The girl in the flowing tunic had come for him again. Tech 7-25 awoke within a haze of green that became her eyes, as his mind swam up to meet her from the murky void of enforced delta sleep, pushing against the background program droning in the cavern of his sleep helmet: "You are Tech 7-25. Your only function is to serve those who serve you. To serve is Life. To serve fulfills your every need. Your only function is..."
She surged past the monotone with an urgent warning upon her lips that he could not hear through the drone of the program: "You are Tech 7-25. Your only function is to serve the Gatekeepers. The Gatekeepers serve you. The Gatekeepers are the guardians of the Dome, our safe haven. Outside the Dome we cannot survive."
Tech 7-25 lay in the darkness of his sleep cubicle, waiting for the drone to silence, struggling to quiet his mind. Images of the last awakening . . . the robot escort . . . the reconditioning center . . . surfaced from the leaden obscurity of his memory. He knew his brain wave patterns were being monitored; control was essential. The electrical impulses that emanated through the sleep helmet softly enfolding his head conveyed every nerve impulse to vigilant computers that kept uncomplaining watch over the night and the sleepers of Gray Dome. He quickly surveyed every facial muscle, relaxing the forehead, eyes, mouth, jaw... and waited.
Just as the dim light of the time monitor faded darkness to dull gray, the drone silenced, and he clearly heard her cry out, "Jason you must do it tonight! Don’t wait!"
The immediacy of her presence and the tension of the long wait evoked a primitive and despairing "Do What?!" The cry was instantly absorbed by muted gray walls that refused an answer in the confined space of the sleep cubicle. He felt foolish, but he was certain no one had heard. No sound from outside ever entered here; none could escape.
Shakily removing the sleep helmet, he automatically reached for the liquid and nutrient tablets waiting in the dispensary. Stalled by an uneasiness he could not define but obeyed, his hand stopped in mid-air; the food remained uneaten. Questions swirled around him and he felt disconnected from himself as he stood in the cool air of the cleanse-ray.
Who is she? What does she want? Did the helmet malfunction?
As he pulled on a gray uniform with the dark blue insignia of a technician level-7, he froze. But I’m a level-1 scientist. I have a wife and a child, a son. Where are they? The morning drone of commitment to service pulled him toward the door, but he listened only to his own vague, confused memories of another time. One image was clear: the Gatekeeper robots were his own creation. Ironic that their creator had become their maintenance technician.
Images of sunlight and laughing children conflicted with the days of sullen gray-light that now prevailed within the Dome whose sun filtering function was obviously tuned to maximum. The women and children were gone. He wondered what had happened on the outside. Perhaps it was true; they could not survive outside the Dome.
Not until the door opened did he know what he must do. . .and something more. He dared not speak it aloud. As the corridor filled with men clothed in gray, he fell into the line, walking slowly, deliberately, as if in a dream.
My name . . . my name is Jason.
Sudden floods of imagery and emotion complicated the long, slow trudge to his lab. He couldn’t connect them to any solid base of experience that he could claim as his past. Once behind closed doors he set aside the tangle of confusion and focused upon the task at hand. There was little time and he would have to work fast.
He was fitting a trace beam with a polarization unit when the telemonitor swiveled down into view, bleeping, "Malfunction - building D, penthouse 9 -", and displayed a map of hallways across the screen. The unit fell from his hands, hitting the floor with an echoing thud. Penthouses. . .a memory of windows and light passed before him.
* As he approached the half-opened doorway of penthouse 9 voices in angry debate flooded the deserted hallway.
"Look Ellison, you know as well as I do that the patch is risky."
"Yeah, sure - but it guarantees the truth. If we can snare just one of the outsiders it could ensure success for the Western campaign."
Jason could see light, soft yellow light, the green of a large plant, and the corner of a painting on the wall of the small alcove just inside the door. He stood transfixed....Shara painted...he remembered a mural on the wall across from their bed.
"...so long as you don’t use it on any of our own people; we can’t afford to loose one now."
"Our people? These sleepwalkers? You’ve been here too long. You know, I could order you starside."
"If you’ll recall, your over-zealous reconditioning almost lost us our top tech a few years back - took months for him to recover from the disintegration process."
Jason backed down the hallway. Better to transfer this job - they would notice the open door and know he had heard them. Listening to the fading voices as he retreated to the shuttle, he took comfort in knowing there were outsiders.
* Jason leaned heavily against the cold stone wall that he had used to grope his way through the city in total darkness. As he waited for first gray-light, he traced and retraced the plan. He could only hope the bio-chip he had inserted into the sleep helmet had simulated and responded with the appropriate levels of delta brain wave. His knees were stiff; the sound of his breathing seemed to reverberate loudly along the narrow passage. What if the trace beam wouldn’t reverse the polarity of the gate shield? Fear edged toward terror. But he had to risk it; there were no answers here. He had to leave the Dome.
