Dreamer AQ#1367-458-MATT stood on the scaffolding of an incomplete skyscraper, hair blown wild by the spring breeze. Skinny legs trembled inside skinny jeans, but he took one step, then another, closer and closer to the edge.

Satisfaction: 37
Growth Mindset: 21
Self-Preservation: 17 . . . 14 . . . 11 . . .

Back in the flesh world, Zishun formed a fist and slammed it against the main control panel. Pain stabbed through his knuckles, but he couldn’t see where exactly he’d hit, only that he hadn’t punched in any accidental commands. With his helmet on, all he saw was the Dreamscape—or rather, 458-MATT’s Dreamscape. Venus gleamed in its twilight sky, as bright as the crescent moon.

Why didn’t Hypnos highlight this earlier? Even as he formed the thought, he had his answer. 458-MATT’s depression had been neglected amidst concerns about other Dreamers. So many critical incidents recently, as if Hypnos’ algorithm was deteriorating.

Up on the scaffolding, a woman materialized behind 458-MATT. She had square glasses and wavy sable-brown hair. “Matt, stop!” she called.

458-MATT turned. His eyes widened. “Why the hell are you here?”

Zishun rested a helmet-encased head in his palm. Saida had worked on one graduate project with 458-MATT. She barely counted as an acquaintance, let alone a friend. Of all the NPCs to dredge up, this was the best Hypnos could do? Had the Dreamer alienated all his other NPCs so badly?

Zishun prayed to every Pre-Dream deity that Saida would keep 458-MATT talking long enough for him to review the Dreamer’s history and find a resolution. Words flared around him, overlaying 458-MATT’s Dreamscape. The twenty-seven-year-old Dreamer had been assigned a rather mundane life. Two-parent family, honors student, engineering undergrad with an interest in aircraft. Two deteriorations, but no previous self-termination attempts. No major adverse events loaded in. Six months ago, he’d been recruited for the design team of the Concordia aircraft—a lifelong wish come true. Still, 458-MATT remained buried in thoughts of inadequacy and dissatisfaction.

Recent history. A meeting two days ago. 458-MATT’s proposal for the Concordia’s fuel tank layout had been rejected. Violation of realistic safety standards within the rules of his Dreamscape, wrote the system notes. Yet what was the value of physics against a Dreamer’s life? Zishun entered two commands: for 458-MATT’s design to be accepted by the project lead and to override system-calculated Dreamscape physics to ensure no accidents with the Concordia.

But . . . how could he get word of this to the Dreamer? 458-MATT had left his phone at home. Saida had no connection with the Concordia design team. Perhaps Zishun could command the project lead to appear on the stairs and—

A scream, then a sob. 458-MATT threw himself off the building.

The Dreamscape vanished. Building, twilight sky, Saida. Zishun stared at the dark interior of his helmet, then ripped it off.

Back in the flesh world, back in the pod-base, Zishun stared up at the gently sloped metal of the domed ceiling. He remembered the beautiful yet false firmament in 458-MATT’s Dreamscape, then turned to the monitor. It flashed blue words against a black screen:

Auto-Reset AQ#1367-458-MATT?

Yes                 No

Zishun hit No, letting the Dreamer’s consciousness enter stasis. He released a long breath, shoulders slumping. His fingers shook as he navigated the map of the pod-base. 458-MATT’s lifepod was only twenty columns down.

He didn’t need to go. 458-MATT’s physical parameters were green, in contrast to his mental ones. But Zishun had to verify with his own eyes. He refused to live off numbers and graphs like the other Caretakers.

He pushed his chair away from the monitor and trotted to the highlighted lifepod. His sneakers tapped against the grooved metal plates of the pod-base floor. The green-blue glow of Synthfluid washed over his palms and forearms. Zishun preferred leaving the light settings on low in his section to draw his eyes to the pods and the figures within.

Dreamers, all. Naked, eyes closed, the Synthfluid’s aurora hues painting their skin and drifting hair. Each cocooned in their own pod, looking like lava lamps from the Pre-Dream world. Some young, some old—for even the Synthfluid could not grant immortality.

