Sleepwalker - Part I

Hello. My name is Quinn Ellison.

There. Our introduction is over. Wasn’t that easy? No one takes the time to introduce themselves anymore. But I did. You remember that. If anybody ever asks you what you think of Quinn Ellison… Tell them that he’s a gentleman. I guess, at this point, that’s the most I can hope for.

The prison is a steel monster of paranoia and confinement, almost begging to devour me as I am escorted through it. I have rotted here for three years. I have no intention of staying any longer. There are men in the cells we pass, each one exhausted and beyond hope. They haven’t slept for two days, just like the guards escorting me, just like the scientist I’m about to see, just like the world.

Welcome to my life.

Finally, the metal corridor ends abruptly at a small door. One of the guards knocks, and it responds by opening.

Have you ever seen a movie called Disruptor?

It came out in 2031. I doubt you’ve seen it. It was a box office flop, and it got terrible reviews. Even so, I saw Disruptor on one of my days off, and I bring it up because it has relevance to my current situation. In Disruptor, the plot hinges around a scientist whose invention of a time portal leads him to insanity. His lab begins as a neatly kempt domain of study and experimentation, but ends as a room full of complex machinery, scribbled notes, and garbage all over the floor. The room I am currently in looks like the lab at the end of Disruptor. Except, instead of a time machine, some sort of strange suit of armor sits in the center.

The other major fixture of this lab is a scientist. His name tag says “Dr. Matern”, and I trust it. His eyes are bloodshot and swollen, and small bags have taken up residence beneath them. He speaks slowly and deliberately.

“Get in the suit, please.”

Now I take a closer look at the “armor” which I had noticed before. The exterior appears to be some kind of fortified plastic, while a small digital readout has been built in at the top. I can’t see what’s on the screen. The whole suit emits a faint electronic hum, reminiscent of a large digital clock. It is an outfit in and of itself, with leg, arm, torso, glove, and shoe-parts built in. The suit is black.

“Get. In. The. Suit. Now.”

Irritable.

Just like all the others.

As I proceed cautiously toward the suit, it splits down the middle and opens before me. I step in so that my body fits into the necessary places, and it closes tightly. The interior texture is actually quite comfortable. I walk around, testing the new weights and inhibitions, when suddenly, it whirrs, and the digital readout illuminates. It says, in all capitals: “Not in containment zone. Suit deactivated.”

“This is your containment suit,” Dr. Matern says. “It’s black to be visible in daylight. It will turn white after six o’clock. It tracks your whereabouts, and monitors vital functions such as heart rate and blood pressure”

I just stare at him.

“We’ll know where you are at all times. If you leave the designated containment zone, you blow up. Got it?”

Silence.

“Man of few words, aren’t you?”

One of the guards steps forward, offering himself up. This confrontation has gone on long enough.

“Thank you, doctor. I think we can take him from here-”

“I’ll need a few moments to fine tune the suit. If you two could just wait out side…”

The guards are obviously suspicious, but also probably too exhausted to care. The one who had spoken nods, and leads the other one through the door they had come in.

The doctor doesn’t walk back to his control console. He just looks at me, like a very tired hawk.

“Listen to me carefully. I don’t have one iota of faith in this plan. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be clothing you in something that could kill you.”

What a surprise. He doesn’t think I can do it. That’s pretty interesting: Neither do I. We should start a club.

“Regardless of this, I have only one piece of advice for you: Don’t screw up. Don’t lose your temper. I read your case file, Quinn. If I could choose anyone for this job, you’d be the last guy on my list.”

See? Another similarity. This is going to be a hell of a club.

“I don’t know why you’re the only one who can sleep. And believe me, I envy you. But that’s not important. Just remember that there’s a hell of a lot riding on this… This is your chance, Quinn. You have a lot of freedom here. Use it wisely.”

The opening of a door, the arms of the guards, and a long conveyor belt all result in me being stuffed into a big metal pod.

Freedom.

What does it mean to be free?

I don’t think I know. I don’t think I’ve ever known, my entire life.

It seems like I’ve spent all of my existence in one cage or another. Crappy friends. Crappy family. Crappier job. If a writer tried to tell my life story, he would probably become too depressed and horrified to get past my college years.

