esauboeck
Sections:
Intervention
Safe house
Magic 101
Rebecca - lives in the safe house
Leon - the attorney
Sonia - Leon's secretary
[] Richards - tennis pro
So I've been having these dreams. It's hard to convey what's
going on because part of the dream is just a dream, part of it is
totally vivid dream, and part of it is so much like the real world
that it's kind of like reading a book. The urgency of it all
is exhausting until I wake up and then I'm fine until the next
time I dream. It's really odd and a bit scary.
The return of magic to the world (metal had sequestered our world,
thankfully) starts through a particular sort of vivid
dreams. It turns out that many people can manipulate their
dreams to have access to the previously sequestered
witchcraft. The dreamers think of these dreams as occurring
in something like a real place called DreamScape.
Dreamscape. So far the effect of actions in the
recently discovered DreamScape are not part of the physical world,
although they can have a psychological effect. Magic can
happen in the DreamScape but not in the physical world.
This isn't the first time
I've tried to write this down.
Two days earlier I would probably have walked right by.
Normally, anyone would.
But then, maybe, if you had just heard that your first real chance
at a championship was over and a thug showed a knife against a kid
on a cell phone and you held the sweetest racket ever, your last
swing ever woould take the thug out. Swish! It was
kind of a relief. My tennis career was over, but I could
sure use a racket. Actually, hitting someone on the forehead
with a tennis racket is not much of a show of bravery.
The bravery came when the kid looked at me. That glance told
me that I had done something more complicated than stop a knifing.
This time, I'll start
from when I was walking across the street.
I was holding and kind of swinging my
favorite racket in my left hand. I'm right handed and it
wasn't cross training. My physio's top
go-to guy had just told me that I wasn't going to play
professional tennis again anytime soon because my right hand's
third meta-carpal had a spiral hair-line stress fracture.
So I could go Pro-Shop and Lessons at the Country Club! Give
lessons to kids or get into coaching or managing. Maybe
something else entirely. How dull.
They'd given me the news. I didn't want to start thinking
about finances.
I crossed the street and saw a guy flick out a knife and start
toward a guy who wasn't watching.
I took a long step forward, swinging the racket up backhand and
knocked the knife aside; a little off balance, I continued the
swing up and hit him square on his eye brow. Left handed!
The racket would need to
be restrung, the guy would need a couple of stiches. There
was blood everywhere. The kid looked back and we locked eyes for a moment.
Then he took off. The guy on the ground was feeling
around for his knife. I walked away quickly, not even
looking to see if anyone had noticed.
The Archade was right there, so unless someone started yelling, I
figured that I was safely away.
Just as I'm settling down -- I finally glanced over my shoulder --
a girl steps out of a coffee shop and says, "Tennis racket, come
with me!" She grabs my sleeve and drags me into a coffee shop, a
punk hangout.
She more or less throws me into a chair at a table next to the
wall with some left over coffee things and sits down facing
me. I slipped the racket under the table.
"Don't look up," she said quietly.
Just that quick, a waiter gives me an espresso and a thimble full
of milk and clears one of the cups and picks up my racket.
Out of habit, I poured some milk into the little cup and added
some sugar. It hadn't been more than a few seconds when the
cafe door banged opened. I was facing away; everyone looked
up, one of the waiters sprints through the door to the restrooms
with my racket. A big guy runs through the shop after him.
"Walk across the plaza to the attorney's office right now," the
girl said.
Even though my adrenaline is through the roof by now, I couldn't
help smiling at her and slugging back the coffee before getting
up.
I followed her directions though. I walked quickly across
the small plaza into the office of Leon Parker, esq. An
attractive, young receptionist looked up when I wallked in.
"I just knocked a knife away in an attempted assault and was sent
here from the coffee shop across the way," I said.
She stood and said, "If you'd come with me, Mr. Richards."
She recognized me. On the other hand, how nice that twice in
a morning a young woman was looking after me.
She led me down a hallway to a staff brake room/kitchenette.
"If you'd like a cup of coffee, take any of the cups in that
cupboard. Milk's in the fridge. I'll try to have Leon
give you a few minutes."
"I'll use the restroom, thanks," I said.
If you know about getting ready for competition on a professional
level, I don't have to tell you anything about using the toilet in
high stess situations. If you don't, I shouldn't.
So then, I sat down with a coffee and a magazine as if it was
perfectly normal. Except this was my second coffee in 5 minutes
and I'd prevented a stabbing and a big guy crashed through the
coffee shop looking for me and I'd lost my favorite racket, broken
strings all the same. And my world-class forehand was
ruined.
