The Dreamer's Curse

[Chapter 1]

The twenty first century was a beautifully tragic era. Despite all the information we had and the many ways we could acquire it, the world has continued to depreciate. We have access the internet with a click of the button, yet find our brains no fuller than before. We possess the ability connect with strangers from the ends of the earth, but find ourselves ever lonelier in the company of ‘friends’. Worse still was the persisting trend of lack—lack of funds to live a pleasant life, lack of direction in our careers, lack of love from those we most desire, lack of support to progress research that could change lives, lack of energy to fuel our ever increasing need for consumption. All the old books on science fiction had obviously had it all wrong. There were no hovercrafts or space homes. There seems only the increasing gap between ourselves and our ambitions. The world didn't progress, it seemed to digress.

And here I was, a hopelessly ideal university freshman, hopelessly dreaming of the hour I could rush to my room and sink my eyes into a book. I could see it now: my entire shelf of crisp paperbacks beckoning to be opened, to be caressed at the spine. Oh, how I longed for it. 

I sat in my class and mulled over the different ways to sneak out of it. To no avail, however.

My English professor was of the opinion that every single word in a book ought to possess a hidden meaning. He presumed, rather wrongly, that authors were cyphers, hiding bits and pieces of knowledge in each letter of each page. "There is significance to each choice of word," he would often say. At first, I had thought he was being metaphorical, but no, he wasn't. "Why did the author use 'the' instead of 'a'?" he was in the middle of saying. I rolled my eyes. We’d gone through this train of thought at least five times in the last week or so. “Obviously because he was referring to a specific piece of object in the realm he had created, whereas 'a' referred to one of many,” I recalled Professor Fiddle saying just last lecture. If we had been on the subject of C.S. Lewis or J.K. Rowling, I would have been infinitely more interested. We were instead on the subject of World Literature—an interesting subject enough, if Professor Fiddle had not been the instructor.

“Ms. March?” he called, pulling me from my thoughts. “Jane, I asked you a question."

“I’m sorry, Professor, I was still mulling over Achebe's use of 'the' versus ‘a’.”

“We're now on Ezinma,” he looked at me expectantly.

I glanced about me. The whole class was staring at my flabbergasted expression, concealing their amusement. I shifted in my seat, fumbling for an answer. "I think, Professor, that since Okonkwo often saw his son Nwoye as a disappointment, an embodiment of his father whom he sought not to emulate, Ezinma became the son who could have been, because of her bold and boyish nature. She was the one Okonkwo would have wanted to succeed him, although she was born a girl."

Professor Fiddle gave an approving nod. "Very insightful," his mouth twitched as the bell rang. "Right, I want a five page paper on Chapters 12-14 by the end of the week. If I don't see it on my desk, then you don't get a grade—no, Mr. Bryan, I shall not go to hell, at least not before I grade those papers. Class dismissed."

I stuffed my books into my knapsack and made straight for the door. Raphael Bryan was by my side in no time. "Nice save back there," he said in his melodic voice. His perfection irritated me now just as it had back in high school. "Come on, cousin, aren't you going to amuse me today?"

"No, Raph, and if you insist on calling me 'cousin' even when we really aren't even remotely related, then I won't even attempt to be nice."

"Come on, we did spend our high school years together, and I know how you just adore how they used to call each other cousins in the 1600s. Hang out with me, Jane, we could get drunk, and snog, and fall in love—”