The Loop

“Do you have a special power? Do you feel a sense of duty? Do you want to serve your country?” The voice on the advert spoke with all the peppy enthusiasm of any other military recruitment ad, but this one seemed somehow more insidious.

It was one thing to target young men who were trying to find their way in the world and lure them with false promises of purpose and adventure and camaraderie. It was quite another to target people with dangerous, unpredictable powers and give them authority and legitimacy.

I turned the T.V. off just as the narrator was telling me about the signing bonuses and benefit packages available to Hyperhumans signing up for military service.

Part of me wanted to rationalize it. After all, in certain other countries Hyperhumans were being forced into military service. At least here it was optional. But even then … There was no quality control board determining what sort of people got power or what powers they got. There was no way to vet them all.

It was just the government recruiting dangerous people because they knew our rivals were doing the same thing, and there was no way that was going to end well.

I got up from the couch and stretched, releasing a sigh that contained all my frustration and anxiety. I took a deep breath and tried to center myself.

Ever since I’d seen the videos of the Hype woman in Dallas and guessed at her identity, I’d been trying to back off a little from the whole thing. It scared me immensely that this girl I’d known for years, this girl who was such good friends with my brother, might have this other side to her. This darker, dangerous side.

And it scared me even more that I was so willing to conclude that it was true with almost no evidence beyond a grainy still frame of an ankle tattoo and a gut feeling. I realized that the growing movement against Hyperhumans had the potential to be just as destructive as the Hypes themselves. We’d been covering the Holocaust in history class, and it was hard not to draw parallels. How long before a false accusation got someone dragged from their home and lynched? Did I want to contribute to that?

My phone rang, shaking me from my dark thoughts. I looked at the caller ID: Adam. I let it ring, waited for the voicemail notification, then listened to his message.

“Hey sis, just wanted to call and wish you a happy birthday. I should be back in time for supper tonight, but just in case I’m not, have an awesome day and eat an extra slice of cake for me! Talk to you later … And Ange, I love you. Sorry we haven’t talked much lately; I’ve had a lot on my plate. I promise we’ll get things back to nor—”

The message cut off, Adam evidently having run out of time. I felt guilty then for not answering, and I considered calling him back, but I heard a car horn outside and looked up to see my friends sitting in the driveway, waiting to pick me up to go to the mall.

My friend, Krista, was in the driver’s seat. Her birthday was in January, and she’d gotten her provisional license two weeks ago, opening up a whole world of possibilities and freedom for our group of friends.

I rushed out the front door, a big grin plastered on my face. The car—Krista’s parents’ old beater—groaned in the summer heat, its exhaust coughed out a puff of black smoke, and I could see flakes of rust fall from its skirt even as I watched. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“Hey, bitch! Happy birthday.”

Krista had a way with words.

I let myself into the passenger seat, generously left open by my two friends, Emma and Chloe, who sat in the back.

“Thanks, guys,” I said.

“Well it is your birthday,” said Chloe. “Besides, the vents up there don’t work and it’s hot as balls.”

The vents might have worked in the back, but even so, her black skin glistened with sweat and her dark curls were plastered to her face when I turned to look at her.

“You look like you’re melting,” I told her.

She laughed and punched my shoulder.

We got on the main road heading out of town and turned in the direction of the Juan Seguín Shopping Center, which sat on a large plot of land right near the edge of McArnold, not far from where Adam worked.

“Soooo,” said Krista, “I was thinking. We could go to the mall, like we were planning—”

“Oh no,” I groaned, laughing. Krista had a tendency to upend established plans in favor of going on harebrained adventures that generally ended up being huge wastes of time, if not utterly reckless and dangerous. She must have already talked about it with Chloe and Emma. I looked back at the two girls with accusation in my eyes.

“Don’t look at me,” said Emma, her paper white skin as shiny with perspiration as Chloe’s deep black. She heaved a sigh and shrugged. “I’m too hot to argue with her, so it’s up to you …”

If Sarah had been here, I could have counted on her to nip Krista’s alternative plans in the bud. Sarah was a planner, like me, and spontaneity wasn't in her nature. The thought of Sarah took me to a dark place for a minute, and it must have shown on my face.

“Are you okay, Ange? Heat getting to you, too?” Krista looked genuinely concerned and I fought my face and thoughts back into a somewhat more composed state. “We don't have to change our plans.” Her voice was soft, gentle. My friends had been walking on eggshells around me lately, and for just once, I wished they would stop.

“I'm fine,” I said, plastering a smile on my face. “I'm down for whatever.”

