Chapter 600

Chapter 600: Traces After Waking

Agatha could slip through shadows and mirrors in an instant. In the very first moment after the Nameless One’s dream ended, she could return to the Vanished in the Mortal Realm and observe the changes at the border of the reflection. Duncan did not doubt her ability at all.

“As long as either Atlantis or Goathead wakes up in a jolt, the Nameless One’s dream will end…” Duncan frowned slightly and thought carefully about the idea Agatha had just raised. “So that means the Nameless One’s dream is actually being ‘sustained’ by Atlantis and Goathead together?”

“Or rather, it is their shared dream,” Agatha said seriously. “That would also explain why that ‘reflected Vanished’ was sailing along the edge of Atlantis’s dream.”

Duncan did not speak for a while. He just quietly sorted through his thoughts.

After a long time, he suddenly broke the silence: “So, like you said, the reason the Nameless One’s dream ended early this time was that my First Mate was startled awake. – Then what startled him awake in the first place?”

Agatha thought for a moment, then spoke, not very sure: “Maybe… it had something to do with the way you steered at the end?”

“Steered?” Duncan’s brows tightened a little.

“You were very careful with your flames this time. You even planted your fire in advance into the Vanished’s reflection, leaving a safe Fire Seed on that ‘ship in the dream.’ That did keep Atlantis from being ‘frightened,’ but to that dream ship, you yourself were still an ‘outsider’,” Agatha said as she laid out her guess. “Do you remember? You forced your way into that dark, foggy space from the ‘outside’ by touching that vine in Lightwind Harbor in the Mortal Realm…”

Agatha spoke while Duncan listened. Goathead kept turning his head, looking at the captain and then at Agatha. As the most direct party involved in the whole affair, he was also the most confused one on the spot. But now he finally understood what Agatha meant. He reacted at once and hurriedly looked at Duncan: “Captain, my loyalty is beyond doubt, Captain! You are the true Master of the Vanished. Even if I really was dreaming, I would still…”

“I know, but the problem isn’t you,” Duncan cut Goathead off with a wave of his hand. “It’s a basic property of the dream – it rejects ‘intrusions.’”

He paused, then continued while he thought: “It seems that unless you are dragged directly into the inner Dreamwalking space like Vanna and the others, and become part of the Nameless One’s dream, any attempt to connect to the Nameless One’s dream from the outside will cause this kind of ‘rejection.’ It will either wake Atlantis, or wake you…”

Goathead lifted his head. Even his hard wooden face showed a strangely human, conflicted look. “Then what do we do? Captain, you know I don’t even know when I’m dreaming. I can’t control this at all…”

“You can’t control it, but this matter itself may not be that hard,” Duncan said thoughtfully. “I already have an idea… maybe I can test it tonight.”

…

Lucretia frowned as she watched Taran Ael busy himself among a huge pile of “junk” in the laboratory. After a long time, she finally could not help speaking: “You sent an apprentice to my house early in the morning to drag me here, just so I could see how messy your lab is? You’ve been ‘digging’ in that pile of tangled machines and papers for half an hour… Did I ever tell you I’m very busy?”

“Almost done, almost done. There’s a huge pile of data that was recorded automatically. I need to sort it all together…” Taran Ael lifted his head from behind a machine with a black casing. There was some unknown grease smeared into his messy hair. “I improved all this equipment myself. Now it seems there is still a lot of room for them to be more convenient… Oh, I finally got this paper box off. This is the last one…”

The elven Grand Scholar muttered as he finally squeezed out from that dizzying forest of devices. He came back to Lucretia with a big armful of printouts, paper tapes, and film. He put everything on the table and, without even lifting his head, went on: “Yes, I know you’re busy, because Lightwind Harbor is shrouded in a massive manifestation, and you and your Father are running everywhere because of it. I’m grateful for that. But we ‘locals’ should also do something, even if we still haven’t found a way to fight that ‘dream’…”

Lucretia’s expression finally grew a little more serious. She put aside her annoyance at having her work broken off and being rushed out so early. She came to the Grand Scholar’s desk and looked at the records spread across it. “So, this is your effort to fight that ‘dream’?”

“I’m not the only one working hard. Many departments, many of my colleagues, and other organizations in the city, the Knowledge Guard and the constables – we’re all trying to find a way. We may not be as strong as your Father, but clumsy methods are still methods… Yes, this part is my result.”

As Taran Ael spoke, he pulled out a long strip of paper tape from the pile and laid it in front of Lucretia.

