Vheissu - PART 3 & PROLOGUE
General Rating: R
General Warnings: dystopian setting, implied character death
Disclaimer: 100% fiction
III
In the midst of his dreaming, a long forgotten voice - unheard in what seemed like centuries - resounded, filling his mind with the only answer he had been looking for, permeating the dream, shattering the lies and urging him to wake up. His heart responded first, warmth pumping the renewed love in his whole body and from his vantage point, Gerard knew he had to return, to finally go home.
The need to awaken surged through him and even as he continued to dream, Gerard wanted to wake up. He wanted to close his ever watchful eyes on Vheissu, turn around and return to reality. He forced himself to do so, and as he turned towards the source of the voice, he noticed a small opening in the realm.
***
Lionel and Francesc sat on the sides of their indoor pool. Their new residence was a huge summer house with a lovely patio and pool. They were tanning in the raw, powerful sun when they felt the ground beneath them starting to shak, like a small-scale, unannounced earthquake.
They jumped from their deck-chairs, fear gripping their hearts. The pool's surface was waving up, as if someone was stirring it with a giant invisible spoon.
The earth continued to tremble, although it wasn't powerful enough to displace large objects and the two hugged, feeling scared with this new situation neither knew what to do about.
They looked up, the sky was darkening, the sun was disappearing, growing paler and paler, soon to be gone.
***
It had been 40 seconds until specialized technicians made it to the laboratory and proceeded to seal the pod. The dream pipe was reconnected to Gerard's mind and the dreamcatcher indicated contact had been achieved. The lid was then closed and the alarm finally stopped.
But even with the closed sleeping pod, even with the cable inserted back into his mind, Gerard was physically and mentally awakening. He was stirring in the closed, narrow space of the pod, his limbs and head moving. The dreamcatcher indicated that the dream stream that was generating Vheissu was thinning and that the Mind was proceeding to wake up.
***
The sea began to retreat, leaving behind drying golden sand.
From inside the house, Bojan saw the changes, he saw the sun disappearing and the sky cracking, the azure now streaked with dark twisted lines, like a torn canvass. He rushed outside, Josep soon following, grabbing his lover's shoulders and holding him close.
“What is happening?” Bojan uttered, clinging onto Josep's hand, afraid to his very core.
Josep looked around, taking in the changes. He too was afraid, unable to understand what was going on. He didn't know what to do, so he hugged his lover tigher.
Bojan started crying, as the last remnant of the blue ocean he had loved so much, the sea he had shared with Josep was gone, the horizon being filled with nothing but endless sand. Whilst holding his trembling lover and witnessing the sudden transformation, Josep slowly began to understand what was happening. At first, he had believed the changes were due to one of the Minds having a nightmare. But then, as everything began disappearing, he understood the truth, truth he had no right to hide from his lover.
He turned Bojan around, so they could be face to face. Gazing into his lover's teary eyes and feeling his own well up, he explained.
“The dream is collapsing, Bojan. One of us is waking up and this entire world is disintegrating,” he uttered slowly, his thumbs caressing Bojan's wet cheeks
“Does this mean...” Bojan could not bring himself to finish the question.
“I'm afraid, yes. I'm afraid it will be the end. In the end, dreams are just dreams; once you wake up, even if you go back to sleep, that dream is gone, its realm destroyed, irretrievable.”
“Do something about it, Josep! You're one of them, dream the world back, please! Save me, Josep!” Bojan pleaded, embracing Josep with all his might, his head resting on the other man's chest while crying convulsed his body.
Josep said nothing, he was trying to think, to find the answer. The dream was generated by three minds, but their independent dream streams were woven together in order to form Vheissu. He couldn't dream the world all by himself, because only the dreamcatcher generated Vheissu, from the different dream threads, and the dreamcatcher had been designed to only work with three threads, not less. Should a thread disappear, the dreamcatcher could only stop from generating the world, as it was actually happening. There was nothing he could do.
Trying to hide the crushing truth of his own impotence, he grabbed Bojan's hand and they started running towards what seemed to be the center of their shrinking world.
***
The whole Science corps was in the laboratory, together with a few members of the Board, who had happened to be awake and had been beamed to the HQ.
By the time Luis, Xavi and Thierry arrived, the pod was sealed again, all the cables connected, but the awakening signal had been too strong and the process was ongoing for too long for it to be reversible by outside means.
Luis and Xavi checked the stats. Since the dream pipe had been hooked again and the pod was closed, maintaining the state of hibernation, there was a small chance that Gerard wouldn't proceed to full awakening. For as long as the Mind was still not completely awake and was hermetically locked in the sleeping pod, the dreamworld would not disappear immediately, and, should sleep return to Gerard, the situation could perhaps be restored.
However, this was only the theoretical response to such a crisis. In the actual current situation, the Right Mind was far more awake than asleep and, as the dreamcatcher charts showed, Vheissu had already began to collapse.
***
Locking themselves in the house and trying to ignore the changes did not make them stop, nor did it make the fear in their hearts go away. Even with the closed curtains, they could notice that daylight was diminishing and that it was growing cold.
Lionel and Francesc sat in their bed, as they usually did, but their hug had a different nature now. With Vheissu undergoing these changes, they grew more and more scared, aware of the doom it all represented.
They had counted the minutes and they had both noticed the transformations were quicker now, Vheissu was crumbling, the dreamworld falling apart with increasing speed. It couldn't be any other way.
When they noticed nighttime had fallen completely over their domain - despite it being still midday by regular time measurements - they knew it was time to face the disaster. There was no running away from what was happening to their world and even if they were afraid, they still had each other and the comfort that brought made them more at peace with the demise.
They went outside. From their country house, they could always see the city, its tall buildings not far away, since both of them still loved it greatly and needed its reassuring scapes near.
Now, they could see the once magnificent sights of tall, fully lit constructions disappearing, their lights flickering into the darkness for a second or two before extinguishing. It was like all the apartment buildings, the restaurants, the nightclubs came crashing down in piles of nothing, imploding without leaving any rubble behind. Francesc could imagine their inhabitants falling to the ground, defenseless in front of this sudden, unexpected and unstoppable disaster.
Lionel looked behind him, and shouted, grabbing Francesc's waist harder and turning him to see the glaring absence. Their new home was gone as well, devoured by the blackness. Hand in hand, hearts beating in unison still, they gazed at the space where their mansion used to be, still feeling its beloved contours and the feeling of despair surged in both their hearts.
“What's going on?” Lionel dared to put into words the horror in his heart.
“I don't know...” Francesc didn't have the same courage, skirting the answer and refusing to say it out loud.
“Are we going to die?” Lionel pulled his face level, staring into his eyes, into his very soul.
They looked at each other, paralyzed with the ultimate fear: death. Each knew what the other was thinking, but each of them was afraid to voice the terrible truth, even Lionel stopping himself now. Darkness was coming, like a great shadow of destruction, and everything else was white, a desert of whiteness. They started running away from the dark wall advancing towards them.
***
Luis' patience was being put to a severe test. While he knew nothing could be done from their end to alter the waking up process, the Board members were getting restless and - as all bureaucrats, they had no grasp of the technologies allowing Vheissu to exist.
He was stuck explaining the situation to them, while Xavi was monitoring the man inside the sleeping pod.
“To put it simply, because the Minds are in a drug-induced sleep, they cannot wake up suddenly, like normal people do when the alarm goes off in the morning. Should that have been the case, Vheissu and all its contents, yes, including the people, would've perished in a matter of seconds,” Luis explained to the Board members, who looked at him with widening eyes, trying hard to understand what must've sounded like gibberish. “Since the minds are sedated, their wakeup time is longer, they pretty much need to pry themselves from their sleep and therefore, as we can see on the screen, Vheissu, in a terribly altered form, is still there, disintegrating slowly, following the same rhythm as the Mind's awaking process. Because it is a dream reality and time is altered there, what can be measured in seconds here, it can last hours, days even in Vheissu.”
“Can't you induce sleep again, pump him full of sedatives and save Vheissu?” Board Member Sandro asked, gesturing towards the white-overalls clad people in the laboratory.
Xavi heard the question and immediately reacted, not before exchanging a significant glance with Luis. He too hated the Suits so much, because they never made the effort to understand how Vheissu worked, caring only about how much credits they could make.
“That's impossible. First of all, the dosage is very strict and calculated with utmost precision, based on so many factors, it'd take forever to list them all. This technology is very delicate, as it incorporates the customers' particulars and the dreamcatcher is calibrated for a certain kind of dream. So if I pump him full of sedatives, like you so eloquently put it, it could kill him. We certainly don't want that, Vheissu would be immediately destroyed,” he attempted a little joke.
Only Luis chuckled, but seeing how Sandro and the other two Board members gave him an evil look, Xavi had no choice but to continue.
“Secondly, like I said, the waking up process is irreversible as far as any outside intervention is concerned; the body can be tricked into falling asleep, but the mind cannot. Even if I get the dosage right, another wave of drugs would cause a different sleep, now that he is on the verge of waking up. The key to this is the Right Mind himself.”
“How come?”
“Dreams are often very powerful images, very powerful contraptions, trapping the brain in and Vheissu is, by all means, one of the most intense and powerful dreams ever. On the way from sleeping state to wakefulness, the dream - if strong enough, if important enough, can sometimes compel the person to return to sleeping state.”
