Dreamslave

Chapter 2

Nevertheless, Alice spent most of her lunch hours trading messages with him. She knew that he was lonely too and probably as unlovable as she was. It didn’t matter whether he was really a gangly teenager or a paraplegic; in her mind, he was always slouched over his keyboard, wearing a sweat stained fedora and chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes, wincing occasionally at the twinge of old wounds, remembering Paris.

That was her life, until the dreams began.

Alice grunted with effort as she sat up on the bed and reached for the clock. “I’m too young to feel so old,” she thought. Outside, winter refused to die. The vacant lot next door was still grey with rotting snow, and trash lay half interred under the skeletal remains of last year’s weeds.

She remembered her dream. Odd that it stayed so clear, but it had been unnaturally vivid. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair. She was surprised to find it damp.

“I must have been sweating in my sleep,” she explained to the empty room. It could hardly have been the rain in her dream, after all.

She had no appetite for any breakfast that morning, strange for a woman who was usually a hearty eater, and left for work with nothing but coffee to sustain her. She arrived early and went directly to her station.

Consulting her calendar there, she saw that she was scheduled to see the company psychiatrist at ten. It was a routine visit. Company policy required all employees to see the shrink twice a year. She never knew if the purpose of the policy was to boost morale or ferret out potentially unstable employees. The visits were always an ordeal for her. The shrink was an old pipe smoker who welcomed her to his confessional couch where she spoke of her loneliness and self-hatred. He listened without sympathy then told her in his detached and professional manner to get a life. She hated him.

She couldn’t face this day without talking to Rick.

“Good morning, Rick,” she typed.

He was there. He was always there. “Good morning, Alice.”

“I dreamed about you last night.”

“Sounds like a real nightmare LOL! Funny, though, I dreamed about you too. We were at a party. You’re a babe!”

She stared at the message for a long moment, reminding herself that it was only a simple coincidence. “Hardly,” she replied. She felt a flush rising to her cheeks. It had never occurred to her that she might be the object of his fantasies too. She quickly dismissed her next thought, the eerie possibility that she and Rick had communicated through telepathy while asleep, that they had both appeared as idealized versions of themselves in a shared dream.

“Speaking of dreams,” wrote Rick. “I have a bootleg program for you—a real mind blower. Way better than just gaming. (And you didn’t get it from me!)”

She was unimpressed. Rick was always discovering the next greatest thing, but she downloaded it and saved it on disk.

“Dr. Deluse will see you now.”

Alice was surprised when the receptionist (an anorexic walking stick and Alice resented her for it) spoke the unfamiliar name. Change always made Alice wary, and she was put off that her usual doctor had deserted her, taking her secrets with him.

“What happened to Dr. Prober?” asked Alice. The office door opened, and a tall, large boned woman in a grey suit stood in the doorway smiling at Alice.

“He has retired,” she said. “You must be Alice Underland. Call me Jane.” The therapist’s office had been redecorated. Behind the desk, a reproduction of a painting by Fuseli had been hung.

The picture showed a demon crouched on the chest of a sleeping woman. Alice could not imagine why such a disturbing picture had been placed there. The ugly but comfortable old sofa that Alice usually occupied during her sessions had been replaced by a leather divan. Alice lay stiffly upon it, arranging her skirt for maximum modesty, disliking the feel of the leather against her fingers and legs. It was like reclining in the palm of a giant hand. Alice looked over at Dr. Deluse. The woman had seated herself on the edge of her desk, deliberately informal. Dr. Prober had always made a fortress of his desk, not even rising to see Alice out. The familiarity made her uneasy.

Jane Deluse had disturbing eyes that seemed to phase from brown, to grey, to green as she studied her subject. She sat with her legs extended and crossed at the ankle. Her shoulders were back, and she had one fist braced against her hip while she twirled a pencil with the other. There was an unsettling restless energy in the woman.

“Is there anything that you would like to talk about?” asked the doctor.

“Do you want to hear about the high school football player who publicly humiliated me when I told him I had a crush on him?” Alice said, a little defensively.

“Not if you don’t feel like talking about it. Men are beasts anyway. Maybe you have a more interesting topic in mind.”

Alice glanced again at the doctor. Dr. Prober would have asked her how she felt about that, and that would have been her invitation to throw a pity party. The party would end with another one of his standard lectures on taking responsibility for one’s own happiness. Go and sin no more. Alice was temporarily at a loss for words.

“I had a dream last night,” she said at last. “Excellent!” said Dr. Deluse. “I find dreams endlessly fascinating. Tell me about it.”

Alice related her dream.

“Dreams are the mind’s way of sorting things out,” Dr. Deluse explained. “The subconscious keeps on working all the time. Sometimes it offers us solutions to problems through dreams or confronts us with the fears we deny while awake. The false reality of dreams brings us symbols, forgotten memories, even premonitions. Our dreams tell us who we are.”

“So what does my dream tell you?” asked Alice.

Dr. Deluse pondered this, tapping a pencil against her teeth. “I think that you are lonely. You want more excitement and romance in your life. You want to be beautiful and desired.”

Alice sniffed. “Who doesn’t want all of those things?”

Dr Deluse laughed, displaying strong, sharp teeth.

