Edda gives Anika a desperate look of confusion. “But what can I do?! I’m too weak, Goah’s Mercy! I’m just a stupid girl in a deadly world. I can’t change shit!”
“Do accumulate power, Redeemed van Dolah. Power to force change. Power to save lives. Power to bend the world to your will. Would you like to wield power that matters?”
“Yes! Oh Goah, yes!”
“What would you sacrifice for such power, Redeemed van Dolah? What would you renounce?”
“Everything!” Tears of desperation and dread run down her cheeks. “My life! Every-fucking-thing!”
“Do prove it. This is your dream, Redeemed van Dolah. It is yours to do as you desire. Do bend it to your will.”
Edda squints, trying to grasp the full meaning of Anika’s words. Ximena feels her confusion, her hope—and the raw thirst of her desire.
But with the unstoppable pacing of nightmares, the cannon balls complete their arc of death, and rain right through the doomed dragoons, disintegrating the ice under their hooves. The crack sound is so loud that it echoes against the auditorium walls.
“What do you will?” Anika insists.
Edda is paralyzed with terror. The brave soldiers do not even have time to scream as the icy waters swallow their horses whole. Willem is the last standing, his horse already sliding.
“What do you will, Redeemed van Dolah? Do detach your mind of emotion, and claim power over your dream.”
Edda closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
Willem’s horse frantically tries to maintain equilibrium on the floating ice as Willem pulls the reins left and right, with the skill of a lifelong rider. He does not look scared; he knows he is doomed.
Edda opens her eyes and looks sharply at her father as his horse begins to fall. Fear slips, and disappears. Anxiety vanishes. Her gaze is void of passion, even as her father dives to his death.
“Do force your will.”
Willem’s horse extends its wings. And flies.
The entire scene slowly fades into darkness, a dream that ends. “Reality is built on top of dreams.” The enigmatic voice of Anika slips through even as the last light disappears. “Do control your dreams, and you shall control your reality.”
Edda sits drowsily on the arrest cell bed, and rubs her neck. Ximena can see something fresh in her expression that was not there before. As if the dream had set something free that was lurking inside her.
As Edda gathers her thoughts, Ximena and her fellow students lean forward and observe her with absorbed fascination, as if a dynamic drama was unfolding in the cell.
Because it does.
Right under Edda’s skin.
Oh, what a gift, the psych-link. Perhaps the greatest achievement of dreamtech. It takes the breathtaking immersion of the dream sensorial deep into the shores of another mind. An incredible feat of engineering, when you really think about it. Thoughts, memories, even emotions, exquisitely crafted by a dreamtech engineer—Ank, most likely in this case—flow into your brain as if they were your own. And Miyagi’s innovation is to apply this technology to historic dreamsensos. Whoa, it feels like true time travel to Ximena. Better.
Ximena smiles at Edda’s feelings. The fulfillment, the clarity, the sense of power, the thirst. She feels like she could stop the world spinning if she puts her mind to it.
Powerful thoughts that attract doubts like porridge attracts flies.
But… They’ll throw me out of school. My students need me. I need them.
But… Only if they catch me.
But… Our family reputation... Dad and Bram don’t deserve… Oh, little Hans, my love. You don’t deserve to grow in a family without a name, without karma.
But… We will be together. Hans needs his grandfather, perhaps more than I do.
But… What if I can’t convince Dad?
But… If I do, I won’t be left parentless—alone in the world.
Ximena feels it now, unmistakable, growing in the background with every exchange: the raw defiance, the determination, the will.
But…. What if I can’t? What if I don’t have the strength?
But… I do.
But… What can I do?
But…. Does it matter? Anything!
Edda stands, and stares at an indistinct point on the wall like there was something—somebody—right there, staring back.
She smiles, and whispers, “I will save you.”
Five
The Joyousday of Rozamond Speese
“So you see, people, in December 2399 Edda van Dolah was just a young woman desperate to save her father,” Professor Miyagi says as he paces the stage, sunlight on his face. “She wants him to renounce his Joyousday. And we know how she plans to convince him: by dropping a bombshell that, if true,” he pauses for effect, “would destroy the entire society.”
Ximena absorbs his every word with the same rapt attention as every other student in the auditorium. The professor surely has a sense of drama, she thinks, but then it hits her. The vial! He’s talking about that vial that Edda sneaked out.
Professor Miyagi continues, “As an educated colonist and teacher, she knows some history, and she believes that the actual force behind the Joyousday ritual is some good ol’ tyrannical repression. Is the Goah’s Imperia government—the Head of Goah—really poisoning every colonist upon reaching twenty-seven years of age?” He chuckles loudly. “Edda is convinced. What better way to retain power than keeping your people in the eternal, happy ignorance of youth?”
He walks towards Ank, who is sitting on the front bench next to Bob, the wudai machine, and says to the auditorium, “I think you will find the next sequence instructive. It is context at its best, so please pay attention—we will have a little Q&A right after.” He gives Ank a nod.
The amphitheater—Miyagi, Ank, the students—fades out as a resplendent morning scene materializes over the stage, and expands upwards and outwards over their heads and across the whole auditorium. Ximena is still in awe at the vivid realism of the dreamsenso immersion. Magnificent! It draws her in and engulfs all her senses.
The scene is static, frozen in time. A pastoral setting. A field of carefully tended grass surrounded by oak trees. It must be winter since no leaves populate their branches. The sun lies