Zishun stopped before 458-MATT’s lifepod. A man in his late twenties—near Zishun’s own age—floated within, his thick mane of hair looking overdue for a system-dictated shear. His eyes darted behind closed lids, as if caught in a nightmare. Which he was, until his Dreamscape reset. Zishun raised his wrist, tapped his mini-comp, and brought up the control panel.

Before he could do more, a red light signaled an incoming call. Eleri, youngest of the four Caretakers in the pod-base. Zishun answered.

The hologram displayed her from neck up, the sharp angles of her face twisting in a savage grin. “Lost one, huh?” she said.

“Why do you sound happy about it?” Zishun asked.

Eleri snorted, blowing back dark bangs. “Why should I be sad? Reboot his sequence, and he gets another go. It’s not like he died for real.”

“Don’t say that,” Zishun snapped. “Self-termination means there is something about the Dreamer’s psyche that Hypnos could not anticipate, and each termination—”

“Oh piss off and stop quoting protocols at me. All I know is, if he existed in the flesh world, this would be it. He’s lucky he’s Dreamscaping.”

Is he? Zishun placed a hand over the glass of 458-MATT’s pod. Hypnos’ algorithms should’ve offered him his ideal life, with the right balance of triumph and adversity. Yet the algorithms had failed. Zishun’s human intervention had come too late, and who was to say it wouldn’t have failed too?

“Besides . . . ” Eleri continued, more somber now, “I lost two this week. Permanently. Cancer grew too aggressively for the Synthfluid to regulate. Hypnos composed the ideal deaths—one sacrificing herself to slay a dragon, the other reuniting with his first love and dying in her arms.”

Zishun’s gaze roved between the hologram of Eleri’s face and the one of the control panel. He swiped back into 458-MATT’s file and entered the command to rewind to that work meeting two days ago. He followed that with a command for the project lead to accept the Concordia’s fuel tank layout, physics be damned.

Hypnos acknowledged the command and executed it, beginning with the memory erasure. Two days was acceptable. The Dreamer would not suffer too badly. Those who lost only a small portion of memory were less likely to be plagued with recurring nightmares: of another life, of a split in their decision path, of the moment of self-termination.

“How old were they?” Zishun asked Eleri. “Your two?”

“He was fifty-one. She . . . was only twenty-five.”

Zishun closed his eyes. “You are right. That is a greater tragedy.”

Still, after their call disconnected, he sat down and leaned back against 458-MATT’s pod. As if he could guard the man with his physical presence, when 458-MATT had no idea he existed. I wonder, which one of us is more trapped? Was it 458-MATT, born into Hypnos’ false paradise? Or was it Zishun, existing in drab reality, in a world reduced to a steel dome and glass pods? Neither of them had a choice, but at least Zishun knew the truth.

---

Zishun woke to clacking footsteps. He opened his eyes, rubbed the sleep from them, and glanced up.

Black combat boots. Blue slacks. White lab coat. An ensemble curated from the Remnants Garage, leading to a face like an aging movie star, hollow cheeks framed by coiffed blond hair. Luisa, Controller of this pod-base and Zishun’s mentor, stared down her nose with its perfect, Erlenmeyer flask slope.

Zishun scrambled to his feet, hands braced on the glass of the pod. “Sorry, I—”

Luisa held up a hand. “Check his parameters. Then we’ll talk.”

The control panel flickered to life from his mini-comp. 458-MATT’s parameters shone green. Zishun sighed with relief. He tried to read some difference in 458-MATT’s face in the flesh world, but of course the micro-expressions told him little.

Luisa’s hand settled on his shoulder, loose skin and dark spots revealing the age her face still refused to show. “A Dreamer’s self-termination . . . This is one of the hardest things for a Caretaker. I wanted to check in and make sure you’re okay.”

