Dreams (23 page)

Read Dreams Online

Authors: Richard A. Lupoff

BOOK: Dreams
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Jimmy took a deep breath and turned back to the window.
Unbend
The black scarab on Madeline Usher's jacket unbent its many metallic legs and began crawling upward toward the girl's shoulder. Jimmy had seen her only once, fleetingly, when she stood in line at Crazy Crepes, waiting her turn to buy a concoction of chocolate syrup and whipped cream and thin-rolled dough. She'd bought her crepe and paid for it, taken her change and walked away, mingling with the crowd milling on the sidewalk, disappearing just as Jordan Elster had disappeared a few minutes before.
But now she reappeared, seeming to emerge from the tinny speaker on Jimmy Kerr's cheap bedside clock-radio. She floated across the room and out through the window as Jimmy watched her, followed her with his eyes and his attention. The voice of the radio announcer gave way to another musical composition. This must have been an all-Hovhaness program. Jimmy recognized Hovhaness's
Mountains and Rivers without End.
Madeline Usher drifted through the window behind Jimmy Kerr's computer like a ghost passing through a wall. The black scarab. Jimmy made a mental note, he must change the name of his story to "The Black Scarab" but he was too deeply fascinated right now by the music and the image of the girl and the snow and the lights and the absinthe. Before Jimmy's eyes the scarab grew to giant size and the girl floated upward, steadied herself with one hand, then lowered herself onto its back. She leaned forward and patted it on top of its head, then leaned farther and embraced it and kissed the top of its head as if it had been a gentle and beloved horse whom she had ridden since childhood, then sat up once more.
The pea jacket had disappeared or been transformed into a flowing, diaphanous garment of glowing green cloth. Madeline turned. She no longer wore her knitted cap, but instead a delicate tiara of glittering emeralds. She smiled at Jimmy.
He reached involuntarily for the bottle of Vieux Carré, filled his glass and held it beneath his nostrils. The scent of anise and sweet fennel rose through his sinuses into his brain. The Green Fairy danced. Slowly Jimmy consumed the contents of the glass. Outside his window the Green Fairy danced on snowflakes.
Madeline Usher danced. She held her hands toward him as if summoning, or as if giving. Giving what?
Giving
That was the last remaining word in his pin-the-tail outline.
Giving
Giving what?
The Green Fairy rose on one toe, balancing on a snowflake, whirling with it as it rose and fell and turned in the midnight wind.
Myrna Fahey was Madeline Usher was the Green Fairy was Madeline Usher was Myrna Fahey, dead in Hollywood, dead in the House of Usher, dead at the age of forty, the same age at which the great Poe had died and the classical station on Jimmy Kerr's clock-radio was broadcasting Alan Hovhaness's
The Mysterious Mountain.
Behind the Green Fairy the Black Scarab flexed the shining half-circles of its shell, spread it wings, circled like a sailplane soaring in a summer morning updraft. It swooped past Madeline Usher. Its eyes were red. Its chelae were large enough and – even from this distance, Jimmy could see – sharp enough to close around the waist of the Green Fairy and slice her in half.
Jimmy gestured, shouted a warning. Long-dead Myrna Fahey took no notice. She held her hands toward him, giving something – perhaps summoning him. Summoning him.
He lifted his glass. Somehow it had become filled once again. He emptied it at a swallow. He was suffused with warmth and chill, with energy and lassitude, with eagerness to move and shout and a compulsion to remain still and silent. He leaned forward, feeling as if he had become utterly weightless, his spirit rising from his body and floating above it, then drifting forward, moving toward the glass panes behind his computer, expecting to collide with the glass yet powerless to stop himself.
But instead of striking the glass he passed through it as a ghost passes through a wall.
The air was frigid. Each snowflake as it touched his skin burned for an instant as if it had been a spark floating upward from a wood flame rather than a miniature latticework of crystallized water falling from the sky.
Myrna Fahey, Madeline Usher, the Green Fairy, took his hand in hers. Her skin was cold but soft. Her touch sent a thrill through him, stirring every atom in his body. She drew him forward and he felt another hand take his own free hand. He peered into a new face, a face marked by a massive brow, lank hair worn in a dark wave, a clipped moustache. A face with eyes that had shed uncounted tears, eyes of a suffering soul. From a portrait he had seen countless times he recognized the visage of Edgar Allan Poe.
Poe handed him a pointed object that grew into a medieval lance. He heard a clicking, grinding sound and whirled, freeing himself from Madeline Usher and from Poe and faced the scarab.
The great insect launched itself at him, crimson eyes glowing, its chelae opening and closing. Once in their grasp, Jimmy knew, he was finished, and in short order so would be Madeline Usher and Poe.
The scarab rushed at him and he leaped aside. He discovered that, like the dead Green Fairy herself, he could balance on a whirling snowflake. He dodged a swipe of the great beetle's claw and struck at it with his lance, having no effect whatever against the beetle's tough, curving shell.
