Chapter 7

The next day, Simon felt better than he had in awhile. He had gotten a night’s worth of uninterrupted sleep. People had been nice to him. They might have some sort of idea about solving his problem – or the whole thing might turn out to be psychosomatic and go away. The possibility of anything else seemed very far away.

At work Simon was almost back to his old self. He may not have had social skills, but he knew the types of people who still waited on line for a cashier, and how to deal with them. He almost liked his job, it was almost like being a normal person. His supervisor looked at him a moment and decided the problem was resolved. Simon hoped he was right.

The dream that came to him that night wasn’t so scary at first. He didn’t know why he needed to see Adam in the dream, but at least he knew where his house was now. 16 Chester Street. Adam probably hadn’t lived in such an expensive neighborhood in the old days though.

After he used the heavy knocker, a striking woman with too much makeup on answered the door. She seemed attractive at first, but something about her stride was angry, and soon Simon decided he would not want to spend much time in her company. She led him to a sitting room where another girl was cuddling next to Adam on the sofa. Despite a darker coloration than the first girl, the two of them had something in common. Simon eventually decided they were both mid range prostitutes.

The first one took her place at Adam’s other side.

Adam told him to have a seat. The seat directly facing Adam was a hard backed polished wooden chair that didn’t look all that comfortable. That was the one Simon sat in. He wasn’t here to find a good place to sit. He had been summoned. He wanted to get whatever this was over with and leave.

Adam did not look well. He was flushed, and his breathing sounded a little too fast. There was a little white powder around the rim of his nose.

The other man asked him, “How do you like the house?”

Simon replied truthfully, “It’s a beautiful house.”

“So, are you impressed? Answer honestly and completely.”

Simon knew that was the worst thing to do, but found himself doing it anyway. Adam must have used sorcery on him.

“The house is very nice, an upper middle class house in what used to be a nice neighborhood. I wouldn’t say impressive, but nice.”

He struggled to shut his jaw against the truth spilling out, but failed. His tongue continued, “It seems like you have some money here, but I’m not too impressed with the way you’re using it. It seems like you’re an addict, and you’ll die fairly young. Anyway, I know how you got all this. You thought you were going to be a world leader and a trillionaire for helping Blue Sword rule Earth. You rationalized every vile thing you did with the idea that you were going to help rule the world benevolently, and help us do well under Blue Sword. You know very well that hasn’t happened, so you’re a total failure.”

Now that he was done Simon had control of his mouth again. He said, “Please don’t hold that against me. I think some kind of jealousy made me convince myself I believed that, but I’m truly in awe of your power and greatness. Please have mercy on me.”

Simon thought the last part might have been laying it on a little thick, but what else could you do when your enemy had the power to make you tell him the truth? What did Adam really want? Something inside Simon thought it knew, and trembled.

Adam said, “Don’t bother lying, you think I’m nothing, less than you. Lemme tell you something, we all make mistakes. You for instance. You should have learned sorcery while you had a chance, while you could still do something. Too late now.”

The two hard faced prostitutes on either side of Adam began to look uncomfortable. Since whatever they knew probably involved him, Simon felt sick to his stomach. He hadn’t been given any commands about standing still, so he turned to leave the room and this horrible house.

Then Adam’s voice came from behind him. “Go to the kitchen and get some knives to cut yourself for my amusement.”

Simon didn’t even know where the kitchen was, so he continued to walk in the same direction. If you knew a little about sorcery and accepted that it was real, didn’t you get some kind of resistance roll? Was that just in the game or in real life? Who knew?

The voice came from behind him again. “Don’t try to fight it. It’s way too late. Just accept that you’re my slave.”

And somehow Simon could not even think about resisting, even knowing about the blood that was to come. Perhaps he would die. Maybe it would be a release from this feeling that he should have done something long ago.

Then Simon woke up in his bed. He was tired and sweaty, stiff and sore. Still it had to be better than the grim future. Future? Of course not, it was only a nightmare.

Simon felt a sudden unreasoning surge of rage at Adam, who was at the center of it all. That didn’t really make sense since he hadn’t done any of this yet. And hopefully wouldn’t do it at all, given the way seers’ powers worked and alternate timelines. More important yet, Adam hadn’t done any of it at all. Presumably it had been a dream based on the resentment of Adam’s nastiness which he had failed to express.

