“Over this?”
“This. My writing. Everything.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. If it doesn’t come out easily, just don’t do it. For now,” she says.
He snickers.
“That’s what Charles Bukowski thought of writing. ‘Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it. Unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it.’”
“You are too hard on yourself,” she says.
He looks at the ceiling. “We were taught that life is filled with possibilities. That Tabula Rasa allows us to live every four years as if they were our last. We’re reminded of this gift of limited time every single waking moment. We’re told to make each cycle matter. And when we’re faced with it, the terror of that, it’s so overwhelming.”
She laces her hand in his. A feeling of remorse overcomes her. Benja will never know something precious was taken from him.
“Close your eyes,” she says.
He does.
She sings the only song that comes to mind, one about bluebirds and a rainbow. She wonders whether Benja remembers the blue cranes and the Dreamers.
“That’s beautiful,” he says. “How do you know this song?”
“I don’t know. It’s always been inside me,” she says.
From a memory or a dream.
“You’re so good to me,” Benja says, “I only wish . . .” His voice trails off. He is asleep.
His face in slumber does not have the same hopefulness it once did. It is a mask. Empty. Aris feels a drop of liquid on her chest. A tear.
She looks at her hands. These are what twisted the knife. She feels like Brutus. A single piece of information shared can do so much damage. She failed to save his dreams. Worse, she opened the door to let in the monster that stole them.
Et tu, Aris?
Another tear falls. She looks at Benja’s empty face and feels in her heart that she has committed a sin.
She gets up and walks out to the living room. She can no longer look at Benja. The light turns on. Her eyes catch sight of the copper helmet on the table. She walks to it and runs her finger over the smooth metal. It looks identical to the helmet the Interpreter Center used on Benja. She now knows its purpose.
If only she can get it to work. At the Interpreter Center, the images of Benja’s dreams were projected onto the metal cloud-shaped machine. She needs a screen. But the only thing she knows of that projects images is the reach system, and that is attached to the main system. It cannot know about her experiment.
She gently picks up the helmet and puts it on. Can she see her own dreams? she wonders. She would have to record it somehow. How much memory space would she need to record a dream?
She scoffs. How ironic is her reality? In her world, computers and AIs retain memories, while humans do not. Her race has given up the right to their past because they cannot trust themselves to not destroy each other.
A thought comes to her. Could one of the computers in the Tomb be used?
They have screens.
Hope rises. If Benja can wear it while asleep, perhaps she can see the visions of his dreams. Maybe she can study them and figure out a way to preserve them. Can she give Benja back his dreams?
When Metis dreads sleep, he comes to this spot on the pathway. Started as a penance, it has become a habit. But he has no control over it. He has a favorite bench under a maple tree. Its branches are now naked. From here, he looks up at Aris’s darkened window and dreams of a life with her.
Sleep begs. He lies down on the bench. The cold bites at his extremities, and he turns up the heat in his jacket. He searches for Vega in the sky, but the city lights mask it. Being in the dark and cold reminds him of the countless times he would lie on a bench in his favorite section of the park, where there is a large circle of black and white mosaic tiles with the word Imagine in its center.
He finds it interesting how one simple word can stir up endless strings of ideas and visions. For him it conjures up images of Aris. Both from the past and the present.
He cannot remember her old name. Nor his. Had he not met Aris this cycle, she would have remained simply “her.” A face without a name.
Everyone gets a new name in each cycle. How many has he had? If he were to live ninety years, he would have had nineteen names. Maybe his subconscious has learned to not be attached to them.
Metis begins to hum the song that inspired his existence. The next cycle he will continue this dance, spiraling down the rabbit hole into oblivion. It is an endless circle of suffering.
Is Benja still suffering?
He wonders how he’s doing since the Interpreter Center erased his dreams. Is he back to his old self but with no past to haunt him? Metis has not seen him. Benja does not leave his apartment often anymore.
The entrance of Aris’s building opens, surprising Metis. He did not expect anyone to come out at this late hour. He springs up and squints at the door.
The familiar figure of Benja emerges. Metis feels betrayal squeezing his stomach.
What was he doing at her place in the middle of the night?
Benja looks as if he is sleepwalking. Metis decides to get up from his bench and follow him. The tall man walks with no pattern or purpose through the deserted streets. Metis’s jealousy turns to concern. They wander block after block until Metis sees the park and realizes that Benja is heading back to his apartment building.
They reach it and Benja goes inside. Metis debates whether he should follow. He needs to know what Benja did with the Absinthe he gave him.
But
