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“All
that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

— Edgar
Allan Poe

-1-

The spaceship was a glistening white,
a human ingenuity, a craft that didn’t need human guidance, a ship among many,
a ship that had the ability to use the air as fuel, and it was gliding
peacefully over everyone, and not a single person looked up to watch it fly,
except Peter Steel, who was daydreaming about being a Dream Chaser.

The spaceship crashed into
Allen Manmoet, and he didn’t even notice, or maybe he did but knew better than
to raise his voice, because that was what happened last week with the other
teacher, that guy raised his voice and now he was in hospital, something about
a punctured neck.

Allen turned around, briefly
looking at the paper spaceship on the floor. He was a small man with a face
only an animal could love. While adjusting his head visor – trying to get the
blue, transparent wall in front of his eyes back online – a fight erupted from
behind.

‘What you do old man?’ the
teenager asked, adjusting his jet-black jacket, making sure the already-up
collar was up. ‘Saw you climbing off that bus in the morning I did, so you
must’ve done something to piss the city off.’

Allen, the teacher for the day,
gave up fixing his visor and turned his attention to the quarrel. ‘Excuse me,’
he said, lifting a hand as if stopping traffic. ‘May I please know what’s going
on back—’

‘Why don’t you shut your
fucking lips,’ the teenager said. A paper spaceship flew over his head, this
one hovering toward the auditorium’s exit where a graveyard of crumpled papers
awaited. The room was divided into two groups. The young ones sat on the left
side; the older ones sat on the right side.

Peter Steel was a month away
from eighteen, five-foot-seven, and just shy from good looking. For some reason
he already had gray hair sprouting from his messy black. His mother, Jackeline
Steel, always joked that it was a sign of great things to come and that girls
secretly found it attractive, said it made them see you as a man with wonderful
potential. Peter turned his head and looked at a girl who sat with the older
people. He didn’t know her name but she was easy on the eyes – blazing red hair
neatly trimmed into a short bob, small shoulders to match her frame, and a face
with soft curves. She had to be around his age, Peter thought. When a person is
around your age, you just instinctively know. He wondered why she never sat with
the younger ones, and she never seemed to mingle with anyone either. He looked
away as she looked at him, and he thought: who can blame her, making friends is
a stupid idea, especially in this part of the city where trusting someone can get
you killed.

The room had an overdose of
perfume hanging in the air; it smelled like a barroom at 3 a.m. about to call
it a night. A group of Asian women wearing blue overalls (with the lettering
TOKYO
CLEANER
at the back) broke out laughing and gave each other a high-five.
They were rambling on about the special day tomorrow, the only day in the year
that their part of the city, Lower City, got a break from work. It also meant
Peter would be able to see his mother, who fell sick the last time he saw her a
year ago tomorrow.

Allen finally got his visor
working. The left side of his face lit up in a blue transparent wall, where
white text went up and down with eye movement. He pointed at the black board
behind and a picture appeared. He readied his throat by coughing. ‘May I please
ask for order? We got a hell of a lot to do, and we only have an hour left, and
if we …’

Peter sighed, a deep and long
one that felt like forever. What was the point of this, he thought. It’s always
the same thing. They try and teach them about the city life and no one listens.
Though, Peter can’t blame the people around him. He’s getting tired of hearing
the same stuff every day as well, teachers telling them how they should clean
the city properly, how they should maintain professionalism in a city that
doesn’t care about them, how they should respect everyone from the Upper City,
because they are the ones funding them with food, homes, and money. Peter
thought about his home, a box with everything you need: a toilet and a
mattress. He laughed inside. But he can’t complain, it’s the way it’s always
been. It’s the Lower City’s duty to maintain all things hands-on, which
included cleaning, running errands, fixing, and serving the Upper City by
working in places like restaurants and washing the washing machines. Peter wouldn’t
mind working in a nice part of the city. He looked at the girl with the red
hair and knew that she had to be working there. With hair like hers, there’s
only one place to get that, and it’s not Lower City.

The teenager with the black
jacket had stopped harassing the old man, who was now sitting quietly doing his
own thing, drawing something that required squinting eyes. Peter was one of the
few who stared at the teacher, who was now talking about the dangers of
trespassing in Upper City. It’s an interesting topic, Peter thought. So many
Lower City people die every day because they try and blend in with the
super-rich. It’s a dangerous game that only got you killed. His father had
played the blending game, and now he’s dead.