“I'm so glad you said that.” Krista smiled at me, her expression one of mischief and mystery. She hit the accelerator and the old car lurched forward with a low growl, launching us past the mall and toward some unknown destination.

——————

We stood with a crowd of excited onlookers, clustered in a loose queue outside a tent in the middle of a field west of McArnold. Normally, this field would be verdant and light green this time of year, but with the intense summer heat we'd been having, it looked more like desert scrubland. Most of those in the crowd around us looked to be in their twenties. A few looked a year or two older than us, but I was sure we were the youngest ones there.

“Where did you hear about this guy, again?” I asked Krista, hoping my voice sounded casual instead of anxious.

“There are all sorts of these people offering or selling their powers online if you know where to look,” Krista responded.

“I heard of this dude in New York, I think it was,” Chloe interjected, “who was getting people to pay to be turned into giant lizard monsters—”

“That’s ridiculous,” Krista said, rolling her eyes at Chloe. “Don’t believe everything you see online, Chlo. Honestly …”

Chloe looked at the ground, dejected.

“And yet you believe in this guy without question?” Emma asked drily.

“Because I’ve actually talked to people who have gone to him,” said Krista. “And all these people wouldn't be waiting in line if he wasn't legit. But if you guys don’t want to go ahead with it, just say so. Once we’re in that tent, though, you better not back out and make us look like a bunch of pussies.”

My hands shook slightly and I was sweating profusely, and not just from the heat. What Krista said this guy could do seemed too good to be true, but the definition of what was true or possible—or good—had changed so much recently that the phrase didn’t mean much anymore.

The question was, would my inherent mistrust of Hypes prevent me from accepting what he was offering?

Arduously, the loose line moved forward, with excited and nervous looking individuals and groups entering the tent, and happy, peaceful looking people exiting it.

Finally, we stood right outside the flap. The group ahead of us, two girls and a guy, had been chatting idly as they waited. The guy had said it was his third time coming here. One of the girls said that drugs were involved somehow, a fact that Krista had neglected to mention. At any point, I could have backed out, could have changed my mind and called it off. Instead, I pushed forward without voicing my concerns until the flap opened, and the group ahead of us exited, wide smiles and dreamy looks on their faces, like they’d just woken from the best sleep and the happiest dreams of their lives.

Which I supposed they had.

“You may enter,” said a slim, gray haired, middle-aged woman just inside the tent. Her face was impassive, not overwhelmingly happy like those of the people coming out of the tent. Still, she looked kind, trustworthy, safe.

I laughed nervously, causing Chloe and Emma to giggle as well. Krista looked back at us, holding the flap open. “Are you guys coming or not?”

I grabbed my friends hands and pulled them into the tent. What the hell am I getting myself into? I wondered.

The outside of the tent was nothing special: just a camping tent—albeit a large, top of the line one—like you’d find at any outdoor gear store. On the inside, though, it was decorated with strange lamps and psychedelic art and extravagant rugs and afghans. The kaleidoscope of colors was a shock to the system, especially after the endless browns and beiges of the outside world. Even the sky was so washed out and cloudless that it was closer to some sort of hazy non-color than it was to blue.

But it wasn’t just the explosion of color that made the place so disorienting. The number of lamps and the light they threw created strange shadows and warped perspective, making the place look bigger on the inside than it had on the outside. I wondered for a moment if that was part of the guy’s power, but no, I decided; it was just cheap parlor tricks.

There was gentle music playing quietly from some unknown source that made me think of India, somehow.

I looked at my friends’ faces and saw that they were all as taken aback as I was. Even indifferent Krista gaped in wide-eyed amazement, her mouth hanging slightly ajar.

A deeply tanned man of indeterminate age sat cross-legged in the middle of the tent. He wore a loose tie-dyed tank top and khaki pants. His long hair fell in messy dreads down to the middle of his back, which contrasted with his immaculately groomed beard. He wore thick-rimmed glasses and his kind eyes squinted at us from behind them, looking larger than life.

But most striking wasn't the apparent size of his eyes, but their color: they were bright gold from edge to edge, with no discernible iris, pupil, or white.

“Hello, friends,” he said. “What brings you to my humble place of business?”

Krista was the first to gather her wits enough to speak.

“Well, it’s uh … It’s our friend Angie's birthday, and we just wanted to do something special for her.” She gestured at me uncertainly, as if she’d forgotten which of us was Angie.

The man nodded.

“You know my price?”

“Yes. Of course, yes,” Krista said, digging through her pockets. “Fifty dollars each, right? I have it right here.”

The woman who had welcomed us into the tent stepped forward wordlessly to collect the money. This was my friends’ birthday gift to me. I hoped I looked grateful, though inside I felt some alien mix of dread and excitement, and the money was the last thing on my mind.

“So how does this work? The people in front of us said something about drugs?” My voice was quiet in that strange space, and I wasn’t at first sure if the man had heard me at all. But after a moment, his piercing, golden eyes met mine.

“The drugs are only needed for people who resist the influence of my power. And they’re simple, harmless sedatives. For most, nothing is required. Sometimes just a small dose of melatonin.”

“And your power is … I guess I’m not a hundred percent clear on the details.”

He looked at each of us in turn and launched into what seemed like a rehearsed bit of advertisement.

“My mind creates a portal to another world, a place that exists on top of and all around this one. I travel there any time I fall asleep, but I can bring others with me, too. And once we’re there, we can create anything we want to.”

“Travel as in …?”

“I mean physically travel. Your bodies will leave this world and enter that one. If you move in that world before you come back to this one, you'll wake up in a different place.”

“And you said we could create things but … how?”

“Simple willpower. Whenever I fall asleep, I travel to my Dreamworld, and any changes I make to it remain there forever, or until I change them again. Every place in the real world corresponds to a place in the Dreamworld, and any place in the Dreamworld that hasn’t been filled in yet is a blank space. I move my operation every few weeks so that a given area of the Dreamworld doesn’t become too crowded with peoples’ creations. Most find the entire experience to be cathartic.”

“All of this was on the website,” the woman from the front of the tent said. “Most people don’t have this many questions by the time they get here.” She eyed us suspiciously.

“It’s fine, Moira,” the man said. “It’s a strange and alien concept to most people. It’s no wonder that these girls have some questions.” He looked at us gravely. “I do want to make sure you’re completely at ease before we proceed, of course.”

Part of me thought the guy was crazy, or some sort of sick predator. It crossed my mind what a man in a tent in the country might do with three sedated teenage girls. But then … Everyone else had left the tent looking so pleased. And many people had come back multiple times. How nefarious could whatever was going on here really be?

“I'm fine,” I said. I looked around at my friends. “We're fine,” I amended.

“I'm glad to hear it,” he said. “And are you all feeling quite sleepy?”

I yawned, stretching my arms in a wide arc. I was feeling sleepy. It must have been contagious, because my three friends were yawning moments later. I yawned again, starting a sort of feedback loop, and earning a few quiet giggles from my friends.

Finally, I stopped yawning long enough to ask the man a final question.

“What’s your name?”

“You may call me Oneiros,” he said, as I felt myself drifting over the edge of consciousness. “And you have nothing to fear from me.”

I was vaguely aware of someone behind me, their hands under my armpits to ease me to the floor, and then I was out.

——————

I awoke as soon as I fell asleep, and the first thing I was aware of was my face getting wet. I held my hands up and mumbled something incoherent. The sound of fat raindrops breaking against the earth was all around me. What happened to the tent? I thought.

The next thing I was aware of was the hushed conversation happening around me.

“What do you mean, ‘something went wrong’?”

“Her mind, it's not … Normally I can see what people want me to create and I create it. People want a giant friendly lion or wings to put on their back or a hot tub full of milk and Cheerios and my power plucks those things from their minds and makes them real. Look around you, this section of the Dreamworld is already populated by things that people have made. Some of the things you yourselves dreamed up are already here. But her mind is struggling to push out things that are different. It's taking all my power to hold back that creative flood.”

“Different how?” asked the voice I now recognized Emma’s.

“Her mind wants to create living things. Conscious things. People create animals all the time, but they don't think for themselves. The creators mind and my power work in concert to create and maintain the creations. But her mind is insistent. It wants to make something that controls itself.”

“But they wouldn't be living, right? Not really? Because it's all just a dream, right?” This voice belonged to Krista, and there was an element of desperate pleading in it.

“They're as real as anything. They just can't leave the Dreamworld. They can't wake up like we can.”

“Your website said it was completely safe. It said nothing in the Dreamworld could hurt us.” Krista sounded accusatory now.

“Because normally I can filter out what gets made and what doesn't. Can you imagine the deranged things people would create without a filter? My power acts as that filter.”

“So what's the problem? Filter out the things she's trying to make.”

I finally opened my eyes and looked around me. I was still groggy and only vaguely aware that the conversation they were having was about me.

I stared in wonder at the scene around me. We were in the middle of a field, just like in the real world, but here the field was all gold and green and everywhere I looked was some new amazing thing. There were skyscrapers that stretched so high into the sky that I couldn't see their tops, and trees just as tall, covered in leaves and flowers in a million vibrant colors. There were clouds made of cotton candy floating lazily by on unseen currents of air, right at mouth level. There were airships cutting across the sky and ancient temples flanked by great statues of lions and other beasts, their sprawling gardens patrolled by robotic guards.

