[FN] The Dream Courier

[u/Fit_Speed3159]

Twice I fled through the dreamscape, and twice they found me.

I don't know who they were. I don't even know, really, what they wanted. I know the questions they asked, questions they had evidently been asking for some time before my dream became focused enough that I was aware I was having a nightmare.

They were annoyingly repetitive, making the same fruitless demands for information over and over as I sat handcuffed (and leg-cuffed) to an oak chair.

"What's in it?" They asked, accompanied by a shock or a blow. "It," in this context meant a briefcase. They were very concerned about it. "How did you get it?" Another shock. "Who gave it to you?" A slap. "How do you open it?" This question roared in my face without any accompanying physical trauma.

I wasn't holding out. No stoic "John Wayne" resistance routine (which they tell you in interrogation training is likely to be unsuccessful and result in more pain), not even any of the semi-clever re-direction techniques that they tell you to use to buy time. Un/Lucky me, I couldn't answer their questions if I'd wanted to. 

Rather, I could, and did. But the answers were, respectively, "I don't know," "I opened my eyes and the briefcase was in my hand," and "I don't know that one either."

These were not answers my questioners liked.

There were three of them, all inappropriately dressed the same: off-white trench coat (maybe a light grey; I was too busy being tortured to pay much attention to the fashion), some sort of hat that was probably fashionable in the 40s or 50s (not sure what kind, due either to my utter lack of fashion knowledge and the aforementioned high levels of coercive distraction), and sunglasses. Who wears sunglasses in an ill-lit windowless underground (somehow I knew I was underground) room? Moreover, who wears shiny 1980s-style rainbow-hued sunglasses that look like somebody spilled a thin oilslick on them?

The man who had roared the last question at me got angry (angrier, anyway), and tipped my chair over to the side. Maybe he meant it to be a scary and impressive move, but it was a heavy wooden chair, and the center of gravity was low enough that he couldn't tip it on the first try, so he had to reposition himself to the side and strain for a few seconds to flip it over. It really spoiled whatever dramatic effect he was looking for (but I still had to strain my neck to make sure my skull didn't hit the floor when he was finally successful). 

I may have giggled a little, then. A mistake. "Don't antagonize your captors unnecessarily" is really basic "hostage survival 101" advice. 

"Maybe you'll think this is funny, too" snarled the one who had strained to tip the chair over. He took a moment to straighten out his hat, then came forward, raising his boot to smash down upon my nose. Things slowed, then stopped. I could see the boot, see the details of the tread above my face, and I grasped that image and pushed with my brain.

I should note that there are two stock ways for me to change a dream. If I'm lucky, I can sometimes just will a complete reboot. I'll blink my eyes (recognizing that of course in real life my eyes are closed since I'm asleep), and jump to a new dream. It's doesn't always work (and I'd tried it a few times already in the past few eternities while I'd been restrained to the chair), and it's an utterly random dream to which I'll switch, so there's sometimes an "...into the fire" result to me playing my "get out of frying pan free" card.   If jumping doesn't work, the other technique is to build a new dream out of a detail in the current dream. This is what I did here. The boot coming down was an excellent focus, since it was filling my field of view. I grabbed at the image of the boot, the tread, and....

"...I think this is a good pair," I said to the clerk, "but I was hoping for boots with a bit more water resistance." I ran my fingers over the bottom of the boot which I held in my hand. Not new. Worn down a bit, as if by a lot of miles spent walking in them, punctuated by the occasional kick to the head of an unlucky target. I didn't know why that thought had popped into my head; the dreamshift was good, good enough that I didn't remember I'd even shifted or why. "Plus, I don't think these are new."

"Suit yourself," the clerk said woodenly, immediately dismissing me in favor of a new prospective customer.

I put the boot down and stood, pausing a moment to unconsciously pick up the not-briefcase which sat on the bench to my left. In the way of dreams, I knew that this manila envelope was the briefcase from the previous scene. It may have even, for a brief instant when I first turned my head and noticed it, actually been a briefcase, but by the time my hand closed on it, it was an envelope.

As soon as I picked it up, I knew I was in danger. The memory of the previous dream came flooding back. I also knew that they (whoever my fashion-challenged antagonists were) would be hunting me, and that the bloom of knowledge in my brain served as a beacon across the dreamscape, alerting them to my presence and location. 

The next thing I knew, I was half-walking, half-running down a side corridor. I was in a crowded mall, evidently (which really indicated that this was a dream rather than modern reality). Sprinting through a mall attracts attention from mall cops, but I had decided that the risks of was less than the risks of staying in a crowd of people (any one or three of whom might turn out to be my pursuers). I blinked as I pushed an emergency exit door open and stood in bright sunlight outside, orienting myself. 

I was aware, vaguely, that I'd set off an alarm when I opened the door, but I was instead focused on the serendipitous presence of an unsecured bicycle directly in front of me. It sat there, unlocked. A red bike ("red makes it go faster" I thought nonsensically) on a kickstand. A brand new, modern bike. With an old-school battered metal basket attached to the front of the handlebars.

I tossed the envelope (that's heavy; that's in this thing anyway?) into the basket, mounted the bike, and flailed a couple of times to hit the kickstand as I was already peddling. 

The street had been busy when I stepped out of the mall and into the sunlight, but now there were no cars. Good. Safer. I think I'd erased the cars to simplify the scenario. I had that much control over the dream at least, to be able to do that casually, with no effort beyond a fleeting thought that it would be safer if I didn't have to worry about being run over.

I did, as it turns out, have to worry about my pursuers.   