Allen pointed at the black
board, and a picture of someone’s home came up. It sure wasn’t one of theirs,
Peter thought. For one, the bathroom was five times bigger than his entire little
shithole. Allen cleared his throat, raised his hand in a stopping gesture, and
waved his fingers around. ‘People,’ he said. No one listened. ‘People,’ he
tried again. ‘People!’ The sea of chatter died instantly. ‘Good, now that I
have your attention.’ He smiled nervously, probably thinking about what had
happened to the previous teacher. ‘Who in here is in Sector Three?’ He tapped
on his visor, the blue wall flickering. ‘Raise your hand please.’

Sector Three, Peter
contemplated. The best one to be in – also the one he was in – and it was all
about cleaning the city’s shit. Peter and the loud Asian women raised their
hands.

The Asian kid with the black
leather jacket (collar erected), the one who’d given the old man verbal vomit,
also known as Ohko, turned his head and stared at Peter, blinking at him. Peter
returned Ohko’s
hello
with a nod. Peter knew what he wanted, and Peter was
going to find out what it really was after this learning session, outside, on
the streets. Peter glanced over Ohko’s head and saw the old man still sitting
there, still drawing.

‘Fantastic,’ Allen said, his
visor’s light stuttering. ‘If this machine of mine just works, we can get back
to cleaning basics.’ He looked up, trying to hold on to a smile. ‘So who can
tell me why it’s important to clean?’

A chubby black kid removed his
ancient headphones – old, big, red machinery that was as big as his head – and
shouted: ‘Becows the big rich too busy wiping ass with money!’ Fresh laughter
exploded and feet stomped. Peter grinned. The only person not laughing was
Okho, who stared at Peter.

-2-

As Peter walked down the dimly
lit creamed-colored tunnel, thinking about how mundane the learning session
was, he could see the outside world of Tokyo, and it was raining. Four
teenagers stood at the end of the tunnel, one smoking a cigar and the other
three electronic cigarettes. Footsteps stampeded from behind and past Peter,
almost knocking him to the side. Lohan, the chubby black kid, glanced and waved
a sorry hand-gesture, one middle finger up. He adjusted his red headphones
before they could fall and then he was out and into the streets of bustling Tokyo.

Rain chattered on a mountain of
trash bags. It was night, and Tokyo’s Lower City residents were marching by in
lines. They all wore black attire, which included holding a black umbrella,
some with leaking holes. Peter peered through the marching drones and at the dozens
of little stalls ahead, which seemed to be crawling with activity. Everyone was
doing his last minute shopping, getting ready for the day tomorrow. You only got
one day to rest in the year, and for most people that meant switching off their
legs.

Peter squeezed through a
retiring line of people and made his way toward a stall. The city’s towering
buildings were all around, glowing a heavy yellow in the rain. The falling rain
couldn’t wash away the stench of Lower City, a constant morning breath, but a
person got used to it.

A nauseating, fishy odor
drifted around the stall. Bill Mohigan was handing over his inventory – seafood
the Upper City didn’t want – for money and anything that could make his life
better. Peter stepped onto something that made his one foot sink into the
ground. It was the stomach of a half-eaten trout. He wiggled his foot around,
trying to throw the innards off, and waved at Bill.

‘My boy!’ he proclaimed, waving
crab legs in the air. Bill had been calling Peter “my boy” ever since his
father had died, which Peter found strange but reasonable to some degree.

‘How you doing, Bill?’ Peter
saw an upgrade to the stall: crushed ice under some of the sea food. He made
his way under the silky roof and brushed water from his arms.

‘Sold more fish than I could
count,’ Bill said. ‘The peeps getting ready to relax tomorrow. You hungry, my
boy?’ Bill was larger than a door, a giant compared to some of the Asian people
in the city. He always had a sweaty forehead, and he always stank of fish.

Peter scanned the fishy mess. ‘You
got anything edible? Don’t feel like cooking.’

Bill laughed as if it were the
funniest joke. He lowered his knees, which took some effort, and popped up with
a box. He slapped the cap open and dug his hand in. ‘Got fresh mussels right
here. Sandak brought them over this morning.’ He winked. ‘Think she’s getting a
thing for me, if you know what I’m saying.’

‘Sure,’ Peter said, thinking
how ugly Ms Sandak is. The first time he saw her he thought “she” was an
elderly man. ‘Got a bag to put them in?’