Warmth and wariness warred inside Zishun’s chest. He remembered sitting on the cushions in the Nursery while Luisa told him stories. Of the Dreamscape, of Hypnos, of the surface they could no longer go back to. Of what it meant to be selected as a Caretaker, a human born into the flesh world to watch over those that Dreamscaped. In Pre-Dream times, Luisa would’ve been the closest thing to his mother, even though her genes hadn’t been in his incubation pod. Yet she’d never allowed him to refer to her as such; she was only ever Controller or Luisa.

“I’m okay,” he said, curling his hands into fists to keep them from reaching into his jacket for his notebook. His secret. “I just wish I could’ve done more.”

“He has another chance,” Luisa said.

Zishun scrolled further down 458-MATT’s parameters. A moderate increase in Suspicion, as expected after erasure and reset. This faded over time. Usually. “What about 103-YESHA? I read about her.” Zishun fought to keep the accusation from his voice. Luisa hadn’t told him that story, leaving him to discover it himself in the archives. “Hypnos reset her over and over, until her Suspicion parameters never settled, until she always knew none of it was real and—”

Luisa’s fingers left his shoulder and curled over his wrist. “You know how many pods are in this pod-base?”

“Two million,” he said, the words automatic.

“How many times has an unsolvable recursion happened?” She didn’t wait for his reply. “Just once. The rest lead happy, fulfilling lives in the Dreamscape.”

Zishun gazed around the gray metal of the pod-base and remembered Luisa’s stories. The surface was a wasteland of humanity’s own making, the air and water polluted. Rather than struggling in such a world, humanity had chosen to exist in lifepods, bodies nourished by Synthfluid and minds connected to the Dreamscape. In their virtual worlds, Dreamers lived as dragon slayers or secret agents or aviation engineers.

Luisa released his wrist and tapped her hologram display. “Look.” Parameter bars lit up in front of every lifepod, Satisfaction and Self-Preservation and Growth Mindset blazing green as far as his eyes could see. “I know you wish you could’ve done more. But remember what happened to 458 is exceedingly rare.”

She never used the Dreamers’ personal names at the end of their numbers.

“It’s not . . . ” Zishun struggled with how much to say. “It’s not real. The first generation chose this, maybe. The others had no choice.”

Luisa tilted her head. “The first generation chose this, and that’s why they could never experience the full benefits. They were haunted by memories of Pre-Dream. Only those connected to the Dreamscape from birth can maximize their happiness.” A flick of her hand and the green bars disappeared.

How far dared he go? When he was ten years old, he’d punched in commands at Andry’s control panel. When Luisa found out, she hadn’t only barred him from accessing his own mini-comp; she’d sent such a shock through his fingers that he hadn’t been able to move them for days. That was when he’d realized what the title of Controller meant.

Perhaps it was 458-MATT, unhappy in his mundane paradise. Perhaps it was Andry’s resource calculations, which lingered in the back of Zishun’s mind every time he entered a command or observed a Synthfluid cycle. Perhaps it was Zishun’s completion of his code, meaning he no longer needed Luisa. The words he had been swallowing for the past two years—and the uncertainty he’d harbored for the past ten—spilled out. “Haven’t you wondered what they could do if they weren’t trapped in the Dreamscape, if the resources powering Hypnos were diverted to the flesh world?” He gestured toward the lifepods, then up at the domed ceiling. “Perhaps humanity would’ve reached the stars.”

Luisa’s gaze locked on their metal sky. He was struck by a sudden thought: she, too, had never seen the real sky. She, too, had only witnessed the stars the Dreamscape showed her. For all her aura of wisdom, she was little different from him.

“We tried that,” she said. “It didn’t work.” She braced a hand against the lifepod opposite 458-MATT’s. “For those that dream of the stars, the Dreamscape takes them there. Look through the logs of your Dreamers. Many of them are charting a course to Neptune or waking on the outskirts of Iota Persei.”

Zishun had drifted through those Dreamscapes, painstakingly recreated from space probe photos, artistic renderings, and Hypnos’ extrapolation. “And what about those Hypnos failed?”

Luisa tapped the pod. “That’s what us Caretakers are for. Sometimes Hypnos needs a little nudge. So we remain awake, to let the Dreamers live free. We were chosen for a reason.”