Gray-light came so suddenly he was momentarily stunned, paralyzed with the desire to run. Now was the time to act, before the doors of the sleep cubicles opened, before the count. The Gatekeeper would respond willingly to his code, unless time parameters had been programmed; humans had no function in the streets of the Dome before the count.
He shook the fear from his fingers, and turned the corner to face the Gatekeeper. The metalloid-skinned robot turned vacant yellow eyes upon him when he was five steps away.
"State rank and purpose."
"I am Tech 7-25. My purpose is Null: Code 999."
Jason waited as the robot’s eyes lost their color, and the barely audible hum of electronics fell silent. The bio-chip of the neural circuit was still observing his actions, so he maintained slow, deliberate movements as he inserted the Disable Card into the robot’s head.
It was done. He turned quickly to the door, and watched as the trace beam dissolved the shield’s opaque field. He took one last breath, and stepped out of the Dome without hesitation.
A few steps from the Dome he stopped, momentarily blinded by reflected light from the river before him. Even the soft hues of pre-dawn were difficult to absorb; the gray-light of the Dome had weakened the automatic responses of his retina.
As he inhaled the cool morning air, the girl’s fingers touched his hand, "Come, Jason. We must hurry before the boundary shield closes."
Though he recognized the green eyes of the girl from his dream, he fell back a step. "Who are you? What do you want?"
"I am Meara. I will guide you through the forest. Hurry, the shield will close when the first rays touch the Dome."
Something within him resisted - how does she know who I am? When she ran on ahead of him, it was clear she intended to go: with or without him, so he followed her downstream to a shallow crossing of the river and into the forest that bounded the Dome on its eastern slope.
Wordlessly and, for Jason, breathlessly, they climbed for hours under a canopy of trees and vines. His eyes began to adjust to the sunlight in this shadowy domain. He felt strangely at home and comforted by the foreign smell of fresh dew-misted air and alien visions of fern and crystal rock lining twisted, cascading streams. He was, at once, invigorated and filled with wonder at the boldness of his uncharted actions. Here he was, following a child he didn’t know through a forest he had never seen . . . to where?
Meara paused as they entered a clearing surrounded by rustling aspens. She turned serious eyes upon him; a spiral emblem on the clasp of her shoulder caught his eye and tugged at his memory.
"And now, you must remember." The depths of her voice calmed him, transported him to another time in this clearing.
A woman, singing . . . a man, smiling at her; stoking a fire with a branch . . . the trees, the wind . . . the wind in the trees dancing to her music . . . his father . . . his mother. And years later, in this same clearing, Shara and Mika and he, laughing.
The continuing flow of memory blurred his vision. He sensed there was no need to speak, that this girl could see his memories; he spoke to untangle the knot of images that confronted him.
"I remember bringing Shara and Mika here. Something at the Dome wasn’t right. Families were being separated; women and children were leaving, a few at a time. The men were moving into the sleep cubicles, as if they knew their families would not return. We came here and prepared a temporary base; then I returned to the Dome. For what? Where are they?"
Meara motioned to the circle of trees. "They were here and lived long. They gathered those who had been ejected from the Dome and formed the tribe which survived and grew. Many years have passed; Shara and Mika passed with them into our history that will not die. It lives in our dreaming."
Jason fell back to sit upon the grass, numbed by a mixture of grief and disbelief. Meara sat before him, "The dream task was passed to me when Mika died."
As she spoke, others had joined them forming a circle around them; but he could rouse no concern or interest in their purpose. A tall and slightly aging man stepped forward and sat beside Meara. Jason vaguely glanced up to acknowledge his presence. He wore the same spiral emblem upon his jacket.
"I am Ranon, elder of the dreamers. There is little time and much to remember. We must prepare you for your task by day’s end. You are the father of our tribe, the creator of Gray Dome, and he who will bring the freedom to dream again.. . When you are ready, listen to the wind in the trees, close your eyes and you will remember."
He wearily complied and felt himself slipping into a mist of color, enclosed within a blur of motion streaming backward into the time-path of forgotten memories. He felt the dreamers follow him.
* When Jason opened his eyes again, they were filled with the illumination of a past reclaimed.
"The creator - yes, I was project leader of the group who developed the Dome. It was never meant to be what it has become. When the first earth-orbiting satellite was populated, the Dome was created as a companion city. It was a link to Earth; a support facility for the satellite dwellers. The Dome was self-sufficient in many ways. We produced the nutrient tablets that fed both communities. The robots were integral to our food production."
"And now you are their prisoners. The history does not tell us how this came to be."
Jason looked steadily into Ranon’s eyes, knowing this was the critical moment these people had waited for; had he betrayed the people of the Dome?
