It had been one of the good dreams last night. The ones where everything is so open and alive. I had stood by a cold stream during a warm day. All around the hills were covered with brown, green and gold. Plants lived everywhere. Off in the distance were low mountains, bluish-gray in the distance, and I had tried to go to them.
I roughly pulled my hand across my face as I broke from the memory. It gets tougher each time, I don’t want to leave the dreams, I don’t want to come back. They’re just about all I have. I sat down on the floor and leaned my head up against the bed. My hands were shaking.
A few seconds behind schedule I stepped out onto the street in uniform. I moved down the street in my usual manner, passing the same buildings and the same people, but from a ways away from the station I noticed something abnormal. The rear door was closed. A few people arrived before me, paused, and walked away. Once I reached the wall I noticed a sign stating that the station was being repaired and that we were to travel to one of the adjoining sectors and depart from their station.
I didn’t know where to go. I had never been to the adjoining sectors, I’ve seen a lot of this large city from a train, there are only a few small sectors which I have been to physically. I started walking, if I went far enough I’d end up in another district and I’d ask someone.
It’s a very large city. It was nearly an hour later before I spotted a District Center. The people inside directed me to the station. It was a strange experience. I eventually approached the station. The schedule was displayed outside and I looked it over trying to find the one I needed, once I had it I moved inside. The people were completely new. I thought I might recognize a few, but for the first time in a long time the people that surrounded me were completely unknown factors. They could be violent, kind or any number of other things and I wouldn’t know how to deal with them. I avoided eye contact and stood, as usual, hands in pockets, looking at the ground.
After a while I began to be unsure as to what time my train would arrive at, I had checked, but I just couldn’t be certain I was remembering the correct time anymore. I stepped out of line and went back outside amid the glares of people I squeezed past. There the time was, same as it had been before. It just didn’t seem possible, the train leaves at 4:34 every morning and here I was waiting for a train in the morning light nearly four hours later. Resisting the growing urge to go check once more, I moved back inside. I squeezed alongside the wall, back toward where I had been before. One woman put her arm against the wall a little ahead of me. As I approached I assumed she would move it once she became aware of me. I walked right into her arm and she turned and stared at me. I wasn’t sure what to do. I quickly apologized and ducked down to go under her arm, but she lowered it so that I couldn’t pass. Unsure of what to do, I moved to the end of the line. I checked the schedule to make sure I had the right time twice more before I left.
As the day neared completion I found myself in line for a train again, but this time according to my normal schedule. I ran my hand beneath the scanner and then stepped into the forward car and quickly moved into the right rear seat. I placed my briefcase on my lap and then rested my hands upon it to stop the shaking. Sweat soaked my clothes and occasionally streamed down my face. It had been a bad day.
Three others filed into the car. An aging woman who smelled of decay, as all the graying do, jerkily entered and sat next to me. A young man and woman entered and occupied the forward seats. They were of a higher "class" than myself or the woman next to me, demonstrated by both the quality of their clothing and the scar the woman had beneath her right ear and her presumed partner, had beneath his left. That was the sign of a special pleasure sort of implant. Those who could afford it could "connect" to their partner in a very satisfying and fulfilling sort of way, or at least that’s what the advertisements say. I had worked on them. A radio transmitter allows the two implants to communicate to each other. They have limited control over certain aspects of the body and when activated the two peoples heartbeats, breathing, endorphin levels and a lot of other biological functions equalize and synchronize; it might even extend slightly into thought, making the urge of one become the urge of the other. As I closed my eyes I noticed that neither one had the scar at the base of their neck.
