Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

We all fell silent. If Don Hector had tried and failed to make all this public, I wasn’t sure how any of us lesser mortals could do it.

‘So HiberTech beamed Don Hector’s dream into our heads to try and find out what he did with the cylinder?’

‘That’s about the tune of it.’

‘So where did the Birgitta dream come from?’

They scratched their heads.

‘We’re really not sure. Dream induction is more of an art than a science. Even Thomas Edison was a little confused by it – and it was also professionally devastating for him, as he couldn’t find a useful way to bring the invention to market.’

‘One last question,’ I said, my head beginning to spin. ‘Where does Dreamspace come into all of this?’

Foulnap and Dr Gwynne exchanged looks, but it was Foulnap who spoke.

‘To initiate a Dreamspace, you must record a target dream on a Somnagraph and then play it back simultaneously to as many people as you wish to interact with in that target dream.’

‘It would be like finding yourself in the Mrs Nesbit tearoom scene during the movie Brief Encounter ,’ said Dr Gwynne, ‘and while Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson bang on about how frightfully, frightfully hard it is to justify their feelings for one another, you interact with all the other Dreamspacers in the tearooms. But Howard and Johnson’s dialogue carries on unchanging in a continuous repetitive loop.’ [61] A cylinder only has enough capacity for eight minutes of dreams, but you can double the duration if you run the Somnagraph at half-speed – but the detail is never as fine, and the voices sound muffled.

‘Shamanic Bob said the problem was about knowing what was real and what wasn’t,’ I said, ‘because when you merge the real and the fantasy, you can never quite define the boundaries.’

‘That’s true,’ said Dr Gwynne, ‘but Dreamspace was also highly dangerous. Psychotic episodes, reality distortions, paranoia, death.’

‘Far too dangerous for civilians,’ added Foulnap, ‘but the risk wasn’t an issue when used militarily. If detainees suffered a devastating neural collapse after interrogation, the official line was “so what?”’

‘Hooke told me that it was Aurora who was the expert at in-dream interrogation, but was keeping it quiet.’

‘Too true,’ said Foulnap. ‘She likes to pretend she’s the moderating influence at HiberTech, but she’s actually the opposite. Aurora enthusiastically embraced the intelligence-gathering possibilities like no other, and was by far and away the best at manipulating the Dreamspace. Could go into anyone’s head and take what she wanted. Go off-piste, so they said, and take the dream to wherever she wanted it to go. She could invoke nightmares, read your thoughts, delve into your emotions – anything. She’s extracted more secrets from sleeping suspects than anyone else alive, and has caused neurological damage to thousands. It was eventually her undoing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The story goes,’ said Dr Gwynne, ‘that fourteen years ago she suffered a moral conflict during a dream interrogation, where the last vestiges of her decent self struggled with what she was doing. Unable to reconcile the dissent within her own mind she split into two people: one containing the very worst bits of her, and the other with the… well, faintly tolerable. They retired her from the military, put it about she was a Halfer and placed her in charge of HiberTech security. They thought all would be fine with the “faintly okay angels of her nature” side of her working behind the bar in the Wincarnis. Trouble was, Toccata wanted a career for herself and took a job as a Consul. Within ten years she was head of Sector Twelve’s Consul Service.’

‘Couldn’t HiberTech have just locked Toccata up or something?’ I asked.

‘It’s complicated,’ said Dr Gwynne, ‘because Aurora views her as a slightly loathsome younger sister who needs to be continuously looked after. Aurora has actually helped Toccata, put her in a position where they are in real-world conflict – part of their ongoing resolution and healing process, we think.’

‘Can they remerge?’ I asked, and they both shrugged.

‘The best neuroscientists are as confused as anyone over it,’ said Foulnap. ‘The simple answer is: no one knows. But this conflict you see out here in the real world? It’s probably ten times worse on the inside.’

I mused on this for a moment. It kind of made sense.

‘So… what’s the plan?’ I asked.

‘We secure the cylinder,’ said Foulnap, ‘and find a Somnagraph to play it to the nightwalkers. We wake as many as possible, get them to Springrise and cause the biggest upset you’re ever likely to see.’

‘It sounds so simple when you say it like that,’ I said.

‘It’s more wishful thinking than plan,’ agreed Foulnap, ‘and more hope than objective. So: where’s the cylinder?’

‘At the Cambrensis .’

‘Good. We’ll need that – and a Somnagraph.’

I told them the ninth-floor device was most likely hidden in a steamer trunk in the room next to mine, and after discussing tactics, Foulnap said he should call Toccata.

‘She’ll only be on shift for another three hours,’ he said as he got to his feet, ‘and if we miss this opportunity we’ll be without Toccata for eleven hours – and have the added burden of Aurora to contend with.’

Dr Gwynne also departed, saying he had to take Wendy back to her quarters, a converted janitor’s cupboard on the fourth floor, just below the rotunda. I sat there trying to make sense of how my situation had changed so dramatically, and in just a few hours. Last night I was dreaming I was working for RealSleep in a life-or-death struggle against a pharmaceutical corporation with only the slenderest grasp of morality – and now I was doing the very same thing, for real .

‘Hey,’ said Josh as he was walking past, I think to his quarters somewhere.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘what happens to you now?’

‘I get to stay in Sector Twelve until Springrise then try and make it back to Canada without HiberTech noticing.’

He gave me his hand and I shook it gratefully.

‘May the Spring embrace you,’ I said.

‘And embrace you,’ he replied, then smiled, and moved off.

I watched him go, then felt hungry and rummaged in my shoulder bag for my spare Snickers, while at the same time wondering if the feelings I held for Birgitta were actually mine at all, and not simply Webster’s, projected into my subconscious by the Somnagraph. I opened the bag as I couldn’t find the Snickers, and took out my purse, spare pants, paracetamol, the Polaroid of Birgitta and Charles and Laura’s Instamatic camera. No sign of the Snickers. The Gronk must have taken that, too. I looked at the camera again and frowned. All four flashes had been fired, even though I had replaced the flashcube after the attack by the nightwalkers. I looked at the back of the camera; the window showed I’d taken eight pictures but I could only remember taking four.

Out there on the way over, when I was upside down in the snow and cooling rapidly, I must have taken four pictures of something.

And that something may have been the Gronk.

It was half an hour before we were ready to leave, and we talked continually as we prepared. Toccata had been roped in to assist, despite her often erratic behaviour, which explained amongst other things why there were so many nightwalkers in the Cambrensis : she’d decided one day that no more would be retired or deployed, so had falsified the HotPot overheat to clear out the Cambrensis to make room. Quite how long they could be held there was never discussed, nor if this was a practical or well-thought-out policy – which it clearly wasn’t. But if it was a gut decision like the one I made about Birgitta, I totally got it.