I can not see anything. The pod I’m in is just barely big enough for a human to fit in, and I can hear machinery carrying it through some abyss of darkness and steel. My stomach shifts and tilts… Better not to concentrate on it.

When I was seven, my mother locked me in a space this small. I don’t remember that very well.

Now I’m twenty-eight.

Twenty-eight is divisible by seven, four times.

Does that mean I have only four times as much wisdom? Four times as many experiences?

I apologize. There is little to think about when the only sights you see are darkness, and the only sounds you hear are an odd mechanical whirring.

Comforted by my metal womb, I drift into a deep, dark sleep.

~0~

Gavels.

When did they get rid of gavels?

That is what comes to Quinn’s mind as he sits in the chair he is strapped to. A plastic sign, designed to look wooden, sits near it, and it says “defendant”. The space on the right hand side of the judge’s desk seems curiously empty.

“Mr. Ellison, have you nothing to say for yourself?”

If he does, Quinn does not feel comfortable expressing it to the weasel-faced lawyer. Quinn stares at him, with the intensity of a blue flame.

“You haven’t even defended yourself, Quinn. You didn’t even ask for a lawyer.”

No, he didn’t. And he never wanted one.

Not that it matters anymore.

“That’s enough, Mr. Gaiman. I think the jury is ready to deliberate.”

What the judge actually means is “fuck Quinn over”, but that’s not what he said. Quinn has been sitting there for hours, and the heat of the room has already caused him to sweat through his shirt. The jury probably interpreted this as nervousness.

The brief recess that the judge announces is very brief indeed. The jury comes back, and when they proclaim their verdict, the whole room is quiet. No tears for the murderer. A woman at the very back even claps in approval. She is alone, but Quinn doubts she is the only one with that sentiment.

“Mr. Ellison, you have been deemed guilty of your crimes beyond any shadow of doubt or redemption. I sentence you to life in prison.”

An icy stare.

“And may God have mercy on your soul.”

Yes, he actually said that.

The court room was host to an eerie silence. Maybe if the judge had a gavel, it would have been more dramatic.

Quinn closed his eyes, and waited for the events that he knew would come.

~0~

A bright light seethes angrily above me, glaring so that the insides of my eyelids turn a fleshy red. I open them, and instantly regret it. I close them again.

“Get up, Quinn.”

I know that voice. I can feel that I’m still sitting in the pod, and any restraints that were previously locked are now open.

“You’re here. Move.”

The voice is female, and it doesn’t sound very kind. Slowly and carefully, I open my eyes.

Gina Moore is a sight to behold. Full red lips and straight brown hair down to her shoulders draw attention to her already attractive face, her figured mired only by a little extra baby fat that has stayed with her through the years. Gina always looked tired: Being a police officer in the city takes balls and connections, only one of which she started with. But her resilience brought her far, and Gina soon gained a reputation for her strategic mind and grim pragmatism. Her left arm hangs limply from its shoulder, where I shot her.

Gina’s beady eyes remain trained on me as I stand up.

“Hello, Quinn. Get up. I’m watching you.” That’s all she needs to say. I rise sheepishly from the metal pod, and hear it retracting back into whatever network of tunnels lay behind me. How far had I traveled, and how long had I been traveling? At least a few hours.

Gina motions for me to follow her. Her anger is clear by the sharpness of her words, and her footsteps seem deliberately heavy. Probably in part due to the sleep deprivation, but also because of the obvious.

Why does Gina despise me? Is it because of the wound I have inflicted, or because of all the fruitless years she spent trying to apprehend me? Maybe it’s just because of the crimes I’ve committed. I doubt I’ll ever know for sure.

I follow Gina out of the room as my eyes finally adjust to the light. I look around: The hallway I’ve just stepped into is colored onyx, and made of some sort of plastic designed to imitate stone. Fluorescent bulbs hum lazily on the ceiling, and the hall has an empty, almost haunting feeling to it. It smells of iron and snow. I imagine the room I just walked out of was similar.

Where are all the people?

The sharp descent of Gina’s shoes lead them into a modern looking elevator, complimented by buttons that glow a deep shade of blue… the whole building feels like a museum during the night, uncomfortably empty and quiet. I wonder whether the workers had started leaving after the second day or the first.

