Dreamworlds, Chapter 5

The first sensation she had was cold, hard stone underneath her. She did not wake up. She had never slept. She was simply there, lying on the ground, in this world that had yet to be discovered. She opened her eyes, and for a moment thought that she had gone blind. The world around her was dark. Not dark, black. There was no light, and there had never been light. It was a void. The air would have been frigid, if she could have believed that there was air. She carefully avoided thinking about what she was breathing, afraid that if she thought too deeply she would lose that precious ability.

Krystle rose to a crouch, balancing on the balls of her feet, ready to move at a moment's notice. But the world was silent. It was eerie, as though everything around her was waiting for something. But there was nothing there to wait. It was a pervading sense of nothing, tensed and waiting for... something. She wanted to yell, to make her presence known, but something inside warned her that such an act might bring the something, and she was almost positive she did not want to meet it.

Slowly and cautiously, Krystle stood. She felt, almost knew, that her movement was a violation of some unspoken code, but nothing happened. She waited there, as tense as the darkness around her, waiting with it for whatever was to come, but as her heartbeats marked the passage of time and still nothing came, doubt and confusion started to plague her mind. What was there to fight in this world? Always before she had needed to fight. She didn't remember that, she simply knew it was true, knew her body and mind were trained for fighting. She took a step forward. Nothing. Another step. Nothing. Each step she took yielded the same result as the step before: a dead and ominous nothing. There was not even a sound to mark her passage.

She began to count her steps, realizing as she did so that it was the safest way to keep her mind occupied. Questions began to sound like bells in her mind. Where was she? Where was she going? How did this world exist? They played over and over in her mind, but she pushed them away, focusing only on the numbers. In some strange way, the counting kept her sane. It was something real, something certain. She knew what it meant to count, and she knew that as long as she kept counting, she would be safe.

"Five, six, seven, eight, nine..." the voice mocked her. Krystle whirled around, expecting to hear or see whoever was talking to her. But the utter blackness around her concealed her enemy perfectly.

"Who are you?" Krystle asked aloud. She couldn't hear the sound of her own voice. The realization shocked her. She tried again. "Who are you?" she said louder. But she heard nothing.

The voice began to laugh, mocking her fear and confusion. "Poor lady," it giggled. "Doesn't know yet that here she doesn't really exist..."

She was tempted to believe it. She could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing but the cold seeping into her. It would be so easy to sit down and blend into the nothingness around her, to forget herself completely. To surrender.

But the thought of surrender evoked in her a fear more intense than the voice could ever arouse, and with that fear came determination and anger. She would not surrender! The force of feeling that washed over her at the word took her by surprise, but she clung to it, knowing it would help her survive.

"You are nothing, here, love," the voice continued. "There is nothing here for you to be."

Krystle pushed the voice out of her mind, determined to ignore it. She took a step forward, then another, and another. Stubbornly, she began to count again.

But she couldn't do it. With each step, with each heartbeat, the darkness grew heavier. She began to feel a deep despair. She could do nothing in a world where there was nothing. She couldn't fight. There was nothing here to challenge her, nothing for her to fight. There were only her steps. her steps and her numbers, and occasionally the voice in the darkness. She eventually realized that it was inside her head, and she hated it all the more. She knew it was madness, and the voice itself became her fight. It told her lies, and with every ounce of strength she had, she fought it. She reveled in the fight, afraid all the while that she would lose and never again know herself. But she knew that she fought, and she drew strength from the struggle against herself.

In her mind's eye, Krystle could see the path that she had taken, straight from the point where she had begun and stretching out into forever. For all she saw, she could be standing in the same place she had started. She laughed out loud at the thought for the ache in the legs said she had walked miles at least. But there was no sound. Her laughter was swallowed by the nothingness around her. That sobered her, but made the voice in her head begin to laugh maniacally. She silenced it ruthlessly, knowing it for madness, and abruptly sat down. In the moment when despair almost overtook her, Krystle defied all that was around her and thought. For the first time, she listened to the questions in her mind. Where was she? Where was she going? How did this world exist? She had no answers. This world couldn't exist. She could not be there. And yet she was. Krystle began to force her mind to work, to focus on something to help her solve this problem in which she found herself. It was like swimming through molasses. She felt as though she had never thought about anything, and now, when it was most critical, she had to teach herself to think and to somehow arrive at a solution.