On Thursday afternoon, I didn't have a care in the world beyond
how to beat the world-ranked number 4. Late in the match, I
hit a cross court volley, charging the net like I loved to
do. Instead of a "Thock!", the hit said "Thetch!" and
something was loose in my hand. I arranged not to have to
volley or hit harder than cross shots and somehow won the game for
the match. My manager called the tournament officials to say
I had to forfeit this afternoon's game.
Forfeit the semifinal injured.
What on earth was I doing here? I stood, wanting to leave
but not knowing quite how. That second a trim older guy
dressed in what they call business casual opened the door and
walked in.
"[] Richards, my pleasure," he said, extending his hand. "My
name is Leon Parker. Sorry you had to become involved."
I shook his hand.
"Give me a minute to make some arangements. I'll be able to
speak in just a minute, okay?"
It turns out that he was on his cell phone. "Okay, so you'll
pick up the kid and Richards then off to Rebecca's," Leon
summarized. "How often do you need to report?" He listened for a
moment. "That answering service worked well last time."
Pause. "Good. It'll only be dangerous for the first few
hours, don't you think?" Pause. He looked up to the
receptionist and said, "Sonia, please call Rebecca to let her know
they're coming -- four of them to start, I think. And move
some money around for household and hourly expenses."
"I'll get a (IRS consultant's reported income form) for Mr.
Richards." She smiled at me, so sure I'd sign it. All
thought of leaving was gone for the minute. I'm a complete
sucker for open-faced girls who smile at me. You'll see it
again and again.
So I was totally in it and
the kid said, "Stay there, okay?" And I did and it went from
a thick lot of stuff to a view from above and then I woke up.
Rebecca was there when I went to the kitchen.
I phoned my agent. I'd figured that either it was all too
real or my agent could deal with me flipping out. A couple
of days ago I surrendered injured, today I aked her to forward any
messages about dreams.
It scared me that she said, "As a matter of fact, a guy called
just a while ago."
"If you can get back to him, ask him to call Leon S--. He's an
attorney involved in this. Thanks, Shiela."
"It's pretty wierd," I said. "There in that realm, you're
engaged but things are changing."
"Kind of like a dream, eh?" she asked and smiled at me
"You're not the first to wake up," she said.
I wasn't hungry. It had only been 2:00 til 4:30. I had
a cup of tea and went back to bed. Back to bed at 5:00 in the
evening.
On my way up there was a knock on the door.
The kid was on the steps on the way down and reached to open.
"Oh, you're home. What about Richards?" This was an old guy
who looked really familiar.
"He's right here," the kid said.
I recognized him from my dream. Lordy, what was I in for?
"Come on in to the kitchen," I said, shaking his hand.
Before we started the kid answered another knock on the door.
A girl on the porch said, "Hi, we were hungry so we got some food
and came over." She waswith a guy holding a couple of white
plastic bags of take-away. [} and I were looking at the bags
and the pair.
"Excellent," the kid said.
The guy with the bags looked at [] and said, "I don't think we've
got enough for everybody."
[] smiled easily and gave his name and hand and said, "Wait til
you see what we've got left over from lunch."
So the afternoon progressed with beer and pot, food and chat, herb
tea and more beer and smoking only on the back porch.
Serious flirting, then one of the girls finally fronted me.
"You're a famous, you're a tennis star."
I just grinned, half lit from beer and the other half from
pot. Another cute girl. Swell!
What on earth is going on? Who is Leon Parker?
I am not a professional tennis player. I rarely have vivid
dreams. Mostly I hurry away from dreams, ignore them and
forget them if I can.
A while ago, I was trying to give up smoking and took Chantrix 1
mg daily for a few days. I dreamt vividly, but didn't take
the drug long enough to stop smoking. Eventually, I caught
pneumonia and quit smoking for good. But I continued to
dream vividly. Even normal dreams intruded.
Then this DreamScape stuff started happening and the tennis pro
and The Kid became involved. So I was having these layers of
dreams and variety of dreams. I didn't really mind it
much. In fact it was kind of fun at first.
When we were first trying it out, it seemed that the problem was
with electro-magnetic effects, especially around electrical
motors. It turns out that the interference is from smelted
metal. Something about it interferes with incohate
forces. In fact even igneous rock interferes. If you
want to do magic, get away from volcanoes. Even the middle
of the ocean, you can have igneous rock just a couple of miles
beneath you. It's amazing how hard it is to get away from
all metal. Head for sandstone and somebody has tossed a beer
can nearby. Or worse, a chunk of meteoric loadstone is a
half a mile away.
But magic in the waking world came long after we figured out the
DreamScene. You won't believe how it started. Chantix
is a drug they give you to stop smoking. It can give some
people lots of vivid dreams -- dreams so close to the DreamScape
that you can squeeze into it. After a couple of times, you
can squeeze into it from your neighborly afternoon nap.