That had been her first lesson. Caretakers were chosen by Hypnos’ algorithms, which were supposed to be infallible. So why had Hypnos failed 458-MATT, why had Hypnos chosen Eleri? Why had it chosen Zishun?

Luisa isn’t here to comfort me, Zishun thought. She’s here to assess me, and I’m on thin glass. “It’s an honor to serve,” he said, repeating the words she’d taught him.

“And remember, you can only be a good Caretaker if you take care of yourself.” She fished around in her pocket and tossed something at him. A packet of Synthfood. “Don’t forget to eat.”

Zishun slid the Synthfood into his pocket, though not the same one he used for the notebook. “I won’t. Thank you.”

A faint smile tugged on her lips. “Spend some time in the Dreamscape. You’ve earned it.”

“The protocols say—”

“You are nowhere near the listed maximum.” She brushed back a lock of golden hair. “Don’t worry, if you ever become lost in your dreams, I will pull you back, just as I did for Eleri.”

Zishun gripped his elbows, holding back a shudder. “Thank you, Luisa.”

---

Zishun flew. Over the Three Gorges, reconstructed from the time before the dam. Over the golden palaces of Bangkok, not yet drowned. Over Tsunoshima, with its white sands and green-blue sea, before dead fish and debris had choked the shoreline.

His comm blinked. Entry request from Eleri.

He granted permission and she materialized, hovering beside him as they stared down at the Kanmon Straits. “Pedestrian as usual.”

“Some of us have no need to go bursting through the rings of Saturn or blowing up half of Antarctica,” Zishun said.

“Hey.” Eleri floated closer, her eyes darting. “You be careful, okay?”

“What do you mean?”

Her clawed hand grabbed the front of his collar. “I know you’ve been reading through the source code. If I know, then Luisa does.”

A block of ice slid down his back even though he hadn’t asked for hail. “Nothing in the protocols says we’re prohibited.”

She lifted her chin. “The protocols also say that the Controller can exercise judgment on her Caretakers.”

“You sure you shouldn’t worry about yourself first?” he teased. “I heard you’re still spending above your allotted hours in the Dreamscape.”

“Because the very concept of allotted hours is stupid,” she hissed. “The concept of us is stupid. Hypnos calculates a Dreamer’s life from accumulated studies on human happiness, sprinkled with story arcs from the dawn of oral storytelling to the last hours of Pre-Dream. If Hypnos can’t chart the ideal life for someone, then you and I sure can’t.”

Zishun winced. A week ago, 458-MATT had wound up back on the scaffolding after his manual reset, and it had taken an auto-reset to pull him from the loop. 458-MATT wasn’t in the clear yet; his parameters still dipped every other day.

“Every system needs oversight,” Zishun said, parroting Luisa.

“And you think that’s fair?” Eleri leaned her face close to his, spittle flying against his cheeks. “We’re stuck in this metal husk, while these two million souls get to experience their ideal lives?”

So that was the crux of it. Why she spent so many hours in the Dreamscape, why she always auto-reset her Dreamers and barely checked their files, why she laughed at his concern for 458-MATT. Zishun floated back a few paces. “We know the truth,” he said. “We should feel grateful for that.”

“Grateful?” Eleri spat. “And here I thought you’d understand, even if Luisa and Andry are up to their necks in Hypnos’ protocols. You think—”

Her voice cut off. The sea spray vanished, as did the sands. Zishun was left with a splitting headache and the memory of Eleri’s wide, shocked eyes as the flesh world materialized around him.

His hands shook as he removed the helmet. He tasted bile and pineapple at the back of his throat, the latter from his last Synthfood packet. He took forceful breaths to keep the panic down, but his thoughts scattered like wayward papers from 458-MATT’s unfinished skyscraper.

Luisa. She’d kicked him out of his Dreamscape. It had to be her; no one else could. She must know what he had done, how he’d teased out the codes, how he could end all this if he chose to.

