Doomsday Warrior 18 - American Dream Machine (7 page)

Once they finished the vast repast, business began: the business of accepting an unwanted, if interesting, gift. Rock was told he was free to examine the “Dream Machine” any time he wanted.

“How about now?” Rockson was more curious than a cat.

Zydeco and the chief surgeon walked over to the south side of the cavern, which was the point farthest from the entrance. A rectangular object lay on the rock-tiles there. It was waist high and about seven feet long by three feet wide. It was covered by a tarpaulin. “My invention,” Escadrille said, proudly.

Zydeco pulled the cover off and Rockson and Archer got a look-see. The device that had prompted the long, grueling ride across the wastelands looked very much, Rockson thought, like a so-called iron lung of the bad old twentieth century—a leftover of the awful polio epidemic days. In short, it was a little scary looking. Rockson had seen some cryogenic tanks in Century City’s science labs that had a not dissimilar appearance as well. The tanks were used to freeze-dry live animal and plant lab specimens for later awakening and study.

The surgeon described the principles of the dream machine thusly: “The body in question lies down in the device, and then the electromechanical servo-systems slow that body’s functions all down. The low rate of pulse and nutrient feeding necessary to maintain a body in stasis—alive and well, in perfect balance—is maintained automatically. Attachments to the brain are effected, tiny connectors that keep the brain on a normal level of alertness. But all stimuli come not from the outside, but from programmed-in experience modules. Understand?”

“A bit,” Rock said, while Archer just looked blank.

The surgeon frowned, and opened the full-length lid of the device. Inside was like the inside of a coffin, nice and comfy and silken. Rock had no desire to lie in there.

As if reading Rockson’s thoughts, Zydeco said, “It is best to demonstrate the device. Why don’t you get inside, Rock, and take it for a spin? Have a nice dream—for just a short period.”

Rockson must have looked dubious, for the surgeon added, “It is perfectly safe, let me assure you. Don’t diss me, stranger.”

“I’m
sure
it is safe,” Rock said, “but how do you set it? What kind of dream will it be set on? How long will I be in there? I want to make the trip as short as possible.”

“Ah, good questions,” the surgeon said, smiling. He pointed out a mass of dials and lights on the side of the box. “As for how the device is set: these controls are microchip circuits. We improvised many circuits out of old missile guidance systems, and added some new things. You can look at the blueprints later. As for your second question, you will have a very pleasant dream, as the device is set to plumb your own mind for imagery and dream-personnel. It will probably be a rather—er—sensual dream—if you wish. Of course, we can also create dreams for you from scratch. We have a list of generic off-the-shelf dreams. You know: playboy, soldier in victorious action, all that sort of stuff.

“The dream will seem to take an hour, but you will only be inside the device for five minutes. Hardly a waste of your precious time!” The surgeon glared at Rockson. “You’re not dissing me, are you? You like the present, don’t you?”

He hoped he wouldn’t have to put up with this “diss” stuff much longer! Rockson nodded, mumbling, “Love it. Can’t wait to haul it home!” But he thought other, less happy thoughts. He didn’t like having gifts crammed down his throat.

“Me try nice dream too?” Archer asked. “Make me dream of women. Very long, very nice dream!”

Zydeco frowned. “Sorry, Archer. We don’t have a box big enough for you—yet. We’ll work on it,” Zydeco laughed. “Now, how about it, Rockson?”

He was a little wary, so Rock whispered to Archer, “If anything seems wrong, get me outta there.” Then Rockson got into the “coffin” and the lid closed over him with an ominous hiss. Zydeco leaned over the face plate and told Rock, “We’ll set it on a five-minute ride, pleasure sequence.”

Rock nodded and closed his eyes, though he wasn’t sure that was necessary. Small suction cups on the ends of copper wires crawled out of the sides of the device and attached to his forehead with a mild thump.

“Bon voyage, Rockson,” the chief surgeon smiled through the suddenly foggy face plate.

Rockson found himself suddenly spinning around, as if going underwater, or into a dream. He was soon seeing a different place entirely than the Techno-survivor’s cavern. He was lying in a magnificent bed, inside a palatial apartment in old New York City. The bed was next to a floor-to-ceiling window. Below him, glittering with starlike lamp lights, was a darkened Central Park.

