Metis looks around. Dawn is approaching in a few hours. There are no souls out in the streets but him.
He decides to follow. He gets into an elevator and pushes the button for Benja’s floor. Minutes later he finds himself staring unblinkingly at the door to Benja’s apartment.
It’s a simple red door. Wide with a clean, basic design and very unlike the ornate one on his Victorian house.
He hesitates. There could be bad consequences from this. He wonders if he should walk away, but his feet are rooted in place. His desire to know overtakes everything. He knocks. The door opens.
In close range, the state of Benja’s appearance takes Metis by surprise. There is only a trace of the man Metis first met a few months ago. His handsome face is concave and unshaven. The purple bruises under his eyes make him look as if he had been on the losing side of a fight.
The most remarkable change is the fire inside Benja. It’s gone. Obliterated. But instead of peace, he looks as if he’s found nothing at all. Metis feels dread sinking into his stomach.
“I know you, don’t I?” Benja says, “Come in.”
Metis turns to walk away.
“Please,” says Benja.
His tone makes Metis turn back. The look in his eyes is that of desperation. It is this that pushes Metis forward across the threshold.
As soon as Metis enters the apartment, the color blue assaults his vision. Dyed pieces of paper are on every flat surface. They hang or lay on tables, walls, and floor, leaving only a small path to navigate through. Benja’s apartment looks like Metis’ living room on the days he makes the cranes.
“What are you making?” Metis asks.
“Gifts for a friend.”
Benja clears paper off two chairs. He points to one. “Please sit.”
Metis does. Benja takes a spot across from him and leans forward.
“I know you,” Benja says. “But my memory is so hazy. Can you tell me how we know each other?”
How much has the Dreamcatcher taken from you?
Metis thought it only took dreams. But how would a machine know which are dreams and which are memories when both intertwine?
“You came to me looking for answers,” says Metis.
“Did I find them?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t feel enlightened,” Benja says.
“Some knowledge brings only pain.”
“I don’t feel pain either. Just lost.”
Metis is sad for him. “I’m sorry.”
“The thing is, I don’t know why or what I’ve lost,” Benja says. “I sound insane, don’t I?”
Metis feels his anger rising. What the Interpreter Center did was wrong—stealing dreams and leaving only questions. It is cruel.
“You’re not insane.”
“I wish I could be happy,” says Benja.
“Me too.”
“You’re not happy? What have you lost?”
“Someone I love. My heart,” Metis says.
An expression crosses Benja’s face. Is it wistfulness? It passes, leaving the owner looking even more desperate.
“How did you lose the person?” Benja asks.
“Time took her.”
“Doesn’t it always?”
“Sooner or later,” Metis says. “Someone very wise told me where the past and the present converge, there’s pain. I suppose it hurts because the soul cannot exist in both planes.”
“And when it doesn’t exist in either place, you feel nothing,” Benja says.
Metis looks at the man in front of him and realizes that feeling nothing is worse than feeling pain. He cannot bear witness to it.
“I should go,” he says.
“Stay awhile. It’ll be nice to talk to someone. To have some human contact.”
“Don’t you have friends?”
“I can’t see her. Not anymore,” Benja says.
“Why not?”
“Seeing me this way only hurts her.”
“She must love you.”
Benja nods. “She doesn’t want to, and she shouldn’t. I’m not good for her. But she can’t help herself.”
Metis leans back, settling into his chair. “Why would you say that?”
“She doesn’t want to be attached to people. She wants to transcend that basic human desire. But it’s only because she feels too much. She doesn’t want to see that it’s in her nature to care. She’s afraid.”
“What is she afraid of?” whispers Metis.
“Pain.”
Tabula Rasa had left the fear of attachment in place of his wife’s memories.
A question comes to him. “Did you ever give your friend a vial of green liquid?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you give it to the Interpreter Center?”
Benja looks confused. “What’s that?”
The Natural History Museum looks bleak and forbidding in the light of the dawn. It is hours before opening and too early for anyone to be there. Even so, the last day of the year means most people will be out celebrating with friends, not going to a museum. Its emptiness amplifies the sounds of Aris’s steps on the granite tile floor.
Benja needs his dreams back. She needs to find a way to fix what she broke. She is here to steal.
It has to work.
She hopes she does not run into Thane. There is no mending that relationship. Trust, once broken, cannot be healed. What would she say to him if she sees him? On those nights she cannot sleep, she thinks of all the horrible words she could fling at him for having written the nasty report on Benja. Because of him, her friend’s dreams were erased.
Benja has not been the same since. He is no longer plagued by the dreams of his old lover, but he is a shell of himself. There is no passion, none of the sparkle that she had loved most about him. He barely talks. And when he does, he sounds utterly devoid of desire. Will Tabula Rasa reset him? Or will he continue to be a fraction of himself cycle after cycle, with no one—not even she—able to remember how wonderfully complex and alive he once was.
It has to work. There’s no other way.
Aris opens the door to the Tomb. The storage room looks like it always has. Shelves of neglected, broken things line it from one side to the other. In one corner lie crates of items too large to fit anywhere else. She feels a tinge of sadness. This is the last time she will be here—at least for this