“I don't understand. You just said that the waking up process is irreversible!” Sandro uttered, his tone a little louder, demanding.
“We cannot reverse it ourselves. As we have noticed before, we have no means of intervention into any of the Minds' sleeping, dreaming and now awakening patterns. However, if Gerard wishes, he could go back to sleep, as people often do, and in such case the dream could be resumed, Vheissu restored and all your customers saved. If Vheissu manages to convince the Right Mind to go back to sleep, if it convinces him it is more worth dreaming than waking up, Gerard will backtrack.”
“And how could Vheissu achieve that?”
“I don't know,” Luis said, bowing his head.
Dreamology was a difficult science, unpredictable just like its subject matter - dreams. Luis hoped Vheissu was strong enough and managed to reclaim the Right Mind, but somehow he doubted.
They all looked at the screen. The changes had increased their pace. They had witnessed the colours fading, the world becoming as grey and as dull as Metropolis was during the day. Then the landscapes themselves began disintegrating, mountains crumbling as if made of dirt, seas and rivers drying, disappearing, buildings turning to dust. The sky blackened gradually, the darkness taking over everything.
In the fibreglass case, the tall man was tossing and turning more and more, his eyes moving under his still closed eyelids. Xavi knew the man was battling the hibernation state, making his way through layers and layers of sleep. But he knew that even with the highest dosage of drugs, administered when the Left Mind had grown a body into Vheissu, the Right Mind would wake up sooner than later unless something happened.
Finally, when the whole of Vheissu was nothing but vast black emptiness, they could see the few hundred people they had lured with the promise of eternal bliss and had implanted in a seemingly unstable dream world all huddled together, a mass of silent, afraid faces, surrounded by darkness soon to engulf them. All the people sat together, some of them talking, some of them obviously lamenting or even crying.
Even as scientists, they felt horrible for those men and women now trapped in a nightmare. A few of the younger, more impressionable technicians were discreetly, or not so discreetly wiping tears and everyone was wishing something happened. Not being able to do anything at all to save all those innocent people was hanging over their heads, the tension in the room reaching unprecedented levels.
Alternating between the screen and the sleeping pod, Xavi counted down the seconds before Gerard finally opened his eyes and Vheissu ended.
***
They reached the narrowing edge of their world, people pouring into that pool of light from every darkening corner. Lionel and Francesc were joined by their peers, the now homeless souls of Vheissu.
Nobody knew anyone else, but they huddled together immediately, hearts opening to let others in on the spot, some breaking the silence with songs, some praying, some crying their eyes out.
The young couple held hands, their fingers twined together. Tears stained both their cheeks as they understood everything would be over very soon.
Reaching the last resort and seeing all the people doomed to die again, Josep decided that, as futile as it might be, he had to try to reason with the Mind trying to wake up. From the state of Vheissu, reduced to a pool of light, he knew it was already very late, that the process was almost completed, but he still had to make the best of it.
Kissing Bojan once more, he returned to his realm, now a circle of light around the black world Vheissu had become. He could no longer see the world, solely the silhouette of the Right Mind advancing towards the opening. He had to hurry.
***
They all stared at the screen for a few seconds, dreading the moment the whole screen would turn black. It was just a matter of seconds now, but as the timer went on, Gerard was still battling the sleep state. For some reason however, the advancing darkness seemed to have stopped.
“I was hoping this would happen,” Luis said, a thread of hope in his voice.
They stared at him, waiting for an explanation.
“Before you start again, let me reiterate that we can no longer do anything. If the Right Mind wants to wake up, he will wake up. Like I said before, that's the key to the whole thing, it's all depending on his own will as well as on the dream's power of attraction. And because the Left Mind somehow implanted himself into Vheissu, lived there, became part of it, perhaps he can convince the Right Mind to go back to sleep. If Vheissu itself cannot achieve that, perhaps a grieving lover about to lose his love could. And should that happen, Vheissu will be restored, since the current dream is not over completely and since the dreamcatcher would restart weaving the same dream threads.”
Xavi and Thierry nodded. With Josep able to contact Gerard inside the dream world, things changed, even if not substantially.
***
From his realm, Gerard could see the opening, a steep climb up a peak, placed on the other side of Vheissu. He had already turned his back onto Vheissu and was heading towards the exit. He had been summoned outside the dream and he had to go, he had the right to go.
“Stop! Please stop!”
Startled to hear another voice, he came to a halt and turned. In front of him, somehow appearing to have climbed from the dying Vheissu towards the suspended realm Gerard was inhabiting, there was an older man.
“What are you doing! You're destroying this world, you're destroying these people! You cannot wake up!”
Gerard had no time for this, although he was intrigued with who the other man was. He wasn't a normal Vheissuan, none of them could reach his realm, none of them could see him and contact him by talking to him. He waved, showing his disinterest and continued his walk back to wakefulness.
“Look at them, Right Mind, look at what you're doing! Are you going to just wake up, just like that? Why would you do that, what could possibly urge you to destroy all these people?”
The older man's words and especially his tone got to Gerard, so he stopped again and turned away from the bright light, the opening.
“Who are you!” he bellowed.
“I am Josep, also known as Vheissu's Left Mind. And I beg of you to not wake up, while you still can, to save Vheissu rather than kill it off!”
Gerard was a little taken aback with this new information. Vheissu was his creation just as much as the other man's, but he had never cared for any of its people. He had spent his time watching them, growing bored with the perfection, with their perfect love stories and their blissful, perhaps undeserved, lives.
The Minds had never come in contact before, not before, when they were just highly intelligent men working on the same Project and certainly not in their realms wherefrom they were gazing upon the world they were creating.
“You're not supposed to be here, why are you here, Josep? Why do you care so much to stop me? They're not worth saving!” He shouted, wishing the other man stopped bother him.
“They are, maybe not all, but some are!” Josep pleaded, his mind full of Bojan and his cry. “I'm here because I fell in love, I broke the rules to follow my love, to pursue my own right to happiness, just like everybody else,” he said quickly, hoping to humanize the younger man, to make him sympathize with his cause.
Gerard wasn't sure whether to laugh or to cry. Anger was taking over him, as he recalled how he had been treated.
“You fell in love, with one of them? With one of these rich bastards who think they can have anything? Eternal bliss for a bunch of credits, oh they're so stupid to fall for this. None of these people is worth anything and I feel sorry that you love one of them.”
“He's not conceited, he's a lonely lost boy, he had nothing and came here to get away from so much pain! It broke my heart to know he had made the conscious decision to live without love, so I had to do something about it! I offered him an alternative, I gave him true happiness. If you wake up, he will be gone, and I will be alone again, losing another loved one. Please, please don't do this to me, I cannot handle another, another...”
Josep broke into sobs, disgusting Gerard completely. If the man hoped he'd be impressed with his pathetic little story, he was sorely mistaken. Anger released his sealed memories already triggered by the voice he had heard, the voice that had summoned him back to life, back to love.
“If you want me to stay asleep for your little love story's sake, you made a really poor bet. I'm afraid I cannot accept such nonsense, not after what they had done to me. Tell me, Josep, do you know what they did? Do you know they forced me to become a Mind? I was working on the Project, yes, I was excited to be part of world building, but I never signed up for this. I was falling in love and I wanted out, I wanted to go back to being a mere engineer, so I could be together with the man I loved. How dare you ask me to stay asleep for your lover's sake when they locked me down and told me my lover was dead, that I had nothing else to live for, so they could convince me to allow them to strap me to the machine a monster had invented? If I wake up, I can hope to be reunited with my love, I can hope to have a real life, so I am sorry, but I cannot stay so you could have your dream one.”
Josep knew. Josep himself had handpicked the young engineer, with such a creative mind, for the role of the Right Mind. Josep had told the Board that they needed to do whatever it took to get him to accept. Josep had wanted to get away from losing his wife, he had done everything to make sure the project took off and he had known the young engineer was perfect for the role.
He bowed his head, not wanting to reveal any of his inner turmoil to the other man. He had no right to hold Gerard down, to ask him to sacrifice his love for him, he had never had any right. But Bojan, Bojan would be gone for good if Gerard woke up. And Bojan was above anyone, above any principles. He had to do anything in order to protect him. This time, his request had more substance, as before, since then he was trying to get away from a broken heart while now he was trying to save the one he loved.
“All this still doesn't give you the right to leave the project when you please! We all make sacrifices, you should too. They are innocent, my boy is innocent and you won't punish whoever coerced you, you will punish them!”
“It doesn't matter what you say, you cannot stop me. I have reasons to go back now and I will!”
“I cannot let you wake up, Gerard, I cannot lose the one who restored my faith in love!”
“Your love is imaginary, old man! It's not real. It's not exposed to duress and has no obstacles to overtake! What kind of love is that, where everything is perfect? If that's your weapon, it is a weak one.”
“You say real love has to be hard, has to be fought for? Then I will fight you!”
Josep yelled and attacked Gerard, jumping on him, hoping to prevent him from waking up.
***
The mass of Vheissuans watched the fight above them almost without breathing. The taller man, their angel of death, was surely no match for the older, smaller man who had gone to beg for their lives.
“What will happen if the tall one wins?”
“He'll wake up and darkness will devour us.”
“We are already dead, so we will just evaporate?”