And suddenly he didn’t know that he was dreaming. He was aware that he had awakened
from
a dream, however. Something of an odd dream about a cave . . . but that dream faded away rapidly. He was Niles Rockson, famous playboy, and this was his apartment. And he was not alone in the silken sheets of his luxurious, heart-shaped bed!

He was lying next to a beautiful woman. Her name was Kimetta, and she was the beautiful, strawberry blond daughter of a delegate to the United Nations. Rockson had wined and dined the lusty beauty the night before. And now she moaned, turned over, and wrapped her arms around him. Kimetta wanted to make love again, and he was more than ready.

As Rock dreamed on, there was a sudden commotion in the cavern. Rays of blue fire shot out from several guardposts near the cavern entrance. Fire returned
fivefold
by the attacking forces of Soviet irregulars! Archer raced to the table where he had left his shotgun, and raised it, intending to go and help out the guards, who had raised a general alarm. Then he hesitated, and instead ran back to the box wherein his friend lay sleeping. Zydeco and the surgeon had rushed away. And Archer didn’t know what to do. He was supposed to rouse Rockson if something bad happened. But
how
did you get the box open?

He looked for a hinge or a knob and found none. Blue rays that seemed to melt walls of granite and flesh just as easily flashed overhead. And bullets flew also. The screams increased in intensity, mad high-pitched screams of Techno-survivors being hit by the intense fire. The defenders were losing, dying like flies.

As Archer fumbled with the coffinlike container, trying to get Rockson out, the Soviets came into his immediate area. Hundreds of grim-faced commandos poured from every direction, several training their guns upon Archer. He dropped the insignificant shotgun. He had to surrender, for he feared wild shots would hit the dream machine! He raised his hands.

Then the Sov’s rotund, filthy-uniformed commander, General Mikael Zhabnov, stepped forward. Zhabnov! One of Archer’s old enemies. Archer, unable to contain himself, lunged at him, but was hit instantly with a blue ray. It didn’t kill him, it was just a low energy stun blast. After the mountain man toppled, the general approached, turned over Archer’s inert form with a big boot, and smiled. “I know this man!”

The general couldn’t have been more pleased. His men had been on a slave-hunting expedition when they had found the interesting cavern. The devices in here looked
very
interesting. The little people must be very smart. Zhabnov’s renegades could use some very smart slaves. After all, Zhabnov had a fortress to build, a world to win. That’s why he had instructed his troops, once the upper hand was achieved, to reduce the level of charge in their ray weapons, to stun rather than kill. They needed slaves for labor. This wretched-smelling mountain man would be a very strong slave! And he would be treated very badly, for Zhabnov hated the man. Nearly as much as he hated Archer’s famous boss—the Doomsday Warrior. He looked around, nervous that another of the famed Freefighters might be lying in hiding nearby.

He saw a box that looked like a coffin, only made of metal. “See what that is,” he told one of his lieutenants, Zimski. Zimski ran over and peered down into a small window on the box. “A body inside,” he said. “Guy is blue—and not breathing.”

“Well, then he won’t bother us. Come back here and start supervising the rounding up of new slaves. Tie them all up well before they awaken. Be especially careful not to bruise the pretty little women!” Zhabnov’s jowls twitched in pleasure as he added, “Tie this giant up, too, before he awakes and kills some of you.” Then the puffy-lipped general strode triumphantly to a high platform. He stepped over the inert forms of severed red tunic-clad elves lying on the stairs as he ascended to the top of the platform. He faced forward, jaw jutting out like Mussolini’s, and announced to the few Techno-survivors left standing disarmed before his troops, “This place is now the property of the New Soviet World State.” (This was the general’s rather vainglorious misnomer for his tiny separatist movement.) “Where is Rockson? Where are the other Freefighters? The giant known as Archer cannot be alone here! Speak up and you shall be rewarded.”

No one answered. Zhabnov rubbed his bushy black eyebrows, a habit he had developed that signified he was about to have a brilliant thought. As a matter of fact, he seemed to have a light bulb burst in his mind. Rockson . . . he was
always
with Archer . . .

The Coffin!
Who
was in the coffin? Had he interrupted some sort of funeral? Was the blue-faced man in the box his nemesis, Rockson?