He shuffled toward the pressurized door that separated his section from Eleri’s. She wasn’t an ally. But she’d been in the Dreamscape with him, and she had warned him. Even her brash company was preferable to confronting Luisa alone.

Eleri kept her section bright, the glow of Synthfluid obscured beneath the glaring lights. Zishun raced past the pods, searching. He expected a call from Luisa at any moment, but his comm remained silent.

He found Eleri at the main control panel. She was still wearing her Dreamscape helmet. Her shoulders were tense, and her balled fists slammed against the locked keys.

“Let me in! Damn it, let me in!”

He stopped several paces away. “Eleri, it’s me.”

She whirled in the direction of his voice, the sleek black of her helmet reflecting the overhead lights. She couldn’t see him, of course, not with the mask on. “Very funny, Mister Programmer,” she said, sarcasm dripping from every word. “I don’t know how you locked me out of the Dreamscape, but you better let me back in before—”

“I didn’t lock you out,” he snapped. “I can’t lock you. Listen, I think it’s—”

Eleri’s monitor flashed to life. Luisa’s face, etched on the large screen, was even more impassive than it appeared flesh to flesh. Her voice blasted from the control panel’s speakers: “Take the helmet off, Eleri.”

Eleri whipped off the helmet. Her hair was matted, her skin holding an oily sheen like she hadn’t gone to the showers in weeks. “Luisa? What’s wrong?”

“Do you remember our last conversation about allotted hours?” Luisa said. “Why have you gone over again?”

Eleri’s shoulders slumped. “This again?”

“You are a Caretaker. You were selected by Hypnos to monitor the Dreamers. You cannot become lost in the Dreamscape yourself.”

Eleri threw up her hands. “My Dreamers are doing fine! Maybe you should look more closely at him!” She jabbed a finger toward Zishun. “He had a self-termination, but instead of punishing him, you’re babying him with extra Synthfood and Dreamscape sessions!”

Luisa’s eyes narrowed. “We are not talking about Zishun right now. Eleri, this is your third consecutive month exceeding the maximum hours. I am disabling your access to the Dreamscape, effective immediately. You will still be able to check your Dreamers’ logs, and you can enter their Dreamscapes if they reach critical thresholds. But under no circumstances will you enter your own Dreamscape or the Dreamscape of another Caretaker.”

Eleri’s eyes blazed. “You can’t do this!”

Luisa crossed her lab coat-encased arms. “Please reflect upon what I’ve taught you. Until you show sufficient growth, you are barred from Dreamscaping.”

The monitor went black, leaving a hollow silence broken only by the low hum of the lifepods. Eleri stared at the blank screen. The helmet slipped from her fingers.

The horror in her eyes twisted something in Zishun’s chest. Yet another part of him exhaled in relief. The Dreamscape session had been terminated due to Eleri, not him. Luisa didn’t know. Not yet.

Bam!

Eleri’s fist collided with the monitor. This did nothing, of course, except to make her wince in pain. She smacked the monitor with her other fist, then slumped over the keys. “Luisa, please . . . you can’t . . . ”

Zishun wondered if he should comfort her, but no words came. Eleri buried her face in her arms, shoulders shaking, and Zishun backed away. There was nothing he could do for her, and if he stayed, her fist could very well be colliding with his face instead of the monitor.

---

Zishun glanced around three times, four times. He crouched near the edge of the dome, reinforced steel wall at his back, out of the control panel’s detection range. He’d stripped his mini-comp from his wrist and thrown it behind one of the pods, so that its camera could not capture him. Then, only then, did he open his notebook.

Scrawled lines of code. Commands. A stupid thing to keep—he should’ve and could’ve memorized them. But having them written down was a small rebellion, and a murky hope that someday someone more courageous would make use of them even if he didn’t.

He’d scrounged around the emergency protocols: critical failure rate above Pre-Dream percentages, attacks from rogue flesh world humans, even alien invasions . . . There were procedures to deal with such incidents, up to and including waking the Dreamers. Far-fetched possibilities, of course. But the protocols were there.