After a while you get so you can act in the DreamScape. Once
you are a participant, everything changes. As an agent, you
notice when someone is visiting.
"So, this dream thing, if you dream about where we are, the folks
who join you there will know where we are?"
"Close, I guess," the kid fiddled with his glass. "It's like
when you dream locations and measurements are skewed. Each
realm has its own blind side and its own special clarity.
The action in each happens where there's the best clarity."
Of course the guys weren't going to accept that sort of
college-level analysis. In the end we got that our waking
realm was great for physical reality -- weights, measures,
distances, mass. The dream realm had its specialties.
The only ones I remember from the day were light and dark,
emotion, and something like fiction or representation or gesture.
It was a big deal to him and he spent a long time trying to
explain it to us. In the end, [] said that maybe we should
do some drugs and get together in the dream realm.
"Tha would be a total escalation. We'd have to talk to Leon
about taking the issue to them." Everyone was quiet for a
while as we worried about escalating into a realm that we didn't
really get.
The discovery of
classs notes from Magic 101 may re-introduce magic into the real
world. The Kid teaches them to go get these notes, to fend
off others seeking these notes -- "We know that you want the notes
too. Our intentions are benign. We have them
now. We are worried that someone with less benign intentions
could get an advantage of early adoption or even exclusive
use. Should we let them leak out to be used by one and
all?"
We were just sitting around,
doing small things and reading. The kid's description had
kind of distrubed us.
I remembered a dream from last night, something about having
almost enough of something, but needing the rest which was
somewhere else and then finding it and wondering what to do with
the other stuff there. It seemed now that the kid had
been in it and I wondered if he had actually been in it.
[] kind of started. "Good Lord!," he exclaimed. "You
can share dreams with folks who are dead!"
The kid looked him right in the eye. "I don't know," he
said. "I can't tell if they're there or if we dream them to
be there. It could be that we're in dreams that they had
when they were alive."
"Deep[2nd]," said. "How many people can share the same
dream?"
"A lot, but it gets confusing right away. Remember, we're
all dreaming; we're all in that dreamscape realm. I've only
been doing this for a little while. There's a lot I don't
know."
The hardest bit is to
capture and write up the dream. Even writing them on the
very moment that they come to you, directly from sleep, they can
slip right past you into psycho babble. There was one about
a woman and a ledge and the foreground emotions and the structure
was the story. But I didn't have a pencil and paper, so it
is gone.
"You won't know it," the kid said referring to nothing. "December
6 is Kristkindle night."
"You're right," [] said.
"In Austria a hairy, poorly dressed old man comes to the house
looking for bad children. He has a switch and a basket and
will put the bad children in the basket and take them away.
"He asks the kids if any is a bad child. They have to say
that they're good. In places the children are asked if
they've done anything bad. If they confess, Krampus hits
them with his switch and asks, disbelieving, 'Are you a bad
child?' The child or an older kid will say, 'No!'
"I'm here for bad children! Don't waste my time!' And then he
leaves as abruptly as he came."
"Ya', lots of fun scaring the beegeezes out of little kids."
"No, it's to induce dreaming." the kid said.
"Hold one there," [] said. "You're recruiting us to cover
your back as we sleep?'
"[], yes, exactly. Thank you."
After a couple of beats [] asked, "Any of you gents join me for a
beer? Serious topics were off the table for the time being.
Wanda came back with grocieries.
"Two guys, go get the rest of the bags," she said. "It's
good to see that you've settled in," she said looking at the beers
and drinks. I followed her into the kitchen.
"The kid told us some stuff," I said. "It's kind of sci-fi
and, apparently, dangerous. Something to do with
dreams. You should get out of here."
"Are tennis pros always so bossy?" she asked. I was totally
smitten and could not trust myself to speak for a second.
"The kid needs us to body guard him while we sleep," [] said,
saving my tongue-tied butt. "Close to a perfect job, eh?"
I recovered and started to put things away.
The kid came in and stood around awkwardly until Rebecca looked at
him.
"Sorry, but I've got to lie down. Can I use the front
bedroom?" he asked. He sounded like he needed a nap and knew
it. Rebecca looked like she was going to melt. She
hustled him out of the kitchen toward that bedroom.
"Kid!" I called.
"What's this now?"
He came over to read the last several Friends posting that I'd
printed out and spread on the table.
"Then we were there and others were too." He was still for a
moment. "They were there too. We were there with
them. Can we get them to come here?'
Rebecca said, "I'll call Sonia. Get me their name, local
airport, and favrite airline; a ticket will be there in their name
just as soon as I tell Sonia. The guy at LAX will have a
chuck of cardboard with their name on it. He'll be in a
cheap black suite with cheap cologne like all the rest of the limo
drivers."