“This is last night’s record of my vital signs and sleep.”

Lucretia’s expression changed slightly. She took the paper tape from him and looked seriously at the jumping curves and rows of punched marks on it. She noticed it was automatic data output from some kind of punch-card recorder, and there were very obvious “breaks” in the data.

“I slept here in the lab last night,” Taran Ael said as he pointed to a cot in the corner of the room. Several strange devices sat beside the cot. They looked as if they had been moved here in a hurry, their cables and pipes tangled together. “I made all this stuff before. I tried to use it to improve my sleep efficiency, to get better rest with the shortest possible sleep time… Those electrodes can record my brain activity. The curves on the tape are that. The punches next to them are my breathing records: one round hole for each breath out, one square hole for each breath in…”

“There are two clear interruptions here,” Lucretia cut him off. “Judging from the timestamps on the edge of the tape, they happened at nine o’clock last night and early this morning, which means…”

“Which means the start and end of the Nameless One’s dream,” Taran Ael took the tape back from her, found the two breaks, and held the tape up before him. “At those two times, my brain clearly had a ‘blank.’ But that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is actually… between those two breaks.”

He held up the tape. On that long record, the curves and punched holes ran on in a continuous line.

“There are still records,” he pointed to the section between nine last night and this morning. “Do you see the problem, Lady Lucretia…?”

“I’m guessing you recorded more than just this,” Lucretia already understood. She spoke quickly. “Where are the other things?”

“This is the most direct one.” Taran Ael did not try to be mysterious. He turned, picked up another stack from the table – a pile of black-and-white images.

Lucretia took the stack and glanced at it. They were all photographs. The subject was the cot in the corner of the lab.

The first few photos showed Taran Ael lying on the bed. In one of them, the Grand Scholar even waved at the camera. But in the later photos, there was only an empty bed – the electrodes that had been fixed to the Grand Scholar’s head had fallen onto the pillow.

“I set up three cameras, hooked them up to timers and continuous film. Every fifteen minutes, they each took one picture of where I sleep, from three angles,” Taran Ael said. “You see? After nine o’clock, there’s no one on the bed – because that’s when the Nameless One’s dream arrived, and I had already vanished to ‘the other side’…”

The Grand Scholar spoke as he picked up the long paper tape again. He found the middle section and placed it in front of the Sea Witch.

“So here’s the question, my lady – between nine last night and five this morning, in the time when I had already vanished from the Mortal Realm, whose brain activity did this machine record?”

Lucretia drew in a slow breath and looked at the last photo in her hand.

In the empty cot in the corner of the lab, the electrodes used to read brain activity lay loosely on the pillow. The metal plates of the electrodes gleamed coldly in the lens, as if, in the silent veil of night over the whole city, they were quietly connected to ghosts unseen by the naked eye.

“The problem doesn’t end there. The Nameless One’s dream has brought us many puzzles. The strange data recorded by these devices is only one part of it,” Taran Ael’s voice pulled Lucretia out of her thoughts. The Grand Scholar walked back behind his desk, sat down, and slowly said, “The other problem is this – after Dreamwalking, where did we actually go?”

“…What do you mean?”

“I just listened to your description. When the Nameless One’s dream came, you and your Father’s followers were drawn into a strange dream. There was a vast forest in it, very similar to what I saw when I was trapped in the dream before. But… I have no memory of anything like that from last night.

“Ever since I was trapped in that dream the last time, and you pulled me out, I have never seen that forest again in my sleep.

“And it’s not only me. Everyone in this city is the same. When the Nameless One’s dream descends, everyone in the city disappears into the veil of night. But we don’t wake up in a world of dreams like you. We don’t act in that mysterious forest. We close our eyes, and when we open them again, everything is a normal new day. If you and your Father didn’t tell us, we wouldn’t even notice anything happened last night.

“So where did everyone in the city go when the veil of night descended?”

Lucretia of course did not know the answer. Taran Ael did not really expect to get an answer from this witch either. He was just talking to himself, giving himself a goal.

sunlight came through the clouds, through a tall tree outside the lab, through its thick canopy and crisscrossing branches and leaves. It scattered in mottled patches across the Grand Scholar’s desk and across the data recorded by his automatic devices.

Lucretia slowly raised her head. Her gaze followed the sunlight as she looked at the flickering shadows of leaves outside the window. Her eyes slowly widened.

“Master Taran Ael…”

“What is it, my lady?”

“…Did you always have a tree like that outside your lab?”