The world lost its shape in my mind, blurred and then formed again as something new and better. The world was dark, yet warm. Alien sounds were everywhere, from wind moving through tall grass to the buzz of insects, but my mind still remembered at some ancient level which sounds were safe and which were not. I waded through the grass leaving a trail flattened behind me. Eventually I stopped and dropped onto my back, imprinting my shape into the vegetation. There were so many points of light in a very dark sky. No orange tinge of city lights reflected off the underside of mist and clouds, it was black. During real nights there are only a hundred or so points of light in the sky, all large and visibly moving, but here there were thousands and some were even different colors. It was as if some sort of ancestral memory, some evolved process, was telling me that the world was wrong, that I was meant to wander through fields and forests of happenstance and not design, that in reality the sky had thousands of objects adrift in it, unmoving and permanent. Funny, that I should suppose that the dreams knew what reality was supposed to be and that the conscious world was wrong, that it contained less of the truth, but I knew that the dreams were right. The dreams are the only reason I go on. It wouldn’t be worth all the pain without them. Pain’s the wrong word. You can only feel pain to the degree which you’ve experienced happiness. Apathy is worse than pain. Pain is progressive, it changes, apathy is eternal frustration and disappointment.
From things she had written I later learned that my mother had also had the dreams, maybe even more powerfully than I do. She had been a lot like me except even more so, she was too claustrophobic to be of any use to society, at least as far as labor goes. I think she could have taught people around her a lot about being human.
The dreams had always been vivid and beautiful. I felt warm, complete, and at ease with life until something began to intrude. Everything lost its shape. I woke violently, jerking upright in my seat. The old woman was looking at me, I looked down to see her hand touching my forearm. I shrugged it off. Had she woken me? I felt violated, she had trespassed in my most valued territory. Sweat streaked from my face. She began to make "small talk." The most annoying and meaningless drivel that can possibly be exchanged between two people. Something neither party would bother to remember for more than a few minutes. It felt like I was being attacked. I fended off her questions without thinking while my hands looked for something to wipe my face with. Why wouldn’t she leave me alone, why hasn’t anyone ever left me alone. I began to feel angry, maybe the day had gotten to me, but it was too late now. I was mad. She didn’t notice, or maybe she just didn’t care. Tears of frustration pooled at the edges of my eyes and I yelled, "leave me alone!"
My arm swung out and I hit her in the throat. She reeled backward and then doubled over in her seat clutching at her throat as she choked. I lost control completely. I stood in my seat and as the couple in front of me looked back horrified and helpless I swung my briefcase down at their heads. As I beat them past unconsciousness, I couldn’t stop staring at those scars, one more way in which I would never feel connected to another human being.
Sanity returned an indefinite amount of time later. I was shaking terribly, pushing myself into the corner hard enough to make it hurt. There were so many emotions, so many feelings. The horror came first as I realized that no one else was moving. It was completely silent except for the hum of the electronics that carried us over the city. Then something I couldn’t identify, seemingly pleased at having taken action against life, but it was followed by despair and an urge toward self preservation. As soon as this train stopped my crime would be known and my implant would be activated, I would fall dead within seconds. I moved around into the front row where my briefcase lay with several dents and, I shuddered slightly, a bit of blood. I opened it, inside were my tools.
I took several out and placed them beside me as I began to unscrew the foremost panel, a square a foot and a half across of gray metal. In the midst of all those wires I found what appeared to be the navigation system. I tore at the wires until I heard the hum of the magnetic field generators die away and the train slowed. As fast as I could I worked to open the door, knowing that if it took too long it would be my death. At last the door opened with a gentle whirring sound. I scrabbled across the front seats to the doors and caught myself at the edge. I stuck my head through. From nearby rails I heard the whooshing of trains shooting past far faster than my own. The train came to a stop.
It was sunset, a beautiful pink and orange and purple sunset, emblazoned by the smog. Wind cooled my reddened cheeks as I looked below. Nearly fifty feet down people parted as the base of a pole which supported the rail redirected their current, on all sides buildings rose overhead, all too far to reach. I trembled, I had not had an opportunity to learn it till now, but I am afraid of heights. I was lying on my stomach when I began to slide more and more of my body through the door and out above the city. The pole below was metal and about my own thickness. It rose fifty feet up from the ground to the central grid, but several feet from its summit bracing extended in all directions. One passed upward and outward from the main post to within slightly more than an arms length from the door. As I reached for it I jerked, my lungs locked as my hands flew up to catch the sides of the door, I gently rocked back and forth in the wind. Sweat beaded on my forehead and moved to the tip of my nose before dropping to the city below. I took a breath as I moved one foot under a seat to hold me. I leaned down and extended my arm until I got a hand on the brace which rose from the central pole. My other hand lowered and found a hold as well. I tried to gently lower my legs down so that I would be hanging from the brace but as soon as my leg came out from beneath the chair they swung unexpectedly out and away and then arced downward far too quickly, swinging up behind me they dragged me backwards sliding towards what I couldn’t see, I yelled in horror. My head and spine hit hard against the central pole and for a moment I feared I would fall, but I held on.
