I wrote this a while back. It is an extract where my hero is is a leader called the DreamMaker. Its probably not as good as I thought at the time, so any comments are welcome. I want to start writing again, but look for directions.
The Beautiful Land
What could the dream achieve? Brian could not allow himself the indulgence often. Others had to test them and even then share the task. It was advanced Holography and each object or person in the dream nothing more than algorithms and polygons in a computer achieved the virtual reality. Yet the mind said they were reality. Techno hypnosis I suppose, perhaps the technology wouldn’t even be needed if the masses ha imagination. Perhaps they would have imagination if they didn’t have the dreams, but that was a risk the leaders had always preferred not take. So if the masses had imagination what would they do? Perhaps finding that if was the purpose of The Wall experiment.
Let me try another experiment, only this time not with real people. I’ll have to be very careful here, it could be dangerous. What do I want mostly? He asked himself every time and still came up with the same old answers, and for that matter the same questions. Men in general wanted awesome power, danger and the beautiful woman. What the beautiful woman would want was quite another thing. However, sumptuous luxury as history had often shown bought societies to another step near decay. War in History had often been the national sport and the winner took all.
It is plainly obvious our dreams have given the masses everything they could want, but that everything had been destructive. OK, I’ll give them the power and the woman, and maybe let the woman take her own part, but there will be restrictions. It will not be the ultimate do as you please scenario: if the restrictions are violated things will go terribly wrong, as if they haven’t already. There would be the moral law of right and wrong and religions have never been allowable, but let’s just play the game, this is a dream.
Brian found himself in a wooded countryside with no signs of human life. He had a solar rechargeable gun and a small bag round his waist. In the bag were a small amount of rations, a tiny computer and some medical supplies. Looking around he saw brilliant red berries, apples, but very small and hard, and acorns. That and the sun told him it was late summer.
A squirrel held a nut in its little paws munching contentedly, ignoring Brian’s presence. The quite suddenly it looked up and ran up a tree. The wood had become quiet, only a gentle breeze causing a rustle in the green leaves. Brian listened, not only with his ears but that inner part of himself as he did everyday in Cyberworld. Fright he thought. Flight and Fright with pumping adrenaline. Somebody is running from danger and it’s from that direction, south. He hid behind a mass of foliage waiting, as the fear grew stronger. Almost without any sound to betray her, a woman appeared breathing heavily, stooping for a moment to quieten her gasping. She was tall, her long blonde hair tied behind her head. Strong athletic and no doubt with some intellect, she wore a robe, torn stained, but once beautiful. Her face muscles were too taught to see her looks properly, but finely boned enough. Her enemy must be formidable.
Rushing out into the glade to help her might have led him into a trap, so Brian decided to wait. The woman had sunk trembling with exhaustion to her knees, but her will was not broken for a moment. He was still listening. This time it was it adrenaline rush, excitement, aggression and violence. The shouting of an ancient language he couldn’t quite catch, now running feet falling heavily on the soft floor of the wood. Taking care to remain hidden Brian set his gun to stun and held it ready. Warriors armed with swords, knives, clubs plus a few spears, hideous, huge men as tall as his own six and a half feet, but massively built, and tending to be overweight. The woman had picked herself up ready to run again, but fell, her muscles too stiff even to walk. The cruel faces leered as they as she looked, waiting for their first move. A very courageous young woman she was.
Brian waited for the warriors to form a tight pack then fired a continuous stream of light. The bronze weapons seared into their bodies from the heat of the ray. He had not accounted for the build up of heat from his weapon from his weapon, intended to be for short bursts. He would have to control his anger. The woman watched mystified as the men fell. She had glimpsed a bright light and her enemy was vanquished. She was still not at ease, evidently expecting more pursuers. Some fruit caught her attention and she ate greedily, the sugar would restore her energy.
Brian had wondered why his natural instincts had not allowed him to rush in and play the hero. Perhaps for the same reason the brutal warriors clearly respected her self-defence abilities and the feeling she might not be grateful as he would have hoped. She might not trust anyone and stunning her with the gun was not exactly what he had in mind.
She was a beauty, a princess of the blood, a monarch’s daughter who her enemy must catch at any cost. She had stopped eating to watch the reappearance of the squirrel, her face now relaxed. Yet Brian sensed she was still listening, always alert. Was she aware of his presence? He thought she had a suspicion of it. He must find a way to win her trust, to find out more about her and more to the point her enemy, which needless to say would be his own.
Now the fear had subsided he began to sense more of her true nature. Indeed she had an inner beauty, something more like transparency, unsullied by the brute nature of selfishness. She was aware as Brian stepped out into the glade, gun placed in his belt. He stood a distance away from her, letting her watch him, allowing her to weigh him in the balance. The he spoke with a gentle voice, “The warriors, are there more?” She thought for a moment then looked fearfully in the direction from which she came. “So, you have a language similar to mine princess. Then please understand they will be my enemies also, I have no doubt.”
She had a good measure of him, yet even so still did not completely trust his intentions. Brian looked a little hurt by this rejection. The she looked at him frowning a little and said, “You are good man, but not I think completely in reality.”