“Why you?” I ask. Cold silence.

“Because I’m the only one who didn’t quit.”

I nod, in silent understanding. Two days without sleep isn’t enough to get her down. Maybe others, but not Gina.

When the doors slide open, I realize two things: Firstly, the people in this facility stopped working after the first day without sleep, and not the second. If they had left on the second day, the custodians would have at least been able to go through and pick up all of the discarded garbage and stray debris. Secondly, I am not who they are expecting.

The room I enter is grand and awe-striking, almost cinematic in its beauty. It is made of the same onyx colored plastic as the rest of the building, but clearly serves some more important purpose. In the center of the room: A very tall pillar hooked up to perhaps a hundred different wires. The pillar is rectangular in shape and completely translucent, made of some kind of glass or plastic. Lying in precisely in the middle, on a simple cot, is Tara.

Tara Brown.

Born in the Bronx, never left the city.

Aged ten and a half.

The most powerful psychic the world has ever known.

For many, gazing at Tara is supposedly a religious experience. For me, staring at her sleeping form is just awkward, and so I turn away.

Standing directly in front of the pillar are two old men: One has gray hair, a beige suit, and a developing pot belly. His name is Mr. Roger Perlin, and I have already been briefed about him. He looks… Peeved.

The other man looks even older. He wears strange, raggedy clothing and has skin that is almost as black as licorice. I have no idea who he is. He nods at me slowly, seemingly calm.

Mr. Perlin speaks.

“You are… Quinn Ellison.” I nod. Perhaps he saw the news story a couple years back.

“They sent…. You? A convict?” His hand flares in the general direction of my containment suit, and I nod again. He seems to share Gina’s sentiment to a lesser degree.

“I’m the only one who can sleep, sir. I don’t know who else they’d send.” His bloodshot eyes peer at me curiously from behind their spectacles.

“Hmm. Very well then. I am Roger Perlin, the administrator of this facility, and I welcome you to The Merrick Research Center. I hope your stay here is… Enjoyable. Any concerns you have should be directed to me. Needless to say, there should be no, er….” Does he really think I’m going to start killing people at this place?

“Discrepancies of behavior. Do you follow me?” My head bobs loosely on its hinges once again.

“Excellent. We plan to commence the first operation immediately. Are you ready?”

“As much as I can be, sir.”

“All right. Let’s-” Mr. Perlin turns toward the pillar, but then sees the other man behind him.

“Oh! I must apologize. This is Mr. N-”

“Carl, please.” The man has a rich voice, like smoke seeping out of a forest. Unlike Mr. Perlin had, Carl reaches for my hand. Slowly, I reach up and shake it. He smiles.

“Carl will be… Transferring you. Your mind, I mean.” Carl nods, and gestures toward the pillar. I walk to it.

What I hadn’t notice before: Wires. So many wires. They stretch and weave like a tangled mess of serpents, slithering into the giant computer consoles they all lead to. The consoles are all connected to the pillar, and a couple of the wires are connected to Tara. They are aware she’s not a cell phone, aren’t they?

“If you would, Mr. Ellison.”

Mr. Perlin points to a plastic chair in front of one of the consoles. Feeling the burn of Gina’s disapproving stare, and the counteracting softness Carl’s meticulous gaze, I sit.

A flip switches from behind me, and a computer starts to hum. Carl quietly places some kind of electronic pad on top of my head. It stays there.

“Please begin, Carl.”

Carl is a dream psychic. He will be bringing me into the foreign lands of Tara’s mind, and I can’t help but feel a little nervous as he puts his hands on the back of my head.

“Three.” Carl’s smoky voice.

“Two.” The loudening hum of the machine.

“One.” The impatient tap of Gina’s foot.

All three dissolve, and then I am somewhere else.

~0~

Quinn was not flying.

That was the first thing he noticed.

As Quinn lifted his eyelids, he came to realize that the light and wispy feeling he was experiencing had nothing to do with being in the air. On the contrary, Quinn had his feet planted firmly on the hard pavement, and felt only the slightest bit of wind on his face.

He looked around.

