Written in Fire

CHAPTER 16

Soren dreamed.

He strolled a foreign city, ancient cobblestones beneath his feet. Weathered buildings of white stone, tall doors painted deep green, curtains flickering through open second-story windows, old men watching the world go by. Rome? He’d never been to Rome. A direct flight would have taken eight or nine hours of “normal” time, close to a hundred hours in his perception, but the hours weren’t the problem. Time was the sea he swam, and alone he could spend that in meditation, in pursuit of nothingness.

It was the time trapped in a cramped space with other people.

The agony of watching them move as though paralyzed, each expression warping and deforming, their worm lips twisting into tortured syllables, drops of spit arcing lazily from their disgusting mouths. Fat bodies and patchy skulls. The simple, horrible energy of their being, just being, and so loud about it, so garish and cheap. Even asleep their snores filled the world, their farts scented it. The only grace existed where they were not.

That was how he knew this was a dream. On rare occasions his curse was lifted in dreams. He wouldn’t have to endure the slow descending footfall of every step, wouldn’t wait in the prison behind his eyes while the world caught up to him. He could walk amidst human beings and not hate them.

The cruelest dreams were the lucid ones, where he had control. He could pause outside a restaurant and savor the rich scents of basil and garlic wafting through the open doors. Could scratch an itch on the back of his neck and feel his fingernails. Could note the small chapel ahead and admire the way its every line was in proportion, every stone tested by weather and time. As Soren approached the chapel, he heard sounds coming from within. Automatically, he winced. Sounds were unpleasant. Voices, sighs, laughter, all drew out to grate like metal against teeth.

Only.

These sounds.

He’d never heard anything like them.

A layered swelling, a soar of textures and moods. They had a rhythm that built like love, like when he moved inside Samantha and each slow stroke was an ecstasy to lose himself in, each tingle of sensation a world in its own right. The rhythm seemed almost to have a theme, as though someone had found a way to represent the brightening of dawn after a night so cold and long it seemed it might never end. The lower tones were the inky darkness, the loss and fear, but against them higher notes were insistent, swelling, moving together in a way that made his chest hurt.

He stepped in the door of the chapel, marveling at the way the sound echoed off ancient stone. The interior was lit by thick white tapers with flames that danced, fast, so fast, it was jarring but somehow liberating, and the smell was rich and safe, wax and fire and incense. At the front of the room, a choir sang.

People? People made these sounds?

He moved down the aisle, found a dark pew, and sat. As the choir moved their lips, noises came out like he’d never heard before. A calculated tangle of voices, pure and sweet and strong. It took him, shook him, lifted him. His hands twitched in his lap, and his chest heaved. He was crying.

This would be the cruelest dream of all, he could tell, but for now he was in it, and if he must pay the price, he would at least relish this, soak in it, let the sound wash over him like a warm sea, this purity, this essence, this holy . . .

Music.

This was music, he realized. The way others heard it. To him, it had never been anything but endless, horrible grinding, tones that rang through his bones. People liked it, he knew that, but he was not of people.

Too soon the voices began to wind down. When the music drifted to an end, it felt like the vanishing of a physical force propping him up. Then he heard something else. Beside him. Another noise he had never known. A voice as it sounded to the speaker.

“It’s something, isn’t it?”

Soren knew the dream was about to end, then. He wanted nothing more than to stay a little longer, a little longer, forever. But it was the way of dreams that he turned anyway. On the pew beside him sat Nick Cooper. A man he had killed, and who had returned from the dead to trick him and break his bones and send him to a purgatory of white and counting.

“Music,” the monster said. “I thought that might be the best way to show you. You’ve never heard it before, have you?”

The dream would end soon. Soren turned away, faced the choir again. Perhaps they would sing again.

“You have a T-naught of 11.2. If I say ‘one Mississippi,’ it takes me about a second. But you’ve never heard that before, have you? You’ve heard, ‘Ooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne Mmmmmmmmmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssssssssssss . . .’” Cooper broke off. “You’ve never known life. Not really.”

The back of Soren’s neck itched again, and he scratched it. Most dreams he merely experienced, but ones this clear were usually under some level of conscious control. He decided to banish Nick Cooper from the chapel, and to focus all his attention on the music until the dream grew threadbare.

“Let me guess,” Cooper said. “You think this is a dream.”

Despite himself, Soren spun.

“It’s like the parable about a man who dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke, he couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t a butterfly dreaming he was a man. And other exercises in dorm room philosophy.” Cooper’s smile did not reach his eyes. “Well, let me end the mystery. You’re not dreaming.”

“What, then?”