She has the measure of Cyberworld in me; it is more serious than I thought. He decided that to be truthful with such a discerning young woman was the only way. “I come from a place, perhaps in another time where reality is hard to know. My mission here is to find it.”
The young woman looked perplexed for a moment then replied, “Reality is all around you, what are you looking for?”
At that moment Brian looked to the south again. His awareness told him that the warriors had horses this time and there were more of them. There was no adrenaline rush, just a sense of power, greed and the hunter’s determination for the catch. His own adrenaline had begun to pump through his blood and the excitement caused by a possible coming conflict and the common cause with this beautiful young woman stirred up long buried feelings. “It’s time to go princess. They’ll be fast this time and not dull witted foot soldiers either.”
They ran through the trees, ducking under branches making it hard for any horsemen to follow to find a steep bank with protruding tree roots, which led to a stream. The woman stopped and smiled, “There must be a place to hide on the other side, there is a cliff farther down, I’m sure of it. The horsemen will not follow us.” They clambered down the bank and walked quickly downstream. A small waterfall prevented them from going further and the rock face next to it rose straight out of the rushing water. Fighting the current they held hands, supporting each other as they walked over the slippery rocks under the water until they were able to grip a hard outcrop of jutting granite. Covered by the tall trees of the wood climbed with renewed energy. The riders had entered to wood under the cover of trees, so they were still free from their sight. Brian continued to climb, but her strength had begun to fail her again. He pulled the young woman to the top and lifted her over the ledge.
“We’ve got away, aren’t you pleased,” she asked.
“Those men will recover soon enough with only burn scars. I set my weapon to stun, not kill. But that’s not my problem. The riders will know my weapon’s ability. They will not under estimate me. I would have preferred not to let the enemy know my strength.”
The woman looked at him carefully again. “You are not a warrior, how do you understand these things?”
“Where I come from we play power games with words and gestures. Nobody gets hurt, but we can limit each other lives at times. The tactics are the same.” Her suspicion had become more of an interest, but he was not ready to tell her about the dreams just yet.
“You are an artist, I think, a sensitive man too kind hearted to kill your enemy. Yet there is a ruthless streak in you, an enigma.” She stood up, “We must follow the sun.” They walked away from the site line of any warrior below. “I should like to see what you do. You are a private man, never saying much about yourself directly, always about your people, but your work would tell me everything.”
Brian turned away looking at the distant hills. The woman walked up close to face him. “What happened? You have courage, you were not afraid of the warriors, you have great strength of character, yet you live with a far deeper fear.”
Brian thought for a moment, “What is the deepest fear of mankind? Warriors are not afraid of death, yet they still have fear before battle. Sometimes death seems to be the easiest option fro many people.” He thought about the feelings of absolute terror the masses of Cyberworld suffered without dreams in the Punishment Block. “Perhaps man’s greatest fear is some kind of eternal madness. We look for happiness and fulfilment, we avoid problems if at all possible and then as a consequence have more fear within ourselves.”
“Are you avoiding something? The woman continued looking directly into his face.
Brian who had only been truly understood by one father figure found this deep questioning very difficult, and wondered why she didn’t talk about herself. Who was she? Perhaps it was easier to talk with somebody he didn’t know. “I have the responsibility to find answers for my people. Failure means something more terrible than I can understand.
She smiled slightly and said, the answer must be in yourself, but you avoid it.”
They had climbed a gentle slope, but the view at the top was outstanding with grass of the greenest hue, woods and distant hills. A hare stood up sniffing the air, the bounded down the hill. Brian was still listening, but the enemy was no longer nearby. They had stopped to catch their breath, Brian looking for signs of civilisation. “We have a story, nobody knows where from. It may never be spoken of, it may not be found in the records, yet somehow I know it has the answer for me, for all of us. There is a city far away, The Silver City where the people have discovered an answer to all these things. As you know we avoid our pain thinking that is happiness. As an artist person I know that pain is part of the creative process. It is in some way necessary to life. Yet these people in the city have in some way passed through all of that and live without sorrow. The place is full of light and there are no shadows. The light seems to have no particular source it is everywhere.”
“Yes,” she replied, “pain is part of life. It is when we face the pain and take it into our lives rather than avoid it we find the way to true happiness. The Silver City, shouldn’t that be in each one of us?”
Brian immediately thought of Julie. “Yes, but how?”
“If you think it is such a wonderful thing then why forbid it?”
He answered, “It means stepping over the line where we lose control of our destiny.”
The woman smiled again then looked far out to the distant hills. It seems to me you have already done that. It seems to me that you are trying to find it. Do you know what your destiny really is?”
The rolling landscape had given Brian not the slightest hint of human habitation. There was no smoke, no hint of a straight line to indicate a building and no signs of agriculture. “Are there any people? It must have been settled at one time, surely?”
“Yes, they lived over those hills.”
“But this land waits for people to live in it. Where have they gone?”
“This is my home,” she answered, “I am the Keeper. The people will return one day.”
“So that is why the warriors wanted you. If they capture you then the land is theirs.”
“They want more, much more. Their greed is insatiable.”
Brain carried on gazing at the landscape, watching the hills separate into layers as the sun lowered over them. Beautiful was simply not an adequate word for this land, or the woman.
03 Feb 2015, 5:28 pm