Quinn was in a city. A cold, mysterious city. Sky scrapers were on all sides of him, with windows that seemed to mirror the eerie moonlight. Quinn started to walk, taking in the perfectly crafted metal and stone, the streets with no pot holes or cracks. No cars, no buses, no streetlights or stoplights. Quinn soon realized that there weren’t even any doors. But then, Quinn looked up.

Stars.

Infinites stars.

He was looking at pitch black sky full of holes, from which light were pouring through. There were thousands. Quinn hadn’t seen the stars in a good ten years, as light pollution had taken its toll just about everywhere. But Quinn remembered what they looked like, and these stars were perfect.

And so he walked. Quinn seemed to be in the city’s center, and there was an ornate fountain. He sat at its edge, and dipped his hand into the crystal clear waters. Quinn began to ponder. What kind of mind would create a city like this one? And how do I find Tara?

The second question seemed to answer itself.

Abruptly, some kind of massive white object passed by overhead. It was like a plane, only… Organic, and beautifully silent.

Because it was a dream, and low gravity seemed to be the law of the land, Quinn leapt onto a rooftop with ease. It was very quiet there.

Quinn breathed in deeply, and stared up at the sky. He stared for a long time.

Soon, a gentle flapping of wings brought the white thing back, and Quinn saw that it was a bird. It’s wings were huge and snowy and featherless. Quinn could hear its soft breath above the eerie silence of the city, and it did a magnificent turn around the building.

Tara waved at him from on top of the bird. When Quinn opened his eyes, he was sitting behind her.

“…Hello.”

No response. Quinn now saw just how huge the city really was: Rooftops had sprouted in literally every direction, infinitely.

“You’re… Tara?” The back of her head went up and down, suggesting a nod.

“Are you here to rescue me?” The sentence had the lilt that only a ten year old’s voice could give to it. And maybe Quinn was imagining it, but she sounded even younger.

“Yes… I’m here to wake you up.”

Now she looked back at him. He had never seen her with her eyes open, and he almost regretted it: She had eyes like huge pieces of dark chocolate. And this incarnation of Tara didn’t seem to have any acne.

“I knew it….” She faced forward once again. Quinn assumed she was referring to the fact that she was in a dream.

The bird’s every movement was like a ripple, a wave of energy that Quinn could feel beneath his legs. He was almost proud of Tara for designing such a complex illusion.

“How are you here?” Tara asked.

“They used someone… A psychic, like you, to put me in your head. When you went to sleep, Tara…” He struggled to formulate a coherent sentence, and one that a ten year old would understand.

“You’ve been asleep for over two days. Since you fell asleep, no one else can sleep. No one in the world… Except for me.”

A pause, then:

“I’m sorry. I didn’t... I didn’t mean to…” She sounded hurt, like a child who had just broken a vase.

“It’s not your fault. Nobody blames you… Nobody even knows why it happened. But they sent me because I was the only option.”

“Is ‘option’ the same as ‘choice’?”

“Uh… Yeah.”

As the bird ascended higher and higher, Quinn began to get the feeling that he was out of his league. Silence filled the air once again, and he realized that he had absolutely no idea how he was going to wake the most powerful psychic in the world up.

“So… Where were you when you went to sleep?”

Suddenly, it was as though reality had fluxuated, and the bird was instantly much wider. Tara pat the new space next to her, and Quinn sat down.

“At our apartment. In my bed.”

“Our?”

“Me and my mom’s. Well, my dad’s. But he’s not there anymore.”

“…Oh.”

Quinn was starting to realize that he was not well suited to a career in child psychology.

“Did anything… Happen? Anything bad?”

Tara wrinkled her nose.

“I heard a noise… Like this.”

With the wave of a small hand, sound exploded in the sky above them. It looked like a sort of organic firework: A tiny red sphere, blown in every direction by Tara’s gesture. Quinn recognized the explosive patterns as sound waves, but the noise was neither the cacophony of an explosion nor the whine of a traveling firework: It was the sound of a slamming door.

Deeply unsettled and surprised by the break in the uncanny silence, Quinn felt himself slide off the ever-shifting bird, clutching wildly to regain his position.

But it was no use.

Soon, he was falling through the air, staring up at a fascinating girl and her magnificent subconscious creation…

~0~