The Loop

The situation was utterly absurd—we were traveling aboard a flying saucer that a superpowered human had created within an imaginary Dreamworld, which was nevertheless real and mapped one-to-one to the real world, and we were headed to put parts of a man’s consciousness back into his brain after I’d inadvertently stolen them some weeks ago. And that was to say nothing of all the other crazy things that had happened in the span of time. I think, because I had the memories of my life before, of having done many of these things already, that I was adjusting quickly and with little consideration, but every once in a while it struck me how insane it all was. This was one of those times.

Thoughts about how quickly my life had turned into this unrecognizable series of increasingly strange events kept flashing through my mind. I think the timeline was the most insane thing of all. It had been less than two months since the orbs had fallen to earth and people had started getting powers. It had been less than two weeks since we’d warned the New York team to find and stop Jaleel’s uncle. It had been less than two days since we’d been in New York again to track down the man who’d killed Jaleel’s uncle. And it had been less than twenty-four hours since Angie, Oneiros, and I had been in this very same Dreamworld fighting the nightmares from her mind.

“Are we there yet?” Angie asked, actually yawning. It was a funny thing to see somebody yawn within a world that was created by dreaming, but then, our physical bodies were here. Sometimes the rules of the physical world seemed to apply in this place and other times they didn’t, and I still had trouble wrapping my brain around why that was.

“We’re getting close,” said Oneiros, pointing to a screen on the console in front of us that showed a map of the United States. “It’s hard to be perfectly exact, since we don’t actually have the landmarks in the real world to go by, but we’ve traveled about twelve-hundred miles and should be somewhere in Pennsylvania. At least, we would be if we woke up right now.”

The interior of the craft was spartan, with five chairs facing the ‘front’, where a large viewing window and several screens showed us where we were headed. There were no controls, the ship being a creation of Oneiros’s power within the Dreamworld meant that he could control it with a thought.

As we cruised along, the world around us generated in real time. We flew at an incredible speed, but nevertheless, new and varied terrain appeared all around us just as quickly as we were moving.

“What would happen if one of us tried to travel this far without you?” asked Lincoln.

“Angie can tell you,” said Oneiros. “You’d be able to go as far as you wanted, but you’d be beyond the borders of creation, in a sort of no-man’s land, unable to wake up or do much of anything unless you came back to an area that had already been generated.”

“I was safe out there, at least,” said Angie.

“That’s true. None of the creations of the Dreamworld are capable of going beyond its borders.” Oneiros stopped, looking around thoughtfully. “What’s really interesting is that I’m not really putting any thought into the landscape that’s being created here. Of course, normally I would, but most of my attention is dedicated to keeping this ship in the air and headed in the right direction.”

“Do you think that has any bearing on what gets created?” I asked. I looked around and I had to admit, the area surrounding the ship did seem less planned-out than the areas we’d seen before, like his power was filling in the blanks in seemingly random ways. There might be a range of low hills that ended abruptly, a final hill seemingly cut in half as if to show off a cross-section of its interior, and the land beyond would be a completely different sort of biome, a desert or a snowy tundra, and those too would end without warning. We crossed over a lake that spanned from horizon to horizon in all directions, the water bright neon colors, and the waves frozen in motion, as if the water itself had decided to form hills.

“I think its pulling from my subconscious,” he said at last. “If I concentrated, I’d try to make areas that actually make some sort of sense, even if they defy the logic of the real world. But what we’re seeing here is … something quite different.”

As he spoke, we passed over a region that was perfectly flat, and the ground appeared to be a checkerboard pattern of black and white kitchen tiles. In the distance were trees that looked like low-polygon models from a video game.

“It kind of seems like things either don’t make sense, or they’re … unrendered,” said Lincoln. “Like your power is just throwing stuff out there so that the space isn’t empty, but assuming that it doesn’t matter what it looks like if no ones going to look too closely at it.”

“Maybe because we’re traveling at such a high altitude?” suggested Christine. “We’re not close enough to see things clearly, so it can look a little wonky and it’s all good?”

“But all that assumes that my power has some sort of, I don’t know, computational limit? Like there’s a finite amount of resources that can be dedicated to any one thing. I get that most people have a bottleneck with their powers linked to their ability to focus or concentrate on multiple things at a time, but my power is different in that as long as I’m not directly controlling something, it continues to exist independent of my mind after it’s been created. So why not just create things that make sense and look good? As soon as they’re generated, they’re no longer a strain on my mind …” Oneiros looked deeply introspective again and the rest of us sat in silence, pondering the mysteries of his power. There was still so much we didn’t understand about powers in general, and it could be frustrating, but this at least was simply idle chatter to pass the time.

