“How can you walk around like everything’s fine?” the man yells at a woman in a red coat, his hand reaching out toward her.
The woman startles. Her face flushes pink. She grips the front of her coat and rushes past.
“They took everything from us,” he hollers after her. “Our lives, our past, the people we love. All we have left are our dreams!”
A man in a suit, eyes fixed on his watch, ears plugged with headphones, walks toward the Elaran man, unaware of the trouble ahead. The angry man steps in front of him and grabs him by the collar.
“Stop looking at your stupid watch!” he screams. “It’s how they track your every move. Don’t wear it!”
The suited man cries out in surprise, as if confronted by a rabid animal. He struggles out of the man’s grip and runs off. People begin crossing over to Aris’s side of the street to avoid him.
“They stole our memories and left us with nothing!” he shouts at all of them. “They can’t keep doing this to us. They can’t take away everyone we care about. It must be stopped. We must fight back!”
Aris has never seen anyone behaving this out of control in public before. He reminds her of the angry bear in the museum. She looks down and sees her arm has looped around Professor Jacob’s. When she did that, she does not know.
A white car with flashing lights whooshes past them. It must belong to someone in the councils. Only officials are allowed personal transports. The car comes to a stop in front of the angry man. Its door opens, and a man steps out. He wears a brown fedora, reminding Aris of the old black-and-white movies she saw during the Old World’s cinema festival.
The next scene unfolds as if it is from one of the films. The fedora man approaches the angry man slowly and deliberately. The angry man steps back until his body hits a column of the building. For a moment, Aris wonders if he is going to hurt the newcomer.
In a quick move, the man in the fedora grabs his hand as if wanting to shake it. Instead, he puts a silver bangle on the angry man’s wrist. Instantly, the angry man becomes as silent and still as the column behind him. His rage dissipates into the air like smoke.
Aris feels a tug at her arm.
“Wait.” She tries to pull away. But she is too late. Professor Jacob is crossing the street, taking her with him.
“Officer Scylla,” the professor calls.
The officer stops in mid step and turns slowly. His face is stern.
“Professor Jacob.” His voice sounds stilted, as if the professor is the last person he had wished to see.
“This man is under the care of the Interpreter Center,” says Professor Jacob. There’s no trace of the jovial man she had met earlier.
Officer Scylla looks from the professor to the Elaran man who is staring ahead with glazed, sleepy eyes. “Is he now?”
“His name is Bodie. He needs to be taken to the Center so he may finish his treatment.”
The muscles in Officer Scylla’s face twitch. “Thank you for informing me. I will contact the Interpreter.”
“Very well,” the professor says.
Officer Scylla walks off. The Elaran man follows obediently, his footsteps sluggish, as if he is in a trance. Aris watches them go with an uneasy feeling.
“Was that the police?” she asks Professor Jacob.
“Have you never seen one before?”
She shakes her head. “I know they exist. Just never met one.”
“That’s Officer Scylla of Station Eighteen.”
“He doesn’t seem to like you.”
Professor Jacob laughs. The amiable man is back. “We at the Interpreter Center make life a little harder for him. He’d be happy if he could just keep the troublemakers locked up for a night. But we believe you must get rid of the root cause.”
“What’s that?”
“Dreams,” the professor says. “Remember I told you about the people who believe dreams are memories? That man is one of them. It’s a form of mental illness. But don’t worry. With the help of an interpreter who’s trained to interpret dreams, we can target and erase the harmful ones. He’ll be fine again. It’s like a partial Tabula Rasa—but for dreams.”
She had seen the Interpreter Center near her favorite picnic spot—a gleaming white building surrounded by a sweeping green lawn and forest. A solitary inorganic object in the middle of life. But she had never heard of the procedure until now. Up until Professor Jacob told her, she did not even know that dreams could be dangerous. How could they be? They’re not real.
Chapter Four
“All right, follow me, children,” Aris says to the restless group of eight-year-olds in white-and-blue uniforms.
They are surrounded by a 3D image of mountains and plains so realistic it makes Aris feel as if she were in the middle of the nature preserve she loves.
“Billions of years ago, the land you’re standing on was not here. Do you know how Southern California came to be?”
She looks around from face to face.
“Anyone?”
The children stare at her blankly.
“It slowly assembled from the earth’s crust, dust and ash from the air, and other materials accumulated from the rain and the oceans,” she says.
The image changes to that of a volcanic eruption. Angry geysers of red and orange lava shoot up from blistering melted earth. The gas-filled bubbles burst, sending explosions into the pitch-black sky like fireworks.
“Then volcanoes and earthquakes built up the landscape. Sediments eroded and were deposited along the coasts of the North American continent.”
Half the class yawns. One kid plays with a loose string on her skirt. Aris sighs but continues.
“Much of the continental crust that’s now California came from the crust that formed beneath the Pacific Ocean region. Over time it moved onto the margins of the continents. Land is built in many stages through Earth’s history. An