She began by questioning everything. She took nothing for granted, and for every question she had she came up with as many answers as she could.

"Who am I?" she asked herself in the darkness.

For a long moment, there was no answer, neither from within nor from without. A voice began to whisper in her mind. She pushed it away at first, afraid of what it meant. But it was persistent. "I am human," it said with perfect clarity. It wasn't voice she had been fighting. It was steady and peaceful. "I am a woman," it reminded her. Krystle paid attention to the voice, recognizing that it spoke truth. The voice continued, "My name is Krystle." Krystle sounded it out in her mind, tried it on her tongue. It felt good. It felt true. "I am a soldier," the voice added. The thought surprised her, gave her courage and strength.

"No!" screamed the madness. "There is nothing! You are nothing!" She pushed the voice away, but it continued in an enticing whisper. "There is only me. Listen to me. My way is easy. There will be no more pain," it crooned to her. "Listen to me, and just let go." It wound like a snake through her thoughts, but she ignored it. "Let go of everything."

"I will not," she said aloud, imagining that she heard her voice in the darkness. She took a deep breath to calm herself, forced herself to ask another question.

"Am I dead?"

Again the voice in her mind soothed her. "No. I still have my body. The ache in my legs is real. Besides, Death would be more crowded than this." The thought was humorous, but she clung only to the logic of it, to the belief it lent her that she still lived and breathed.

"So where am I?" But her mind shied away. She couldn't face that one yet.

The madness laughed sadistically. "You'll never know," it whispered.

"Is this place real?" she persisted doggedly.

"It must be real," said the voice in her mind. "I am here. I am alive. Therefore, in some way, this place must be real."

"Unless you are mad. Not everything you see is real, you know," giggled the madness.

Krystle wanted to scream, to run away from the illogic in her mind that seemed to make so much sense. She didn't know what was real, what was true, what was illusion, what was there to lead her astray. But still she fought. "I am not mad," she told herself firmly. "Not yet. Not ever."

"Are you really sure?" it mocked her.

"Yes. I'm sure. I'm not mad."

"And who are you talking to?"

The question made her stop. Who was she talking to? Herself? She had not asked the question of herself. Had she? Did talking to madness itself make her mad?

"No," she said aloud. Again, there was no sound, but making herself move, making herself think about something outside of her mind calmed her somewhat. She closed her eyes and focused on her problem, on what she wanted to accomplish.

"What do I want to do?" she asked herself aloud, imagining she could hear every word she spoke with her ears, and not just in her mind.

"I want to get out of here," she answered her own question, again out loud.

"But where is here?" whispered the madness. She ignored it. It was not a voice she could have heard aloud.

"How should I get out?" She could almost hear the words. If she strained just a little harder, she knew she would hear them.

The voice in her mind, the one that knew the truth, whispered again. This time, Krystle voiced the words as they came to her. "There is always a door. If I find the door, I can leave."

The madness persisted. "There are no doors, here, love. Here, there is only me."

She feared it was true. But she chose to trust the voice she wanted to hear, the voice that gave her hope. "There is always a door," she repeated. Then she stopped. She had heard it that time. With her ears! She had heard what she said! Tentatively, she tried again. "If I find the door, I can leave." There was no mistaking it that time. She heard every word clearly as she spoke. She began to laugh, just to hear the sound of her voice. Tears of relief streamed down her face until lshe wasn't sure if she was laughing or crying, but she didn't care. It was so good to just hear a real sound, any sound. Her own voice had never sounded so sweet.

Hysterics finally turned to quiet sobbing. Krystle lay down on the hard ground beneath her and cried until her energy was spent. She knew she had to get up, to continue on. She had a door to find. But not now. She couldn't make herself move yet. She lay on the ground and let herself think about nothing. Even the madness inside her was quiet, respecting the emptiness of her mind.

