Labyrinth of Lucid Dreams
I fucking love this city. Sky scrapers cutting across the horizon, the splatters of colors, chrome and festering machinery creeps up the shining buildings as we rise, up, up, up. Every now and again we get flashes of the city outside as the glass elevator rises through the floors. Light from the pale dawn, the dazzling neon of the Street Level is reflected, refracted, reverberated, like a broken mirror against the windows and sleek walls of the buildings. It's beautiful and dangerous, and you know I always fall for that.
As the elevator rises quickly, the dirty dystopian streets slowly fade into the gleaming white, utopian Upper District. White domes and arching bridges connect the buildings up here, so much so that people never have to come down to lower levels. A park is glassed off there, and a factory sparks fire and fumes into the dying night. As we leave the Green Room beneath us, I tell our newbie Jac everything he needs to know about the Streets.
“It’s simple. Blues are cruel, sadistic fucks. The Reds claim to be honorable and dignified, but they’re just as twisted as the Blues. They’re the enemies in this gang war… we’ve been fighting forever. Blackshirts try and crush out color because they have no souls––”
“No souls?”
“Just wait until you see one, then you’ll see what I mean.” I shudder, just enough to stutter. A dramatic effect, of course, I’m not afraid of those renegade cops. “Those are the bad guys,” I continue, laying it out simple and clean. “Red: R for Righteous. Blue: B for Brutal.”
“Green: G for…?” Jack prompted.
Dark grinned. “G is for crazy! Hah! Green is the best color, the color of life.”
To make my point a bit more clear and flashy, well, I can’t help but show off a bit, I hold out my hand and with a flick of my wrist a ball of forest green light comes into life before us. My color-chi, my energy, nothing feels more right inside of me than that deep, solid hue of green. I let it roll over my hands, like a tiny pet that licks light into my eyes.
“How… how do you do that?!” The astonishment in Jac’s eyes is enough to extinguish my ball of light. “I’ve seen others do it,” he continued. “Just never… it’s not a trick of my eyes then? Not a hallucination?”
“You mean… you’ve never seen? But you must have heard of color-chi…?” Is it possible that he was from a level or family so prudish and strict that he had never seen color used before, or even heard that it exists? Was he really one of those damned few with no color in their soul? No. I can’t believe that.
Those grey eyes grow wide, and, winter wolves freeze my soul, he had no clue what I meant. I close my eyes. How do I explain? “It’s called color-chi. We… manipulate the light with our hands. You just feel for it—that energy of your soul, of your life. It’s like love, or hate, or anything at all that calls on you strongly. I mean, I often think of sex.” I flash him a wry smile. Shameless, Darc. “But there’s no trick to color. It’s rooted in your chakras, pulsing with your blood. It’s…”
As natural as breathing. It’s such a deep part of me I know I would die without it, or die for it. Color is the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that feels right.
He smiles. “You’re quite the poet.” And don’t I know it.
“Nah,” I say. “Fuck the poets and all their high-and-mighty ways. No one’s enlightened in this city; no one’s got a clue. Fuck their ink and paper.”
I see his smile wane, and his eyes dart about. Those eyes are like those of the lamb, waiting to be devoured. And baby, I’m the beast that bites. Good thing I have a charming, warm smile.
“Is that the only color you can do?” Jac changes the subject, painfully oblivious as always. I wince… nothing’s more insulting than being compared to those fucking Rainbow Fairies, but I let it slide. He really doesn’t know this world.
“Yeah, green is my thing,” I say, forcing a smile.
“Oh.” Jac looks out the glass as the city comes into view again. “It’s a long way up,” he says nervously.
I just assumed that he was a Green by the color of his hair, but now I can see that the emerald is fading into light brown. The artificial slashes and splatters of color on his skin are shifting to a more normal tone—I’ve seen this same thing happen to Twitch when he takes a bit too much ‘shock, but the bitty-mites said Jac took none at all. Drug free? That can’t be.
They say that curiosity killed the cat, and now I’m dying to know, Jac, where the hell did you come from?
For a while, we watch the city fall beneath us.