The scarab launched itself, spreading its wings and circling back toward the trio. This time it flew at Poe.
Jimmy thought he heard Poe whisper, "They don't grow this big in Baltimore."
That was ridiculous. He stared at Poe. The famous author waved dismissively at the scarab and it banked and swooped past him. It came at Jimmy again and Jimmy leaped like Baryshnikov. The scarab passed beneath him. As it swept past, Jimmy attempted to strike at the base of one of its wings with his lance but he missed the vulnerable spot and he was barely able to retain his grasp on the weapon.
Now the scarab charged at the Green Fairy. She laughed aloud and leaped, pirouetting above the monstrous insect and landing on its head. She drew her hands back along its head, pressing gently. The crimson glow of its eyes faded, altered, passed through a murky, nondescript shade and then began to glow once again.
They were green.
Jimmy felt himself floating backwards, away from Poe, away from the Fairy, through the glass of his window. He watched the glowing green eyes of the scarab slowly merge into a single, glowing emerald gem whose light pierced the darkness and the falling snow across the city.
Jimmy drew a breath. The scarab was gone. The Fairy was gone. Edgar Allan Poe was gone. He moved his hand toward the computer mouse but instead encountered the bottle of Vieux Carré absinthe.
The Hovhaness program on the radio station had ended and a new announcer, this time male, had introduced a new series of cuts. The present selection was the
Marche au Supplice
from Berlioz'
Opus 14.
Jimmy stood up and carried the absinthe bottle to the cupboard where he kept his meager stock of groceries. He placed it carefully on the top shelf, toward the back of the cupboard. He went to the coffee maker. The machine had kept the unconsumed coffee hot. He poured himself a cup, carried it to his desk and set it near the mouse, where the absinthe bottle had stood.
He scrolled back to the top of the screen.
He took a sip of coffee, then another, then downed the entire cup and set it, empty, on the floor beside his desk.
He looked over his shoulder at the clock-radio on his night table. Most of the night was gone. The Berlioz composition conjured images of its own. Jimmy hoped the selection was not an omen.
He turned back and gazed out the window. One by one the city's lights were blinking out. The snowfall had ceased. A single ray of morning sunlight lanced between two skyscrapers and back-lit Jimmy's monitor screen. The night's snowfall had transformed the city, if only for one brief shining moment, into a glittering fairyland of pure unblemished white.
He highlighted the title of his story and entered a new title.
THE GREEN FAIRY
By James Otho Kerr
He wondered what Jordan Elster would make of that. He decided not to worry about it just now. He had to write a story. He began:
Jimmy Kerr looked at the stack of unpaid bills on his desk. . .
The Webster Sloat Stories
DREEMZ.BIZ
If you're getting this e-mail it's because you're very special to me. A close relative, former lover, dear friend, or esteemed co-worker. Believe me, it's not spam and I'm not sending it to any huge mailing list I stole off somebody's database or bought from a marketing house.
I know what that's like, I've been annoyed by spam and spoofs for years and I wouldn't do that to you. Truthfully, I couldn't live with myself if I did that. I really couldn't. I get mad when junk email turns up in my computer, too.
Danged if I can figure out how the heck they get through. I've got a firewall, spam-blocker, anti-spyware, anti-adware, and they still get through. Every day I get offers to buy knock-off jeweled wristwatches indistinguishable from Rolex or Cartier except for the fifteen-cent mechanism inside, certified drugs from Canada or Iceland or Cambodia, or pills guaranteed to enlarge my penis, breasts, or other organs and make my partner ecstatically happy. Oh, stock tips galore, don't forget the stock tips. And my favorite, of course, pleadingly illiterate letters from the impoverished widows of Liberian millionaires offering to share their fortunes with me if I'll just kindly send 'em my bank account information and PIN numbers purely as evidence of good faith of course. Of course.
Here's what I do with these. I hit the "forward" button, type [email protected] in the address box, and send 'em off to the oblivion they well deserve.
Then there are the chain letters. Two dozen rules for having a happy life or half a dozen photos of cute children, cute dogs, cute cats, or cute children hugging cute dogs or cute dogs hugging cute cats or fuzzy ducklings or whatever, or a soppy poem that somebody dug out of a 1946 issue of
Good Housekeeping
, or a joke that you thought was really hilarious when you heard it in the bathroom at your junior high school thirty years ago. Whatever it is, just send it on to your fifteen dearest friends within thirty minutes and
something good will happen to you today—this is absolutely guaranteed!
Right.
The free offers can be tempting. You've probably got some of these yourself. You've won a free digital camera, a flat-panel giant TV set, a brand new laptop computer loaded with hi-tech features, a shiny late-model automobile or a lovingly restored classic '55 Chevy Bel-Air or '32 Ford roadster, or a free weekend getaway to the Bahamas for two, transportation included. All you have to do is click here and you're a guaranteed winner.
