Insomnia

3

"Not here," Esme grunted at her crowd of dedicated fans. She'd sent out requests for information on any kind of dream aberrations, glitches in the system, unusual nightmares. She was careful not to name her query directly, lest she give herself away, but that did make it difficult to sift the relevant from the inane. "Private world. I'll send you the thought link."

They were gathered near the curve of the Mobius strip where it rose and twisted into the air. When Esme first visited the Nexus as a child, she had experienced an overpowering vertigo, disoriented by both the height and unnatural shape of the structure. It was in the aftermath of the Disaster. There weren't quite as many users then but also far fewer servers, leading to swollen, rushing crowds trading news, hope, or some other kind of release.

It had been a harrowing experience, ending with her shoved off of the platform by the bustling masses and falling onto the hard city floor, and a flash of agony before she awoke. Fantasian Industries had mastered the art of neural manipulation, ensuring that most sensations experienced in the dream translated not just to their digital representations, but into the user's body directly; it was supposed to enhance the experience.

At the time Esme did not feel so much enriched as terrified. Her brother had logged out first and held her tight in the real world as she recovered from the shock. Her mother took a while longer, stumbling out of her bed and desperately feeling her way towards the living room. She hadn't taken off her mask since the Disaster killed her husband and robbed her of her vision.

"Shh, baby," her mother had rasped. "It's okay. I'm here." Her voice had suffered from exposure too, but it was nothing compared to the scarred wastes that lurked behind her ragged corneas. She had looked up and whimpered at the sight, two puckered red mouths staring down at her where eye sockets should have been. The mask only made it worse, the masks mother insisted they wear at all times, even in vacuum sealed spaces like their home, which were perfectly safe. Its skeletal jaw glinted in the darkness, set just beneath a pair of thick glass goggles.

Her mother never took off that mask, not until the day she died. The undertakers removed it from the body when they carried her away and for a moment Esme felt as if she were staring at a stranger's face. It was often said that one's dream body reflected the truth of one's soul. Esme wondered what it meant that even when dreaming her mother still wore that awful mask.

She and her brother had held a private ceremony in Somnus, where Abigail Trahan had always been most comfortable, the only place where she could actually see the faces of her children. Esme grieved. But beneath the sadness was an empty space, a phantom pain for an aborted relationship. It was the shape of regret - regret that she'd wasted so many years in infantile terror and spent so few trying to really understand her mother. Her hopes, her fears, even her paranoia.

Esme shuddered, tossing away her musings - though gently, as if she might need to pick them back up later. She wove a short thought probe containing the Seed images that would form the basis of a dream and injected it into the chat bubble. Esme waited a moment before conjuring the world herself, darkness sponging up the moonlight as she emerged in a new universe. It was a replica of her Homespace, blue flowers as far as the eye could see. Esme thought they might find it calming considering the subject of her inquiry.

A few moments passed before the novice Psions began to pop clumsily into view, some at first in slumped blobs that slowly shifted into humanoid shapes. Several fell from considerable heights in the sky.

Esme waited patiently as one by one, her informants stumbled, fell, and blobbed their way into existence. She sighed with displeasure. Had she ever been this unskilled? She hoped not.

"What do you have for me?" asked Esme once the others had regained some semblance of composure.

They scrambled to attention and began to shout a combination of rumors, news and questionable propositions. She tried to discern some order from the din, but to no avail. Esme started banishing the more obvious liars, thieves and trolls. This was her dream, and she exerted a significant amount of authority over who was allowed to remain within it.

The first to go was a bespectacled young man who kept howling about premium gas masks he had for sale. Was he a bot? Or just an ass? In any case, it was time for him to leave.

The second was a confused woman asking over and over again if this was the meeting place for some kind of beat poetry society. Esme frowned. She needed to keep a closer eye on where she sent out these chat requests.

The third looked like he was trying to communicate, but his face kept freezing in place while his words continued uninterrupted. Lag was incredibly rare. And incredibly annoying.

She stopped about halfway through the crowd. She saw a middle aged man trying hard not to stand out. His shoulders were hunched, a dress shirt stained beneath the arms and slightly untucked at the front. Hair beginning to thin. Skin creased by worry and sleepless nights, a fatigue that seeped even into his dreaming hours.

His eyes were haunted and afraid. Shifting back and forth, left and right, unsettled uncertain and unhinged. Esme surrounded the others in a mute bubble and stepped closer.