“That's what I'm trying to tell you …” The man was starting to sound impatient. “My filter isn’t working with her. The things in her mind want to get out so badly that I can't hold them back. And as long as I'm busy trying, I can't spare the power to wake us up and take us back to the real world.”

I got to my feet and dusted myself off. I looked at the worried faces of the people huddled twenty feet away from me. Chloe finally noticed me and rushed to my side.

“Are you alright, Ange?” There was something more than concern in her eyes, something like outright fear. “When we all woke up here, you just … didn't.”

I couldn't help but notice that after her initial assessment of my condition, she backed away from me a few paces. The others were coming over to us now.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Oh, Ange, I'm so sorry,” Krista said. “You've just been so down lately, ever since, you know … And I just wanted to do something cool for you for your birthday.”

“What's going on?” I repeated.

“Girl … Angie, right?” Oneiros was looking at me like he'd never seen another person before. “Have you been in contact with any other Hypes? Anyone who might have altered your brain in some way?”

For some reason, my mind went straight to Adam.

Adam.

How long had I known? I realized in that moment of revelation the reason why I'd pulled back from my suspicion of Christine, from my investigation into Hypes in general.

An indictment of her was an indictment of my brother. It all started adding up and my brain started to accept what it had probably known already for weeks. The way he'd seemed to be more in tune with my thoughts and feelings, the way I'd sometimes felt an inexplicable calm come over me when he got home, even without seeing or talking to him, the way he was constantly sneaking out and hanging out with Christine, with Lincoln. And I'd felt something else, hadn't I? A poking and prodding in my mind that wasn't like my brother. There was something darker, something alien when he was around.

My brother was a Hype, and—whether on purpose or not—he'd been doing something to me, to my brain.

“No,” I answered, my voice utterly toneless. “Not that I know of.”

“Well are you a Hype yourself? Because my site made it very clear that I can't guarantee my power will play nice with other Hypes’ neural patterns. If you are, you should have disclosed it.”

My friends were looking at me with shock and awe in their eyes, believing that I might be one of those … things.

“I'm not a fuckin’ Hype.”

“Well, whether you were aware of it or not, somebody has broken down some pathways in your brain, bringing your deepest desires closer to the surface than they should be. Those thoughts normally want to stay buried, but in you … they want out.”

I ignored him, not really wanting to hear what he was saying. I turned to my friends, who were still looking at me suspiciously. Chloe and Emma, at least, had some pity mixed in with their fear.

“This birthday kind of sucks,” I said. “Can we go now?”

“Maybe you haven't been listening, young lady,” Oneiros interrupted, “but no … Until I can stamp out those insistent creative thoughts in your head, I can't spare the amount of power it would take to wake us up. But there might be another way …” He looked at me thoughtfully.

I wasn't even aware of any creative thoughts in my head until I heard him say it, but then, there was something. A human shape, a girl. Sarah, I thought. But my thoughts were so mixed up. So angry and hurt and filled with images of my brother, of Christine, of dark, shapeless people doing dark, nameless things. Whatever wanted to get out of my head, it was more than just a vision of my dead friend.

As I became aware of these thoughts below the surface of my consciousness, I felt a surge inside my mind, like something large throwing itself against a locked door. I heard a deafening noise, somewhere between a plank of wood being snapped in half and cloth being torn. Multicolored lights flashed in the sky and the rain redoubled in intensity. My vision was momentarily obscured by a sort of static overlay, which moved away from me and briefly coalesced into a humanoid shape before collapsing.

The others flinched back from me, Oneiros stumbled and grimaced, like he'd been struck.

“This other way, what is it?” I asked the man, who was visibly shaken.

“In order to wake up in the real world, you have to fall asleep here. Normally my power would facilitate that, but … Perhaps your friends could get some distance, find some place to hunker down and fall asleep. If they can get out, maybe they can get some help.

“Absolutely not,” said Chloe. “I don't know what the hell is going on here, but we're not leaving her.”

“… Maybe it's not the worst idea,” said Krista quietly.

I glared at her, and she dropped her eyes to the ground.

“I'm sorry, Ange,” she muttered. “We just wanted to do something cool for your birthday, but this is getting crazy. We have to do something.”

I wasn't happy to hear it, but she wasn't entirely wrong.

“Get out,” I said. “Find my brother.”

“Your brother?” said Emma. “What can he do?”

“Just find him. I think he can help.”

Oneiros wore a look of intense concentration and only grunted as I felt another surge in my mind, more powerful than the last. I wasn't sure he could really hear us anymore, but I took the noise as an approval of the plan.

“Are you sure about this?” Chloe asked me.

I nodded solemnly.

“We'll find him,” said Krista. “We'll be back as soon as we can.”

——————

I stood alone in the field, surrounded by wonders, too terrified to appreciate them. My friends had run off, following Oneiros’s guidance to a bed of clouds that another visitor to his Dreamworld created a week ago. It was two miles away, but by my estimate, they'd had plenty of time to get there and fall asleep, taking them out of this place and back into the real world.

Oneiros was a hundred yards off, his face turning red from exertion. I didn't know what to do. I tried in vain to stop thinking about the things I wanted, but trying to force yourself not to think about something usually just makes you think about it more.

I could tell he was at the end of his rope, and so was I.

He explained that neither of us could fall asleep to escape this place as long as my dreams were unfulfilled, and he couldn't give into what my mind wanted to create. He was vague on details why, but his worry was genuine, and it was enough to make me truly, deeply scared. Not just for me, but for the friends I'd inadvertently dragged into my broken mind.

Worrying about my friends made me think again of Sarah, and that was all it took for the dam in my brain to finally crack

All at once, I saw Oneiros collapse, and the world shifted around me. The sky turned a violent shade of red, the rain came down harder than ever despite the cloudless sky, and directly in front of me, a seam began to open in the air. A seam through which a staticy hand issued forth.

“I'm sorry,” I heard Oneiros say, getting to his feet and limping over to me. “I can't hold it back anymore.”

He looked somewhat better, like a weight had been lifted from him. He was no longer fighting back against whatever was coming out of my mind. I didn't blame him.

I couldn't fight it either.

“I'm the one who should apologize,” I said. “I shouldn't have brought my baggage here. I didn't even plan to come here today, but … when my friends described it to me, I think part of me wanted this. Part of me knew exactly what I wanted to create and made me come here.”

We both watched in mixed awe and terror as the seam in space ripped open wider. The hand reaching through resolved into flesh, and the arm that followed was wrong somehow. There was a sick, pulsating light beneath the surface of the paper-thin skin.

“Why did you think your brother could help here?” he asked.

“I lied when I said no Hype had done anything to my mind. I think my brother has … I'm not sure what you'd call it, but he can see my thoughts, my feelings. I think he can influence them. I don't think he meant to break anything, but here we are.”

“Family can be tough,” he said drily, as the seam opened to the width of a door, and beyond the thing coming out was the most profound blackness I'd ever seen. The arm was followed by a torso, naked and bony, ribs almost poking through waxy, translucent skin.

“What are we looking at here, by the way?” I asked him. “The blackness, I mean. Where is that?”

“That's your subconscious mind,” he said. “A vast, endless space full of all your fears, feelings, thoughts, hopes, dreams, and nightmares. My power picks the safe things and manifests them in this place. In your mind, they're all wrapped up together, I'm afraid.”

The rest of the body pushed through, and it was unmistakably Sarah, but devoid of whatever makes a creature a person. Her naked body was like a doll, flat and featureless and utterly inhuman.

We could see her dark, glowing purple heart pumping in her chest, beneath ribs like twigs from some ancient, desiccated desert tree, brittle and black. The light beneath her skin came from no discernible source; it simply was.

“Hello, Ange,” she said. “Long time, no see.” Her voice was not her own. She spoke first in Christine's voice, then in my brother's, and then somehow in both at once.

Almost everything in me wanted to cower away from this mockery of my friend, but some small part of me felt pity, and it kept me rooted to the spot. For his part, Oneiros stood by my side, terror plastered on his face, but a strange sort of fascination, too.

My eyes were shiny with tears when I finally found it in me to reply.

“Hi, Sarah. I'm sorry about what happened to you. I really am. But you're not supposed to be here.”

“Oh child, first your inaction kills my brother, then me, and you want to tell me where I belong.” Her face was twisting into some grotesque mask, and a sort of halo of black light appeared above her head. “Let me tell you where you belong. In hell. Here. With me.”

Without warning, she lunged forward and stuck her hand out toward Oneiros. Something that looked to me like a lightning bolt, but dark and inverted somehow, shot forth and struck Oneiros in the chest. It left a burning after image in my eyes, and by the time I could see the world around me once more, Oneiros was gone.

I was alone with the perverted ghost of a girl who had been my best friend in life, and her eyes held nothing but malevolence, nothing by contempt, nothing but a desire for revenge.