CHAPTER 5 RECAP: Chapter 5 had us following Beatty to his big meeting at Panacea. We get a sense of the convoluted and neglected transportation system on the Ranks’ side of the wall. On the bus we meet a local woman who asks Beatty uncomfortable questions about his job that—along with his discomfort with the meeting he is going to—start to crack the shell he’s built to shield himself from thinking about the morality of what he does. At Panacea, we meet Mr. Em. We find out they are planning to alter Beatty’s concept, using the device to deliver ads to Upthink users rather than jam the device and rescue people who are dreamlinked. They also want Beatty to work for them. Mr. Em reveals he has lots of personal info about Beatty and uses it to threaten him if he says no to the job offer.
Later that evening, while lying catatonic on his mattress, he stared up at the water-stained plaster above his bed as the full impact of what just went down finally hit him. He had no choice at all. He would have to disappear. Mr. Em made it pretty clear he couldn’t say no, but if he stayed he’d be complicit, forced to help them with the project against his will. This intrusive ad tech device wasn’t going to bring the downfall of humanity or anything, but he was sure, down-the-line, the Ranks were going to get hurt badly because of something he started. It made him feel sick. His stomach was a pit of stabbing bile. For the first time in forever he felt himself on the verge of crying.
A calm knock at the door brought him out of his head. It took a moment or so for him to gather words.
“Who is it?” he croaked.
“It’s Mar. Are you decent?”
Beatty gave an affirmative grunt and a sliver of Mar Vel’s face appeared through a crack in the door. He took in the sight of Beatty lying in bed fully clothed.
“Ok, good. I’m not in the mood to be traumatized today”, he said as he slipped in, shutting the door quietly behind him. “You ok?”
Beatty stared at his friend a moment then started rubbing his face in his hands. “I dunno. No, not really.”
Mar Vel stood over him, hands on his hips, dressed in a cherry red tank dress that extended to just above his knees. “I noticed you discarded your new fancy man outfit on the back stairs. Did you strip as you were walking up? Or throw them from the landing after you’d changed?”
Beatty vaguely remembered doing something with his clothes. “Honestly, I don’t remember.”
Mar Vel responded with a sigh. “Damn. Well, we’ll say you took them off as you were walking up. More dramatic.”
Beatty sighed and sat up, noting the stench of sweat coming from the pits of the decaying grey t-shirt he’d hastily chosen to put on.
“So I take it your meeting with the chosen ones went well?” Mar asked.
The room suddenly felt like an oven. Beatty glanced at the window he’d neglected to open and Mar Vel went over to wrestle it open a few inches, just enough to let a cool breeze waft in.
“There. You’re welcome. Now spill it,” he demanded. plopping down on the low mattress beside Beatty while tugging at his hiked up dress to cover more of his legs.
Beatty went through it all: the pain in the ass trip to get there, the plans for his proposal, the job offer, the threats. As he spoke, Mar’s facial expressions went on a dramatic journey from annoyance to shock to stifled rage to amusement.
“Pfft. They’ve got nothing on you. He’s bluffing,” he interjected.
“But they mentioned you and Alora by name.”
Mar shrugged. “I know. He could have gotten that from anyone.”
“Ok, then. They also know my tag?”
This caused Mar Vel to arch an eyebrow. “What? Seriously?”
“He more or less said it was only a matter of time before I get caught, and that the consequences are something I should factor in to my decision to work for them.”
“Wow. That does sound like a threat,” he admitted while staring at the wall a few feet in front of him and tugging nervously at his bottom lip.
“I’m in trouble, Mar,” Beatty said plainly. “I have no other choice but to go dark.”
Mar Vel’s expression turned pained. “That’s unacceptable. You can’t leave.”
Beatty sighed and flopped down on his back again. “Hey, if you’ve got other ideas feel free to run them by me.”
Mar scowled and waved a hand at him. “Chht. Give me a minute to think.”
Less than a minute had passed when Beatty interrupted again.
