I do have another story I wrote that I'll probably throw in here sometime after this one, and another update to the Data Storage project though I want to get all the remaining project goals included in that one. Anyways, regardless of what I get up to, have yourself a lovely day and enjoy this kinda weird sci-fi story! Unless you don't like it. You don't have to enjoy it if you don't want to.
San Misao by Mac Clevinger, September 22, 2017
“This is a terrible idea.”
A woman sits at a desk in the dark, the glow of the monitor before her lighting up the ratty mess of her hair and the rumpled, stained clothes that have served as blankets for when exhaustion got the better of her. She bites her lip, nails tapping against the worn metal surface as wide eyes with heavy bags underlining them scan the text scrolling across the screen.
The room is cramped, the woman able to touch both walls on either side of the desk easily and having only to stretch back slightly in her chair to place a foot on the wall behind her monitor and a hand on the wall behind her, but it suits her needs perfectly: A quiet place, far from anyone else on this cursed station living their fake little lives, and hidden from her prying eyes.
“So much could go wrong.”
Her leg shakes, unconscious of her efforts to keep it still. Reaching down, deft fingers meet the steel surface of her leg and pry open a panel smoothly, taking ahold of an outstanding screw and turning it tightly back into place. It doesn’t stop the shaking; she had tried five separate models, had taken them all apart and examined their workings time and time again, yet she still couldn’t stop them from shaking like her old leg used to.
It was simple. She was just going to turn off one part of the machine – just one. She knew what she was doing. She was in control. This was going to be fine.
She took a long breath, holding it briefly.
“I have to do this.”
A quiet ‘click’ was all it took, and comforted by what she had done the woman huddled in her chair and fell into an exhausted slumber, finally dreamless as she was dropped from the network. So, too, were over forty-million other citizens of Colony San Misao across its six complexes, none so neatly removed as the exhausted woman in her hole in the wall.
The dream seemed endless, and for Maria and Samantha it was everything they had ever wanted. An eternity alone but for the presence of each other to love and cherish in a place of such beauty: a paradise born out of the hidden desires in their minds. Stress, anger, disappointment; it all disappeared in their dreams where they could simply love one another until the dawn brought them back to reality.
Beside a burbling stream, nestled in the roots of an immense tree of some breed Maria didn’t care about, and beneath a beautiful blue sky that was cloudless and still, yet not too hot or stuffy; in paradise, Samantha held Maria as they gazed peacefully into the prefect world around them, soft kisses and giggling rising in tandem with the rustling of leaves and the bubbling of water.
Maria didn’t know how long she had been there. Whenever she thought about inevitably waking up to the real Samantha, the thought slipped away and the woman holding her said something so funny that Maria couldn’t help but laugh until a soft kiss interrupted her thoughts all over again.
She liked the dream. She was supposed to like the dream, and she knew that as well. If someone had offered her the chance to experience everything she ever wanted out of life, she would have killed someone to have it. Or, not kill because that was really quite violent, but perhaps hurt them quite badly. Not physically, mind, but emotionally, like muttering some sort of comment about how their behavior wasn’t quite what Maria had expected when she had met them, and they were really being quite rude.
The dream was so much better than wish fulfillment, though. Maria had imagined having everything she had ever wanted, but never had she thought of having it every night. If she so much as thought back to her childhood pets, they would all swarm out from the other side of the tree and she and Samantha would play with the puppies until that became tedious, and then they would be gone, leaving Maria alone with Samantha again to just simply enjoy one another’s presence again.
Or if she thought of her wedding night, the world would swirl away and Maria would find herself in a gown blushing at the suit that made Samantha look stunning, afraid to look into her love’s face because she knew that she would start crying and if she started crying then Samantha would cry and all their friends and family were there watching…
They both cried that night, and the mere thought of it comforts Maria immensely.
The best part of the dream, though, was that it could stop Maria from thinking. Like that big fight she had last – wait, what fight? Or last week when Samantha… when she… Maria can’t remember. Or when Maria was a child and her… parents? When Maria’s parents… something… at the wedding? When Samantha looked beautiful in that suit and they both cried in front of everyone, oh…
Maria loved the dream so very much, and was horrified to hear the sounds of the water and trees begin to fade away and be replaced by a familiar chime.
“Finally!”
Maria rushed to her feet, the sky fading from the soft blue into a blank white, black figures the size of mountains stretching above her as the paradise around her faded into an empty void, her own body disappearing until all that was left were Maria’s perceptions of the colossal black figures against a white backdrop, their size equally colossal and diminutive to Maria in an infinite void of cognition.
They read: ‘8:00 AM’.
Maria woke up.
Sometime before 8:00 AM, Samantha looked down at Maria’s unconscious body with worry. Sure, there had been the fights and the screaming matches, or rather Samantha screaming and wishing Maria would say something back to her and not be so timid all the time but then what the hell was wrong with you, Samantha, for yelling at someone you loved, you’d hated when your dad had done it don’t you remember crying at your wedding night –
Samantha brushed the thoughts away, and instead felt guilty for two reasons. First, she realized that she was in a cycle of domestic abuse that had started long before her father, and that she had refused to do anything about it until far too late; and second, she was about to abandon her wife while she lay in an induced dream state. Sure, she was leaving to try and save her – and everyone else – but what if something happened to her?
What if she could never say sorry for all the pain she had caused? Never hold Maria and tell her that she was going to get help, that she regretted every time she’d raised her voice and just wanted to love her like she used to?
Samantha could feel the tears rolling slowly down her cheeks as she drew the sheets over Maria’s exposed shoulders, leaving a salty kiss on her forehead before stepping away from the most important person in her life. She had to leave, but her heart would be left behind.
“Are you ready, Samantha? She will not awaken. None of them will awaken until your task is complete.”
Samantha nodded in response to the artificial feminine voice that spoke to her from a console by the door of the bedroom. Something had gone wrong with San Misao, and instead of being able to dream away the years as it was gradually fixed like millions of others, Samantha had been awakened, had been given a task… had been taken away from the woman she loved.
“I’m gonna wake you up, Maria. Even if only one of the millions gets to wake up, I’m going to make sure it’s you, alright? I love you.”
She kissed Maria again and stood, wiping the tears from her cheeks as she hurried towards the door. The sooner that she finished whatever San Misao needed her to do, the sooner she could return home and fix everything that she’d done wrong and make it up to Maria. Even if she fucked everything up, at the least she just wanted Maria to wake up, and not spend another four years asleep in a dream that must have been as tortuous as her own.
As Samantha stepped through the doorway, she screamed. A medical records database within San Misao updated Samantha’s file to reflect her new condition – Deceased – and, with no other resident awake, San Misao was permitted once again to wake a single citizen to assist it in resolving a low-priority sleep-malfunction. Or, rather, just under forty-million low-priority sleep-malfunctions; it had been busy.
A rapid search through its records found the next target – or, Conscripted Assistant, as they were called before they had to resolve the problem of blocking San Misao from waking up a new Conscripted Assistant to fix its systems failure.
Her name was Maria, and the time was 8:00 AM.