“It’s lovely, isn’t it? The chance to walk and talk and think without having to watch the rest of the world drag along. Imagine how things might have turned out if you hadn’t been born the way you were. You could have had a life. Friends, relationships. You could listen to music or stroll on the beach or have a conversation. All the things everyone else takes for granted. All the things you’ve always been denied.”

“What is this?”

“You know,” Cooper said, “you don’t have to stick to the whole three-words-at-a-time thing. Stretch your wings. Try a whole sentence.”

Soren stared at him. Waited.

Cooper sighed. “It’s the possibility of a real life.”

“Real?” He glanced around, at the chapel, the choir, the Roman street through the open doors.

“You of all people should know that ‘real’ is a flexible term. The rest of the world experiences one thing, and you experience another. Which is real? Ours? Yours? Neither?” Cooper shrugged. “Perception is just a matter of electrical signals in the brain. Philosophers and poets and priests say there’s more, and maybe they’re right. But that doesn’t change the fact that consciousness is a matter of current. There is no objective truth, only the subjective experience our minds perceive. After all, when you thought this was a dream, didn’t you want to stay in it?”

More than anything, and for the rest of my life. But he just repeated, “What is this?”

“It’s a simulation. Designed by the best and brightest in the Holdfast. Really puts the new in newtech, huh? It’s basically a cutting-edge game, powered by predictive networks that stay one step ahead. I’m not a bioengineer, but the way it was explained to me, it directly stimulates the parts of your brain that process sensory information. The occipital, temporal, frontal, and parietal lobes, neurons in the brain stem, who knows what else. Point is, it’s as real as anything else in your head. And because it’s generated, here we can nullify your perception of time.”

“How?”

“We sedated you while you slept, and Erik’s surgical team implanted a small interface device.”

“Why?”

“I think what you mean is ‘thank you.’” Cooper flashed another cold smile. “For a guy whose idea of entertainment is counting holes in the wall, whose dearest hope is that I’ll kill him, this is basically Christmas.”

He understood then. “An offer.”

Cooper nodded. “And this is just version one-point-oh. With time, Epstein can create a permanent interface, a sort of mental translator that would allow you to experience the world the way the rest of us do.”

Scratching at the back of his neck, he said, “What price?”

“Information.”

“About John.”

“Yes.”

Soren paused.

When he had been a child, overwhelmed by every second, unable even to explain to the people around him what was wrong, there had been a voice in his head that promised one day he would be cured. Someone would find a way to nullify this hell he carried behind his eyes. Someday he would be able to experience the world as others did. Simple joy in simple things.

It was the only reason he’d stayed alive. And though he eventually stopped believing the voice, it had left a deep enough mark that surviving had become a habit, one he had never broken, despite daily consideration of it.

Now it turned out he’d been right. There was a cure for him.

The choir began to sing again. Tremulous whispers that bounced and echoed around the chapel. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever known, as lovely as the times with Samantha, but instead of a fading memory, it was here, real enough, and right in front of him.

All your life you have tried to be a leaf and let the current carry you away.

What if instead you became an eagle and soared on the breeze?

“I know you think he’s your friend, but Smith used you. He sent you out to kill for him, and when you failed, he abandoned you. He felt no more love for you than a chess player feels toward a powerful piece, knowing full well that he’ll sacrifice it to win.”

A memory came to him then. John, saying to him, “You’retherook. Overlookedonthebackrow.” Speaking in their old way, running the words together to make it easier for Soren. It had been in the apartment in Tesla, the one filled with books, the one where John had reunited him with Samantha.

The itch struck again.

Soren looked at the graceful chapel lit by candles, rich with the scent of wax and furniture polish, ringing with song, the beauty of which he had never known. Then he reached behind his neck with both hands.

Cooper cocked his head. “What are you doing?”

Soren ignored him. His neck felt normal, but he knew there was more to it, and he focused, applied all of his effort. Like trying to wake from a dream, that moment when both worlds seem real, when the boundary between them is pliable, and as he thought that, his hands touched something cold and hard. Looking Cooper straight in the eyes, he wrapped his fingers around it and tugged.

The world froze, twitched, shifted like a video call with poor reception, and vanished.

The chapel, the candles, the choir, gone.

All but Cooper, sitting opposite him in the bright cell of white tiles pierced by holes, 415,872 of them. The man stared at him with an expression of mingled confusion and horror.

Slowly—so, so slowly—Soren slid his right hand out from behind his head and looked at the cable that had been jacked into his neck. The voice inside him raged and screamed, told him to put it back, that it wasn’t too late, that this was what he had always dreamed of.

He opened his fingers and let it fall. “No.”

But it sounded like, “Nnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooo . . .”