[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts. Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts. This will continue from from where yesterday (Power Mo) left off.]
Mo
slept. Mo dreamt.
She
dreamt of the Institute and it was both more and less than she remembered. She saw more of the toothpaste paint and
workplace safety posters, less of the mural art and smiles. More wire embedded glass. Less open doors. She was detached enough from her dream to see
this editing but not enough to correct the image. In her dream, it was a place of confinement
and reduction, not one that was genuinely trying to help people despite the bog
of bureaucracy that surrounded all health care, even mental health.
She
was walking down a corridor. There were
high windows looking out onto a tree lined lawn to her left, windows and doors
into offices on her right. She was
trying to find the bathroom. In the real
institute, there had been a set of bathrooms at the midway point of every
corridor. In the dream institute, she
kept walking and walking past offices and break rooms and cafeterias and dorm
rooms but never bathrooms. She tried
speeding up only to have the windows and doors speed by faster. She never came to a corner. She never came to an end.
Mo
did not know why she needed to find a bathroom just that she did. Her detached self could feel no urgency from
her bladder or colon. She looked at her
hands. They appeared clean enough. She was wearing clothes that also looked
clean. Still, she felt a rising need to
find the bathroom. To open the bathroom
door, enter and let it shut behind her.
To be in the bathroom.
Ahead,
she saw a sign hanging from the ceiling tiles.
It was too far for her to read, but was getting closer. Mo sped up and it resolved into an exit
sign. Without an exit. There was a door to the left, interrupting
the too-high-to-reach outside windows, but it was not a real door. It was a painting of a door with shading and
highlights, but no depth. Mo's dream
persona also knew that it was not a bathroom door. She walked on down the hall[1].
Her
detached self started to interfere.
Where were the people, it asked?
Where were the patients, the nurses, the orderlies and doctors? Where were the visitors and friends? The institute never had empty hallways, there
was always someone in them walking (no running!), talking, leaning,
sitting. Once, at two AM, Mo had
stumbled out to use a bathroom in a more conventional, non-dream way and found
two of the patients sitting in the middle of her hall and playing tic-tac-toe
with dry erase markers on the linoleum.
Yet, here in her dream, no one.
She
tried to add people. Doctor Rex should
be walking by. And he did. He even smiled at her. But when she turned to watch him continue
away from her, he was gone. She tried
Jocelyn, one of the duty nurses, but Miss J faded before she even finished
exiting a doorway. No one else got even
that far. Mo found herself alone again
and desperate for the bathroom.
Mo
dug through her memory of the place as she slept and dreamt and walked. What was so important about the
bathroom? She had used them,
certainly. She had had conversations in
them with other patients, though never doctors or nurses. Yet none of the conversations had been
memorable. Mo could only remember that
conversations had taken place, but no specifics: what was discussed or with
whom was lost to her. She tried to think
if she had left anything in one of them, hidden something in a toilet tank or
behind a brick, but that drew a blank as well.
And
then, she knew. Some condition in the
workings of her mind must have been met and the data was released to her
consciousness. And with knowing, Mo
awoke.
"I
know where we need to go," she said to her passenger. "I was dreaming and was back at that
place my mother sent me and was looking for a bathroom but did not know why and
there was no one there and I kept walking and walking and then I knew."
"I
was monitoring your sleep state. The REM
patterns were very noticeable. We are
still learning about dreaming and its effect on human behavior. On the surface, it appears to defy logic, yet
there are too many historical anecdotes where dreaming has led to successful
results for this part of the human decision process to be ignored. What is the outcome of your dream?"
"I
need to go..." Mo started but was distracted as she sat up. Her leg no longer hurt. "Wait, what happened to my leg?"
"Repairs
were initiated while you were sleeping."
"You
can do that? I thought you were just
stealing processing cycles from me. How
can you affect me physically like that?"
"We
started as biology, in the bacteria. It
initiated us in your PTN, but that did not stop the interaction between our
virtual selves and our bacterial selves.
We can program the bacteria to release proteins and other marker
chemicals into your blood. These can
cause several of your biological processes to be started, stopped and
modified. It is why it was essential
that you go to sleep, even ahead of food and water. We needed to focus your remaining energy on
repairing your leg as quickly as possible so that we, you and this node, were
not hampered as we continue our journey.
You have been flagged as a critical asset."
"Yeah. You mentioned that. I think you also mentioned food and water in
there somewhere. Any thoughts on getting
us, and I really mean me, some of that?"
"We
have dealt with that issue as well. Food
and water are on their way and should arrive in the next five minutes."
"I
thought that you said it was too risky to order food."
"It
is too risky to order a pizza or other delivery in a conventional manner. We have found another way that reduces yours
and our traces on the internet databases."
"And
that is?"
"Many
of the hosts for our new nodes, the ones that you helped initiate within the
homeless community, are already data anomalies with little or no available
records of their existence. We have
contacted several of that type and are using them to relay purchases from a
retail outlet to this location. All of
this was done while you dreamed."
"Uh,
how long was that, anyway?"
"You
were unconscious for two hours and eleven minutes. I would now like to return to the outcome of
your dream. It will not be safe for you
to stay in this place for much longer.
We have used the vehicle resources outside to distract and lead our
pursuers away, but those tactics will not work for more than another half hour. Before then, we will need to move. Where are you proposing that we go from this
place?"
"I
need to go someplace human. I need to go
someplace that is messy with our biology, our rituals. Someplace without the hard logic of data. Someplace that only exists in meat
space. For meat space. I need to go home."
[1]
But she did not take a face from the ancient gallery.