“Our souls will perish, if such a thing is possible.”
“Will it hurt?”
“I don't know. Dying in the real world didn't hurt.”
Couples held hands and children hugged their parents, everyone tried to communicate their final emotions to the one they loved. Solely Bojan stood apart, his eyes locked on Josep, his heart hardening in preparation for extinction.
He knew his lover wouldn't win, he had known all along their love story had a short deadline. It had all been too good to be true, the man of his dreams - quite literally - making him happier than he had ever been. He had always felt that it wasn't normal, that he was somehow exceeding his allotted happiness inside Vheissu, that he was stretching more than allowed.
He was ready to depart though, for he had known love after all, true love and deep down Bojan didn't regret any of it.
***
Gerard pushed Josep to the ground, but didn't hit him. It wasn't like him to beat an older man, especially since they were physically so unmatched. He continued his march towards the enlarging opening, but the other jumped on him again.
Again, Gerard pushed him to the ground and tried to walk away, but Josep was determined not to let Gerard reach the opening. His each attempt was rebuffed and he found himself on the ground every time, while the younger man took another step towards the real world.
As he jumped on him again, trying to hurt him somehow, to buy some more time - time needed not, but just for the sake of it, for showing Gerard he too could fight to the very end - Gerard not only knocked him off, but this time swung his fist at him, ready to hit.
The blow was prevented by a third party, suddenly materializing between them and effectively stopping Gerard's arm in full punching motion.
Both Gerard and Josep relented, staring at the lanky brunette who had appeared out of the blue.
“I am the Middle Mind and I am here to settle this conflict.”
The man looked as young as Gerard, but somehow looked older, like he had been hardened by a tough life. Josep didn't know who the Middle Mind was, there were certain things he hadn't been told before entering the sleeping pod, despite him being the Project's leader and its main creator.
“Fantasy love versus reality love,” the brunette said, glancing first at Josep and then at Gerard.
“This man has been brutally separated from his lover, by force may I add. He has now heard love's calling and wants to go back. His interest is just as selfish as yours, Left Mind, but he isn't hiding behind the ideal of self sacrifice like you are. What is it that are you willing to sacrifice, Left Mind, in order for Vheissu to be restored?” he continued, gazing mercilessly at Josep.
Josep was speechless. He knew there was a third mind, he himself had devised the trinity concept, the tripod holding the dreamworld together, but he hadn't been told this person would have greater knowledge than himself.
“The Right Mind already sacrificed his love once, are you willing to do the same? Are you willing to revert to your upper realm, as a watcher only and renounce young Bojan?”
There was no positive answer to this question. Josep knew how deeply enamoured Bojan was and how losing Josep and having to return to a different kind of Vheissu life would probably kill the young boy. He would wither away and Josep could not watch that, he refused to even imagine what it could mean for Bojan to return to a lonely life. He had promised him eternal love and he would end up bailing out, for no-one's benefit. He couldn't do that, even if it meant saving the others. The Middle Mind was right, he wasn't interested in the others. His reason for being part of project Vheissu had been a selfish one to begin with.
“Are you ready to face a world where your lover could have been killed for trying to awaken you? Are you ready to live that kind of mourning life? Just for the minuscule chance that you could be reunited with him?”
Gerard was at a loss himself, aware that surely Carles' attempt couldn't have been met favourably by the Vheissu Board and even by the Metropolis authorities. Still, he knew he could never go to sleep after this, he could never be able to generate the perfection needed to run Vheissu. Marred by the signal of lost love returned, he knew he would forever yearn for him, now that he could remember what they had.
“Vheissu has been compromised anyway. I will take my chances,” he uttered slowly, looking straight at Josep.
The Middle Mind glanced significantly at Josep, his mere gaze pinning the other man down.
“It is decided then. Go Gerard, wake up. We shall all see each other soon.”
Josep found himself unable to make any move, his willpower having left him. Under the Middle Mind's watchful eye, he got up and looked down at Vheissu for the final time. He couldn't discern the faces anymore, but his heart knew Bojan was there. A tear rolled down his cheek as he whispered a goodbye.
Gerard looked at the two, saluted and resumed his walk, the Opening larger and larger, the light brighter and brighter.
Stepping through and into the white light, he could sense the darkness behind him enveloping the rest of Vheissu and finally his eyes popped open to the sight of what seemed like a hundred faces all staring at him through the sleeping pod's glass lid.
Epilogue
Xavi still looked at the black screen. It was still tuned in, but Vheissu and its gorgeous colours were gone, extinguished like they never existed. He had given so much to Project Vheissu, he had allowed it to take over his life, even to seep into the only thing that still kept him sane in world riddled with rules he now found absurd, his relationship with David.
He couldn't believe that one man and his fearless search for love had managed to destroy the most important, costly and technologically advanced project mankind had ever undertaken. He failed to understand how it was possible that one man's voice, calling his lover deep in drug-induced sleep, could have such an effect that it had reached him even in the middle of the most intense and complicated dream and it had made him awaken, forsaking everything.
He had heard the old sayings, that love could move mountains and whatnot, but what had happened just a few hours before was larger than life and almost as impossible to comprehend as man's abilities to live inside another's dream.
He didn't know what made him feel worse, the fact that all those souls of Vheissu were now lost, completely gone without a trace, and that nothing could be done about it, that they had been paralyzed, unable to defend them, or the fact that the lovers who had destroyed Vheissu, the multimillion credits project, with the simplest means possible - a repeated name calling, and the immediate response of a long denied lover - would surely be severely punished for their deed.
Also, while he felt dejected that a project he had dedicated years of his life to had crumbled so unceremoniously, he somehow felt vindicated in his secret beliefs that it was all too good to be true, that perfection, while conceptually attainable, never lasted, always failing in the pettiest of ways.
Switching off the now useless screen and touching the dreamcatcher for the last time, Xavi left the laboratory. Walking along the deserted halls, he hoped he would never have to return. If he could find some hospital that would take him, he would gladly leave Project Vheissu behind. Perhaps the project would be abandoned altogether, perhaps not, but one thing was sure, Xavi never wanted to be part of anything similar: it was simply too draining.
Reaching the apartment, he found that David was missing. It was well into the night period, and David had been sound asleep when Xavi had gotten the call and had left for the HQ. Xavi looked for him throughout the not very large apartment, without success.
Entering what had become the master bedroom, the one they had shared for about 2 years, Xavi sat down on the freshly made bed, David's absence even more painfully obvious. On top of the pillow on David's side, there was a note and next to it, a little bag with some pills.
Xavi grabbed the note and held the folded piece of paper between his fingers for a while before daring to unfold it and read its contents. Finally, he gathered the courage and started reading.
dearest,
I will always love you, but these last few months of hardship and duress have shown we're too different to remain a couple. It's both my fault and yours for getting to this, but you're the one who made it clear that our relationship is not enough, that for you, it was just a means of escaping your strictness and your ingrained principles.
I brought you something that could be enough, a different, hopefully more fulfilling escape - the drug of the upper class: thrys. And remember, even if two people love each other, it doesn't mean they have to be together.
D.
P.S. You don't have to worry about me, I found a job. I'll be all right.
Xavi looked at the three spherical pills and held back tears. He couldn't believe things were falling apart just when project Vheissu was over and he could finally relax, find the time to mend his broken relationship and move on.
With the sublime example of what love could do in Carles and Gerard's case, Xavi suddenly realized that whatever him and David had shared was nowhere near what real love represented. He had always imagined they were unbreakable, that what they had found in the other was exactly what they had always desired, but it turned out it was just mundane romance, the kind that had an expiration date.
He opened the little bag of pills and took one. Leaning back on the bed, Xavi awaited, not sure what would happen, but for once in his predetermined, preprogrammed life, he didn't actually care.
***
Josep and Sergio, the former Left and Middle Mind of Project Vheissu respectively sat in adjacent holding cells somewhere in the pits of the project headquarters.
“Why did you intervene?” Josep asked.
He wanted the answers for himself, so he could know the truth, but at the same time he hoped the conversation would prevent him from thinking of what had happened and what he had lost.
“When the project was initiated, as you probably know, since it was your baby, they thought only two minds would be necessary. Yours, as you were the balanced, mature man, having been through a lot and having nothing to lose. They needed your desperation and your abandon, and you needed someone to use these characteristics. You were the unconditional one, ready to uphold the dream structure with your whole being - just like it actually came to happen. But while your mind was needed to erect the structure, you were a cold, calculated scientist, indeed with a particular life story and with enough dedication, but lacking creativity. You had the emotion and the strength, but no vision for the perfect world.”
Sergio stopped for a second, waiting for the other man to intervene. His silence was met with the other's though, so he continued.
“Gerard was the world's engineer. He had the vision, he had the abilities to turn people's desires into concrete images and objects. You noticed that and requested that he become your foil, dragging him into the project - against his will, may I add. He was the conditioned one, the one who had to be coerced onboard the project.”
“Yes, I know all that. I know Luis thought two dream threads wouldn't be balanced enough. I knew he was looking for a third participant in the project, someone who hadn't been involved with it before. But by the time I started my preparation for hibernation, Luis was yet to find someone suitable.”
Talking about those times made Josep remember the beginnings, but also kept his emotions in check.