“You and Alora could come with me?” he floated tentatively. “I mean, what do any of us really have going for us here, right?”
Mar threw him an annoyed glance. “You really think we’re gonna be able to just up and leave on a whim? Head to some new town, hit up the magical job fairy who’ll give us money and a place to stay? It ain’t that easy.”
He wanted to argue that maybe things would be different, better, somewhere else. Maybe there was the equivalent of a magical job fairy, or at least groups of people willing to help them out. How would they know if they didn’t look?
“Let me go talk to someone. There’s a chance I may be able to hook us up if we do need to bail.”
Beatty sat up, stunned and skeptical. “Who? How?”
Mar Vel put up a hand. “Let me reach out first and see. No promises. If it works out, then we’ll go from there.”
Beatty sighed and relented, running a nervous hand through his lank hair. He knew nagging his friend for more info was futile.
Mar invited him to tag along with him to an event at The Crawlspace, but Beatty insisted on staying home to continue berating himself for all the naive ways he’d just destroyed his life. Hindsight had given him more clarity, of course, rattling off all the things he should have done before making the decision to pitch this idea in the first place. He cringed at the fact he hadn’t bothered to contact the developers he’d tracked down first to make sure they were on board with teaming up with a company like Panacea. He should know better—was too stuck in his own head. From the way Mr. Em had put it, they probably received the same kinds of threats he had. The realization that his hubris might have ruined their lives pained him.
Then there were the dreamlinked. Would they really be helped in all this? Beatty somehow doubted it, despite Em’s assurances.
That truth sent his thoughts barreling toward Mila, the actress whose Upthink journey had inspired him. He hadn’t checked her feed in days and was curious now to see if she had posted anything more.
Crawling across his mattress, he waded through the sea of discarded clothing looking for his tab. When it didn’t turn up he began cursing, followed by a moment of panic that hit when he realized he might have left it in the pocket of his pants outside.
He lunged for the bedroom door, doing a double take at the familiar shape perched on his pillow. It was right there the whole time.
Letting go of the knob, he sighed and slumped back down on the bed. He picked the tab up off the pillow next to his head and held it aloft while trying to connect his phone to Humaneyes’ wi-fi. Their signal barely managed to reach their apartment on clear, less humid nights. If he did have to leave quickly, he needed to save all the personal data credits he could right now.
Thankfully the connection worked. He was free to browse without incurring fees. He quickly navigated to Mila’s feed and saw there were three new entries. The oldest one was introducing her audience to her new cat (probably inspired by her recent hallucination). The newest was an shared interview she did for M-Vid about a new project she was working on. The one in between had the title: Thoughts on Dreamlinking.
Bingo. Beatty hit play.
It opened on her sitting next to a white table, elbow casually propped on the edge, head resting in her hand. Her gaze was trained on the person she was talking to, sitting somewhere off to the left of the camera. Her hair was swept up in a dark ponytail and she was dressed in a heather grey hoodie unzipped to below her breastbone. Her face revealed only the lightest hint of makeup and held a calm, unbothered expression. Still, there was a wariness to her—the kind most people tend to feel after a long day. She was talking casually about dreamlinking, what it felt like, how it started and progressed. She had a smile on her face. It felt like whoever was filming was a friend.
He had never found any first person interviews of victims talking about what dreamlinking was like. It was always researchers and journalists summarizing what they’d heard. He was dying to understand what it was like.
“It started with the cat thing. If you don’t know what I mean, I have a video from a month ago. If you need to, go back and watch it. It’ll make more sense. Anyway, so once I understood what was happening, seeing a cat that wasn’t really there, it was almost like...my brain started to crave more? The feeling of it when your in it...it’s a sort of bliss, a kind of happiness I haven’t felt before.
“Like, for another example, I was reading this script last week, a really good one, really unique, the kind of thing I have always wanted to do. And when I was reading it I could picture the scenes in my head...I don’t know if everyone does that but I do. It’s like having my version of the movie playing behind my eyes as I’m reading. Anyway, I’m in love with this script. I end up thinking about it for days, replaying the scenes I created in my head. Then, one afternoon it just hits me. I’m here, at home...thank god...just on the sofa preparing something to post to my feed and suddenly it’s like I’m actually there, living inside this script, but just the best parts, the ones I can’t stop thinking about.