Eventually, Lincoln broke the silence. “We know that powers are the result of an interaction between two forces,” he said. “Those are us, or our minds and bodies, and them.”

“Do we know that?” I asked.

“Who or what is ‘them’?” Christine asked.

Lincoln looked impatient when he replied. “We can infer it,” he said to me. “And ‘them’ is the source of the powers. The distant things that our brains communicate with after their alteration by the orbs.”

“What?” said Christine. “You’ve lost me.”

“Come on,” he said. “Where do you think the energy for Adam’s power comes from? Where do you think the massive amount of energy required to create and maintain this entire world comes from?” he asked, gesturing widely. “The orbs somehow alter our brains and bodies in a specific way that allows us to interface with some source of energy. A well, if you will. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

I thought back to the first time I’d tried to use my power on Ricky, the way it had felt like packets of information were being sent out from his brain to some distant place I couldn’t sense, and other packets of information were being returned, like an endless conversation he wasn’t even aware was happening. At the time, I’d conceived of that other as a sort of manifestation of his subconscious, but now I wondered if it wasn’t as Lincoln was saying, the source.

“Maybe that well is a shared well,” said Lincoln. “Maybe we all draw from one or at least a finite number of energy sources, and something out there is prioritizing who gets to use the most energy at any given time. So, for example, when Oneiros doesn’t really need a perfect creation, his power supplies him the bare minimum. Maybe that’s where focus and concentration come in. It’s like meditation, like a way of asking for more energy and showing the source you have the means to direct it. I don’t know, I’m just spitballing.”

What Lincoln could come up with while just ‘spitballing’ was more than most people could come up with given days or weeks of thoughtful reflection. His brain was a truly impressive thing, although I’d never tell him that. I also knew from experience that by the time he was ready to present a theory, even if he called it ‘spitballing’, he was at least ninety percent sure it was true.

“Do you believe this, Adam?” Christine asked. She sounded incredulous. “Do you have any insights?”

I knew she meant insights from my memories. The frustrating thing was that my memories seemed to trickle in without any logical pattern or structure, and that trickle could be very slow by times indeed. Sometimes I went so long without remembering anything new that I started to doubt the whole thing again. Other times I’d have a flood of disconnected images and sounds course through my mind in such a short span of time that I found it difficult to concentrate on the here and now. But one thing held true: trying to force it didn’t work, and trying to remember specific information was next to impossible.

“I can’t say I do,” I said. “If this is something we discussed or discovered last time, I don’t remember it.”

A flash of disappointment and something like resentment from her mind. A flash of satisfaction from Linc’s.

“I still don’t get what you mean when you keep talking about ‘last time’,” said Angie.

“It’s … honestly, Ange, it’s such a long story.”

“Tell it to me some time?”

“Of course I will. As soon as all this is over, I’ll —”

“We’re here,” Oneiros interrupted. I’d been so engrossed in the conversation that I hadn’t even noticed we’d been slowing down. The screen that Oneiros had indicated earlier now showed our location as a vague circle over Jersey City. “At least, we’re very close. We’ll have to wake up to recheck our exact position before we come back in here to move to the precise location. But I think we’re almost right on top of it.”

I looked around the ship and noticed that the area generated where we were setting down looked more consistent and normal than any of the areas we’d passed over. There were buildings that looked more or less like proper constructions and the sky was filled with clouds that drifted in believable patterns.

“Looks like a city,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I’ve never been to Jersey City,” Oneiros said, “but I took a crack at creating what I imagine it might look like. Probably we’ll wake up to find that I’m completely off, but what can you do?”

Our craft was landing in a small park nestled between three skyscrapers.

“Everyone ready to come up?” he asked us.

We all agreed that yes, we were ready. I don’t think any of us really were, though. The entire trip had taken three hours. That wasn’t enough time to mentally prepare for what we were about to do.

A section of the smooth metal wall at the rear of the craft split in the middle and the two halves slid apart, revealing a small chamber with six cots in it.

“Everyone get comfy and I’ll do my thing.”

“Can’t you just wake us up directly?” I asked.

“I can,” he said, “but I get the feeling everyone would feel better having an extra minute to relax and prepare. Drift off slowly, peacefully, and then wake up into whatever insane thing comes next.”

“And Linc, you’re certain of the location you gave us?” I asked. “No chance it was a decoy or something put online by the government to lure people into a non-existent facility?”