“That is correct. Luis wanted a third thread, from someone who had a lot to lose by choosing to become a Mind and yet still coming willingly. Someone who would be the middleman between the others. Luis never told you about my existence, because he wanted to grant me higher powers - by granting me higher knowledge of the project - and he knew you would frown upon such a thing. I was brought in as the balance beam between you two, the arbiter. I was the aberration, inserted into the dream world without an actual need for the construction or support thereof, I was the chaos factor, organized chaos that would make sure Vheissu was in perfect equilibrium. I was always the third wheel, but also an impartial observer over both you two and the world itself.”
Josep sighed audibly, feeling all sorts of wretched.
“You couldn't have won the fight. His repressed desire to reunite with his lover would've always trumped your wish to maintain an unnatural relation. I know you penetrated that boy's dreams, I know you broke the rules, I saw everything and I knew this wouldn't end well.”
“Why didn't you say anything? Why did you sit passively if you knew what would happen!”
“Grief is making you think poorly, Josep. I didn't know an outsider would physically attempt to awaken one of us. I only knew your romance was not meant to be, since it was fabricated. Vheissu was the utopia of fulfilled love, that's basically what everybody wanted. You desecrated this by forcing a love affair onto a young man who only wanted to be left alone. How did you think it would end? Probably not the way it did.”
“He died... he died, Sergio, he's gone.”
“For that, I am sorry. But this doesn't excuse what you did, nor what you and the Board did to Gerard.”
Josep knew that much was true. He had a lot to account for, and he knew that in the end, the only ones who'd pay were still the innocent ones, Gerard and his lover.
“What do you think they'll do with us?” Sergio asked, more out of common sense than for any other reasons, such as actual fear.
“Does it matter? I don't deserve to be left alive, but I should, so I can live with my sins and repent every day of my life, to the very last.”
Josep then ignored Sergio's response, turning on his side and pretending to have fallen asleep. Now that he knew, he could no longer avoid the emptiness about to devour him. He had no choice but to throw himself into the pit of darkness and excruciating pain.
He stared at the cell's wall, his mind and heart bleeding for the lost love. He recalled being awakened. After the initial moment of confusion, his body too weak to move on its own, it had all come to him. He had remembered the last moments of the dream, the fight, his caving in and he understood the dream was real, that Bojan was gone, that Vheissu had perished without a trace. Looking around as technicians removed Gerard and Sergio from their respective pods, the blond howling for his lover, the brunette passively allowing them to do so, he grasped the idea that he was alone again, desperately miserable and with no relief.
Then, they had carried him out of the lab and they had brought him to the cell he was still occupying, locking him down until the situation was under control. Shortly after, they had brought Sergio and they were told both of them would be taken good care of, since they still were valuable assets and that they would be told of any news as soon as the Board took a decision concerning them.
Deep down, he knew he would never leave these facilities ever again, or any others the Board would move the project to, that they would never release him - nor Sergio - into Metropolis, not after what they had seen and what they had experienced.
And perhaps, it was for the best. Consumed by internal grief, Josep started weeping, his left hand's fingers curling around his right hand wrist in a self-soothing gesture.
***
As David walked apparently aimlessly, from dark little street to even darker, narrower alley, the sense of loss took over him. Deep down, he knew he had done the right thing, both for himself and for his lover, but a part of him still wished he had fought on, that he hadn't given up.
The truth was that David was tired, immensely tired of living the lie, of battling the system and especially of always losing that fight. And ever since he had found the Outsiders, the futility of his struggle had become obvious and no longer something he could choose to ignore. The Outsiders were his family, the family he had missed for so long and meeting them felt like a reunion, like all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.
David had been born in the sewers, but his parents, a fist generation of Outsiders, had given him away, trusting he would make a better life for himself should he get a good start, in a decent Metropolis family who needed a child.
But his nature had always barricaded his path, emerging from the earliest days and making his life as a Metropolitan nearly impossible. He had been cheated out of his rightful rank in the National Testing, by a “brother” who knew the truth, and then the system had thwarted each of his every attempts of getting the job he deserved. Marginalized, everything began to crumble.
David had always known who he really was and that had always made things harder for him, that was why he hated Metropolis, the system that refused to ever be cheated. The City always found the way to defeat him, the way to show him again and again, that he belonged in the sewers and not on the streets and certainly not in a well equipped apartment shared with the man he loved.
Falling in love had been David's final mistake, perhaps his greatest one yet. Because love had made him believe everything was possible, that he could overcome his condition and be the man Xavi deserved, the man Xavi needed. In the end, having failed even at being a good lover, he had had no choice. It hurt to leave like this, especially to leave Xavi the way he had, but there was no other way, love had taken its toll on him and he wanted out, for both his and Xavi's sake.
Returning to his peers, leaving Metropolis behind the only way a man like him could, David felt his soul shattering, yet regaining a certain peacefulness. For finally, the lie he had been withstanding for nearly thirty years was crumbling away and he was free.
Finding the entrance to his world, to the real world, with real people, people just like him, David hesitated for just one second. With a mute goodbye to the dreaded City, and after such a long departure, he plunged right back into the underworld, home at last.
***
Sitting upright on the bed in his cell, with Josep quiet and pretending to have fallen asleep on the other side of the wall he was leaning against, Sergio was deep in thought. He had had everything before, the life of kings, with credits no object, his achievements celebrated throughout the City, his name chanted off the rooftops. He had been the City's last prodigy, the boy-genius who had designed the best holograms and the most realistic implants.
And now he was all but a prisoner of the Project Vheissu Board, as they'd most likely keep him locked up at least until they figured out how to proceed further, if not forever.
The small cell with the uncomfortable makeshift bed and the urinal nearby was the most pitiful sight possible, the most degrading and appalling situation for a man of his power to find himself into, but Sergio found it soothing. He was safe here, away from the maddening world, from the Metropolis sucking the life out of everyone, from the hoards of admirers and the overpopulated City where he couldn't breathe.
Sergio had chosen to become a Mind on Project Vheissu out of boredom and disgust with the world he had partly helped create. Escaping through generating yet another artificial world, as ironic as it was, had been a blessing for the man who had it all and wanted nothing.
Being part of Vheissu, creating real happiness - as real as dreams could ever be, anyway - had been his greatest adventure and he had never felt more alive than during his hibernation. And now that it had all turned to dust, to something less than dust and when he had lost everything again, he felt more at ease than he had ever been. Anonymous, he could be himself, just the awkward Sergio he had always been until fame had clutched him in her evil claws.
Sergio didn't mourn the loss of life, the squandered technology, the desolation of failure. As he gazed deeply at the opposite wall - a smooth, metallic grey surface - he felt content, his life's path renewed again and at the start of a new adventure. And this was far better and more fulfilling than anything else.
Even if he somehow felt sorry for the other Minds and their immense grief, he could only feel elated for he was to plunge into the unknown again, wrestling ennui once more.
Feeling more awake than ever, more alive than ever, Sergio dropped to the floor and started doing some pushups, exercising his body after the long repose.
***
The glider was heading towards a maximum security prison. Sedated, Gerard was laid on one of the benches in the back, while the other was occupied by Carles, still under the effects of the stun shot. The Board had had no choice but to surrender both of them to the Metropolis authorities, who had appeared immediately after Gerard had finally awakened.
Since Vheissu was partly a Governmental project - as any possible project initiated by a Metropolis citizen - it was under the City's jurisdiction and the two had destroyed it, therefore they had become enemies of the state. The Board could not retain their Mind, since he was to be trialled for genocide, a thing that trumped any possible other use they could have for him. The other man was also charged with aiding and abetting and would probably be convicted as well.
Gerard woke up first, a far more sudden jump back to reality and immediately he noticed his lover on the other bench. Weak in the knees because of the prolonged lack of use of his muscles, he dragged himself to the other side of the moving vehicle and began shaking Carles, the reverse of the situation before.
The curly headed man opened his eyes and smiled. He extended his arms and hugged the kneeling Gerard, gradually pulling him upwards, helping him take a seat next to him.
“You came.”
“You woke up.”
They kissed, a clumsy kiss of lovers long separated.
“When you left for work that day, I hadn't known I'd never get to see you again. I had to find you, I had to look at your face and hold your hand and tell you that I love you.”
“I knew you'd come for me, I always kept hopes up and never believed that you were dead like they told me, so when you called, I woke up. I killed a lot of people to get where I am now, right next to you.”
“Metropolis doesn't have people, most of them are animated robots without feelings. Don't feel bad for what you did. They wronged you, us, in the first place.”
Gerard felt a little cold, the extensive hibernation having taken its toll on him, so he leaned into his lover. He had witnessed so much happiness while he was overseeing Vheissu, he had generated the best of dreams for others, but nothing quite compared with how he was feeling right now, his heart filling with immense joy, the simple act of twining this fingers with his lover's making him feel complete.
Carles had endured so much and had gone through hell just so he could hold his lover again, and he knew that even in the cold, frightening world of Metropolis, even on their way to jail and with a tremendously uncertain future ahead of them, happiness was real, and its name was Gerard.
For one moment, they were finally together, and everything that had happened before and anything that would happen still mattered too little.
The glider came to a sudden halt and they could hear shots in front of the vehicle. Startled, they held each other tightly and awaited. The doors opened and in the powerful light, Carles could see Zlatan's now familiar outline.