"It was already too late when I discovered Project Delta. We were a community of scientists with hundreds of research projects, all at different levels of development. It wasn’t my responsibility to monitor them. Only by tracing some unusual accesses made to my own project files in the main computer did I find the Delta files."
"And then it became your responsibility," Ranon noted.
"Yes, they had created the sleep helmets by combining Shara’s neuro-research on brain wave patterning in humans with the bio-engineering I had utilized in the robots. The mind is easily programmed when forced to maintain deep and prolonged levels of delta; normal waking functions become a twilight state: the dream."
"The mind seeks balance," Ranon seemed satisfied. "Shara taught us dreaming - and how to enter the delta void of the sleepers of the Dome without harm to ourselves. But why were the women and children sent out of the Dome?"
"Unstable subjects; their psychic bonding was too strong. Children are too imaginative with almost constant alpha/theta content."
Meara eyes flashed, "Who would do this to their own tribe; why?"
"Fear makes men hungry for power." Looking at these fearless people, he felt ashamed for making an attempt to justify the actions of men who had betrayed them.
"The satellite wasn’t yet capable of self-support. Only a handful of men, two from the Dome and three from the satellite, knew about the project. They easily manipulated the existing systems, reprogrammed the robots, made some additions to the nutrient tablets - a memory blocker and some DNA stabilizers to slow the aging process. The rest, as you say, is history; After I brought Shara and Mika here, I returned to the Dome to warn others and was caught in the web."
Meara smiled, "Great-grandmother Shara spoke of a dark web that had blocked your way to the door to the future."
Jason started at Meara’s reference; tribal status as great-grandmother would require a significant passage of time.
"How long has it been, Ranon?"
"The tyranny we call the collective darkness has lasted for seventy-two years. Every third year, on the same day you left your family in the forest, you have resisted the program. While she lived, Shara dreamed with you on those days. Since her death, we have continued. Now you must learn how to enter the sleep of the others and pull them into the dreamtime, where you may speak with them; as Meara did with you."
* Jason felt an inexplicable bond with Meara as they spent the remainder of the afternoon dream-linking. She was so young and yet not the least bit intimidated by the enormous task before her. He knew he could be a difficult student, concerning himself more with theory than with the application of techniques; but time was limited and Meara refused to let him squander it.
Once again he relaxed and let his mind fall into a deep alpha/theta trance. When he sensed the reddish glow that began from his solar plexus radiate outward to surround him, Jason shifted his attention and focused inner vision upon the sense of enlargement in his thumbs. As before, there was a movement of wind and a blur of passing landscape; a sense of flight and then he was there, sitting within a smooth concave depression of rock. He kept his vision shifting, remembering not to become absorbed in detail, and established the link to Meara.
"Where are we?"
"This is a listening place. It is near the clearing; you could just as easily have dreamed being in the Dome. Remember, there is no distance or time within this sphere."
The thought of the Dome jolted him back into his waking body in the clearing. He could understand the concept of returning to the Dome to utilize the sleep helmet as an amplifier, in order to awaken the sleepers simultaneously. He could use the dreamtime techniques, although he wasn’t certain he could withstand the delta patterning long enough to succeed. It had taken seventy-two years to get out of the Dome; he rebelled at the absurdity of returning.
"I am not a hero," he complained to Ranon. "I’m not even sure I can get back in. Besides, those in the Dome have fared well enough. Who am I to awaken them to the loss of their loved ones, to the renewal of the process of aging, only to die alone? Who am I to upset the balance? The satellite dwellers depend upon the continuance of the Dome."
Ranon frowned in perplexity. "You must understand, you are the only hope; they cannot be stopped unless resisted from within. Five new satellites and five companion Domes are being established each year. It spreads like gray mold. Those who serve their purpose will be absorbed into the Domes. Two choices remain for the rest, flee to a dreamless megapolis or stay in the free zones that border the Domes and face elimination. The work of reprogramming the robots to hunt the outsiders has already begun in the western territories. We know this through our dreaming."
Jason cringed with guilt, but deflected Meara’s plea, "Great-grandfather, you must!"
"I am not the father of your tribe, and certainly I am not your great-grandfather. My family has died, and now I too will die."
"Oh, but you are her great-grandfather, and more." Ranon leaned forward; something within his piercing gaze seemed familiar and demanded recognition. "Meara is my daughter and I am the son of Mika."
Jason’s breath caught in his throat and a deep silence ran through him. Too much, too fast.
He sat motionless for a long while. He seemed to be absorbing the rays of sunset through closed eyelids. To make such a decision without consensus was unthinkable. And yet, the men of the Dome had been stripped of choice; their lives reduced to a pre-programmed dream, each man a unit of function whose tomorrow would be as today.