It was out of this stillness that the voice returned. It wasn't the madness. It was the other voice, the one that told her truth. "I can hear," it said. The thought was happy.

"Yes," thought Krystle.

"How did that happen?" it queried.

"I don't know," she replied in her mind. Now that she knew she could hear, instinct once again reminded her to be silent, to give her enemies as little information as she could.

"Think about it," the voice prompted. Then it was gone.

"I don't want to." But once the question had been posed, she couldn't leave it alone. She had to know. She lay still, staring up at nothingness, thinking back through what had happened. She hadn't been able to hear anything but the voices in her mind, at first. It was when she had tried to shut one of them out, and she had begun talking to herself out loud, that her hearing had been restored. But neither action explained why she could suddenly hear again. Maybe the insanity had taken her after all, and she only imagined that she could hear. Maybe everything around her was still silent.

"I don't know," she said aloud, testing. her fear was confirmed. She heard nothing.

"No!" she screamed. Blind terror gripped her. "No! No! NO!" She sprang to her feet, almost falling forward on her face. "I can hear!" she screamed, trying to imagine it, to make herself believe it. She wanted so desperately to believe. "I CAN HEAR!" The sound almost deafened her. After so long with almost absolute silence, the sound of her desperate scream filling the void around her made her ears ache. Startled into silence, Krystle quickly dropped to one knee, chest heaving with each ragged breath. "I can hear," she whispered. And this time she knew why.

"I believe," she said simply.

"That makes no sense," whispered the madness. "Belief does not make something real."

"I believe I am sane," she said simply, willing it to be true , making herself believe. There was no reply.

Almost immediately, she began to question. In all honesty, simple belief in something should not make it real. But it did. Here, somehow, imagination and faith made things real. How could that be true? Her first thought was VR. But that made no sense. When you were in a VR world, you knew that it was virtual reality. The world you saw was not the world you were truly in. Here she had no sense of being in two places at once. She was here completely.

"I am not dead," she said aloud, working through the details again. "I am here, in this void. It's real. I'm not in a VR studio." She slowly stood and began walking again, hoping the movement would send blood to her brain and enable her to think better.

"Where does imagination make things real?" she asked herself. The answer seemed to come much later. Only in imagination itself. She was again swimming in molasses, going around in circles. She knew there was something she was missing and tried to catch it, but it eluded her, teased her, tormented her until she finally relented. She gave up and let her mind go blank, refusing to think of the problem for a few moments. Instead, she hummed a wordless tune, allowing herself to get lost in the creation of it.

A thought struck her, seemingly out of nowhere. It was the voice from within herself, the one that knew Truth. "This is a dream," it told her. Logic immediately began to argue. "This can't be a dream," she told herself. "I feel too much for it to be a dream." She had endured physical pains here that should never have affected her in a dream. And yet, she knew without doubt that she was dreaming. She felt the truth of it.

Again, questions began to plague her. How had she gotten here? How was it so real? How long had she been there? She vaguely remembered worlds, trials, battles she had fought, but how many had she forgotten comepletely? Besides, even if she could remember them all, time in dreams passed differently from time in the real world. She could have been there for two weeks or two years. What was happening in the real world? She abruptly pushed away all her questions, all the confusion, and focused on one thing.

"Every problem has a solution," she told herself. "This one does, too." With a renewed sense of purpose, Krystle set off in search of the doorway that would release her from her own mind.

She had only traveled a few steps when she began to grin mischievously. "Let's try something..." she murmured to herself. Closing her eyes, Krystle imagined an image from her memory. Without bothering to open her eyes, she reached a hand in front of her. There, as she had hoped and believed, was a smooth surface, perpendicular to the floor. She ran her fingers over the front of it and found, at eye level, the symbol she had been searching for. It was a diamond inscribed in a circle. She calmly placed her hand in the middle of it and spoke the words, "Open sesame."

As she had known it would, the door swung outward from her hand, admitting her to a new world.