Past Lives Could Never Come Between Us

5

"Okay, I'm in Dreambert's chambers." Luigi says uneasily as he wobbles inside the dreamscape. "And we have a serious problem."

"Tell me." Mario urges.

"The dreamscape is in ruins." Luigi says, still wobbling. "It's like his dreams have been shattered. And no, that's not figurative. It's also extremely nauseating."

"Pauline?" Mario taps his earpiece.

"His dreamscape is broken. "

"Can you fix it?"

"Working on it."

"Weeg? You wanna wake up?" Mario asks.

"Hang on." Luigi says. "I can still see stuff happening. And I smell it. Cologne, maybe?"

In the real world, Pauline says, "He can smell in Dreambert's memories."

"That's not normal. " They hear Mario say from the speaker.

"I can't do this." Luigi says, trying not to lurch. "Wake me up, and get me something to throw up in."

Mario makes a dash for it, jumping through the dream portal.

The second Luigi is awake, Mario's next to him, holding a trash can in front of his face, and Luigi promptly pukes his guts out.

"That's not supposed to happen, is it?" The guard captain asks.

"No, it's not." Mario calls from where he's still next to Luigi on the bed, annoyed.

"The first thing we do when we get someone in here is tap into their dreamscape, specifically the part that serves as a bridge between short- and long-term memories." Pauline explains to the guard captain. "The stronger the emotions, the more powerful the memory."

"Not that you have any." Mario snarks.

"I can turn you into one right here and now, punk." The guard captain threatens.

"You call me Mario, or you call me nothing." Mario snaps back.

"Mario." Snoozemore warns.

"The point is, all this time, the Dream Lab has collected data from all those memories to span all of our worlds several times over." Pauline moves right along. "My computer compares what it's collected to the memories of whoever's in the glass box, and pinpoints how old the memory is and how significant it is. That's how I know where Luigi is going."

"Spoiler alert: this rent-a-cop actually knows what you're talking about." The guard captain says.

Pauline doesn't reply, just keeps typing. "Typically, a good dreamscape looks like this."

She hits a key, and a map with several dots appears.

"And this is what happened to Dreambert's." Pauline goes on, hitting another key, showing shattered fractals across the map.

"Dreambert's memories and dreamscape are irreparably fragmented." Mario summarizes.

"Explains why I threw up. Place looked completely and utterly disorienting." Luigi says. "Is it possible Dreambert's boss taught him to do that so dreamwalking was pointless?"

"Mm, yes. I'm not ruling anything out with Dreambert." Snoozemore says.

"Can we put the memories together?" Mario asks again.

"Already trying." Pauline assures.

"I'm going to Dreambert's chambers. I saw something in there I wanna follow up on." Luigi says.

"Spike's still with Clark, so you're taking Mario." Snoozemore tells him.

Mario and Luigi nod, but the guard captain stops them.

"Not so fast. You two." She points to two guards off to the side. "You're escorting them."

"No they're not." Mario argues.

"This is my job." The guard captain reminds him. "Trust me, I don't want to do it either."

"Ouch." Mario deadpans.

"Hey, can we go already?" Luigi says to break it up, then walks out of the Lab.