Somehow, their best days were still ahead of them.
General Warnings: dystopian setting, implied character death
Disclaimer: 100% fiction
III
In the midst of his dreaming, a long forgotten voice - unheard in what seemed like centuries - resounded, filling his mind with the only answer he had been looking for, permeating the dream, shattering the lies and urging him to wake up. His heart responded first, warmth pumping the renewed love in his whole body and from his vantage point, Gerard knew he had to return, to finally go home.
The need to awaken surged through him and even as he continued to dream, Gerard wanted to wake up. He wanted to close his ever watchful eyes on Vheissu, turn around and return to reality. He forced himself to do so, and as he turned towards the source of the voice, he noticed a small opening in the realm.
***
Lionel and Francesc sat on the sides of their indoor pool. Their new residence was a huge summer house with a lovely patio and pool. They were tanning in the raw, powerful sun when they felt the ground beneath them starting to shak, like a small-scale, unannounced earthquake.
They jumped from their deck-chairs, fear gripping their hearts. The pool's surface was waving up, as if someone was stirring it with a giant invisible spoon.
The earth continued to tremble, although it wasn't powerful enough to displace large objects and the two hugged, feeling scared with this new situation neither knew what to do about.
They looked up, the sky was darkening, the sun was disappearing, growing paler and paler, soon to be gone.
***
It had been 40 seconds until specialized technicians made it to the laboratory and proceeded to seal the pod. The dream pipe was reconnected to Gerard's mind and the dreamcatcher indicated contact had been achieved. The lid was then closed and the alarm finally stopped.
But even with the closed sleeping pod, even with the cable inserted back into his mind, Gerard was physically and mentally awakening. He was stirring in the closed, narrow space of the pod, his limbs and head moving. The dreamcatcher indicated that the dream stream that was generating Vheissu was thinning and that the Mind was proceeding to wake up.
***
The sea began to retreat, leaving behind drying golden sand.
From inside the house, Bojan saw the changes, he saw the sun disappearing and the sky cracking, the azure now streaked with dark twisted lines, like a torn canvass. He rushed outside, Josep soon following, grabbing his lover's shoulders and holding him close.
“What is happening?” Bojan uttered, clinging onto Josep's hand, afraid to his very core.
Josep looked around, taking in the changes. He too was afraid, unable to understand what was going on. He didn't know what to do, so he hugged his lover tigher.
Bojan started crying, as the last remnant of the blue ocean he had loved so much, the sea he had shared with Josep was gone, the horizon being filled with nothing but endless sand. Whilst holding his trembling lover and witnessing the sudden transformation, Josep slowly began to understand what was happening. At first, he had believed the changes were due to one of the Minds having a nightmare. But then, as everything began disappearing, he understood the truth, truth he had no right to hide from his lover.
He turned Bojan around, so they could be face to face. Gazing into his lover's teary eyes and feeling his own well up, he explained.
“The dream is collapsing, Bojan. One of us is waking up and this entire world is disintegrating,” he uttered slowly, his thumbs caressing Bojan's wet cheeks
“Does this mean...” Bojan could not bring himself to finish the question.
“I'm afraid, yes. I'm afraid it will be the end. In the end, dreams are just dreams; once you wake up, even if you go back to sleep, that dream is gone, its realm destroyed, irretrievable.”
“Do something about it, Josep! You're one of them, dream the world back, please! Save me, Josep!” Bojan pleaded, embracing Josep with all his might, his head resting on the other man's chest while crying convulsed his body.
Josep said nothing, he was trying to think, to find the answer. The dream was generated by three minds, but their independent dream streams were woven together in order to form Vheissu. He couldn't dream the world all by himself, because only the dreamcatcher generated Vheissu, from the different dream threads, and the dreamcatcher had been designed to only work with three threads, not less. Should a thread disappear, the dreamcatcher could only stop from generating the world, as it was actually happening. There was nothing he could do.
Trying to hide the crushing truth of his own impotence, he grabbed Bojan's hand and they started running towards what seemed to be the center of their shrinking world.
***
The whole Science corps was in the laboratory, together with a few members of the Board, who had happened to be awake and had been beamed to the HQ.
By the time Luis, Xavi and Thierry arrived, the pod was sealed again, all the cables connected, but the awakening signal had been too strong and the process was ongoing for too long for it to be reversible by outside means.
Luis and Xavi checked the stats. Since the dream pipe had been hooked again and the pod was closed, maintaining the state of hibernation, there was a small chance that Gerard wouldn't proceed to full awakening. For as long as the Mind was still not completely awake and was hermetically locked in the sleeping pod, the dreamworld would not disappear immediately, and, should sleep return to Gerard, the situation could perhaps be restored.
However, this was only the theoretical response to such a crisis. In the actual current situation, the Right Mind was far more awake than asleep and, as the dreamcatcher charts showed, Vheissu had already began to collapse.
***
Locking themselves in the house and trying to ignore the changes did not make them stop, nor did it make the fear in their hearts go away. Even with the closed curtains, they could notice that daylight was diminishing and that it was growing cold.
Lionel and Francesc sat in their bed, as they usually did, but their hug had a different nature now. With Vheissu undergoing these changes, they grew more and more scared, aware of the doom it all represented.
They had counted the minutes and they had both noticed the transformations were quicker now, Vheissu was crumbling, the dreamworld falling apart with increasing speed. It couldn't be any other way.
When they noticed nighttime had fallen completely over their domain - despite it being still midday by regular time measurements - they knew it was time to face the disaster. There was no running away from what was happening to their world and even if they were afraid, they still had each other and the comfort that brought made them more at peace with the demise.
They went outside. From their country house, they could always see the city, its tall buildings not far away, since both of them still loved it greatly and needed its reassuring scapes near.
Now, they could see the once magnificent sights of tall, fully lit constructions disappearing, their lights flickering into the darkness for a second or two before extinguishing. It was like all the apartment buildings, the restaurants, the nightclubs came crashing down in piles of nothing, imploding without leaving any rubble behind. Francesc could imagine their inhabitants falling to the ground, defenseless in front of this sudden, unexpected and unstoppable disaster.
Lionel looked behind him, and shouted, grabbing Francesc's waist harder and turning him to see the glaring absence. Their new home was gone as well, devoured by the blackness. Hand in hand, hearts beating in unison still, they gazed at the space where their mansion used to be, still feeling its beloved contours and the feeling of despair surged in both their hearts.
“What's going on?” Lionel dared to put into words the horror in his heart.
“I don't know...” Francesc didn't have the same courage, skirting the answer and refusing to say it out loud.
“Are we going to die?” Lionel pulled his face level, staring into his eyes, into his very soul.
They looked at each other, paralyzed with the ultimate fear: death. Each knew what the other was thinking, but each of them was afraid to voice the terrible truth, even Lionel stopping himself now. Darkness was coming, like a great shadow of destruction, and everything else was white, a desert of whiteness. They started running away from the dark wall advancing towards them.
***
Luis' patience was being put to a severe test. While he knew nothing could be done from their end to alter the waking up process, the Board members were getting restless and - as all bureaucrats, they had no grasp of the technologies allowing Vheissu to exist.
He was stuck explaining the situation to them, while Xavi was monitoring the man inside the sleeping pod.
“To put it simply, because the Minds are in a drug-induced sleep, they cannot wake up suddenly, like normal people do when the alarm goes off in the morning. Should that have been the case, Vheissu and all its contents, yes, including the people, would've perished in a matter of seconds,” Luis explained to the Board members, who looked at him with widening eyes, trying hard to understand what must've sounded like gibberish. “Since the minds are sedated, their wakeup time is longer, they pretty much need to pry themselves from their sleep and therefore, as we can see on the screen, Vheissu, in a terribly altered form, is still there, disintegrating slowly, following the same rhythm as the Mind's awaking process. Because it is a dream reality and time is altered there, what can be measured in seconds here, it can last hours, days even in Vheissu.”
“Can't you induce sleep again, pump him full of sedatives and save Vheissu?” Board Member Sandro asked, gesturing towards the white-overalls clad people in the laboratory.
Xavi heard the question and immediately reacted, not before exchanging a significant glance with Luis. He too hated the Suits so much, because they never made the effort to understand how Vheissu worked, caring only about how much credits they could make.
“That's impossible. First of all, the dosage is very strict and calculated with utmost precision, based on so many factors, it'd take forever to list them all. This technology is very delicate, as it incorporates the customers' particulars and the dreamcatcher is calibrated for a certain kind of dream. So if I pump him full of sedatives, like you so eloquently put it, it could kill him. We certainly don't want that, Vheissu would be immediately destroyed,” he attempted a little joke.
Only Luis chuckled, but seeing how Sandro and the other two Board members gave him an evil look, Xavi had no choice but to continue.
“Secondly, like I said, the waking up process is irreversible as far as any outside intervention is concerned; the body can be tricked into falling asleep, but the mind cannot. Even if I get the dosage right, another wave of drugs would cause a different sleep, now that he is on the verge of waking up. The key to this is the Right Mind himself.”
“How come?”
“Dreams are often very powerful images, very powerful contraptions, trapping the brain in and Vheissu is, by all means, one of the most intense and powerful dreams ever. On the way from sleeping state to wakefulness, the dream - if strong enough, if important enough, can sometimes compel the person to return to sleeping state.”