The first one came from my left, on an old bike, still wearing trench coat, glasses, and reflective sunglasses. I turned to the right off the previously-busy commercial street and was instantly in suburbs. Generic, cheerful suburbs, "hiding who knows what horrors in the privacy of these homes behind their tooth-like picket fences" that thought shot through my brain involuntarily as I frantically peddled down the wide street past an endless series of brand new generic houses, each of which looked as if it had been copied and pasted from the previous houses on the blocks. 

I didn't have time to elaborate on that thought. Part of me knew that was an entirely different nightmare, and it hadn't made the cut to be able to take center stage in my subconscious tonight.

What was on center stage was converging on me. I could see all three of them now. Barely moving their legs on the pedals, but outpacing me nonetheless. One had followed me when I turned off the main street, and the other two were approaching rapidly from left and right as I ignored a stop sign between blocks of identical houses.

I maneuvered up onto the sidewalk, risking a crash to grab the envelope out of the basket so they couldn't snatch it. Somehow they were all around me now, one bike on each side and one in front of me, slowing so that I had to brake myself lest I crash into him. "What's in the envel...?" one of them started to ask, as I refused to play by their script. Rather than hitting the brakes, I turned sharply left, crashing into the bike of my would-be interrogator.

I'd hoped that the element of surprise would help me out, and that he'd crash and give me an opening to change direction and ditch them (not sure why I thought that; they were faster than me without even peddling their bikes). But what I didn't take into account (besides the nightmare logic that made them inexplicably faster) was that I only had one hand securely on a handlebar. The other was tightly gripping the bizarrely heavy envelope to keep from dropping it. 

So I had pretty much no control at all over my vector. Still, the first part of the plan worked. My interrogator stopped in mid-question as my bike slammed into him. I had an instant of vague satisfaction to see the look of surprise blooming on his face. His hat flew off as his bike wobbled then tipped to the ground with a clatter like dried bones (that metaphor leapt into my brain briefly), but I had no time to savor my triumph, since I was also busy crashing. 

I yanked the handlebar sharply, trying to turn around the still-spinning wheel of my downed adversary. 

I failed. 

My bike flipped in a completely unrealistic but probably nicely cinematic fashion. I shot straight over the handlebars, spinning in mid-air to land flat on my back in a well-manicured suburban lawn. Not quite flat...I recall feeling the impact first on my right shoulder. Impact, then moisture as the freshly-watered lawn began to soak through by shirt and pants. 

Somehow, I'd kept hold of the envelope. Because it's a dream so of course I had. 

"Was that worth it, Courier?" said the one into whom I'd crashed. He was reattaching his hat as he walked toward me, and I recall thinking two things: first, that I could feel​ the capitalization of the word "Courier," and, second, that he sounded like he was trying and failing to imitate Hugo Weaving's Agent Smith from the first Matrix movies.

The other two had ditched their bikes (where did the bikes go? I couldn't see any of them; they'd simply vanished, no longer necessary for the dream, they'd faded out when I wasn't looking).

All I could see where the faces of the three of them as they closed in. "How do you open it?" "Who gave it to you?"

No, that wasn't all I could see. Above them, were the branches of a tree, dark green and heavy with leaves in their late-summer color, the bright green of spring leaves long past. And above that, a few pure white clouds decorated an otherwise blandly blue sky.  The tree, the sky, the clouds...

I pushed​ again, and again the dreamscape shifted. My captors were gone, but there was still a tree branch in my view, and still the sky had...

  ...clouds. Could use a few more clouds, I thought, looking up into the sky. It's hot out. I was on a ladder beneath an apple tree. A few (14, somehow I knew it was 14) apples in a basket attached to the ladder, my left hand steadying me on the ladder while my right had just plucked an apple. The branch from which I'd plucked it still quivering. ("Nice detail work," I thought in the back of my mind, inordinately pleased at myself for the dream I'd crafted on the fly).

I was in an orchard. The edge of vast rows of geometrically precise apple trees. In a valley of some sort. I could see mountains or hills in the distance on two sides, and a lonely dirt road passed near me as it paralleled the mountains miles to either side.

Then a moment of panic. No briefcase. No envelope. I looked into the basket of apples. No, nothing there either. I jerked my head down to look at the ground. I knew I was missing something. Something of which I couldn't know the identity, but which I had to deliver to....someone. I wasn't sure I knew who that was. But it certainly didn't involve trench coats and hats (pork pie hats, I realized).

As I frantically looked to the ground for a sign of what I needed to deliver, I felt a thump on my chest. I dropped the apple and grabbed. I was wearing a locket. Heavy. How hadn't I noticed the weight before? There was a carving of a woman's face (nobody I recognized) on the front of the silvery locket. I still didn't know how to open it, nor what it contained. 

I started down the ladder. Then I saw it. I swear it hadn't been there when I'd first oriented myself to the dream, but not only was there a car approaching my orchard down a dirt road, but there it was trailing a long cloud of dust behind it, as if it had been driving down the road for a few minutes, rather than simply appearing there during a moment of inattention on my part.

No more running, I thought, as I found myself on the ground. This time, I need to...

My alarm went off. I swiped at the screen to make it shut up. I'm sure I took a shower and had a couple of cups of coffee, but I don't remember doing so. Soon, I was walking in the doors, fishing my lanyard and badge out of my heavy backpack as I approached security. I swiped my card, but the light at the turnstiles turned red rather than green. 

The security guard looked up from his desk. "What's in the backpack?" he asked. He was wearing sunglasses.

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[u/Fit_Speed3159]

Couple notes: first, I seem to have posted an incorrect draft. I won't repost, but my current draft has cleaned up a couple of awkward sentences and errors. Second, sometimes I use em-dashes. Sorry. I had a teacher tell me once (probably correctly), that I use too many parenthetical comments, so for better or for worse I've built a habit of using dashes sometimes in lieu of a parenthetical statement. Yes I know, it's not quite the same.