. ¡°No, I¡¯ve come to save you.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t want to be saved.¡± ¡°Are you sure? I saw the smoke signal.¡± ¡°We want to stay here, forever.¡± ¡°Where are the other boys?¡± I was obviously alluding to the democratic sect of group, the one in opposition to this band of hunters. ¡°We ate them,¡± answered the leader with leaves tied into his blond locks. This story arc was not a part of the original story I had studied in high school. It read like an alternative ending, a ¡°choose¡± which ending your preferred type of authorial offering. ¡°You ate the civilized boys?¡± They nodded affirmatively. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°They wanted to be rescued. We don¡¯t need to be rescued.¡± At once I read their intention above their confession. They were not afraid of my authoritative presence. I was older than them, an adult, or so they would regard me in any other context but the island. But they weren¡¯t staring at me with obedience, and they were not about to cry as they had in the original story, at the very end, when the military man found them after the island was set on fire by the hunters. Instead, they were sizing me up with their appetites. I was a delicacy much more in demand than the pigs on the island. The story had muted into something much more primal and ugly. So I changed my position. ¡°I am the Lord of the Flies.¡± They shrieked back. ¡°I am the Devil of the island.¡± They convened to discuss amongst their visible panic. I could hear ¡°black skin¡± repeated numerous times in their debated arguments. ¡°You will obey my wishes.¡± Now, all of them reacted obediently, almost in supplication. They knelt and began worshipping me. A gang of white skinned, blond boys extended their arms out in reverence of my godly presence. And then, the story mutated into another obscene direction. The leader¡¯s face transformed to resemble him - Jonas. My own ghost of relationships past, Jonas, with his red beard in the frame of this young boy¡¯s blond locks, strewn with leaves. Jonas, the man who hurt me beyond repair in an origin lifetime. My first love. A cruel, heart cracker. I shook my head noticeably, to shake away the resemblance. The boy¡¯s face had transformed back to its original pubescent one. Was my mind playing tricks on me? The prolonged silence reminded me they were waiting on my next command. ¡°Feed me my meat!¡± The leader prodded one of the boys with his spear to cut me a piece. I pointed to a rock for him to place it before me, as they would a sacrifice to a deity. ¡°You cannot touch me, or else you will perish.¡± He scurried back and I had to withhold a smile, as well as my anxious hunger. I needed to demonstrate spiritual control over physical sustenance first. I understood the story they were a part of more than they did, which made me the invisible author who controlled them with his creative imagination, who believed their story needed ¡°to be.¡± I retrieved the steaming meat and satisfied my hunger. Unsalted and without spice, it tasted more like burnt fur. The boys were too amateur to skin the pig properly. ¡°You will be rescued, but not by me. I am a Devil that curses. I don¡¯t save, I kill.¡± They inched back, almost to the brink of the cliff. I worried my words were too strong to control them without threat. They kept stepping back, even when I didn¡¯t voice them. They would surely fall of their own accord if I didn¡¯t scream ¡°halt,¡± but I stepped closer to issue this command, they reacted with too much fear. Once one slipped, others followed, while some voluntarily jumped to die by the same pattern. I rushed over to the edge to witness a scattered spill of fallen bodies, strewn about the rocky bottom, right next to the lagoon. Not one of them fell in the water. In the distance, the thunder of a helicopter¡¯s blades interrupted the peace of a blue sky. I decided I wasn¡¯t going to wait for the rescue. I would escape into another Scape. This time, I was prepared to kill anything that resembled Jonas, my origin ghost, who continued to haunt me, even in a paradise. Chapter 5 - BEKKS Chapter 5 - Bekks I decided to paint a Scape to properly exist in, one that replicated my origin lifetime. I held a brush in one hand and a colour palette in the other. I had entered a vintage, Art Scape. The room resembled a formal art studio, and the lighting was dim and warm. I wasn¡¯t sure how I found it, and was less sure if it found me first, before pulling me in, disregarding my own trains of thought. This side Scape might have been triggered by my conversation with Juve in the drug den, like keyword advertising tailored to suit the subliminal interests of a potential consumer. All I remember is floating up from the drug den after visiting the cemetery on the lake, and then landing in front of a blank canvas. The paint brushes and colour palette were prepped for me. I wonder if Juve staged the whole temptation, to trick me into creating again. This seemed very plausible. It was just like him to assume he could read my thoughts. So, I resolved to trick him back. I would create a tableau from my origin past. I had never tried it before, but maybe by painting an origin reality, I could create the Rabbit Hole I was looking for, a portal to a true reality Scape. How different could that reality be from the art representing it, I asked myself, as I took hold of the pain brushes, testing their pliancy. And if I wasn¡¯t permitted to travel to an origin lifetime through Scaping, why not create it myself. All I needed was a setting and some characters, which seemed to be the foundation of any reality, even the virtual ones in Dreamscape Domination. So I painted away with the belief that if I were precise enough, it might introduce the whereabouts of the Rabbit Hole. The setting of my origin scene was a circle. Not an actual circle, but a cul de sac, or what they called the neighborhood where I lived with my family in an origin lifetime. The street name was posted on a pole at the corner of the circle and it read, Keholme Cr. in white against a green plate. When asked where I lived by anyone, especially my teachers, I would automatically answer Keholme Circle for some reason, instead of Keholme Crescent. Maybe it sounded better to a child, the concept of circle over crescent, the idea of perpetual over a slice of the moon. Seven houses occupied the plot of land in this tiny crescent, so I began designing each of the houses with my virtual paintbrush as they appeared in my memory. I remembered each of the houses specifically because I once played with the children living, like me, in this protected little hamlet of houses. The first house on the corner was the light grey brick one. This home stood out because the rest of the homes in the crescent were brown and red brick. This one was tall and rose two stories high, featuring cast iron fake balconies covering the windows for decoration. Giovanni lived there, with his parents. Giovanni was a kid at heart for the rest of his life, but a hairy man. He was considered slow, according to his intelligence, but he became the gatekeeper to the circle. He waved at every car that pulled in, or at every neighbor who walked by. Curly, wiry hair meshed his body irritating red pimples underneath, while a chalky, yellow substance permanently sheened his teeth. Next to Giovanni¡¯s house lived my Aunt Marie. Aunt Marie was left by my uncle, for a taller, tattooed lady, but her twins, Pan and Pi, boy and girl, were my age in the memory. I painted Pi¡¯s baby blue dress and Pan¡¯s brown corduroy pants. The scene was coming together as they chased each other in between houses and into backyards with freshly laundered sheets fluttering from clotheslines. As I inserted more detail, the scene on the canvas vibrated, like it was adrenalized to create itself by my invention. Some invisible artificial intelligence challenged control over the creation of the visuals, before I took the time to manually trace out the outlines. Before long, I was working in tandem with this invisible force, to construct this memory microcosm from my origin lifetime. Now, moving cars drove in and out, and bicycles raced each other against big wheels on the gravelly circle asphalt. With help from this invisible force, the still tableau had become a moving film. Other adult neighbours manicured lawns with clippers, while an elderly grandfather sat on the front porch across the street from my home, smoking homemade cigarettes and observing the activity with an evil eye. Mr. Hunter. He presided over our play in the time between three o¡¯clock, when the bus dropped us off at the street sign, to five o¡¯clock, when the adult headlamps paraded into the circle, separating like a centipede into garages or oil stained cemented driveways. But Mr. Hunter didn¡¯t move. I stepped back from the canvas. I wasn¡¯t smelling the metallics of the colours anymore. I was beginning to detect cigarette smoke and whatever else scented him Mr. Hunter from an opened bottle next to his lawn chair. Lily, his granddaughter, and my best friend, said he needed it to breathe, like medicine, or Vaseline on his chest. Mr. Hunter never left his porch, except when it was too dark to find a light. Stolen novel; please report. Lily, a blonde, pig tailed girl with green, Irish undertones in her reddish skin colour, never liked to talk about her grandfather. He was a war hero, or so the medal he wore on his pajamas indicated. His skin was leather worn and lined with age, and his hair streaked silver grey in the slick of grease that allowed Mr. Hunter to comb it behind his ears, where it winged out. Although I had hoped to create a literal reality, something as close to real origin life as possible, I understood the scene was resembling an hallucination, or a mirage. Sooner or later, it would dissipate into the same air from which it was created, only to fade to a dully grey canvass, similar to the ashtray on Mr. Hunter¡¯s porch. If that were to happen, I would entertain a train of thought and transport myself back to the Drug Scape. These were comfort escapes to me. And only the Drug Scapes could soothe this violent longing to return home. My real home on Keholme Crescent. Finding that permanent Rabbit Hole to satisfy this longing was not so easy in the Dreamscape Domination Scapes. But I had a gut feeling. I would find it one day, like an undiscovered black hole in an astrological universe. And it would suck me into an entity that defied time, that created warps. And I would return home for good, with another chance to live what I had taken for granted at such a young age in my origin lifetime. ¡°Bekks, let¡¯s move closer to your house,¡± Lily spoke out loud from the heart of the scene, the road between our two driveways. It was like breaking the fourth wall in reverse. I was the creator of the scene invited into the canvass to experience my art with the characters emerging from it. When Lily spoke to me bright colour raced in to fill in the empty spaces, like a child had taken my place to recklessly colour in the remaining spaces with crayons. The colour for each of the subjects in the scene had crossed the dimension outlines, like a piece more abstract in nature. ¡°Why, Lily? Your driveway is smoother. Our skateboards will move faster on it.¡± Lily tilted her head to the side. ¡°My grandpa. I don¡¯t want him looking at you.¡± ¡°He stares at everyone, Lily.¡± ¡°Yes, but he only looks at a few. It¡¯s disgusting,¡± Lily lowered her voice to a whisper. Inside the scene and out, I regarded my younger self in the same way I would a documentary, or a biography of my childhood, which was rather objectively. As a young, school girl I thought nothing of Lily¡¯s warning, then. But as I aged a little more, I had learned more of Mr. Hunter, and why they chained his leg to the iron railing of the porch. Why chain such an old man who refused to move, I once questioned, even openly to Lily. And then the streetlights came on in the scene. All of the children returned to their homes with the lighted windows. Except for Lily and I. We refused to go in, or was it Lily who stalled the exodus inside. I remembered it more as a pact. We wouldn¡¯t go in until our parents were angry enough to command us inside. ¡°Can I sleep over your house?¡± Lily asked often. ¡°Yes, but it¡¯s a school night.¡± ¡°What does it matter? Will your parents mind.¡± They did mind, I remembered. No friends over during night time hours on a school night. ¡°What if I stay in your garage? I can sleep in your father¡¯s car, Bekks.¡± Lily was insistent, but I didn¡¯t see it the same way then, in the context of getting in trouble with my parents. Instead, I perceived her begging as flattery. My best friend never wanted to leave me, like the sister I had always prayed for after my brother disappeared. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Lily, but my parents will get mad.¡± Lily¡¯s face turned a maroon colour, like it was bruised and blushed at the same time. When we were teenagers, Lily found clever ways to crash over my house. Over such sleepless nights, Lily introduced me to alcohol binges and drug experimentation. We would pass out often as teenagers. But by that time, it was only my mother and I living in the home on Keholme Crescent. My father had fallen in the garage and couldn¡¯t wake up in the hospital, despite the attention he was receiving from all of us. ¡°I¡¯m in love with this escape to your house. Isn¡¯t it always the best adventure?¡± Lily was excited. She opened her closed first to a handful of red and yellow pills. ¡°I know what you mean,¡± I agreed, pointing to the art I had created to decorate our spider webbed basement. I had taken an art class at the hospital, for family members in need of therapy. ¡°Does your art take you to another place too,¡± Lily proceeded to share one of the red pills, placing one onto my tongue, before she stood up to peer into the piece I brought home from the hospital. I nodded yes. It was the first time I believed in something inside of me. ¡°I can live with you forever, Bekks, if you only say yes.¡± ¡°My mother will get upset. It¡¯s a school night.¡± ¡°School won¡¯t help us escape for good, Bekks. It will only lock us up for good.¡± The tableau colours turned a shade of gray on the heels of her words, like they had the power to make life black and white with a short sprint. After the images depleted their colour and passed this black and white stage, they resembled drawings in a comic book, printed on cheaper newsprint. One of the edges caught fire like a virus, and the scene eventually curled into smoke and a pile of ashes. I recognized the hint and wisped away into a safer Drug Scape.