“I don't understand. You just said that the waking up process is irreversible!” Sandro uttered, his tone a little louder, demanding.
“We cannot reverse it ourselves. As we have noticed before, we have no means of intervention into any of the Minds' sleeping, dreaming and now awakening patterns. However, if Gerard wishes, he could go back to sleep, as people often do, and in such case the dream could be resumed, Vheissu restored and all your customers saved. If Vheissu manages to convince the Right Mind to go back to sleep, if it convinces him it is more worth dreaming than waking up, Gerard will backtrack.”
“And how could Vheissu achieve that?”
“I don't know,” Luis said, bowing his head.
Dreamology was a difficult science, unpredictable just like its subject matter - dreams. Luis hoped Vheissu was strong enough and managed to reclaim the Right Mind, but somehow he doubted.
They all looked at the screen. The changes had increased their pace. They had witnessed the colours fading, the world becoming as grey and as dull as Metropolis was during the day. Then the landscapes themselves began disintegrating, mountains crumbling as if made of dirt, seas and rivers drying, disappearing, buildings turning to dust. The sky blackened gradually, the darkness taking over everything.
In the fibreglass case, the tall man was tossing and turning more and more, his eyes moving under his still closed eyelids. Xavi knew the man was battling the hibernation state, making his way through layers and layers of sleep. But he knew that even with the highest dosage of drugs, administered when the Left Mind had grown a body into Vheissu, the Right Mind would wake up sooner than later unless something happened.
Finally, when the whole of Vheissu was nothing but vast black emptiness, they could see the few hundred people they had lured with the promise of eternal bliss and had implanted in a seemingly unstable dream world all huddled together, a mass of silent, afraid faces, surrounded by darkness soon to engulf them. All the people sat together, some of them talking, some of them obviously lamenting or even crying.
Even as scientists, they felt horrible for those men and women now trapped in a nightmare. A few of the younger, more impressionable technicians were discreetly, or not so discreetly wiping tears and everyone was wishing something happened. Not being able to do anything at all to save all those innocent people was hanging over their heads, the tension in the room reaching unprecedented levels.
Alternating between the screen and the sleeping pod, Xavi counted down the seconds before Gerard finally opened his eyes and Vheissu ended.
***
They reached the narrowing edge of their world, people pouring into that pool of light from every darkening corner. Lionel and Francesc were joined by their peers, the now homeless souls of Vheissu.
Nobody knew anyone else, but they huddled together immediately, hearts opening to let others in on the spot, some breaking the silence with songs, some praying, some crying their eyes out.
The young couple held hands, their fingers twined together. Tears stained both their cheeks as they understood everything would be over very soon.
Reaching the last resort and seeing all the people doomed to die again, Josep decided that, as futile as it might be, he had to try to reason with the Mind trying to wake up. From the state of Vheissu, reduced to a pool of light, he knew it was already very late, that the process was almost completed, but he still had to make the best of it.
Kissing Bojan once more, he returned to his realm, now a circle of light around the black world Vheissu had become. He could no longer see the world, solely the silhouette of the Right Mind advancing towards the opening. He had to hurry.
***
They all stared at the screen for a few seconds, dreading the moment the whole screen would turn black. It was just a matter of seconds now, but as the timer went on, Gerard was still battling the sleep state. For some reason however, the advancing darkness seemed to have stopped.
“I was hoping this would happen,” Luis said, a thread of hope in his voice.
They stared at him, waiting for an explanation.
“Before you start again, let me reiterate that we can no longer do anything. If the Right Mind wants to wake up, he will wake up. Like I said before, that's the key to the whole thing, it's all depending on his own will as well as on the dream's power of attraction. And because the Left Mind somehow implanted himself into Vheissu, lived there, became part of it, perhaps he can convince the Right Mind to go back to sleep. If Vheissu itself cannot achieve that, perhaps a grieving lover about to lose his love could. And should that happen, Vheissu will be restored, since the current dream is not over completely and since the dreamcatcher would restart weaving the same dream threads.”
Xavi and Thierry nodded. With Josep able to contact Gerard inside the dream world, things changed, even if not substantially.
***
From his realm, Gerard could see the opening, a steep climb up a peak, placed on the other side of Vheissu. He had already turned his back onto Vheissu and was heading towards the exit. He had been summoned outside the dream and he had to go, he had the right to go.
“Stop! Please stop!”
Startled to hear another voice, he came to a halt and turned. In front of him, somehow appearing to have climbed from the dying Vheissu towards the suspended realm Gerard was inhabiting, there was an older man.
“What are you doing! You're destroying this world, you're destroying these people! You cannot wake up!”
Gerard had no time for this, although he was intrigued with who the other man was. He wasn't a normal Vheissuan, none of them could reach his realm, none of them could see him and contact him by talking to him. He waved, showing his disinterest and continued his walk back to wakefulness.
“Look at them, Right Mind, look at what you're doing! Are you going to just wake up, just like that? Why would you do that, what could possibly urge you to destroy all these people?”
The older man's words and especially his tone got to Gerard, so he stopped again and turned away from the bright light, the opening.
“Who are you!” he bellowed.
“I am Josep, also known as Vheissu's Left Mind. And I beg of you to not wake up, while you still can, to save Vheissu rather than kill it off!”
Gerard was a little taken aback with this new information. Vheissu was his creation just as much as the other man's, but he had never cared for any of its people. He had spent his time watching them, growing bored with the perfection, with their perfect love stories and their blissful, perhaps undeserved, lives.
The Minds had never come in contact before, not before, when they were just highly intelligent men working on the same Project and certainly not in their realms wherefrom they were gazing upon the world they were creating.
“You're not supposed to be here, why are you here, Josep? Why do you care so much to stop me? They're not worth saving!” He shouted, wishing the other man stopped bother him.
“They are, maybe not all, but some are!” Josep pleaded, his mind full of Bojan and his cry. “I'm here because I fell in love, I broke the rules to follow my love, to pursue my own right to happiness, just like everybody else,” he said quickly, hoping to humanize the younger man, to make him sympathize with his cause.
Gerard wasn't sure whether to laugh or to cry. Anger was taking over him, as he recalled how he had been treated.
“You fell in love, with one of them? With one of these rich bastards who think they can have anything? Eternal bliss for a bunch of credits, oh they're so stupid to fall for this. None of these people is worth anything and I feel sorry that you love one of them.”
“He's not conceited, he's a lonely lost boy, he had nothing and came here to get away from so much pain! It broke my heart to know he had made the conscious decision to live without love, so I had to do something about it! I offered him an alternative, I gave him true happiness. If you wake up, he will be gone, and I will be alone again, losing another loved one. Please, please don't do this to me, I cannot handle another, another...”
Josep broke into sobs, disgusting Gerard completely. If the man hoped he'd be impressed with his pathetic little story, he was sorely mistaken. Anger released his sealed memories already triggered by the voice he had heard, the voice that had summoned him back to life, back to love.
“If you want me to stay asleep for your little love story's sake, you made a really poor bet. I'm afraid I cannot accept such nonsense, not after what they had done to me. Tell me, Josep, do you know what they did? Do you know they forced me to become a Mind? I was working on the Project, yes, I was excited to be part of world building, but I never signed up for this. I was falling in love and I wanted out, I wanted to go back to being a mere engineer, so I could be together with the man I loved. How dare you ask me to stay asleep for your lover's sake when they locked me down and told me my lover was dead, that I had nothing else to live for, so they could convince me to allow them to strap me to the machine a monster had invented? If I wake up, I can hope to be reunited with my love, I can hope to have a real life, so I am sorry, but I cannot stay so you could have your dream one.”
Josep knew. Josep himself had handpicked the young engineer, with such a creative mind, for the role of the Right Mind. Josep had told the Board that they needed to do whatever it took to get him to accept. Josep had wanted to get away from losing his wife, he had done everything to make sure the project took off and he had known the young engineer was perfect for the role.
He bowed his head, not wanting to reveal any of his inner turmoil to the other man. He had no right to hold Gerard down, to ask him to sacrifice his love for him, he had never had any right. But Bojan, Bojan would be gone for good if Gerard woke up. And Bojan was above anyone, above any principles. He had to do anything in order to protect him. This time, his request had more substance, as before, since then he was trying to get away from a broken heart while now he was trying to save the one he loved.
“All this still doesn't give you the right to leave the project when you please! We all make sacrifices, you should too. They are innocent, my boy is innocent and you won't punish whoever coerced you, you will punish them!”
“It doesn't matter what you say, you cannot stop me. I have reasons to go back now and I will!”
“I cannot let you wake up, Gerard, I cannot lose the one who restored my faith in love!”
“Your love is imaginary, old man! It's not real. It's not exposed to duress and has no obstacles to overtake! What kind of love is that, where everything is perfect? If that's your weapon, it is a weak one.”
“You say real love has to be hard, has to be fought for? Then I will fight you!”
Josep yelled and attacked Gerard, jumping on him, hoping to prevent him from waking up.
***
The mass of Vheissuans watched the fight above them almost without breathing. The taller man, their angel of death, was surely no match for the older, smaller man who had gone to beg for their lives.
“What will happen if the tall one wins?”
“He'll wake up and darkness will devour us.”
“We are already dead, so we will just evaporate?”
“Our souls will perish, if such a thing is possible.”
