Representative Belles “won” a raffle for a series of free visits to the mental spa. Hopefully, even if the terrorists know that Mom’s technology can be corrupted to be used for spying, Representative Belles doesn’t. He doesn’t appear to be suspicious, at least, and Ms. White is a master at putting clients at ease.
When they enter the reverie chamber, I start to get ready. While Ms. White is giving the representative a dose of the reverie drug, pressing electrodes into his skin, and hooking the interface system up with his cuffLINK device, I’m doing the same in this hidden room, connected by wires to the representative’s reverie chair.
The door to my room opens, and Ms. White steps in. She scans the chair, checking behind me to make sure I’m fully plugged in and ready for the reverie.
“Promise you’re okay?” she asks, worry clear in her eyes.
I don’t bother answering; I just lower the sonic hood over my head. Ms. White pushes a button, and a puff of the bright green reverie drug bursts straight into my open eyes.
My eyelids droop and my head feels heavy, sleep starting to pull me in. There’s no pain this time— thankfully —but the black behind my eyelids turns to bright white, and I feel a moment of nothingness before the world—Representative Belles’s world inside his mind—starts to develop.
I am in the middle of a war.
For a moment, I’m struck by the horror of it all. The Secessionary War was more than twenty years ago, and of course I’ve seen the digi files on it, but I never… I was never in the middle of it. I never lived it.
I didn’t know that wars were so dusty. The air is thick with it, swirling streams of acrid smoke and debris. I cough, choking. This isn’t real, I remind myself. It isn’t real. I shut my eyes, clenching them so tight that the blackness behind my eyelids bursts into my brain. When I open them, for a second I see the dream Representative Belles is trying to have—an old man and an orange grove—but then a bomb bursts, and all I can see is the war.
Representative Belles is obsessed with the idea of war right now. He can’t quit thinking about it. This is the fear inside him, drowning out every single other thought. It’s not different, really, from the way Mom can’t have a reverie when the pain of her disease is too much to bear.
Terror creeps along my throat, like a spider trying to crawl out of my mouth. I could suppress Mom’s pain, help her forget it, because I wanted to forget it, too. But this? Representative Belles’s fear is my fear, too. I cannot break him from a fear that I share with him.
We’re both sinking into the nightmare.
Panic rips through me. What if I get stuck, trapped inside the representative’s mind? What if this is my fate, doomed to live in another man’s hell?
A missile soars overhead, whistling through the sky before it crashes into Triumph Towers, the largest buildings in the city, home of all the representatives, including Prime Administrator Young and where Representative Belles works. The towers were built to look like flames, topped with solar glass that glitters day and night, rising from the ashes of the Secessionary War. But now, in Representative Belles’s dream, the towers burn for real. They shatter like crystal, sparkling amidst the rubble.
A bomb lands near my feet, sending broken stone up in a shower of rocky debris. I stare down at the unexploded bomb—it’s made of glass and glitters like liquid gold swirls inside. Solar glass. A recent import from the extrasolar colonies, solar glass provides a lot of the fuel needed to run New Venice, but ever since the disastrous attempts to use solar bombs during the Secessionary War, they’ve been utterly banned as weapons across all nations. Still—this is Representative Belles’s fear, so it’s real here.
I hear screaming. A long, long cry of utter sorrow. This is a dream; it is focused on the Representative’s greatest
When they enter the reverie chamber, I start to get ready. While Ms. White is giving the representative a dose of the reverie drug, pressing electrodes into his skin, and hooking the interface system up with his cuffLINK device, I’m doing the same in this hidden room, connected by wires to the representative’s reverie chair.
The door to my room opens, and Ms. White steps in. She scans the chair, checking behind me to make sure I’m fully plugged in and ready for the reverie.
“Promise you’re okay?” she asks, worry clear in her eyes.
I don’t bother answering; I just lower the sonic hood over my head. Ms. White pushes a button, and a puff of the bright green reverie drug bursts straight into my open eyes.
My eyelids droop and my head feels heavy, sleep starting to pull me in. There’s no pain this time— thankfully —but the black behind my eyelids turns to bright white, and I feel a moment of nothingness before the world—Representative Belles’s world inside his mind—starts to develop.
I am in the middle of a war.
For a moment, I’m struck by the horror of it all. The Secessionary War was more than twenty years ago, and of course I’ve seen the digi files on it, but I never… I was never in the middle of it. I never lived it.
I didn’t know that wars were so dusty. The air is thick with it, swirling streams of acrid smoke and debris. I cough, choking. This isn’t real, I remind myself. It isn’t real. I shut my eyes, clenching them so tight that the blackness behind my eyelids bursts into my brain. When I open them, for a second I see the dream Representative Belles is trying to have—an old man and an orange grove—but then a bomb bursts, and all I can see is the war.
Representative Belles is obsessed with the idea of war right now. He can’t quit thinking about it. This is the fear inside him, drowning out every single other thought. It’s not different, really, from the way Mom can’t have a reverie when the pain of her disease is too much to bear.
Terror creeps along my throat, like a spider trying to crawl out of my mouth. I could suppress Mom’s pain, help her forget it, because I wanted to forget it, too. But this? Representative Belles’s fear is my fear, too. I cannot break him from a fear that I share with him.
We’re both sinking into the nightmare.
Panic rips through me. What if I get stuck, trapped inside the representative’s mind? What if this is my fate, doomed to live in another man’s hell?
A missile soars overhead, whistling through the sky before it crashes into Triumph Towers, the largest buildings in the city, home of all the representatives, including Prime Administrator Young and where Representative Belles works. The towers were built to look like flames, topped with solar glass that glitters day and night, rising from the ashes of the Secessionary War. But now, in Representative Belles’s dream, the towers burn for real. They shatter like crystal, sparkling amidst the rubble.
A bomb lands near my feet, sending broken stone up in a shower of rocky debris. I stare down at the unexploded bomb—it’s made of glass and glitters like liquid gold swirls inside. Solar glass. A recent import from the extrasolar colonies, solar glass provides a lot of the fuel needed to run New Venice, but ever since the disastrous attempts to use solar bombs during the Secessionary War, they’ve been utterly banned as weapons across all nations. Still—this is Representative Belles’s fear, so it’s real here.
I hear screaming. A long, long cry of utter sorrow. This is a dream; it is focused on the Representative’s greatest
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