Dreamers Dreaming
“For me, it all started with a hum,” she begins, her voice reaching out to the small microphone between them. “I heard this… hmmmmmmm…. It was so small, and at first I thought I imagined it. But there it was—– perfectly purple. That hum changed me forever. I was sealed away like you were, and ignorant of the world around me. That hum came and saved me.
“I became obsessed with music. The story of your teacher echoes that of mine. I met a man who was a musician as well, and he taught me how to play. This was Cadence, who you met. He had a huge collection of instruments, and I would learn quickly, and then move on to another. I was impatient to see. You have to understand, Jack, for me, color is something more than sound. It’s a religion. A way of life. And I had been denied that life for many years. But like I said, I was ignorant. I would go out and play music on the streets, everywhere. I’d try and show everyone my colors. I was too obvious. Cadence told me about the mysteries of this city, but I wasn’t—– I couldn’t be prepared for what happened. It must have been several years ago, though I don’t keep track of time.
“They took me away. The men in black and white came to our studio. Thankfully I was the only one they got. I didn’t see where they were taking me, but when I came to I was sitting in a dark room. There were no windows.
“The men came. I couldn’t see their faces… they shined a bright light into my eyes. I’ll spare you the details, but over a week they questioned me. They tried to get the names and locations of other musicians from me. They tried to make me sing. I wasn’t sure what they wanted to do with me, but by the way they acted, the things they said… they were being very specific. They had a goal in mind.
“After a week I escaped. I may not be strong but I am quick and light on my feet, and I don’t think they were expecting me to resist after all that time. I picked the lock, and snuck out under a guard’s nose, and I—– oh, please, don’t smile like that. It really wasn’t very heroic. I was scared for my life!
“Anyway, I was in this Modern Era building of some sort. Pretty plain and unkempt, tiled floors, barred windows, the works. I decided I’d snoop around and see whom I was dealing with. Not a very smart move on my behalf, mind you, but I don’t exactly regret it. I found this huge room. It was filled with computers and TV monitors, the likes of which I haven’t seen anywhere else. It was so bizarre. I looked up to see the whole City of All Cities flashing before me. The screens would jump from one location to another constantly, of streets, of inside people’s homes. They still have cameras everywhere, but it hasn’t been too hard to take many of them down.
“I ran out of there to tell my friends what had happened before the guards realized I was missing. Later, a few of us snuck back in. We stole this disk that said ‘The Color Conspiracy.’ We started calling them the Black and White Conspiracy. Over the years we’ve done a lot more research about these people. They have no idea how much we know, and how organized we are. There are still holes, but I’ll tell you what I know so far.
“The Black and White Conspiracy works under someone who calls himself ‘That I Am’. I have a feeling that there’s more than just one man pulling the strings here though, but there definitely is someone behind the green curtain playing God. You’ve never heard that expression before? Behind the green curtain? Funny, isn’t it? A lot of things about this City are funny like that.
“That I Am and his followers, what we call Apostles, run the city. I can only guess, but I think that there must be about 5-10 people working under him. Someone to hire hit men, someone to develop the technology they use, someone to interrogate and investigate musicians, someone to run a network of spies, and someone in charge of the ‘true history’. It was mentioned on the disk we found, but I don’t know what it is yet.
“To tell the truth, I don’t know when the Resonance really started. At first those of use who knew about That I Am were just trying to warn other musicians. We all figured that we were safer in a group, so we started recruiting new players to stay with us. We discovered these underground tracks… a lot of musicians stay here, and we offer sanctuary to anyone who needs to hide out.
“We can’t truly fight back yet. We want to open people’s eyes to this conspiracy, but it’s not the right time yet. In the meantime… we’ll just keep playing.”
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“So… you want me to join the Resonance.” Jack unfolds his hands from under his chin. He’s been sitting against the wall, listening to her speak her singsong story and wondering what to believe.
“I didn’t want you to become just another dead musician.” She strums her harp strings lightly, almost thoughtlessly, and a crescendo of colors gleams in her eyes. “But no. I don’t want you to join the Resonance, or stay here and fight with us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I need you for something else.” Path pauses. “You’re a great musician. And when I saw you play, I noticed something else in you. You’ve got the drive, the will I need, and a hunger to understand. I saw it in the way that you looked at your music… that you knew there was something beyond it.”
Her words strike a chord–— deep inside of him, Jack feels something stir against the staccato of his heartbeat. What she says is true, truer, he thinks, than anything he knows. Those words fall like puzzle pieces into place, a jigsaw of thoughts snapping together in the back of his mind. Jack looks over at the white wall, and he thinks he can see ripples of tone under the surface. No, not tone. Color, shimmering behind his eyes.
“And I’m not speaking metaphorically,” Path says. “We’re not alone. There is a place, a physical place, through this music. I know you’ve sensed it. Another city… another world, that’s undeniably connected to ours. A connection between two cities; between color and music.”