"Why do we want them to come here?" [] asked.
"You're right,[]." the kid said. "Not here for sure.
But if someone is afraid of me enough to send an assasin..."
"Asassin, assasin!" [2] chanted, mocking.
"Well, dude. What, after me after them, right?"
"Yes, yes, yes," [2] said. "It's just that assasin is such a
big word!"
"So, this year the new moon falls on Valentines Day," the kid
said. "It's a perfect example of what I'm talking
about. We're going to respond to Valentine's Day pm a night
with no light. It's right up there with horoscope."
"'Remind me if it makes it so that you can do something', he said.
"Who said that?' the kid asked.
"Who did you first hear it from? Me. It was my dream,
right?" he said.
"It doesn't sound like something you'd say, [2]."
"No, I could be talking about using a tool or something."
""Kind of an unsual way to speak though, eh?"
"Well, ya'."
Magic 101
~ The irony of the subconscious flaw is the number of actual
flaws.
~ How to interpret and induce occular migranes.
~ Tree worship. An honest moment with a tree, in its
society, matters to the tree.
~ It is either certainly true or an easy illusion.
~ We are loosing place of trade and should look for another
connection. Adieu, friends.
~ Dreams real and imagined dream elements. Persistence and
emotional ambiguity mark real elements. Imagined dream
elements are ephemeral or emotionally charged and of consistent
emotional tenor.
~You will have noticed that the measurements are approximations --
a bushel, a bucket, a ail, a cup a ladle, a tablespoon, a teaspoon
and all the rest.
Herb tea measurements are particularly prone to variation.
Calculations in the rest of the world seem, in contrast, starkly
exact -- 11/42 of 8% of 144...
Wow, more time on math than ingrediants. If you start with
5/16 letres instead of a teacup, you loose nearly everyone,
patients and practitioners alike.
~ Lets consider what sorts of beings there are in the world other
than humans. Animals do not have being, or rarely do, the
familiars, of course, are the exception. Whether the
being-ness of familiars is due to their association with a human
or the association with a human is due to their being-ness is a
great debate. It would be a mistake to call these beings
ephemeral, despite the usual encounters -- very brief, intent
ladent, seemingly relevant, often in an induced emergency.
~Fashioning lives. Potions to make someone do something or
become someone are a poor notion. Here "poor" does not mean
wrong. The worse rarely happens.
~Superstition is not the way.
~The reason you got into this school was because you had noticed
that your actions could affect others' perceptions. By now
you should recognize that this is generally either onerous,
bothersome, an encumbrance, dangerous, frivolous, and on rare
ocassions fruitful or beneficial or comforting.
Still, why you set the fountain into the pond and set the flow,
for the day it affects the perception of the day.
Controlling the perception by interpretation and by arranging
affects is similar to setting the geyser in the garden pond.
~Kryt, I can't believe you got this! Who remembers perfectly
what they hear. You helped them write it down or took
dictation. The prof will be furious. Don't let him
know. I'm going to send it on. You must have known
that I'd send it on.
~Tinctures. The taste of the tincture has an effect.
The immediate effect of those meant to have an immediate effect
will cause and effect which must be furthered subsequently.
That is to say, people who come to you for medicine are
desparate. What you can give them has an effect almost
immediately. That effect is as a placebo, so what you give
them will work best if it tastes like something that will
work. Mix your concoctions accordingly. Of course, the
subsequent or eventual effect is what they really need.
~A good man who knew he was dieing was reported to say, "I will
stay here and be dead. Something else urgently looks forward
to something else."
~There are times in people's lives that they feel should be
commemorated, like when an infant laughs for the first time, or
upon a girl's first menses. You can make these interesting
by adding something to what people are already inclined to do.
~Tell them that they can ignore a bad thought by concentrating on
any simple thing. You can make it more effective if you get
a hint of the thought and match it with something metaphorically
related.
~Guest Lecture. Today, children, started laden with cloud
but not too cool until midday when the wind blew from the west out
to sea. This evening the wind blew back in from the sea,
cool and fresh. These winds happen because the land warms up
and cools off first, more quickly than the sea. Anyway, that
earlier morning, when the land woke up and spoke to the sea,
saying 'I dreamt of humans last night.' As the wind took the
land's story to the ocean, we were created. He told of our
families and our memories. And that's why we are here
now. As long as they speak about us as the land's dream we
get to be.
~Ascribing attributes. "The Elder Brother say, 'In all the
world there is no such thing as a dangerous place.'" An
agent in the place is dangerous, not the place. "A beautiful
place" similarly not the place but the agent, the viewer, ascribes
the beauty.
.