“What are you going to do with me?” Jac asked.
“Can you fight?” Without color-chi, he’ll be at a huge disadvantage combatively.
“I usually try and avoid fights.”
“More of a runner than a fighter, eh?”
“I guess.” Jac shrugs. “I’m good at not getting into a situation where I need to run.”
I perk an eyebrow, smirk. “Well, I already have my fighters, flyers, hacker, drug dealer and miscellaneous in my crew. Twitch could always use a courier, but until you know the streets well you won’t be much use. But if you really don’t have color…” I step towards him, and force those grey eyes towards mine. I grab his wrist. Rhythm and blood pulse against my fingers, and I feel… something. It’s not the familiar color energy, and I’ve tasted a bit from all across the spectrum. There is life in those monochrome eyes.
“Don’t have color?” Something races in his eyes.
I drop his wrist. “Well, you’re a unique player then. Maybe you haven’t developed your color yet,” I offer, though I’m doubtful. Usually by his age, he’d have that chromic flow.
“You haven’t always been able to do that?” he asks.
“Oh, I’ve had it since I was a kid. Most people get them when they hit puberty. But you might be slow, I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, we really have to get you some bitmites. I’ll have Netto buy some. Without them you won’t be much use.” I pull my cybershades out of a pocket, and slip them on. “You can use them with these. They’re called cybershades.” I reach out with my bitmites, feeling for the psychic energies of the cybernet. Microscopic mind bots, artificially intelligent cell-souls, the bitmites have ingrained themselves into my mind and sometimes I don’t even notice them. They’re at home there, I think, sorting my memories into files. Childhood. Raves. Gang business. Ace. Kill list. I make a mental note and I see the words scribe in front of my eyes, into a little digital file—Jac.
“What do they do?” As Jac asks I can see the sounds transform into text before my eyes. I take the shades off.
“Anything you want, baby. They mostly connect to the cybernet and work with your bitmites.”
“Don’t know what those are either.”
“Damn! What planet are you from? Bitmites. You can talk to other people with them, and basically… organize your mind. They’re great for internal monologues too.”
“Organize my mind?” he laughs. “I could really use that… Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Huh?”
“Why are you being nice to me? Why didn’t you just leave me, in the street I mean?”
The question is timid and cautious, and I can see the expectation of disappointment, of a let down, in his eyes. Well, fuck, I don’t know! I can’t just tell him that there was something in his eyes, his color-stained skin; a mysterious abyss of possibilities of what he could be. I can’t just tell him that I need a change of pace or else I’ll break, that I’ll take anything new and unheard of and make it mine. While the others are scared of something different, I fall in love with it. What I see when I look at Jac is a labyrinth of lucid dreams. The words pop out of my electronic subconscious, my digital poet.
“I’m in a good mood kid, take advantage of it.” Well, it could be true.
“Do you have any use for a musician?” He backs up against the elevator doors, watching his feet shuffle.
“You’re a musician?”
He shrugs, his head still bent.
“Well, what do you play?”
“Guitar. And I sing.” He holds out his arms, looking from his patchwork pallet of skin to my own pale gold flesh and green hair. “Huh. I don’t get these colors. They’re familiar, like sensing something from a dream. A lot like what dreaming looks like. They sound—almost, but without vivacity.”
“What do you mean, ‘get these colors’?” I frown. “What other colors are there? It’s not like color is a big mystery. It’s just reflections of s––”
The elevator comes to a stop. I feel the word curl on top of my tongue, but it wasn’t the one I was thinking at the time. I started to make the wrong… sound.
“Reflections of light,” I say after a moment’s pause.
“I wonder…” Jac looks at me suddenly, with such intense determination, desperation, it hits me like a slap—the furious life in this timid boy’s gaze. He takes a step back as the elevator doors swing open, bathing him in the light of dawn. He clenches his fists and opens his mouth as if to shout. That was the first time I saw him clearly, with his confusion turned to rage, his grey eyes flashing with power, his fears surfaced… even if I didn’t have the bitmites recording the image, the picture of the sunrise embracing him would stay with me always. He tilted his neck back, and I saw his colors.