“Will it hurt?”
“I don't know. Dying in the real world didn't hurt.”
Couples held hands and children hugged their parents, everyone tried to communicate their final emotions to the one they loved. Solely Bojan stood apart, his eyes locked on Josep, his heart hardening in preparation for extinction.
He knew his lover wouldn't win, he had known all along their love story had a short deadline. It had all been too good to be true, the man of his dreams - quite literally - making him happier than he had ever been. He had always felt that it wasn't normal, that he was somehow exceeding his allotted happiness inside Vheissu, that he was stretching more than allowed.
He was ready to depart though, for he had known love after all, true love and deep down Bojan didn't regret any of it.
***
Gerard pushed Josep to the ground, but didn't hit him. It wasn't like him to beat an older man, especially since they were physically so unmatched. He continued his march towards the enlarging opening, but the other jumped on him again.
Again, Gerard pushed him to the ground and tried to walk away, but Josep was determined not to let Gerard reach the opening. His each attempt was rebuffed and he found himself on the ground every time, while the younger man took another step towards the real world.
As he jumped on him again, trying to hurt him somehow, to buy some more time - time needed not, but just for the sake of it, for showing Gerard he too could fight to the very end - Gerard not only knocked him off, but this time swung his fist at him, ready to hit.
The blow was prevented by a third party, suddenly materializing between them and effectively stopping Gerard's arm in full punching motion.
Both Gerard and Josep relented, staring at the lanky brunette who had appeared out of the blue.
“I am the Middle Mind and I am here to settle this conflict.”
The man looked as young as Gerard, but somehow looked older, like he had been hardened by a tough life. Josep didn't know who the Middle Mind was, there were certain things he hadn't been told before entering the sleeping pod, despite him being the Project's leader and its main creator.
“Fantasy love versus reality love,” the brunette said, glancing first at Josep and then at Gerard.
“This man has been brutally separated from his lover, by force may I add. He has now heard love's calling and wants to go back. His interest is just as selfish as yours, Left Mind, but he isn't hiding behind the ideal of self sacrifice like you are. What is it that are you willing to sacrifice, Left Mind, in order for Vheissu to be restored?” he continued, gazing mercilessly at Josep.
Josep was speechless. He knew there was a third mind, he himself had devised the trinity concept, the tripod holding the dreamworld together, but he hadn't been told this person would have greater knowledge than himself.
“The Right Mind already sacrificed his love once, are you willing to do the same? Are you willing to revert to your upper realm, as a watcher only and renounce young Bojan?”
There was no positive answer to this question. Josep knew how deeply enamoured Bojan was and how losing Josep and having to return to a different kind of Vheissu life would probably kill the young boy. He would wither away and Josep could not watch that, he refused to even imagine what it could mean for Bojan to return to a lonely life. He had promised him eternal love and he would end up bailing out, for no-one's benefit. He couldn't do that, even if it meant saving the others. The Middle Mind was right, he wasn't interested in the others. His reason for being part of project Vheissu had been a selfish one to begin with.
“Are you ready to face a world where your lover could have been killed for trying to awaken you? Are you ready to live that kind of mourning life? Just for the minuscule chance that you could be reunited with him?”
Gerard was at a loss himself, aware that surely Carles' attempt couldn't have been met favourably by the Vheissu Board and even by the Metropolis authorities. Still, he knew he could never go to sleep after this, he could never be able to generate the perfection needed to run Vheissu. Marred by the signal of lost love returned, he knew he would forever yearn for him, now that he could remember what they had.
“Vheissu has been compromised anyway. I will take my chances,” he uttered slowly, looking straight at Josep.
The Middle Mind glanced significantly at Josep, his mere gaze pinning the other man down.
“It is decided then. Go Gerard, wake up. We shall all see each other soon.”
Josep found himself unable to make any move, his willpower having left him. Under the Middle Mind's watchful eye, he got up and looked down at Vheissu for the final time. He couldn't discern the faces anymore, but his heart knew Bojan was there. A tear rolled down his cheek as he whispered a goodbye.
Gerard looked at the two, saluted and resumed his walk, the Opening larger and larger, the light brighter and brighter.
Stepping through and into the white light, he could sense the darkness behind him enveloping the rest of Vheissu and finally his eyes popped open to the sight of what seemed like a hundred faces all staring at him through the sleeping pod's glass lid.
Epilogue
Xavi still looked at the black screen. It was still tuned in, but Vheissu and its gorgeous colours were gone, extinguished like they never existed. He had given so much to Project Vheissu, he had allowed it to take over his life, even to seep into the only thing that still kept him sane in world riddled with rules he now found absurd, his relationship with David.
He couldn't believe that one man and his fearless search for love had managed to destroy the most important, costly and technologically advanced project mankind had ever undertaken. He failed to understand how it was possible that one man's voice, calling his lover deep in drug-induced sleep, could have such an effect that it had reached him even in the middle of the most intense and complicated dream and it had made him awaken, forsaking everything.
He had heard the old sayings, that love could move mountains and whatnot, but what had happened just a few hours before was larger than life and almost as impossible to comprehend as man's abilities to live inside another's dream.
He didn't know what made him feel worse, the fact that all those souls of Vheissu were now lost, completely gone without a trace, and that nothing could be done about it, that they had been paralyzed, unable to defend them, or the fact that the lovers who had destroyed Vheissu, the multimillion credits project, with the simplest means possible - a repeated name calling, and the immediate response of a long denied lover - would surely be severely punished for their deed.
Also, while he felt dejected that a project he had dedicated years of his life to had crumbled so unceremoniously, he somehow felt vindicated in his secret beliefs that it was all too good to be true, that perfection, while conceptually attainable, never lasted, always failing in the pettiest of ways.
Switching off the now useless screen and touching the dreamcatcher for the last time, Xavi left the laboratory. Walking along the deserted halls, he hoped he would never have to return. If he could find some hospital that would take him, he would gladly leave Project Vheissu behind. Perhaps the project would be abandoned altogether, perhaps not, but one thing was sure, Xavi never wanted to be part of anything similar: it was simply too draining.
Reaching the apartment, he found that David was missing. It was well into the night period, and David had been sound asleep when Xavi had gotten the call and had left for the HQ. Xavi looked for him throughout the not very large apartment, without success.
Entering what had become the master bedroom, the one they had shared for about 2 years, Xavi sat down on the freshly made bed, David's absence even more painfully obvious. On top of the pillow on David's side, there was a note and next to it, a little bag with some pills.
Xavi grabbed the note and held the folded piece of paper between his fingers for a while before daring to unfold it and read its contents. Finally, he gathered the courage and started reading.
dearest,
I will always love you, but these last few months of hardship and duress have shown we're too different to remain a couple. It's both my fault and yours for getting to this, but you're the one who made it clear that our relationship is not enough, that for you, it was just a means of escaping your strictness and your ingrained principles.
I brought you something that could be enough, a different, hopefully more fulfilling escape - the drug of the upper class: thrys. And remember, even if two people love each other, it doesn't mean they have to be together.
D.
P.S. You don't have to worry about me, I found a job. I'll be all right.
Xavi looked at the three spherical pills and held back tears. He couldn't believe things were falling apart just when project Vheissu was over and he could finally relax, find the time to mend his broken relationship and move on.
With the sublime example of what love could do in Carles and Gerard's case, Xavi suddenly realized that whatever him and David had shared was nowhere near what real love represented. He had always imagined they were unbreakable, that what they had found in the other was exactly what they had always desired, but it turned out it was just mundane romance, the kind that had an expiration date.
He opened the little bag of pills and took one. Leaning back on the bed, Xavi awaited, not sure what would happen, but for once in his predetermined, preprogrammed life, he didn't actually care.
***
Josep and Sergio, the former Left and Middle Mind of Project Vheissu respectively sat in adjacent holding cells somewhere in the pits of the project headquarters.
“Why did you intervene?” Josep asked.
He wanted the answers for himself, so he could know the truth, but at the same time he hoped the conversation would prevent him from thinking of what had happened and what he had lost.
“When the project was initiated, as you probably know, since it was your baby, they thought only two minds would be necessary. Yours, as you were the balanced, mature man, having been through a lot and having nothing to lose. They needed your desperation and your abandon, and you needed someone to use these characteristics. You were the unconditional one, ready to uphold the dream structure with your whole being - just like it actually came to happen. But while your mind was needed to erect the structure, you were a cold, calculated scientist, indeed with a particular life story and with enough dedication, but lacking creativity. You had the emotion and the strength, but no vision for the perfect world.”
Sergio stopped for a second, waiting for the other man to intervene. His silence was met with the other's though, so he continued.
“Gerard was the world's engineer. He had the vision, he had the abilities to turn people's desires into concrete images and objects. You noticed that and requested that he become your foil, dragging him into the project - against his will, may I add. He was the conditioned one, the one who had to be coerced onboard the project.”
“Yes, I know all that. I know Luis thought two dream threads wouldn't be balanced enough. I knew he was looking for a third participant in the project, someone who hadn't been involved with it before. But by the time I started my preparation for hibernation, Luis was yet to find someone suitable.”
Talking about those times made Josep remember the beginnings, but also kept his emotions in check.