“And not all those scenes in the script were happy ones either, but it doesn’t matter, it still gives me that hit of….it’s almost euphoric really. I’m totally in it, but totally safe too. It’s like...the best daydream you’ve ever had. It makes the regular world seem so...two dimensional, boring. You just want to stay there, you know? I can see why some people get addicted. I don’t think I will. I’m being really careful. But I don’t know. I know everyone says it’s bad but...it’s also kinda awesome? I wish everyone could feel it just once, understand what it’s like. I feel like...like I’m the purest version of myself when I’m in it. I want to be there, be that person, more than anything.”
Her description of her experience left him with a grin on his face. He had to admit she was cute, even if she came off a bit beige and naive.
He wondered if Mila had ever done drugs before. Because what she was describing sounded like the best trip ever. If dreamlinking could just be controlled, harnessed somehow, it could change everything. Being able to escape all this, get lost in the best version of your life for a few hours, but safely. Whomever was able to harness a thing like that could actually change the world.
He delved into those thoughts for a bit,wondering if maybe he had stumbled on the idea of the century. But it only took considering what would happen once you were forced to step out of this cognitive fantasy to disabuse Beatty of his delusions. It reminded him of the other thing Mila said: “You just want to stay there, you know? I can see why some people get addicted.”. Coming down from dreamlinking would be devastating. Controlled or not, you’d always be living to go back. That’s why people fell in and never wanted to leave.
It was crazy they hadn’t incorporated a way to switch the thing off. You’ve got this device wired into your head, rerouting electrical signals and there’s no kill switch.
The blinding oversight took Beatty down another rabbit hole. He wanted to know what exactly Bios’ Upthink marketing materials and contracts were telling people. He read every brochure they’d ever produced, the entire Bios website, watched two Upthink marketing videos, and skimmed probably ten articles about the technology. None of them mentioned dreamlinking or the fact that the implant had no off switch. He tried to find cases of people who had tried to sue Bios for deceptive marketing, but it seemed like anyone who tried kept coming up against the Personal Responsibility Act, or ran out of money to keep fighting.
Processing all the events of the day kept him up late, unable to keep his mind from churning with thoughts that refused to release him. Even with the lights out and his head on his pillow, he remained wrapped in that hypnagogic state between wakefulness and sleep—where images repeat on a loop and you lose control of the train of thought you were following.
His mind conjured up unbidden images, flooding his cortex with anxious delusions. He’d find himself back in the unnerving ghost town of the business district, panicked about getting stuck on the tram because the restraints wouldn’t release him. Then he was wandering the endless maze of Panacea’s hallways and never finding the room he needed. He put himself in Em’s office again, but with the roles switched. He was behind the desk yelling at Em and saying all the things he wished he’d had the guts to say earlier.
He tried to steer his thoughts away from these dark, obsessive corners by imagining himself in that field again, surrounded by the yellow flowers. Alora and Mar Vel were there with him. They were traveling. He could see a road now, off in the distance; the van they were driving was parked on the shoulder. His friends were silent, but smiling. He could feel himself smiling too. They were free from everything, ready to define the next chapter in their lives. All the troubles that had been holding him down had been lifted. None of those dark things mattered now.
It felt so real, so perfect, like transmissions from a parallel universe. If he could somehow just crack a door in his brain and step through he would wake up in this new reality where all his current problems were null and void.
But darker thoughts kept sneaking back in and he was too drowsy to fight. So he let them wash over him, keeping him on edge with his mind half-awake and spinning.
Somehow he finally managed to come close to nodding off. As his thoughts drifted, he managed to find his way back to Mar Vel and Alora. They were walking away from the van, deeper into the sea of blinding color. Just a few more steps and he’d find that door and step through. He was almost there. He was almost free.