I fucking love this city. Sky scrapers cutting across the horizon, the splatters of colors, chrome and festering machinery creeps up the shining buildings as we rise, up, up, up. Every now and again we get flashes of the city outside as the glass elevator rises through the floors. Light from the pale dawn, the dazzling neon of the Street Level is reflected, refracted, reverberated, like a broken mirror against the windows and sleek walls of the buildings. It's beautiful and dangerous, and you know I always fall for that.
As the elevator rises quickly, the dirty dystopian streets slowly fade into the gleaming white, utopian Upper District. White domes and arching bridges connect the buildings up here, so much so that people never have to come down to lower levels. A park is glassed off there, and a factory sparks fire and fumes into the dying night. As we leave the Green Room beneath us, I tell our newbie Jac everything he needs to know about the Streets.
“It’s simple. Blues are cruel, sadistic fucks. The Reds claim to be honorable and dignified, but they’re just as twisted as the Blues. They’re the enemies in this gang war… we’ve been fighting forever. Blackshirts try and crush out color because they have no souls––”
“No souls?”
“Just wait until you see one, then you’ll see what I mean.” I shudder, just enough to stutter. A dramatic effect, of course, I’m not afraid of those renegade cops. “Those are the bad guys,” I continue, laying it out simple and clean. “Red: R for Righteous. Blue: B for Brutal.”
“Green: G for…?” Jack prompted.
Dark grinned. “G is for crazy! Hah! Green is the best color, the color of life.”
To make my point a bit more clear and flashy, well, I can’t help but show off a bit, I hold out my hand and with a flick of my wrist a ball of forest green light comes into life before us. My color-chi, my energy, nothing feels more right inside of me than that deep, solid hue of green. I let it roll over my hands, like a tiny pet that licks light into my eyes.
“How… how do you do that?!” The astonishment in Jac’s eyes is enough to extinguish my ball of light. “I’ve seen others do it,” he continued. “Just never… it’s not a trick of my eyes then? Not a hallucination?”
“You mean… you’ve never seen? But you must have heard of color-chi…?” Is it possible that he was from a level or family so prudish and strict that he had never seen color used before, or even heard that it exists? Was he really one of those damned few with no color in their soul? No. I can’t believe that.
Those grey eyes grow wide, and, winter wolves freeze my soul, he had no clue what I meant. I close my eyes. How do I explain? “It’s called color-chi. We… manipulate the light with our hands. You just feel for it—that energy of your soul, of your life. It’s like love, or hate, or anything at all that calls on you strongly. I mean, I often think of sex.” I flash him a wry smile. Shameless, Darc. “But there’s no trick to color. It’s rooted in your chakras, pulsing with your blood. It’s…”
As natural as breathing. It’s such a deep part of me I know I would die without it, or die for it. Color is the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that feels right.
He smiles. “You’re quite the poet.” And don’t I know it.
“Nah,” I say. “Fuck the poets and all their high-and-mighty ways. No one’s enlightened in this city; no one’s got a clue. Fuck their ink and paper.”
I see his smile wane, and his eyes dart about. Those eyes are like those of the lamb, waiting to be devoured. And baby, I’m the beast that bites. Good thing I have a charming, warm smile.
“Is that the only color you can do?” Jac changes the subject, painfully oblivious as always. I wince… nothing’s more insulting than being compared to those fucking Rainbow Fairies, but I let it slide. He really doesn’t know this world.
“Yeah, green is my thing,” I say, forcing a smile.
“Oh.” Jac looks out the glass as the city comes into view again. “It’s a long way up,” he says nervously.
I just assumed that he was a Green by the color of his hair, but now I can see that the emerald is fading into light brown. The artificial slashes and splatters of color on his skin are shifting to a more normal tone—I’ve seen this same thing happen to Twitch when he takes a bit too much ‘shock, but the bitty-mites said Jac took none at all. Drug free? That can’t be.
They say that curiosity killed the cat, and now I’m dying to know, Jac, where the hell did you come from?
For a while, we watch the city fall beneath us.
“What are you going to do with me?” Jac asked.