There was one small mercy. At least it was morning so he didn’t have to try to go back to sleep. And he must have slept a few hours before the nightmare, so he wouldn’t be so exhausted he would lose his job. That was good, right?

There was light coming in the window, around and through the cheap curtains. In the cold light of morning, it seemed to Simon there were only two possibilities. If he was crazy, he didn’t need people messing with his head, or even a bunch of well meaning gamers trying to help him. Since he didn’t have health insurance, he needed to scrape up money to see a psychiatrist or social worker. Or could he be eligible for some kind of government aid? Lord knew he was poor enough.

The best possibility was that he wasn’t really crazy, but just taking his nightmares too seriously. Maybe because he took Eightfold Invasion too seriously. Could an over the counter bottle of sleeping pills really be the solution to his problem? He had to hope so.

In some ways the worst possibility was that it wasn’t in his head at all. Imagine if the nightmares came from someone or something else. He still had a problem and no idea how to solve it.

Unsettlingly, the words of the dream Adam came back to him. If this were real, could it truly threaten the whole world? Adam had been bullied as a child, and knew that pretending to be a hero in a game was easier and more fun than trying to really be one. What had humanity ever done for him?

That night he wrote Doc an e-mail. Some things were less embarrassing to say by email than face to face. He said:

Doc,

I’m sorry I’m going to have to quit. The game didn’t help my nightmares, and I’m afraid it may make them worse.

-Simon

That was hard enough to write. It was so embarrassing to be afraid of nightmares, like a little kid. There was no way he could tell Doc that he suspected what he really needed was a therapist which he couldn’t afford.

He was a little surprised to see a reply half an hour later:

Simon,

Sorry to hear you had another nightmare. Believe it or not I’m a real Doctor. Search for Doctor A. Finch on Google. I know this is a game where people sometimes try and pretend they have secret knowledge they can’t reveal because of the Delirium, but only you can decide if you think I’m enough of an asshole to play that game with someone who genuinely needed help. I don’t think visiting most psychiatrists would help you. Would you tell me about your latest dream?

-Doc

Simon stared at the reply in shock for a few moments, then went to Google. He found a Doctor A. Finch in Edgeton – a psychiatrist. No, wait. Anyone could claim to be Doctor A. Finch. He didn’t know ‘Doc’’s first or last name. Except after a couple of minutes, he found a picture on a profile. Dr. Finch was Doc, except he was wearing a three piece suit.

He stared blankly at the picture a few moments. No responsible and ethical doctor would …

He searched a couple of free databases for complaints about Dr. Finch. Nothing major, nothing more than you would expect to find about any other psychiatrist. Should he confirm that by doing some comparisons? With whom?

All the same, Dr. Finch seemed to have a moderately successful practice as a psychiatrist in his home office. At least, the rent couldn’t have been cheap, judging by the picture.

Yet if all this were real, what then? How much older had the Adam in the vision been than the Adam he had known recently?

Simon grasped at a fragment of the dream, if such it was. 16 Chester Street. Simon had never been there. He searched with Google Earth. The neighborhood was not as upscale as he recalled, but the plot of land could have been the same. The house was not as large. The picture didn’t prove anything either way.

Adam told himself desperately he might still be going crazy. Because the alternative was much worse. He was headed towards a future with future-Adam in it, who might make him kill himself.

Adam had told him it was too late, and he should have learned vulgar sorcery. He was pretty sure that learning it correctly took years, even if he could find a school. Of course a hungry and desperate Elder might push knowledge into your mind much faster, in exchange for who knows what, as Adam seemed to have done. If there was one subject Simon knew, it was Eightfold fiction, and that kind of learning never seemed to work out well for the student.

Of course Simon had someone he could talk to now. Doc. Or did he? A sudden flame of paranoia flared up brightly in his brain. To really know that Simon was sane, Doc had to have been contacted by an Elder. Which side was Doc on, and what did he want?

Eventually Simon wrote back that he didn’t feel like talking about the dream right now, but he wanted to know why Doc didn’t think he was crazy.

He didn’t get any reply that night. Maybe Doc did think he was crazy. Of course it was getting late, so maybe Doc had just gone to bed.

Simon tried to think, but his thoughts kept running in furious circles and getting nowhere. Eventually he dropped off to sleep.