Brian Saves the World, Maybe

Chapter 1 - The Voice

Brian Walker frowned. Why couldn't he remember anything about the second day of his camping trip? And what about that bizarre recurring dream? The dreams had started soon after that same trip into the mountains.  What the heck happened up there?

It will all make sense in time. Try to be patient, said the voice.

No, he wasn't talking to himself. That was the other thing. As if the memory loss and dreams weren't enough, he now had this strange, unwelcome voice in his head.

He suspected he might be going nuts like Aunt Carol, who had years ago suddenly claimed the world was ending, and finally just ran off somewhere. Maybe this was what had happened to her.

You're not crazy, Brian.

The voice in my head says I'm not crazy. Yeah, that's reassuring, he thought, smirking.

"Well, Brian, what can we do about that? And wipe that weird smile off your face. This is serious!" Brian had nearly forgotten he was in a meeting. His boss, Jack Martin, was looking at him with raised eyebrows. When Jack's eyebrows were raised, it meant he expected something. In this case, he expected Brian to explain what he was going to do about the restrooms. Apparently, people had been complaining about poor Wi-Fi connectivity in there, and it had suddenly become a major issue, demanding immediate attention.

Brian sighed. These weekly meetings were meant to discuss company initiatives. Instead, they were usually spent going over the latest IT problems. Brian sometimes liked to pretend his primary responsibility was to generate complaints. It made him feel more successful at his job.

"Well, our only real option is to put another wireless access point near the restrooms," Brian said. He knew Jack wouldn't like this because it involved spending money, and Jack hated spending money on IT.

"Unacceptable." Jack had now lowered his eyebrows. This meant he was about to say something ridiculous. "That's not in your IT budget. You need to fix the problem without buying more equipment." His eyebrows were back up.

"Uh, we could move HR's access point closer to the restrooms, but that might cause some connection problems for HR."

"Perfect," Jack said. He hated HR more than he hated IT expenditures.

Top-notch leadership like this was common at Talon Industries, a fairly typical government contractor.

Over lunch, Brian mentioned the dreams he had been having to Dale Meeks. He decided not to bring up the memory loss, or the voice, though. He wasn't quite ready to talk about his impending insanity.

Dale was Talon's very own walking encyclopedia. He felt it was his duty to know everything about anything and to point out when someone else was wrong about something. He claimed it was part of his job description. Brian wasn't sure why knowing everything was a requirement of being head of maintenance at Talon, but whatever.

More than once Brian had been struck by the irony of Dale's last name. He was anything but meek. Still, he meant well, and was more than willing to help a friend when he could (or when he thought he could).

"It's unusual," Brian said. "It doesn't seem like the sort of dream you would have without some kind of stimulus, but I haven't been watching any sci-fi movies lately."

"Hmmph." Dale had been listening halfheartedly while chewing on his roast beef sandwich (the guy always ate roast beef). "Well, dreams are usually kind of off-the-wall. You probably saw something like that on a website or book cover without even thinking about it. Nothing slips past the subconscious mind," Dale said, tapping on his temple. He took another bite of his sandwich, then continued, "And dreams are pretty much the playground of unconscious thoughts."