Chapter 5 – Cognitive Lock
1095 Words
His tightening grip drew the card an inch closer to his palm.
The figure let go.
The hum collapsed outward into silence.
Jasper stared at the returned ticket. Same holographic seal, same strange expiry date.
He looked up the steps. The corridor behind him now seemed a full block away, though he’d only descended a handful of stairs.
When he stepped back, the air thickened almost resisting him.
One more retreating step and the stairwell around him shivered like a mirage. The green‑enameled tiles rippled, bending into angles that matched the dream’s impossible geometry.
Panic thudded in his throat. He turned for the exit.
The moment he did, the sloped corridor flashed white same impossible speed as the earlier office flicker and when his vision cleared, he was standing at his desk.
No steps, no corridor, no humming.
The ticket burned against his palm.
Across the aisle, Rhea’s voice came quick and casual “Meeting starts in ten.”
She was looking at him strangely, like she’d interrupted something.
Jasper’s monitor displayed a blank query window, the cursor blinking against an empty field.
On Rhea’s desk, the mug logo had rotated again.
He slipped the ticket into his pocket, heart still scraping against bone.
He didn’t bother answering her. He didn’t trust his voice to carry anything sane.
But somewhere, in a tiled space that might have been under the building or nowhere at all, he felt the shadow figure turning away.
Jasper didn’t remember leaving the building. One moment he was standing at the threshold of the sloped corridor, staring at the shadow clutching his lost ticket, and the next he was outside in stabbing afternoon light, head buzzing as if someone had actually reached in and flicked a switch.
The ticket was back in his pocket.
No fanfare, no handoff, no chase just a solid rectangle of card pressing against his palm through the coat fabric, warm, faintly pliable, impossible. He didn’t even take it out to check; each step toward his apartment felt like wading through syrup while his mind churned over the only two options his brain could conjure:
Either
(a) he was in the middle of some undiagnosed break with reality,
or
(b) the dream city the folding streets, the Delsane Hub, the shadow was not *just* a dream at all.
Both explanations knotted his stomach.
By the time he reached the familiar yellow door to Bartlett Street Apartments, his phone vibrated. Rhea: **You coming in tomorrow?**
Jasper thumbed back: *Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?*
She didn’t reply.
That night, he sat with the ticket on the kitchen table and a legal pad beside it. He wrote three column headings: **Dream Details**, **Waking Anomalies**, and **Possible Causes**. The list under Dream Details came fast: Folding geometry. Green railings. Metal dust taste. Shadow crowd. Ticket. Delsane Hub signage. Heat from nowhere.
Under Waking Anomalies, the ink hesitated before each bullet:
- Curved crack in sidewalk.
- Kiosk on Bartlett Street never there before.
- Ticket persisted after sleep.
- Photo of map corrupted except for Delsane Hub.
- Object/logo recognition mismatch (coffee mug, Rhea’s project watermark).
- Database address names matching dream stations.
- Corridor slope & station stairs in office.
Possible Causes stayed empty except for *dream bleed*, which he underlined twice. It still looked ridiculous in his own handwriting.
Sunday night bled into Monday morning without real rest.
He knew he’d have to mention *something* to someone. The obvious candidates were Rhea or Dr. Lang. Dr. Lang might treat it as a psychotic symptom; Rhea would dismiss it as him chasing patterns again. But the way Rhea had waved off the watermark yesterday smoother than reflex, almost *programmed* made him wonder if people couldn’t see certain anomalies at all without becoming unstable.
If he told her, would she even be able to recall what he said?
Work greeted him with the same lemon-polish scent and low server hum. The kiosk outside was still there intact, unmoved but he walked past without slowing.
At his desk, Rhea arrived a few minutes later, hair damp from rain.
“Rough weekend?” she asked, watching his eyes.
He thought of the ticket, of the shadow’s hand. “Weird dreams,” he managed.
She laughed politely. “You always have the weirdest ones.”
He almost launched into it then the stairwell in the corridor, the lost-and-returned ticket but her gaze slid away halfway through his inhale, distracted by a ping from her inbox.
It was like his opening to speak had been quietly closed.
The morning plodded toward his weekly one-on-one with Dr. Lang, a conference call shifted to a secure office on the second floor. Jasper went in armed with a stripped-down version of the truth: avoid folding streets, mention inconsistencies casually, test whether Lang noticed any odd detail.
Lang sat behind the small desk under fluorescent light, the potted plant in the corner exactly as last week except it wasn’t. Jasper remembered broad green leaves fanning outward; now, the plant had arching stems tipped with clusters of tiny white flowers. Same ceramic pot. Same position.
Jasper made no effort to hide his staring.
Lang noticed. “Something on your mind?”
“What kind of plant is that?” Jasper asked.
Lang glanced over his own shoulder. “It’s the same dracaena you keep staring at every session,” he said without pause. “Why?”
Jasper leaned back, not answering. Dracaenas didn’t sprout white blossoms not like that.
They talked about stress, sleep, the importance of not fixating on dream imagery. Jasper kept glancing at the plant. Once, its blossoms seemed to fade to pale green, then sharpen back to white under the room’s bland lighting. His voice faltered mid-sentence.
Lang didn’t react.
At the end of the session, Jasper decided on one direct test.
“I have something with me,” he said, pulling the ticket from his coat pocket, holding it flat between them. “Do you recognise this logo?”
Lang took the card, studied the sunburst-and-arc. “Sure. Transit Authority pass. They rolled out this design twenty years ago.”
Jasper’s lip went cold. “They did?”
“Always been in use here in the city,” Lang said, sliding it back across the desk. His eyes crinkled faintly. “Why? Lose yours?”
Jasper’s hand closed automatically over the card.
He didn’t bother to answer.
The walk back to his desk felt longer than it was. He sat down, put the ticket under the lip of his monitor, hidden from casual view.
- Writer