Seven

Z
habnov ran down off the platform and brushed past the startled first rank of renegade officers toward the coffin. He bent his flabby body over the face plate and tried to make out the face he saw inside it. And he gasped aloud. “It
is
Rockson! I knew that the giant mountain man’s presence indicated that his leader, Rockson, had to be nearby. But he’s dead! Remarkable! And sad . . .” Zhabnov stood up and seemed about to shed a tear. “I had
so
hoped to find and torture Rockson! So sad that he is dead!” His officers stood uneasily, awaiting orders.

“But . . . what a strange coffin . . .” Zhabnov felt along the lid. It was cold, colder by far than the cavern itself. And all those wires, all that electrical cabling feeding into the coffin. Could it be that it was some kind of suspended-animation chamber? Could it be that his luck was great this day? Could it be that Rockson was
not
dead? Zhabnov swung around and looked at the small band of little men and women that had been rounded up. “Who knows about this box? Who is a physician among these little shits?”

The older elf in the white lab-smock seemed to shuffle a bit on his little red slippers, and Zhabnov smiled. “Ah, yes,
you!
Come over here! What is this box?”

Lieutenant Zimski pushed the little fellow forward until he was almost touching Zhabnov’s distended stomach. Zhabnov grabbed the man up by his lapels and hoisted him in the air. The physician was feather light. “OK, doctor, spill!”

Twisting the surgeon’s arm, Zhabnov shortly made him reveal the true nature of the device that held the sleeping Doomsday Warrior. And General Zhabnov was fascinated—and pleased. “So,” Zhabnov said, wiping his pudgy fingers over his four o’clock shadow. “So the box is a dream machine? How truly remarkable.”

“What shall we do with this little doctor?” Zimski asked. “Shall we take him out to the truck with the other slaves, or shoot him right here?”

“No! Don’t kill him. I need him to operate this device. A dream machine can become a nightmare machine, I think, with a little rewiring!”

“I won’t do it,” the little, white-smocked man protested. But after Zhabnov’s torture experts applied a device called the “compressor” to the little doctor’s head, he was very willing to cooperate.

The reprogramming of the dream machine began.

Niles Rockson, millionaire man about town, playboy sought after by all the loveliest women in the world, had just finished making love to the sensual, oh-so-desirable Kimetta. Now, as she brushed away at her long, silken, strawberry blond hair at the Louis XIV dressing table mirror, Rockson sat up in his silk bedsheets and stretched. He saw that dawn was breaking over the park. All the little people, those without any
real
money, were hurrying around to go to their dull little jobs. They were living dull little lives. But not Rockson. No, his life of enjoyment and luxury went on and on, without any such thing as that ugly word
work
to interfere with his pleasures!

Rockson leaned over and extracted the bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne from its crystal decanter next to the bed. He poured himself another sparkling glass of the bubbly, sipped it slowly. There was a full breakfast, which his butler James had deposited right on the table next to the heart-shaped bed, once Kimetta had slipped into her brocaded dressing gown. Now Rockson put down the champagne and put the silver spoon against the shell of one of the two-minute poached eggs. It was done just perfectly, as always, and so was the toast under the silver lid, still warm and with all the ugly crust cut off of it! And the marmalade! Superb!

When you were rich, young, and handsome, and lucky as well, life just got better and better, didn’t it?

Kimetta came over to the bed. She sat there, her knees tucked under her. She took the silver spoon from his hand and said, “I’ll feed you, darling.” He lay back with his hands under his head on the satin pillows as she spoon fed him the poached eggs.

“You are the best lover, darling, absolutely the best,” she cooed.

“So they
all
say,” Rockson replied, in a jaded, I-couldn’t-care-less way. He reached over and flicked on the multi-speaker stereo system, and sultry tropical rhythms coursed through the palatial bedroom suite.

After listening to the music a bit—music always turned on Kimetta—she put the breakfast aside, stood up, threw back her long locks and toyed with the ribbon-tie of her gown. “Can we make love again?” she pleaded.

Rockson nodded.

She sighed and slid out of the handmade silk and then came to him again. Naked she slipped under the sheets. Kimetta ran her long, cool fingers through his black-with-a-streak-of-white hair and kissed him furiously. He drew her to him. His shoulder, his neck, his cheek were covered with hot kisses.