Zishun didn’t have clearance to wake everyone. It could only be done if three out of four Caretakers, including the Controller, agreed. But Hypnos was just a web of code. Code, no matter how complex, could be rewritten. And he had.

With this command, I can . . .

Zishun leaned his head back against the metal wall. The parameters of his Dreamers scrolled across his mind’s eye. Green, yellow, an occasional red. Despite all the wisdom of scientific studies, all the algorithms derived from mythology and storytelling, the Universal Human Happiness Program was not universal.

Soft steps. Zishun jammed the notebook back in his jacket just as Andry emerged from between two lifepods.

Ten years Zishun’s senior, with a scruffy dark beard and wearing gray overalls, Andry resembled a mechanic from some ancient photograph, back when images were captured in black and white. All that broke this illusion was the glow of Synthfluid, washing his square jaw and creased forehead in green-blue.

Zishun raised a hand in greeting. “All’s well in your section?”

“Of course.” Andry’s brows furrowed in sympathy. “Heard about what happened. You alright?”

“The auto-reset fixed things.”

Andry nodded, transformed from twentieth-century plumber to wise sage. “Hypnos learns quickly.”

Zishun stared down at his Remnant Garage-issued sneakers. Luisa had dismissed him. So had Eleri. Perhaps Andry would understand.

Zishun looked up. “Did you speak to Luisa about the resource calculations?”

Andry’s black eyes gleamed. “That’s what I came to talk to you about. That, and because Eleri is stomping around in my section.”

Huh. Eleri was usually too preoccupied with the Dreamscape to visit another Caretaker in the flesh world. Then again, now that she’d been banned, of course she’d seek something else to do. He was still wondering if Andry knew about Eleri’s ban, and whether to tell him, when Andry spoke again.

“I thought of a solution.” Andry glanced around, then leaned close. “Promise not to tell Luisa until I’ve figured out how to present it to her?”

Zishun nodded.

“Why do we need this?” Andry jabbed a finger over his shoulder toward the lifepods. “You get what I mean?”

“No,” Zishun said.

“People are born in the Dreamscape. They die there. So why do they need their flesh bodies? Think about it.” Something wild danced behind Andry’s gaze. “Most of the water and electricity is funneled not to Hypnos, but to Synthfluid and the lifepods. Feeding, waste disposal, exercise simulation, cell damage repair. What if we cut it all?”

Zishun took a step back, his heel hitting the wall. “What do you mean?”

“We upload the Dreamers’ minds to Hypnos. Then no one would need a flesh body.”

Zishun braced his hands on the steel. “That’s . . . not possible.”

“It can be.” Andry’s gray eyes, usually resembling dust gathered in the Remnant Garage, now shone with a feverish light. “Hypnos runs two million Dreamscapes. Two million heavens.” He tapped Zishun’s shoulder with a fist, then thumped his own chest. “Our minds are just data, just algorithms processing the next choice. Are you with me? I can’t code this, but you can.”

Zishun didn’t know whether to laugh or flee. “We’re not code, Andry. I can’t turn us into code, and even if I could . . . ” He swallowed. “You are speaking of killing everyone.”

“I’m speaking of saving them.” Andry spread his arms. “Minds written in code will not degrade. There will be no need for births and no possibility of death. And think of all the resources saved! Under the most favorable assumptions, this pod-base would be able to sustain itself until the sun runs out of hydrogen.”

He’s gone insane, Zishun thought. We all have, in this place.

The hiss of a pressurized door. A clatter of footsteps. Andry turned. “Eleri,” he growled.

She skipped down the line of pods, dark ponytail swinging, a toothy grin cutting her face. “You might want to check your control panel.”

Andry raised his mini-comp, flicked on his personal hologram, then swore at whatever he saw.

Eleri swept a glance toward Zishun’s own mini-comp, which was still lying on the floor. Zishun’s mouth went dry. He’d forgotten about it. Andry had seemingly not noticed, but Eleri had.

As Andry hurried off, cursing, Eleri regarded Zishun with keen eyes and cocked her head.

“Eleri—” he began.