I asked my guru about these. I mean, just click here and I'm a guaranteed winner, right? I'm not greedy. The great car or the Bahamas vacation for two would be terrific. I can think of one special person I'd love to take for a spin in a Little Deuce Coupé or romance beneath the Caribbean stars. But, hey, I'd settle happily for the camera or the laptop.
My guru says, "If you want the camera or the laptop that much, save your money and then buy one. You'll have less grief, far less grief, than if you start jumping through hoops for some online sharpster."
Still, the offers do manage to get through and when I see a particularly attractive one it takes all my will power not to click where indicated.
But I do resist the temptation.
Always.
Almost always.
We all do slip once in a while or we wouldn't be human, would we?
When an email came through from Dreemz.biz with a subject line of
Dreemz 4 Sale
it caught my attention. I've always been fascinated by dreams. I don't think we know nearly everything there is to know about them, and I think all the so-called "sleep labs" at research universities are going about their work the wrong way. They study brainwaves and eye movements and skin temperatures and respiration rates. Okay, that's fine as far as it goes. But the physiology of sleeping, particularly of dreaming, is only one aspect of the subject.
What about the dreams themselves? What do people dream, and why do they dream what they dream, and for that matter what
is
a dream? That's one of those questions that seems simple enough, the answer should be obvious enough, until you start to think seriously about it. Then it gets very tricky, surprisingly complicated and evasive and ambiguous.
Okay, so I received this e-mail titled
Dreemz 4 Sale
and I thought, yes, the fact that it was about dreams was at least slightly interesting. The "4" was also a nice touch. Very post-modern, very hip, very with-it.
I suppose anybody who still uses phrases like post-modern, hip, or with-it is by definition square, dorky, and obsolete.
Oh, well.
I did like the word "Sale." It's honest, you see? Everybody who advertises on the internet or television these days offers something absolutely free of charge and without obligation and you get a free gift just for trying our product. Nobody ever says, "I want to sell you something," but that's all that any of them want to do.
So one point for
Dreemz
, one point for
4
, one point for
sale
. I figured I had nothing to lose by just opening the letter. I know you can get a virus that way, but I'm paying good dollars for protection from viruses. Let the antivirus software company earn its money for once.

That sign, BTW, the "g" inside the funny angle marks, is computerese for "grin." And BTW stands for By the Way. BTW.
The email is from a company called Dreemz.biz. I've never heard of them before but obviously they've heard of me. The letter is addressed to me by name, c/o the email address I use for my home office. I don't know how the heck I got onto Dreemz.biz's mailing list, but here I am. Here's what the letter says. I saved it to my hard drive and I'll give you a link to it. Here we go:
Dear Webster Sloat,
The average person spends one-third of his or her life sleeping. For most of us, the other two-thirds of our lives are divided roughly in half. Half the time is spent working. That leaves just one-third of your lifetime for everything else, and that includes necessities like washing, dressing and undressing, traveling to and from our jobs, preparing meals, folding laundry, and countless other tasks.
How many hours a day are your own? Really your own, to use however you choose? University studies show that for the average person, the answer is barely more than one hour a day!
By joining
Dreemz.biz
you can get back the one-third of your life that you spend asleep. By ordering
Dreemz
from our huge catalog you can
live
those eight hours every night. You need not rely on random chance to determine the contents of your Dreemz. You can choose anything you want. Be anyone you want. Experience adventure, romance, excitement. Explore outer space. Win an athletic championship. Have a rich, rewarding relationship with the person of your choice. Or use our DreamLearning™ experiences to learn a new language, complete courses in physics, chemistry, sociology. Learn anatomy, mechanics, accounting. Prepare yourself for a new career!
Dreemz.biz
offers a choice of over 10,000
Dreemz
in our ever-expanding catalog. Or tell us
your
dream and for a modest additional fee we'll create a custom
dream
just for you. Our
Dreemz
are fully interactive and participatory. This feature is unique, and I'm sure you'll love it once you try it out.
For a free sample membership in
Dreemz.biz
just go to the URL below and fill out a simple application. We here at
Dreemz.biz
are sure that you'll want to become a full member once you've tried our
Dreemz
. If you have any questions, feel free to write to me personally c/o the
Dreemz.biz
website. Every letter receives my prompt and personal attention.
Yours truly,
Carter Thurston Hull
Maybe I was a fool to follow up on that one, but I figured there was nothing to lose by just writing to Mr. Carter Thurston Hull. I wasn't joining Dreemz.biz, I wasn't even signing up for their free trial offer. All I did was send them a simple question in an email one line long. It was this:
How did you get my name, business identification, and email address?