‘Five steps ahead of you.’ He
ripped a plastic bag from above and threw the mussels inside. ‘They say these
things are good for you, healthy for something. You gotta stay healthy in
today’s life, my boy.’ He pointed at a building that towered into the rainy
clouds. ‘You see those lights in there, those flickering ones.’

Peter glanced. It was an old
corporation building, the letters
Xia Corp
still at the top, a place
where people used to work, something about an office industry. Rain obscured
his vision.

‘Yeah,’ Peter said. ‘It’s a
squatter’s tower.’

‘Wanna know why the police
don’t clear that building out?’ Bill asked, slapping a fish onto the counter. Peter
glanced away from the rain-obscured building and waited for Bill to continue.
‘It’s because they don’t care about Lower City.’

Well that’s nothing new, Peter
thought. He glanced at the tower again and saw windows flickering orange, some of
them had shadows passing through. ‘Say, Bill, I don’t suppose you’ve heard the
latest on Dream Chasing?’

Bill dug his fingers into the
fish’s head and ripped it off. No need for a knife. Purple innards trickled
over the table. ‘I thought I told you to stay away from that stuff.’

Not this again. Bill had given
him a two-hour lecture last time over the dangers of Dream Chasing, had told
him: that’s how the divide between the people started, how the rich got super
rich, and the poor, well, poorer?

Peter gave a reassuring
yeah-I-know smile. ‘I’m just curious, that’s all. It’s not like I’m going to do
it myself.’

A fight broke out not far away.
A beggar had tried stealing a bucket of something, maybe apples, because he was
surrounded in them on the floor. He was now screaming in pain as the people
around him kicked his stomach, telling him they’ll kick him until he pays up. An
elderly woman next to Bill’s stall, who never said much and sold strange metal
trinkets, shook her head at the fight and then started casually packing things
up.

‘Well, if you really need to
know.’ Bill squeezed his hands together, squeezing fish innards out. ‘You know
how you need a good imagination to be a Dream Chaser, right?’

Peter nodded.

‘Well apparently there ain’t
too many of them around these days, you know, people with good imaginations,
strong enough to harvest energy from dreams.’ Bill scooped the fish’s guts with
a blunt knife, and laughed. ‘Shouldn’t really be telling you this, but there’s
something else.’ He studied Peter’s face. ‘But who cares, right?’

Peter’s stomach was starting to
hurt, hunger called. He opened his bag and threw a mussel into his mouth. It
tasted of salt and just salt. ‘What is it?’

Bill leaned in, using his bloody-fish
hand to cover his mouth, and whispered: ‘Upper City people are so rich, they
don’t have time to stimulate their imaginations. Most of them don’t do anything
creative. Bastards are what they are, taking everything for granted.’

Peter felt like spitting the
mussel out, but he knew it was his dinner for the night. ‘Why you whispering me
that? Not much of a—’

‘You know how the police are.
They hear us Lower City people talking bad about them and—’ he made a shooting
gesture with his hand ‘—before you know it, you’re gone.’

Peter glanced at the beggar on
the floor, who was now alone and bleeding badly. Peter looked back at Bill. ‘Is
that all you know?’

He scooped the blood off the
table with his hand. ‘There is one more thing, but I don’t know if I should
tell you.’ His expression turned serious. ‘And it’s not that important – to us,
anyway.’

‘Wait …’ Peter’s voice trailed
into silence. He had a good idea what Bill wanted to say, and the thought of it
made him feel all hot inside. ‘Are you trying to say what I think you’re trying
to say?’

The elderly woman looked at
them, her wrinkled forehead a dim glow amid the raindrops, and she went back to
packing her trinkets away into a trash bag.

‘You’re starting to annoy me,
my boy. All this—’ Bill snapped another fish apart, head falling. He was
starting to get annoyed, and Peter could see it. Maybe he shouldn’t press him
like this. Bill pressed his thumb into the fish’s eye. Murky water spouted. ‘You
know what the Upper City’s like. And you know how many of us poor people die
every day because they try and head over there and Dream Chase themselves.’

It was only happenstance that
Peter looked behind when the girl with the red hair came walking out of the
learning center. He could see her red hair in a sea of black hats and coats. He
could also see the rain falling around her. It was raining hard tonight,
droplets landing on umbrellas and bouncing off them in a gray splash. She
looked around her as if looking for someone, and then she was swallowed by
passers-by.

‘You still in this city?’ Bill
waved his hand, also waving guts. ‘Hey, my boy, you there?’

