wanted
to
do was take that knife out from behind your eyes and drive it hard
through his heart because now how you going to eat, pay the rent, stay
alive. I remembered, me, how it was, all in a second after I opened my
big mouth to Annie.
“You’re right,” I said, not looking at her. “There ain’t no Eden for
us. I should go home now, me.”
“Stay,” Annie said kindly. “Please, Billy. In case there’s trouble
at the cafe.”
Like anybody could break into a foamcast apartment. Or like a
broke-down old man could be any real help to her or Lizzie. But I
stayed.
In the darkness I could hear, me, how Annie and Lizzie moved in
their bedrooms. Walking around, laying down, turning and settling into
sleep. Sometime in the night the temperature must of dropped because I
heard the Y-energy heater come on. I listened, me, to their breathing,
a woman and a child, and pretty soon I slept.
But I dreamed about dangerous raccoons, sick and full of death.
----
Three
DREW ARLEN: HUEVOS VERDES
I never get used to the way other people don’t see colors and
shapes. No. That’s not right. They see them. They just don’t
see
them, in the mind, where it matters. Other people can’t feel colors and
shapes. Can’t become colors and shapes. Can’t see through the colors
and shapes to the trueness of the world, as I do, in the shapes it
makes in my mind.
That’s not it either.
Words are hard for me.
I think words were hard even before the operation that made me the
Lucid Dreamer.
But the pictures are clear.
I can see myself as a dirty, dumb, hungry ten-year-old, traveling
alone halfway across the country to Leisha Camden, the most famous
Sleepless in the world. I can see her face as I ask her to make me “be
somebody, me.” I can see her eyes when I boasted, “Someday, me, I’m
gonna
own
Sanctuary.”
Sanctuary, the orbital where all the Sleepless except Leisha Camden
and Kevin Baker had exiled themselves. My grandfather, a dumb laborer,
had died building Sanctuary. And I thought, in my pathetic ten-year-old
arrogance, that I could own it. I thought that if I learned to talk
like donkeys and Sleepless, learned to behave like them, learned to
think like them, I could have what they had. Money. Power. Choices.
When I picture that child now, the shapes in my mind are sharp and
small, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The shapes are
the pale lost gold of remembered summer twilight.
Miranda Sharifi will inherit a controlling interest in Sanctuary
stock. When her parents, Sleepless, eventually die. If they ever do.
“What belongs to me belongs to you, Drew,” Miranda said. She has said
it several times. Miranda, a SuperSleepless, often explains things to
me several times. She is very patient.
But even with her explanations, I don’t understand what Miri and the
Supers are doing at Huevos Verdes. I thought I did eight years ago,
when the island was created. But since then there have been a lot more
words. I can repeat the words, but I can’t feel their shapes. They’re
words without solid form: Auxotrophes. Allosteric interactions.
Nanotechnology. Photophosphorylation. Law-son conversion formulas.
Neo-Marxist assisted evolution. Most of the time I just nod and smile.
But I am the Lucid Dreamer. When I float onstage and put a raucous
Liver crowd into the Lucid Dreaming trance, and the music and words and
combination of shapes flow from my subconscious through my
Super-designed hardware, I touch their minds in places they didn’t know
they had. They feel more deeply, exist more blissfully, become more
whole.
For at least the length of the concert.
And when the concert’s over, my audience is subtly changed. They
might not realize it. The donkeys who pay for my performances,
considering them bread-and-circus occult trash for the masses, don’t
realize it. Leisha doesn’t realize it. But I know I’ve controlled my
audience, and changed them, and that I am the only one in the world
with that power.
to
do was take that knife out from behind your eyes and drive it hard
through his heart because now how you going to eat, pay the rent, stay
alive. I remembered, me, how it was, all in a second after I opened my
big mouth to Annie.
“You’re right,” I said, not looking at her. “There ain’t no Eden for
us. I should go home now, me.”
“Stay,” Annie said kindly. “Please, Billy. In case there’s trouble
at the cafe.”
Like anybody could break into a foamcast apartment. Or like a
broke-down old man could be any real help to her or Lizzie. But I
stayed.
In the darkness I could hear, me, how Annie and Lizzie moved in
their bedrooms. Walking around, laying down, turning and settling into
sleep. Sometime in the night the temperature must of dropped because I
heard the Y-energy heater come on. I listened, me, to their breathing,
a woman and a child, and pretty soon I slept.
But I dreamed about dangerous raccoons, sick and full of death.
----
Three
DREW ARLEN: HUEVOS VERDES
I never get used to the way other people don’t see colors and
shapes. No. That’s not right. They see them. They just don’t
see
them, in the mind, where it matters. Other people can’t feel colors and
shapes. Can’t become colors and shapes. Can’t see through the colors
and shapes to the trueness of the world, as I do, in the shapes it
makes in my mind.
That’s not it either.
Words are hard for me.
I think words were hard even before the operation that made me the
Lucid Dreamer.
But the pictures are clear.
I can see myself as a dirty, dumb, hungry ten-year-old, traveling
alone halfway across the country to Leisha Camden, the most famous
Sleepless in the world. I can see her face as I ask her to make me “be
somebody, me.” I can see her eyes when I boasted, “Someday, me, I’m
gonna
own
Sanctuary.”
Sanctuary, the orbital where all the Sleepless except Leisha Camden
and Kevin Baker had exiled themselves. My grandfather, a dumb laborer,
had died building Sanctuary. And I thought, in my pathetic ten-year-old
arrogance, that I could own it. I thought that if I learned to talk
like donkeys and Sleepless, learned to behave like them, learned to
think like them, I could have what they had. Money. Power. Choices.
When I picture that child now, the shapes in my mind are sharp and
small, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The shapes are
the pale lost gold of remembered summer twilight.
Miranda Sharifi will inherit a controlling interest in Sanctuary
stock. When her parents, Sleepless, eventually die. If they ever do.
“What belongs to me belongs to you, Drew,” Miranda said. She has said
it several times. Miranda, a SuperSleepless, often explains things to
me several times. She is very patient.
But even with her explanations, I don’t understand what Miri and the
Supers are doing at Huevos Verdes. I thought I did eight years ago,
when the island was created. But since then there have been a lot more
words. I can repeat the words, but I can’t feel their shapes. They’re
words without solid form: Auxotrophes. Allosteric interactions.
Nanotechnology. Photophosphorylation. Law-son conversion formulas.
Neo-Marxist assisted evolution. Most of the time I just nod and smile.
But I am the Lucid Dreamer. When I float onstage and put a raucous
Liver crowd into the Lucid Dreaming trance, and the music and words and
combination of shapes flow from my subconscious through my
Super-designed hardware, I touch their minds in places they didn’t know
they had. They feel more deeply, exist more blissfully, become more
whole.
For at least the length of the concert.
And when the concert’s over, my audience is subtly changed. They
might not realize it. The donkeys who pay for my performances,
considering them bread-and-circus occult trash for the masses, don’t
realize it. Leisha doesn’t realize it. But I know I’ve controlled my
audience, and changed them, and that I am the only one in the world
with that power.
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