Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘There are now fifty-four winsomniacs in the Sector,’ said Aurora, sitting down and taking off her gloves, ‘and there’s been no wastage for almost five days. I left a note suggesting to Toccata that we tell them there’s a good selection of videos at the Captain Mayberry . The trek would have at least a thirty per cent attrition rate, perhaps as high as forty if we timed it during an ice storm.’

‘Is that legal?’ I asked.

‘The trick is to try and get them to do potentially fatal things voluntarily with a full understanding of the risks. We call it ethical reduction.’ [52] ‘Proactive thinnage’ was another euphemism, as was ‘assisted winnowing’.

‘Unless there isn’t a good stock of videos in the Mayberry ,’ I said.

‘And therein lies the problem,’ replied Aurora. ‘The selection isn’t terrific. Mostly Police Academy comedies , endless Die Hard sequels and boxed sets of Emmerdale and Dynasty . Hey, Shambob. Two coffees.’

There was a grunt from Shamanic Bob and he moved with almost snail-like speed towards the coffee machine.

Aurora brought out her knitting. It wasn’t a bobble hat this time, it was a sock with an Argyle pattern. We’d sat near the window so we could keep an eye on the nightwalkers. Since you couldn’t actually own another human being, possession – and the bounty thereof – was based nominally on custody and proximity. But on reflection, I doubted, given Aurora’s standing, that anyone would try and steal them.

‘So,’ she said, ‘let me be your Dormeopath. Tell me as much or as little as you want.’

I paused to gather my thoughts, and told her how the blue Buick dream had been circulating around the Sarah Siddons . How I hadn’t thought much about it; how I thought it was simply a Sub-beta dream panic.

‘That’s our view and that of the Consuls,’ said Aurora, ‘although we didn’t know there actually was a blue Buick parked up in the garage. What sort of dreams were you having?’

‘Not dreams as I imagined them to be,’ I began. ‘Half-remembered artefacts, disjointed and vague – but strong, vivid and full of detail. I know this sounds silly, but I dreamed I was Don Hector, with his feelings and his memories.’

‘Go on.’

I recounted everything in as much detail as I could, but purposefully omitted the Birgitta dream because it seemed strangely private, and an odd amalgam of my own childhood holiday memory and Birgitta’s painting. I only told Aurora about the blue Buick, thinking I would apply any advice across to the other dream.

‘Why am I dreaming about rocks, cars and disembodied hands?’ I asked.

‘Search me,’ she said, ‘and on the face of it this is all batshit crazy, but this is my take: the parts of the dream you were told about are easy to explain, simple auto-suggestion. They mentioned it, you dreamt it. You saw stuff, knew about Zsazsa, it was included. The rest of the dream was you just filling in the gaps.’

‘I agree,’ I said, ‘but what about the rabbit’s-foot key ring and the car being precisely the same? I dreamt those and later I’m finding they have a basis in reality.’

‘I’m going out on a limb here, but all I can suggest is that the recall of your dream is still in a state of delayed suggestion. Memory remains plastic after waking, and it’s possible everything you think was in the dream might not actually have been in the dream at all.’

‘You mean,’ I said slowly, ‘the details of my dream have been joggled in retrospectively? The rabbit’s foot and the detail on the Buick weren’t in the dream?’

‘The mind needs to remap on waking,’ she said, ‘and reinforce the millions of neural pathways. Slumber is pretty well understood from a physiological point of view; it’s how personality and memory recover from the doldrums of synaptic tick-over that is hibernation’s greatest mystery. So what I’m thinking is that it’s possible for more recent memories to fill the place of absent, older ones. A fair description would be a severe case of déjà vu. Not just a feeling that something has happened before, but a certainty that it has – and in that certainty, doubt, confusion, fear, paranoia.’

‘So even dreaming myself as Don Hector might not have happened? I only created that in my head when I knew the car was his?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, it’s a plausible explanation.’

‘Ah,’ I said, mulling it over.

ShamBob entered the lounge and put down a large plate of chips in front of Zsazsa, then moved towards us with two coffees.

It was real coffee and I inhaled the mellow fragrance gratefully.

‘It wasn’t all déjà vu,’ I said, still with questions. ‘The blue Buick, for one. What was that doing in the garage?’

Aurora had to consider this carefully.

‘The car could have been there for years. Suzy Watson might have chanced upon the Buick and she constructs a nightmare around it during her Dreamstate. She tells everyone including Moody, they relate the dream to you – bingo.’

‘But that precise model?’

‘You only heard it was blue and a Buick from Suzy,’ said Aurora, ‘the reality was—’

‘—added when I actually saw it. Okay, I get it now.’

I thought of Birgitta. If this were true, the plasticity of the dream would have created the scenario with her, too. Her second name would have been chalked up on the basement door, and the vision in the leaf-green swimsuit could have been created when I imagined her equivalent look in the painting she did of me. Even telling me she loved Charlie might only have happened for the first time under the car, and it would be directed at her husband, not me.

I lapsed into silence.

‘Hard to accept, I know,’ she said, ‘but narcosis is like that. This is intriguing, so tell me if you have any other dreams. But here’s a tip: if you value your career, tell no one else about the dream .’

‘I haven’t, and don’t intend to.’

She smiled, opened her hands and stretched them towards me. I placed mine between them and she clasped them tightly, the shorthand of the Winter embrace. It was firm, trusting and, unlike the full embrace, actually felt warm. As we clasped, I noted that a functioning eye wasn’t all she’d lost. She was missing her ring finger – from both hands.

The alarm on her watch buzzed at her plaintively.

‘That’s me out of here,’ she said, stifling a yawn while her unseeing eye blinked rapidly, ‘and one other thing: you’ll be seeing Toccata pretty soon and she and I have something of a… strained relationship. It’ll be better for us both if this meeting remained private. As far as you’re concerned, I rescued you from the nightwalkers in the car park, and we parted company outside the Siddons – yes?’

This didn’t sound good, and Aurora sensed my reticence.

‘I need an oath on this, Charlie. I saved your butt twice, remember.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘oath.’

‘Good. Now, I don’t want to seem underhand or insulting but Toccata’s a poisonous, untrustworthy, self-serving little reptile – with a severe personality disorder and a disquieting capacity for cannibalism.’

‘That sounds underhand, insulting – and slanderous.’

‘It’s fair comment. I’ll leave Birgitta for you to deal with. There’s a pit behind the Siddons where you can thump her and dump her. It’s normal to sprinkle on some lime for when the thaw sets in. Here’s another tip: get her to walk there herself. It’ll save you a lot of heavy lifting. Oh, and don’t forget her thumb to claim the bounty.’