“That is correct. Luis wanted a third thread, from someone who had a lot to lose by choosing to become a Mind and yet still coming willingly. Someone who would be the middleman between the others. Luis never told you about my existence, because he wanted to grant me higher powers - by granting me higher knowledge of the project - and he knew you would frown upon such a thing. I was brought in as the balance beam between you two, the arbiter. I was the aberration, inserted into the dream world without an actual need for the construction or support thereof, I was the chaos factor, organized chaos that would make sure Vheissu was in perfect equilibrium. I was always the third wheel, but also an impartial observer over both you two and the world itself.”
Josep sighed audibly, feeling all sorts of wretched.
“You couldn't have won the fight. His repressed desire to reunite with his lover would've always trumped your wish to maintain an unnatural relation. I know you penetrated that boy's dreams, I know you broke the rules, I saw everything and I knew this wouldn't end well.”
“Why didn't you say anything? Why did you sit passively if you knew what would happen!”
“Grief is making you think poorly, Josep. I didn't know an outsider would physically attempt to awaken one of us. I only knew your romance was not meant to be, since it was fabricated. Vheissu was the utopia of fulfilled love, that's basically what everybody wanted. You desecrated this by forcing a love affair onto a young man who only wanted to be left alone. How did you think it would end? Probably not the way it did.”
“He died... he died, Sergio, he's gone.”
“For that, I am sorry. But this doesn't excuse what you did, nor what you and the Board did to Gerard.”
Josep knew that much was true. He had a lot to account for, and he knew that in the end, the only ones who'd pay were still the innocent ones, Gerard and his lover.
“What do you think they'll do with us?” Sergio asked, more out of common sense than for any other reasons, such as actual fear.
“Does it matter? I don't deserve to be left alive, but I should, so I can live with my sins and repent every day of my life, to the very last.”
Josep then ignored Sergio's response, turning on his side and pretending to have fallen asleep. Now that he knew, he could no longer avoid the emptiness about to devour him. He had no choice but to throw himself into the pit of darkness and excruciating pain.
He stared at the cell's wall, his mind and heart bleeding for the lost love. He recalled being awakened. After the initial moment of confusion, his body too weak to move on its own, it had all come to him. He had remembered the last moments of the dream, the fight, his caving in and he understood the dream was real, that Bojan was gone, that Vheissu had perished without a trace. Looking around as technicians removed Gerard and Sergio from their respective pods, the blond howling for his lover, the brunette passively allowing them to do so, he grasped the idea that he was alone again, desperately miserable and with no relief.
Then, they had carried him out of the lab and they had brought him to the cell he was still occupying, locking him down until the situation was under control. Shortly after, they had brought Sergio and they were told both of them would be taken good care of, since they still were valuable assets and that they would be told of any news as soon as the Board took a decision concerning them.
Deep down, he knew he would never leave these facilities ever again, or any others the Board would move the project to, that they would never release him - nor Sergio - into Metropolis, not after what they had seen and what they had experienced.
And perhaps, it was for the best. Consumed by internal grief, Josep started weeping, his left hand's fingers curling around his right hand wrist in a self-soothing gesture.
***
As David walked apparently aimlessly, from dark little street to even darker, narrower alley, the sense of loss took over him. Deep down, he knew he had done the right thing, both for himself and for his lover, but a part of him still wished he had fought on, that he hadn't given up.
The truth was that David was tired, immensely tired of living the lie, of battling the system and especially of always losing that fight. And ever since he had found the Outsiders, the futility of his struggle had become obvious and no longer something he could choose to ignore. The Outsiders were his family, the family he had missed for so long and meeting them felt like a reunion, like all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.
David had been born in the sewers, but his parents, a fist generation of Outsiders, had given him away, trusting he would make a better life for himself should he get a good start, in a decent Metropolis family who needed a child.
But his nature had always barricaded his path, emerging from the earliest days and making his life as a Metropolitan nearly impossible. He had been cheated out of his rightful rank in the National Testing, by a “brother” who knew the truth, and then the system had thwarted each of his every attempts of getting the job he deserved. Marginalized, everything began to crumble.
David had always known who he really was and that had always made things harder for him, that was why he hated Metropolis, the system that refused to ever be cheated. The City always found the way to defeat him, the way to show him again and again, that he belonged in the sewers and not on the streets and certainly not in a well equipped apartment shared with the man he loved.
Falling in love had been David's final mistake, perhaps his greatest one yet. Because love had made him believe everything was possible, that he could overcome his condition and be the man Xavi deserved, the man Xavi needed. In the end, having failed even at being a good lover, he had had no choice. It hurt to leave like this, especially to leave Xavi the way he had, but there was no other way, love had taken its toll on him and he wanted out, for both his and Xavi's sake.
Returning to his peers, leaving Metropolis behind the only way a man like him could, David felt his soul shattering, yet regaining a certain peacefulness. For finally, the lie he had been withstanding for nearly thirty years was crumbling away and he was free.
Finding the entrance to his world, to the real world, with real people, people just like him, David hesitated for just one second. With a mute goodbye to the dreaded City, and after such a long departure, he plunged right back into the underworld, home at last.
***
Sitting upright on the bed in his cell, with Josep quiet and pretending to have fallen asleep on the other side of the wall he was leaning against, Sergio was deep in thought. He had had everything before, the life of kings, with credits no object, his achievements celebrated throughout the City, his name chanted off the rooftops. He had been the City's last prodigy, the boy-genius who had designed the best holograms and the most realistic implants.
And now he was all but a prisoner of the Project Vheissu Board, as they'd most likely keep him locked up at least until they figured out how to proceed further, if not forever.
The small cell with the uncomfortable makeshift bed and the urinal nearby was the most pitiful sight possible, the most degrading and appalling situation for a man of his power to find himself into, but Sergio found it soothing. He was safe here, away from the maddening world, from the Metropolis sucking the life out of everyone, from the hoards of admirers and the overpopulated City where he couldn't breathe.
Sergio had chosen to become a Mind on Project Vheissu out of boredom and disgust with the world he had partly helped create. Escaping through generating yet another artificial world, as ironic as it was, had been a blessing for the man who had it all and wanted nothing.
Being part of Vheissu, creating real happiness - as real as dreams could ever be, anyway - had been his greatest adventure and he had never felt more alive than during his hibernation. And now that it had all turned to dust, to something less than dust and when he had lost everything again, he felt more at ease than he had ever been. Anonymous, he could be himself, just the awkward Sergio he had always been until fame had clutched him in her evil claws.
Sergio didn't mourn the loss of life, the squandered technology, the desolation of failure. As he gazed deeply at the opposite wall - a smooth, metallic grey surface - he felt content, his life's path renewed again and at the start of a new adventure. And this was far better and more fulfilling than anything else.
Even if he somehow felt sorry for the other Minds and their immense grief, he could only feel elated for he was to plunge into the unknown again, wrestling ennui once more.
Feeling more awake than ever, more alive than ever, Sergio dropped to the floor and started doing some pushups, exercising his body after the long repose.
***
The glider was heading towards a maximum security prison. Sedated, Gerard was laid on one of the benches in the back, while the other was occupied by Carles, still under the effects of the stun shot. The Board had had no choice but to surrender both of them to the Metropolis authorities, who had appeared immediately after Gerard had finally awakened.
Since Vheissu was partly a Governmental project - as any possible project initiated by a Metropolis citizen - it was under the City's jurisdiction and the two had destroyed it, therefore they had become enemies of the state. The Board could not retain their Mind, since he was to be trialled for genocide, a thing that trumped any possible other use they could have for him. The other man was also charged with aiding and abetting and would probably be convicted as well.
Gerard woke up first, a far more sudden jump back to reality and immediately he noticed his lover on the other bench. Weak in the knees because of the prolonged lack of use of his muscles, he dragged himself to the other side of the moving vehicle and began shaking Carles, the reverse of the situation before.
The curly headed man opened his eyes and smiled. He extended his arms and hugged the kneeling Gerard, gradually pulling him upwards, helping him take a seat next to him.
“You came.”
“You woke up.”
They kissed, a clumsy kiss of lovers long separated.
“When you left for work that day, I hadn't known I'd never get to see you again. I had to find you, I had to look at your face and hold your hand and tell you that I love you.”
“I knew you'd come for me, I always kept hopes up and never believed that you were dead like they told me, so when you called, I woke up. I killed a lot of people to get where I am now, right next to you.”
“Metropolis doesn't have people, most of them are animated robots without feelings. Don't feel bad for what you did. They wronged you, us, in the first place.”
Gerard felt a little cold, the extensive hibernation having taken its toll on him, so he leaned into his lover. He had witnessed so much happiness while he was overseeing Vheissu, he had generated the best of dreams for others, but nothing quite compared with how he was feeling right now, his heart filling with immense joy, the simple act of twining this fingers with his lover's making him feel complete.
Carles had endured so much and had gone through hell just so he could hold his lover again, and he knew that even in the cold, frightening world of Metropolis, even on their way to jail and with a tremendously uncertain future ahead of them, happiness was real, and its name was Gerard.
For one moment, they were finally together, and everything that had happened before and anything that would happen still mattered too little.
The glider came to a sudden halt and they could hear shots in front of the vehicle. Startled, they held each other tightly and awaited. The doors opened and in the powerful light, Carles could see Zlatan's now familiar outline.
Somehow, their best days were still ahead of them.