“You’re right, of course, but most people find at least some of the things they seek. I think that you feel ugly and unloved.”

“Let’s be real,” said Alice bitterly. “I am ugly.”

“Not really. Stand up straight and smile. Do something with that hair,” she laughed to soften the edge of her criticism. “Maybe you don’t have the figure of a runway model, but you would be surprised at how many people find a woman attractive when she has a little meat on her bones.”

Like Dr. Prober, she was laying the blame on Alice, yet somehow, the advice seemed more helpful coming from her. She made Alice feel almost optimistic.

“What else does my dream tell you?” she asked.

“It shows me that you have an active and vivid imagination. Do you dream in color?”

“Of course, doesn’t everyone?”

The doctor shook her head. “No, it’s rather uncommon. Do you ever have lucid dreams? What I mean is, are you aware that you are dreaming during your dreams?”

Alice thought a moment. “Sometimes. Once in awhile I feel myself waking, and I force myself back to sleep so that I can finish the dream.” Too late, she realized what she was admitting, that sleep was preferable to her dreary waking life.

The doctor seemed excited by this news and turned to her desk to seize a clipboard and scribble a note to herself. Writing, she said, “I am affiliated with a clinic in Boston where they do dream research. Would you be interested in going there as a research volunteer?”

“This isn’t your way of getting me to commit myself?” Alice joked.

“Is this some deep seated fear we’re talking about here?” asked the doctor. “Do you have an obsessive aversion to men in white coats?”

Then, seeing that Alice’s face suddenly fell, the doctor favored her with another of her easy laughs holding up her hands to signal a time out. “Hey! Just kidding, okay? I really do need volunteers though, and I promise that nothing painful or embarrassing will happen to you there. I could even arrange time off for you—with pay.” There was something coy in her voice that made Alice suspicious.

“I don’t think so” Alice demurred.

Dr. Deluse just shrugged. “Think it over. It could be fun. Would you mind scheduling another visit next week? You may be suffering from depression, and I can help you with it.”

She wrote a prescription that Alice threw in the first trash bin she saw on the street.

Alice sat in front of her keyboard wearing only her nightgown and holding the disk in her hand. In her dream, Rick told her that she would be given a disk. The next morning, the real Rick had sent her this program. Perhaps it was not such a coincidence. Computer disks were as much a part of her life as the movies she fed on; yet just holding this one sent an irrational chill through her. She almost wanted to throw it away.

She ran the program.

The first thing to appear on her screen was a warning. This program is the exclusive property of Muse Inc. Unauthorized use is illegal and potentially hazardous.

“Sure,” said Alice sarcastically. Many games began with bogus warnings, designed to give the illusion that users were participating in something forbidden. She continued.

The program that followed was a disappointment. While her monitor screen filled with images of happy people enjoying life, having picnics, running on the beach, and playing with children, a narrator spoke over the images. It was a baritone voice, speaking slowly, sounding bored.

“This is the Muse program, designed to put you in touch with your subconscious mind through subliminal suggestion and dream images. No effort is required on your part, simply relax and enjoy the video portion of this program while the patented Muse affirmations do the work for you. With a single use of this program, you will find yourself transported to the realm of the imagination. Though this technique is still experimental, most users have reported improvements in concentration, alertness, and attitude. Some have even experienced positive physical changes and incidents of synchronicity or extra sensory perception.

“Relax,” droned the voice. “Let the program work. If you feel sleepy, don’t try to stay awake. Let it flow through you. Feel the tension ebb from your muscles. You are warm and safe.

“Relax.”

Alice woke up face down in a ditch. She was completely soaked with rain water. Her shoes were gone and her evening gown was ruined. Something warm was running down her forehead. She reached up gingerly and found a small cut on her scalp that oozed blood.

“What the hell?” she muttered. Then she remembered.

There had been something waiting for them in the road, a board, bristling with thick spikes that flattened all four tires. The taxi had skidded and rolled, and her door had come open, throwing her clear. Frightened, she explored her body with cautious hands, feeling for injuries. She counted her teeth with her tongue. Her shoulder was scraped and bruised, but other than that, she seemed to be all right. She was shivering, but she didn’t know if that was caused by the cold rain or the first symptoms of shock.

“The driver!” she said, and rose shakily to her feet. When she stood, she saw an ambulance parked in front of the overturned car. Its lights were flashing. The road was littered with broken glass. Alice smelled spilled gasoline.

Two men leaped from the ambulance and squatted down to look inside the taxi cab. One of them reached into his white tunic for something.

“Help him!” Alice croaked. “He may be hurt!” One of the men stood up and peered into the darkness toward the sound of her voice. The other extended his hand into the window of the cab, toward the driver.

There was the flat, hard sound of a pistol shot.

Alice stood for a long moment, still seeing the after-image of the muzzle flash floating before her eyes, trying to mentally process this unexpected development. She was frozen with terror. These were no paramedics. They were ruthless men who intended to leave no witnesses behind.

And they were after her.

Alice spun on her heel, choosing a line of flight. The dark highway stretched before her. How long before a car would appear, some Good Samaritan who would take her away? Would the men in white run her down with the ambulance while she tried to flag it down?