I figured they'd bought a mailing list somewhere. Or—ah, this was the answer!—I'd filled out a little questionnaire at the electronics store down at the plaza when I took my daughter there to pick out her birthday present. I'd long since given up trying to choose anything that would please her, not even a brand of breakfast cereal, but giving your own pre-pubescent offspring cash for her birthday seemed pretty cold to me. So we compromised. She could pick the store. She could pick the gift. I would hover at a distance and pretend not to know her until it was time to pony up the moolah, then the gift would go on my plastic not hers.
Mr. Hull actually replied, and he was impressively candid as well as prompt. He acknowledged that Dreemz.biz purchased mailing lists, and that they'd got my information from the electronics outlet where I'd filled out the questionnaire.
Was there anything else I'd like to know? If so, Mr. Carter Thurston Hull would be happy to furnish the information. In any case, he would be delighted if I would accept that free trial membership in his organization, but of course he would not try to pressure me and I was still, he emphasized, under no obligation whatever.
In fact I had a couple more questions for Mr. Hull. I sent him another email:
What do you mean by "fully interactive and participatory?" Sounds like one of those Role-Playing Games that my daughter buys at the software store. What's so special about your product? And, BTW, why do you spell Dreemz.biz that way? Why not Dreams.biz?
I thought Hull would be annoyed by that, but he played it straight and I kind of liked his answer:
By "fully interactive and participatory" I mean that our Dreemz are
your
Dreemz. When you enter one of our Dreemz you won't just be an observer—not unless you want to be, and that's a choice you can make. But if your Dream is, let's say,
Washington Crossing the Delaware
, you won't just see our First President in action, you can be one of the soldiers in his Continental Army. You can be right there in the boat with him, that cold December night. If you choose, you can
be
General Washington. It's up to you!
You can be Babe Ruth or Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe or Eleanor Roosevelt or Madame Curie or Rosa Parks. You can be anyone you choose, for the duration of your Dream. And when you wake up, you'll be yourself again, but very likely you'll be a happier and maybe a wiser self.
You'll find that our Dreemz are as different from any Role-Playing Game and provide as much better an experience as a full symphony orchestra is from a child playing a tin whistle!
Please—give us a try!
Yours truly,
Carter Thurston Hull
P.S.—We call ourselves Dreemz.biz because somebody else already has the domain name Dreamz.com.
Of course, I might merely have been tapping into an automated FAQ routine that produced those seemingly personalized answers. Or there might have been some low-paid computer science major working at an entry-level job, picking canned answers out of a catalog and assembling replies. But I didn't think so. These answers really seemed, if you'll excuse my saying so, real. And I liked the candor of the "P.S."
Carter Thurston Hull and Dreemz.biz seemed to be on the up-and-up, don't you agree? I even got hold of my guru and invited her over to the house for a sandwich and a glass of beer, which my daughter watched us consume with undisguised scorn. I showed my guru printouts of our emails, and she reluctantly conceded that the catch, if there was one, was so well concealed that she couldn't find it.
After she left I took a second beer with me into my study. I booted up the computer, clicked on my ISP's icon, and shortly found myself in cyberspace. I went back to Mr. Hull's first email and clicked on the URL at the bottom of the screen.
The application that popped up was pretty simple and definitely nonthreatening. It asked for some personal data but not for my credit card number or driver's license number or Social Security number, so I figured this wasn't an identity theft racket. It asked me to create a user ID for myself. I picked Dudley Batson after a minor comic book character of my childhood. It asked me to create a password of six characters minimum and I keyed in
***
***
.
Next came a screen that said I'd need some software to participate in Dreemz.biz. I muttered,
Ahah! At last! Here comes the pitch. How much are they going to want for this?
But there was no pitch. I could either download the software or they'd send it to me on a CD. My option. No charge either way. And in either case they recommended that I save it on my hard drive for future reference.
And my selected Dreemz would be sent to me the same way—via download or on CDs, as I preferred. They offered any three chosen from their online catalog. Once I'd used them I could order more. I didn't have to return the used Dreemz, they were mine to keep.
I clicked on CDs—see, that's more of my Luddism coming out, I still like things I can see and touch, not just invisible electrons that come whirring along wires or out of the ether.
Finally Dreemz.biz provided a link to their catalog. It was as big as Carter Thurston Hull had said. My first choice was easy.
I'd always been a rock and roll fan, and when the Beatles played San Francisco in 1966 I was frantic to attend their concert.
Wouldn't you know, I was at school that day and started feeling queasy over my Sloppy Joe and soda at lunchtime. I tried to keep going but my friends said I was literally turning green before their eyes. They dragged me to the nurse's office and an hour later I was in SF General having my appendix yanked.
It was a routine operation. The doc told me later that if I'd tried to go the concert I would never have made it. My appendix would have burst and then I would have been in
real
trouble. But as it was, I was out of the hospital in two days and back to school in a week.

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