“Not so clever, are you? Don’t forget, I’m watching you.” She winked. “Better make a decision soon or have it made for you.”

She trotted off, whistling what sounded like the national anthem of a long-defunct country. He could almost forget how he’d seen her last: shaking, screaming, begging.

Clattering footsteps told him Eleri remained in his section, wandering around his pods, doing stars knew what. Between this and what she’d said in the Dreamscape, she was at least partially onto him. And she would never let him do it. The Dreamscape was her everything.

---

Dreamer AQ#1367-458-MATT was recovering. A month had passed since the point of self-termination, and his parameters remained green. As Luisa suggested, Zishun spent more time in the Dreamscape—not his own, but those of his Dreamers. He attended the lecture of a mathematics professor. He followed a unicorn rider through a wood of silver trees, almost expecting his flesh world eyes to ache from their brightness. He floated past a banquet table stretching to infinity, a city overlaid with firecrackers and paper banners, a planet of golden clouds and mercury seas. So many dreams beyond the ability of the flesh world to fulfill, even back when mega-cities still blazed.

He studied Descartes and Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream and Pandora’s box. He thought of all the world’s evils weighed against a sliver of hope.

He saw little of Andry, who hadn’t returned since vocalizing his idea. Luisa called regularly, but her concern seemed to diminish as Zishun’s Dreamers stabilized. Eleri floated in, strolling among the pods, smiling beatifically at the Dreamers as if looking to memorize every face. Often she rummaged through the Remnant Garage, switching clothes and hairstyles like she was holding a one-woman play to an audience of zero.

“What are you doing?” Zishun asked when he found her sitting against the entryway to the Remnant Garage. A Pre-Dream deck of cards was spread out before her.

Her gaze remained on the cards. “Solitaire. What else am I supposed to do?”

Zishun’s stomach twisted. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “Just wish the Garage had more stuff.”

Zishun sat down across from her. “Do you . . . want me to play with you?”

She scoffed. “Go enjoy your time in the Dreamscape.”

“Should I talk to Luisa?”

She flicked a card at him. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle this myself.” She adopted a lopsided grin. “It’s not like I can’t survive without the Dreamscape. Hypnos chose me for a reason, right?”

Zishun nodded and left.

Over the following weeks, he wandered the pod-base in a fugue, thinking, considering, his brain too full to ever be translated into algorithms. Once, he lost his notebook and raced through the pods in a panic only to find it back at the main control panel. He must’ve left it there himself. He hoped. The alternative terrified him.

---

Blue text. Black screen.

With a few taps of his fingers, he could end all this.

And die in the aftermath?

Luisa would kill him. He’d never found termination protocols for Caretakers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Does it matter?

If the pod-base awakened, what power did she have? Punishing him would be the last thing on her mind.

And the Dreamers?

Luisa had educated him on scarcity and human history. Andry had made the resource calculations. Zishun knew nothing but code and philosophy, but even he could guess what would happen. If two million souls tumbled from their pods, ripped from their perfect lives, with nothing but the metal dome above them and the Remnant Garage to pick through . . .

At best, they would curl into cocoons of misery, too shell-shocked to move or understand. Perhaps they’d smash their heads against the metal walls, self-terminate in the flesh world. Maybe they’d attack Zishun, blame him for keeping them in the lie. They’d fight over packets of Synthfood, over control of the Synthfluid. They’d claw at the pressurized doors and burrow back to the surface, no matter how many times he told them it wasn’t safe.

It’s all a lie.

Or maybe there was a thread of hope, buried in the bottom of Pandora’s box. Maybe some remnant of humanity would survive.

It’s a lie, but that’s all they have.

He wandered over to the nearest pod. A woman in her fifties drifted within. In her Dreamscape, she’d landed her spaceship on Kepler-22b, had started deploying terraform bots to form the first space colony. How would she feel when she learned the truth?

He inputted the command Luisa had used, the one that displayed the Dreamers’ parameters over their pods. Green all around.

But if I don’t do this, Andry might . . .