When the last purple ray had vanished from the darkening clouds, he placed one hand upon Meara’s shoulder, the other upon Ranon’s; the thought that flowed along the link that encircled them filled them like clear water, "Children, I am ready. Can we find our way through the forest at night?"
* Jason and Meara stood beside the river looking at the Dome, which loomed even larger and darker in the moonlight.
"What did he mean, Meara, when he said to greet the demons as my children?" Though he regarded such terminology as aberrant ideology, Ranon’s parting words filled him with dread.
"To move consciously through the void one must first pass the demons. If you acknowledge their reality correctly no harm will come to you."
For a moment Jason felt all of his lost seventy-two years wash over him, this was no time for cryptic language. The clasp at her shoulder reflected the moonlight and the spiral seemed to move.
"When you have met the demons of your own creation you will understand; for now, it cannot be explained other than from an oblique angle. You must trust the flow of the spiral; it will lead you through the darkness into the future."
The old man in the young man’s body borrowed the strength of her parting smile, walked up the hill, and stepped into the Dome without hesitation.
* The moment he entered the darkness of the Dome, Jason knew he had failed. Four yellow eyes turned to him; two cold hands grasped each elbow. The two Gatekeepers didn’t pause to query for rank and purpose, but efficiently dispatched him to the reconditioning center.
A reclining lounge was all that awaited him as he entered the brightly lit room, and a minor buzzing of white noise that intensified until it became a searing pain between the eyes. He recognized the voice that boomed across the room as the man Ellison.
"Good morning, Tech 7-25. We have been waiting for your return."
The robots firmly planted him upon the lounge that secured him as it adjusted to his body.
"We need your assistance. We have questions about the world outside."
"You can forget your questions!"
The disjointed laughter that filled the room seemed to explode and then become very distant as one of the robots placed a small med-patch upon his forehead.
"The patch will help you remember all you have seen, and you will begin to find you can trust us; you will tell us everything we need to know."
He felt a door slam shut within his mind, the door to his link with the dreamers. There was a splitting sensation, as if he were an amoebae arguing with itself from two, then three, perspectives.
I am Jason.
No, I am Tech 7-25.
I will not answer any questions.
The man’s a fool...I’ll tell you...what do you want to know?
The faces of the two Gatekeepers hovered above him; they began to warp and become fluid, almost human. He watched in horror as the slits of their mouths seemed to move grotesquely, uttering gibberish that became questions, "Where have you been Tech 7-25?"
"I don’t know." Jason fought to maintain a center of self but the other voices overwhelmed him, "To the forest."
"Who did you see in the forest?"
"No one - no one - I came back.."
"The tribe...Meara...Ranon..."
The faces leaned closer...the faces of his creation, "And where is this tribe?"
He looked into the demonic yellow eyes of the Gatekeepers, machines come to life, machines whose features he had purposefully designed not to appear too human. And then he understood. Greet them as your children and they will let you pass. He laughed aloud as his vision cleared and they were once again, after all, only machines.
"He’s resisting...it’s not working...use the body helmet."
The gauze-like covering that floated down from the ceiling enclosed him in total sensory deprivation. He felt his body evaporate, leaving his mind afloat in a void that was becoming wider, deeper. He seemed to be falling with no sense of movement, no where to fall. When the drone began its familiar chant, he seized upon the one image left before him, the spiral.
Shara’s painting...the minute spiral of purple surrounded by darkness just beyond the open door. Why did I never see it? He knew now it was painted from the perspective of one who has traveled along the spiral through the dark doorway to the future, and stands on the other side looking back. Trust the flow of the spiral. He felt the swirl, saw the approaching darkness and surrendered.
From the one point of consciousness that remained, Jason perceived Meara’s link as a jolt, "Remember . . . there is no time . . . no distance . . . listen"
Jason listened and heard his heart beat, felt the pulse move through his body again. And then he heard another voice; the voice of his tribe speaking as one, "Listen, sleepers of the Dome, listen to your dreams." The waking dream unfolded like a life-raft all around him; he could no longer hear the drone.
In the safety of silence Jason found the fatal flaw in the system; this full body helmet was linked to the main computer. He sensed the pulsations of electronic circuits reaching out to the helmets of the Dome. He expanded his dream along the many pathways of the void and gathered the sleepers. With the voice of his tribe he called them back into their dreams, lifting them like heavy stones from a deep river bottom. Swimming upward into the green haze of Meara’s eyes, the sleepers of the Dome heard the truth and awakened.
Jason heard the loud seething fizzle of an overloaded computer, felt the covering over his body grow heavy and pushed it aside. The room was empty. He hurried to the street, expecting to find confusion. He found the first light of dawn bursting through a translucent Dome, where men walked purposefully to silence Gatekeepers who did not question how there could be so many Techs with Purpose Null: Code 999.