Turning around and getting a hold of the pole was hard. After several attempts to turn at the waist and lock my legs around it I decided it was impossible and I was worried because my arms were getting tired. I released with my left hand and turned my upper body halfway toward the pole, my legs locked around it and my left hand tried to grab on, but found the surface too smooth and large. Spasmodically I released with the right and flung it around to meet the left, instantly I began sliding down. I hit the street hard, with people staring at me for blocks, but the second I touched I started sprinting off, downhill, the street sloped steeply down away from the hills which surrounded the valley the city dominated toward the low central regions, where it would begin to climb once again toward the opposite edge of the bowl.
I pushed past everyone, knocking people aside and dodging those groups too large to push through. It sounded like the end of the world. A train had turned the corner moving at an ungodly speed and found another sitting in its path. Metal roared through metal and sent hundreds of tons of death onto the crowds below, the sound was deafening, the scream of tearing metal combined with those of tearing people. I dove onto the ground, arms over the back of my neck. Debris smashed down like a meteoric impact into the tops of the buildings along the path of the tracks. As chunks drove themselves into buildings at several hundred kilometers an hour ejecta of glass and concrete splashed up and outward from the impacts, raining onto the people in the street in reply.
I scrambled to my feet, pants torn and knees shredded from diving onto the street and as I readied myself to run once again there was a moment of hesitation following quickly behind an unexpected thought. I spun around, facing the damage. People everywhere lie crying or bleeding, some were dead. I worked my way through the injured back toward the spot which I had just fled, avoiding sandblasted faces, and impact pitted bodies.
"Help me." The voice stumbled with the words and punctuated them with a series of wet coughs. I looked to see a middle aged man lying in the debris. He had expensive clothes and not a trace of gray hair. I didn’t hear pain in his voice, just anger. He wasn’t asking for help, he wasn’t demanding help, he just expected it, it was inconceivable that help would not be given. Blood stained his shirt, maybe a lung puncture? The cloth had been ripped away from one of his thighs and blood collected in the street beneath it at a furious rate. It was a very dark red; running thickly down the inside of his leg and pooling with the rest alongside his knee. The puddle finally grew too large for surface tension to control, it broke like a miniature dam, still one moment and then the next it flowed like a stream, moving downhill, turning with the imperfections of the road.
I turned away angrily pleased at the shock on his face and searched the ground quickly until I found what I was looking for. I snatched a piece of glass a couple of inches long and maybe one thick from the rubble. A series of coughs brought the injured man back into my thoughts.
"Help." The voice was weak and faltering.
I extended my leg toward him, sliding my foot under his shoulder, and rolled him onto his side. The coughing became terrible. Dropping down to one knee I carefully sliced the back of his shirt open down to the middle of his back with the shard of glass. Disgusted, I rolled him onto his back once again.
"You don’t need help. You’ll be fine tomorrow and you’ll still be fine a century from now." It was true. He had the port in his back. He was fitted with a fully capable medical system. The clothes he wore were nice enough that he probably had young healthy cell samples somewhere that they would open up and he’d be grown a brand new set of lungs, just like the ones he had at twenty. I was pretty sure the medical unit could keep him alive until then.
He seemed frustrated, he squirmed in anger, but quickly went still from the pain. "You’re the only person on this street that’ll survive." I sat, crossing my legs, beside him. I reached toward his chest with the piece of glass in hand. He looked horrified. I cut a dry strip of cloth from his shirt and placed it across my legs. I gripped my right knee strongly with my left hand and cried and moaned as I slid the shards point beneath the skin on the back of my hand. Blood gushed forward immediately, dribbling to the ground and joining with the mans.