“Can you fight?” Without color-chi, he’ll be at a huge disadvantage combatively.
“I usually try and avoid fights.”
“More of a runner than a fighter, eh?”
“I guess.” Jac shrugs. “I’m good at not getting into a situation where I need to run.”
I perk an eyebrow, smirk. “Well, I already have my fighters, flyers, hacker, drug dealer and miscellaneous in my crew. Twitch could always use a courier, but until you know the streets well you won’t be much use. But if you really don’t have color…” I step towards him, and force those grey eyes towards mine. I grab his wrist. Rhythm and blood pulse against my fingers, and I feel… something. It’s not the familiar color energy, and I’ve tasted a bit from all across the spectrum. There is life in those monochrome eyes.
“Don’t have color?” Something races in his eyes.
I drop his wrist. “Well, you’re a unique player then. Maybe you haven’t developed your color yet,” I offer, though I’m doubtful. Usually by his age, he’d have that chromic flow.
“You haven’t always been able to do that?” he asks.
“Oh, I’ve had it since I was a kid. Most people get them when they hit puberty. But you might be slow, I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, we really have to get you some bitmites. I’ll have Netto buy some. Without them you won’t be much use.” I pull my cybershades out of a pocket, and slip them on. “You can use them with these. They’re called cybershades.” I reach out with my bitmites, feeling for the psychic energies of the cybernet. Microscopic mind bots, artificially intelligent cell-souls, the bitmites have ingrained themselves into my mind and sometimes I don’t even notice them. They’re at home there, I think, sorting my memories into files. Childhood. Raves. Gang business. Ace. Kill list. I make a mental note and I see the words scribe in front of my eyes, into a little digital file—Jac.
“What do they do?” As Jac asks I can see the sounds transform into text before my eyes. I take the shades off.
“Anything you want, baby. They mostly connect to the cybernet and work with your bitmites.”
“Don’t know what those are either.”
“Damn! What planet are you from? Bitmites. You can talk to other people with them, and basically… organize your mind. They’re great for internal monologues too.”
“Organize my mind?” he laughs. “I could really use that… Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Huh?”
“Why are you being nice to me? Why didn’t you just leave me, in the street I mean?”
The question is timid and cautious, and I can see the expectation of disappointment, of a let down, in his eyes. Well, fuck, I don’t know! I can’t just tell him that there was something in his eyes, his color-stained skin; a mysterious abyss of possibilities of what he could be. I can’t just tell him that I need a change of pace or else I’ll break, that I’ll take anything new and unheard of and make it mine. While the others are scared of something different, I fall in love with it. What I see when I look at Jac is a labyrinth of lucid dreams. The words pop out of my electronic subconscious, my digital poet.
“I’m in a good mood kid, take advantage of it.” Well, it could be true.
“Do you have any use for a musician?” He backs up against the elevator doors, watching his feet shuffle.
“You’re a musician?”
He shrugs, his head still bent.
“Well, what do you play?”
“Guitar. And I sing.” He holds out his arms, looking from his patchwork pallet of skin to my own pale gold flesh and green hair. “Huh. I don’t get these colors. They’re familiar, like sensing something from a dream. A lot like what dreaming looks like. They sound—almost, but without vivacity.”
“What do you mean, ‘get these colors’?” I frown. “What other colors are there? It’s not like color is a big mystery. It’s just reflections of s––”
The elevator comes to a stop. I feel the word curl on top of my tongue, but it wasn’t the one I was thinking at the time. I started to make the wrong… sound.
“Reflections of light,” I say after a moment’s pause.
“I wonder…” Jac looks at me suddenly, with such intense determination, desperation, it hits me like a slap—the furious life in this timid boy’s gaze. He takes a step back as the elevator doors swing open, bathing him in the light of dawn. He clenches his fists and opens his mouth as if to shout. That was the first time I saw him clearly, with his confusion turned to rage, his grey eyes flashing with power, his fears surfaced… even if I didn’t have the bitmites recording the image, the picture of the sunrise embracing him would stay with me always. He tilted his neck back, and I saw his colors.