He dashed back to the main panel and typed in the lines of code before he could lose his nerve. He wasn’t the Controller and wouldn’t be for many decades. Andry was ahead of him, and now he knew what Andry would do when the time came. Worse, if Andry convinced Luisa, then the true death of humanity would happen sooner rather than later.

His finger hovered over the Enter key, trembling.

They were never given a choice to dream. If I do this, they wouldn’t have a choice about waking up either.

He couldn’t just put everyone back to sleep if things got out of hand. Hypnos’ erasure was imperfect. It could handle only a few rounds of critical failure in the Dreamscape; it wouldn’t wipe away a flesh world memory of waking in a vat of Synthfluid, realizing your entire life was a lie.

He stared around him, at roving eyes behind closed lids, at fingers splayed in glowing green-blue. And realized . . . he couldn’t do it. The pain, the consequences, he couldn’t bear them. The time to choose the flesh world over the Dreamscape was then. Now, waking up would not be life. It would be near-certain destruction with the faintest hope for something better. He couldn’t accept that. He had no right to accept it on behalf of humanity.

He hammered on the Backspace key, deleting the commands. Yet, before he could finish, something flashed on the screen.

Hypnos, initiating emergency awakening
Target: All lifepods

Alarms blared, each shrill beat driving through his head like a stake. But how? He hadn’t entered the commands. He’d deleted them. So who . . . ?

His comm rang. He answered, finding himself confronted by the furious face of Luisa. “Zishun, you . . . !”

“I didn’t do anything!” he said. “I swear!” He stared at the main control panel, which refused to display anything except that damning emergency awakening.

Andry’s image flickered to life beside Luisa’s. “What’s going on?”

“An awakening of all Dreamers was initiated,” Luisa said. “But there are no breaches to the pod-base’s exterior, no emergencies detected. So how did this happen?”

Zishun stared at Andry. “Did you . . . ?” The man had proposed the end of humanity. Was this some attempt at ensuring the Dreamers destroyed each other? But . . . he’d wanted to upload everyone’s consciousness to Hypnos first. Waking the Dreamers was at odds with that.

Realization dawned just as a fourth individual joined the call. “Luisa, it’s her,” Zishun said, as Eleri’s face formed on the hologram.

She wore a feline smile. “Thank you for the commands, Zishun.”

“Both of you?” Luisa said.

“No!” Zishun snapped. All the time Eleri had spent in his section. The time his notebook went missing. I’ve been a fool. Red text scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

Hypnos entering shutdown mode.

“Why?” Zishun said, staggering to his feet. “You love the Dreamscape.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Eleri’s grin contorted into a snarl. “If I don’t get to be a Dreamer, then no one else does.”

Andry released a string of curses. Luisa muttered something about Hypnos’ algorithm, and how could it have failed so spectacularly as to select Eleri as a Caretaker. Zishun stuffed his notebook into his jacket and raced down the rows of pods, heart battering his rib cage.

He stopped before Dreamer AQ#1367-458-MATT. Synthfluid was draining from the pod. 458-MATT’s body collapsed against the glass, then he began to twitch. In the surrounding lifepods, the same scene replayed. Synthfluid emptied, and Dreamers shifted, clenching their fists and opening their eyes. Zishun clawed at his useless notebook with one hand, hovered over his mini-comp with the other.

Near-certain death and mutual destruction, weighed against hope. Zishun drew a ragged breath. And dug up the words he’d planned to say—when he woke the Dreamers, if he woke the Dreamers.

A decision was made to put humanity to sleep. Another was made to wake everyone. Zishun had controlled neither, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t fight for the best possible outcome.

The pod glass opened. 458-MATT—no, just Matt now—stretched out a dripping arm. Zishun took a step forward and kept his voice steady. “I know you’re very confused right now. My name is Zishun. I’m going to help you.”

The eyes of thousands upon thousands of Dreamers bore into him. Whatever he said or did, it wouldn’t be enough. They’d tear him and then each other to pieces.

Hope, Zishun reminded himself, and held out his hand to Matt.