Peter turned his neck around.
‘Sure.’ An awful, salty liquid swirled in his mouth. No more mussels for now,
he thought. ‘Just tell me what you know, Bill. I’m just curious, that’s all.
Nothing more.’

‘
Fuckin
leave me!’ the
beggar hollered. Peter looked and saw him being dragged by a group of young
boys. They were going to kill him, he thought. They were going to take him
somewhere and do bad stuff to him. The beggar yelled again but this time got
his face kicked in. And then he disappeared, dragged behind a large stall.

‘You want any more fish?’ Bill
asked, holding up dangling guts. ‘Just put it over a fire, maybe a pot of hot
water.’ He wiped fish juice over his eyes, and sighed. ‘God, don’t I take care
of you?’

‘Yeah, you do,’ Peter said,
thinking that it was true. Mr Bill here was the only good friend he had,
someone whom he could trust. That didn’t mean he didn’t have any other friends
– acquaintances. There were one or two he hung out with. One of them—

‘My good a friend,’ Ohko said,
his hand landing like a claw on Peter’s shoulder. ‘I’ve been looking all over
Tokyo’s streets.’

The hand should have startled
Peter, but it didn’t. He looked away from the table, where fish guts lay in
solid clumps, and at his friend Ohko, who was masturbating his collar up and
making sure it was straight. ‘What’re you doing here? Thought you hated—’

‘Fucking hate fish, yeah.’ Ohko
gave Bill a smirk, his eyes flat and lips rolled into his mouth, and returned
his focus to Peter. ‘You and I need a talk.’

The rain falling on the stalls’
silky roofs, some of them tattered and dripping water onto merchandise, were
starting to sound like a platoon marching to battle. The elderly woman next to
Bill’s stall had finished packing up all her strange artifacts into trash bags
and was now looking at them behind shadow and rain, leaning against a metal
pole. Smoke rushed from her mouth, and she inhaled another cig.

When Peter looked at Bill, he
saw the mistrust he had for Ohko, as clear as day from night. Peter raised his bag
of mussels. ‘Guess I’m going to shoot off, Bill.’ He felt the need to ask him
one more question before he went, and it wasn’t going to be about the Dream
Chasing, because if Bill knew something about it, Ohko was going to know. ‘What’re
you doing on your day off tomorrow?’

‘I’m going to do what everyone
does, my boy, sleep and sleep some more.’ Bill scooped his blunt knife from the
table – fish liquid dripping – and pointed it at them, maybe a little more
toward Ohko. ‘Now you boys stay out of trouble, you hear me?’

‘Of
cauuuse
, Bill,’ Ohko
said, turning up his Asian accent in a mocking manner. ‘We the good ones,
remember?’

‘Maybe not my Peter here,’ Bill
wiped his forehead, smearing purple blood, ‘but I’ve seen you, Ohko, hanging
with the wrong people. Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.’

There was no need to be this
protective, Peter thought. He loved Bill, in a father slash friend way, but no
need for this. Always telling him to keep his head low around the city, telling
him that there are bad people, vultures that wouldn’t think twice about nipping
away that which aren’t theirs.

‘I’m taking your son to coffee
date, Mr Bill.’

Peter punched him in the
shoulder. ‘C’mon, that ain’t nice.’

Ohko had a baby’s face,
something he said balanced his inner-demons nicely. Whenever Ohko talked, you’d
think he was squinting, but it was just the way he stared. He had a strong,
healthy body structure: a slim waist, carved stomach, taller than the average
Asian, and his hair a deep black and always slicked back. He stood under the
stall’s roof, the bit where it leaked the most. Rainfall fell on his leather
jacket and trickled down. He gave Bill a salute and said he was sorry. And then
he stared at Peter. ‘I’m serious about the coffee date, you ready to go?’

Peter contemplated going. His
plan for tonight was for him to go home, eat his mussels, and carry on with a
painting that he’d begun a few weeks ago. There was nothing better than
painting – even if it was on the ground – while listening to the rain tapping
on his shitty house roof. He looked at Bill, who was probably hoping he’d go
home and call it a day.

‘Sure,’ Peter said. And then to
make Bill happy: ‘But I can’t stay out too long, got things I need to do.’

Ohko’s grin grew wide,
revealing more teeth than tongue. ‘You turning in a Bill here!’ He slapped
Peter on the back. ‘Let’s go.’

BOOK: Dream Chasers (Dystopian Scifi Series Book 1)

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