“Well, it’s the same thing,” Jack explains, trying to bring Path back to this world, to the only world. But now Jack is loosing his grip. Loosing lucidity, falling fast into dream-like logic. And he’s not so sure. Ever since Path plucked that string, ever since he stepped into 1783, Jack has felt uneasy, like something was shifting under him, through him, somewhere in between… he can’t say what it is, he can’t put it into words that will be heard but he knows that something definitely isn’t right.
“No, no, not the same thing at all!” Path begins to play her harp, and at once a stream of color appears in the air before them, blending from light blue to deep purple and then back again. “It’s the connection between them that’s the same. I’m close to figuring it out, I know it. But I need your help…”
Jack laughs. “How can I possibly help you?”
Path licks her lips. “Be my spy.”
Jack’s smile drops. “What?”
“Be my waltzer.” Something gleams in her eyes. “You’re going to go to this other city, to be my eyes. If there is a world filled with color, it means that the musicians may have a true safe haven—– not just what the rumors of the Resonance make us up to be. We can leave this godforsaken City of All Cities. Be free.”
His head feels dizzy, his throat, dry. Everything is spinning, and he can’t sum up enough hysteria to laugh at her insanity, or enough doubt to question her.
“How do I get there?” Jack finds himself asking, as if it is another’s voice; his mouth just a puppet.
Path extends her hand, creating an arch towards the corner. The guitar stands proudly against the wall. “Play.”
Jack floats over to the instrument and cradles it in his arms. He finds his way back to the stool, and sits before Path. His hands find their normal positions, and settle, though he feels uncomfortable and uneasy. It’s okay, he thinks. The hands know the way.
“It’s a call and repeat,” Path explains. “Follow along as best you can.” She sweeps her fingers across the cherub harp strings, and then begins.
“Walking against the dawn, we watch the curtain come down…” Path sings slowly, plucking faint notes on the harp. They sound like a music box. Jack hums along, watching the colors while he searches for the right chords, sounds for the right notes, feels for the right vibration.
“Walking against the dawn…” Jack sings back, opening his throat to let the colors pour out. He figures he might as well play along, because if she’s insane then he’s insane too.
And if she’s not crazy…
“Waiting for the silence, we drown against the sound…” Path sings out, craning her neck and pushing the words forward. Her voice is soft and airy, the colors impossibly smooth around the edges, but the tone is humble. The hues transfix Jack’s eyes. She holds the colors there somehow, painting with them until they fill the whole room. The music follows the flick of her fingers across the strings, or maybe the plucking follows the dips and curves of chords in her throat, but somehow she moves the colors. It makes sense to Jack, though he’s never seen anything like it.
As Jack repeats the melody, the color grows, and Path conducts it with the ting-ting of her tiny strings, until Jack is looking at what he thinks is some sort of beach. Below him are bright blue and purple grains of sand, and before him a rainbow sun setting on a golden sea.
His eyes grow wide, filling to the brim with these visions.
“But how could you look with eyes that do not dream? I see the blind as they see me. Dreamers dreaming will watch us, watcher watching will dream us, dream us…”
Jack drinks in the colors. He doesn’t have to repeat after Path anymore. The song is imprinted in his mind like a forgotten childhood lullaby. As he sings the next part, Path leaves off. She holds out her hand, the color dripping from it, the music echoing all around them. The white walls are gone. It’s just Jack and Path, the guitar, the harp, and their music.
“Trailblazing, pathmaking…” Jack sings into a bridge he knows he shouldn’t know, as familiar as the first song he learned. “Storyweaving, dreamwalking…”
Path stands up, and the colors swirl around her.
“Drowning to see, seeming to drown. And the sound is all around…”
“Look into the color,” Path tells him as he continues to see. “Look through the waves of music… don’t you see past it all? Can’t you see what’s beyond it? I just feel that something’s there. I know there is.”
“But how could you look with eyes that do not dream…”
“Look beyond the color. Let the music flow through you, let it wash over you. Can’t you see what’s behind it all? Don’t you see what’s before your very eyes? You feel that something else is out there… you know there is…”
“I see the blind as they see me.”
Somewhere buried in the colors there’s still Jack, watching as the waves crash over his feet, feeling the sand sink in between his toes.
“Dreamers dreaming will watch us…”
Something inside him pleads for the song to be over, please, let me go back to the way things were!
“Watchers watching will dream us…”
Too late, her smile says.
“I do… I see it…” Jack breathes, eyes glazing over with the melody. He reaches out a hand. “I see the world beyond this. How did you find this? How can we… reach… through?”
Path laughs. You actually believe me. She steps in front of him, bending down so that her face is right before his.
“You just need a push.”
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And that was when everything began to spin completely out of my control.