I already knew it wasn’t, but I was stalling.

“No,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “Obviously I’d see through any such ruse. You’re forgetting that no amount of digital security can keep me out. There was one curious thing, though. Their file structure, the whole digital infrastructure, it looked a lot like Overseer.”

“You think he—it—is connected somehow?” asked Christine.

“No, I don’t. Not really. But there’s definitely a commonality there, and I intend to figure out why.”

I had suspected Lincoln had an ulterior motive for wanting to come with us. On the one hand, his power probably would come in handy for getting where we needed to within a secure facility, but on the other hand, Lincoln rarely did anything unless it benefitted him in some other way that he wasn’t ready to share with the class.

I could have learned what it was a lot more quickly by using my power, but I was still doing my best to avoid any egregious use of my telepathy, at least until the situation with Pitch had been resolved and I could fully trust my own mind again.

But now I saw it,no powers needed: Lincoln was still obsessed with and concerned about Overseer, even though it seemed like the AI—or whatever it had been—had been destroyed. Without looking into his mind, I knew he suspected that some piece still remained, and that it might still have some part to play, whether to our advantage or not.

“Let’s do this,” I said, climbing into a cot with a tartan bedspread.

“Absolutely,” said Oneiros. “Everyone close your eyes and think happy thoughts.

——————

I opened my eyes, emerging from the Dreamworld to find myself lying on hard pavement in the middle of what looked like a shipping depot. I could hear water lapping against a seawall not far away, see gulls circling overhead, see the multicolored shipping containers that surrounded us, and see at least a dozen armed guards rushing toward us, guns raised in our direction.

“Oh, fuck,” said Lincoln, opening his eyes and seeings the same things I saw. “I forgot about depth.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded.

“We’re in the exact right place. But I forgot about depth. The facility is underground, under the harbor. We’re on the surface.”

“And you’re just now mentioning this?” Angie said.

“I … I didn’t think about it,” said Lincoln, masking his panic with anger.

“Wow, so I nailed it?” asked Oneiros.

“You nailed it alright,” I said. “What the fuck do we do now? Go to sleep again?”

I waited for Oneiros to reply, but he didn’t say a word. I looked around to see what was going on and saw him standing with his eyes sealed shut as if concentrating so deeply that he couldn’t even hear what I was saying.

“Oneiros,” I said. “Can you get us out of here or not?”

I chanced a look into his mind and saw something truly startling.

“What’s happening?” asked Angie. “Why aren’t we doing anything?”

The guards were getting close now, definitely within range to start firing if they had a mind to, but that was far from my biggest concern.

“His power,” I said. “He can’t get to his power.”

That was what I felt inside his brain. If his power was normally a raging forest fire, right now it was a tiny candle flame, fluttering in a breeze that threatened to extinguish it completely.

I looked around and saw a man in a black suit and a black ski mask approaching at a leisurely pace from behind us as an alarm started blaring. From the other direction, a woman in a truly impressive armored bird get-up came flying toward us. Flying as in with actual wings, something I hadn’t seen before.

From yet another direction, a man in some sort of ancient bronze armor, wielding a massive shield and spear and running at a speed that should have been impossible with all of that weight approached us.

The woman in the black suit and mask that matched the first man barely registered in my mind as she approached from around the side of a shipping container. I couldn’t concentrate on her because, as soon as I saw her, a deep and unspeakable dread crept into my thoughts and it took all of my willpower not to fly into the sky and abandon my friends, my sister.

“Do you guys feel that?” asked Christine, her voice shaky.

All of us said we did, except …

“Feel what?” asked Angie. “What’s the plan? What are we going to do?”

“How did you get in here and what’s your business?” asked the man in the bronze armor.

I pushed out with my telekinesis and sent him flying backward. I hadn’t meant to do it, but in my panicked state I’d just acted without thought. Anything to get us out of this situation.

“I guess we’re fighting,” said Christine as the man landed on his feet effortlessly and heaved his spear at us.

“That doesn’t seem like a very good plan,” said Angie.

I went to use my telepathy on the man to figure out anything useful about him as Christine tanked the hit from his spear. As I reached out toward his mind with my own, I felt something inside me snap, like a severing in my brain. I gasped and clutched my head in my hands.

“My power’s back,” said Oneiros. “What should I do?”

“Get us out of here,” I almost screamed.

“Right,” he said, and his power washed over me, taking me down into the Dreamworld just as the guards started opening fire.