Overdreamt

I had overdreamt. When I awoke I just knew I was years into the red. This was unthinkable, the penalties, the restrictions, the promise of incarceration. All pointed at me now. The threat of no-sleep, antisleep, dreamvoid and dreamfreedom lockout. Death if I was lucky. But the dream… Gone now.

I began to sweat and reached shakily for a stimtube. The box was empty, there was no music left. I tried to stand but my withered muscles were having none of it. How long? This atrophy astounded me, I had considered myself healthy enough but it seemed there was little strength left within my flesh. Reaching to the panel on the wall, I lowered the gravity further, until it was settled at a comfortable point six of a standard Terran gee.

More relaxed now, though still shaky, I managed to stand and forced myself through a short series of tentative stretches, which helped to relieve the welling panic response. They would be here soon. All I could do was wait.

I hadn’t even remembered the dream. It didn’t really matter now anyway, the bond had been broken, the deed done, the… fuck it, maybe they’d sympathise with me because of that, but how could I prove it? Maybe they’d lessen the penalty.

Shit, who was I fooling, I was seriously fucked. I shrugged and undressed, thinking that it would be overall more pleasant if they found me naked and prepared. I knew there would be a mess, but this way it would be easier to clear away.

How to spend these last few minutes of relative freedom? I considered a quick dose of wrist exercise, there was still good money available in my genes and a modicum of pleasure extracting the product. Maybe a ticket out of here, in the rush, the boiling flash of light and sensation. But no, I was tired, drained. I moved instead to the heated floor, folded my inflexible legs into the lotus and curled my psychic petals warmly around my shoulders. I felt my body moving, my breath gently flowing, a pulse, a leitmotif of regularity. My eyes closed gently and the lights in the room lowered in time to my muscles movements. My breathing was free, unrestrained and the visions came early – I was floating through a subway station, along the darkened tracks, through carriages, bodies. I was inside a blood cell. I was pure light. I was a deep moist moan from a dark and vibrant cello.

There was time and there was music.

And then there was no more time, but the music rose, kicked, shrouding my senses, enclosing me in a thick recalcitrant layer of restful sound. There was no more time.

Coldness of a pistol barrel resting on the bridge of my nose. Pressure against my forehead. No more time, but the music, oh god, oh god.

The world opens up.

I exhale and fall into the golden glow, spread before me, spinning in breakbeats, drinking the womb rhythms, falling free with a roar into something new.

Clenched in my right hand, never to be opened and never to be heard, was a small silver bell.