We
sat at our worktable in the back of the shop (which was,
unsuprisingly, the former kitchen table from my apartment). We
looked at the list. We looked at each other. The phone started
ringing; I shook my head and sent it to voicemail.
Gina
waved a hand at the list. "I'm teaching a class tonight. Lucid
dreaming. Pre-session is at Eight O'Clock, on the nose, at the torch
monument down on Wreck Shore. You've got to attend the pre-session
to attend the sleep-in, unless your name is Clara. Sign-up is fifty
bucks for the sleep-in, or free if your name is Clara. If you're
willing to man the phones, I'm going to start preparing."
"Pre-session?"
"If
I'm going to find all these people and round them up tonight, I'm
going to need to know their names, and I want to try and set up fast
ways to find them – like the hospital bridge I used to find you the
first time. The monument marks the start of a walkway, over to
another torch statue that isn't lit; I'll walk and talk. Gives us a
common experience, which involves moving around, and will be fresh in
all their minds. Best I could think of."
"Okay,
that's... pretty good, actually."
"Man
the phone. I'll see if I can have a few more strokes of genius
before eight."
I
manned the phone.
That
night, Gina and I met with a total of fourteen 'students'. Clara was
one; she was curious what Gina was going to say about dreaming before
lighting up another cone of the incense that had given her the
'wildest night ever, seriously'. I was pretty curious to hear it,
too, honestly, so I tagged along. Ray had begged off on the trip –
he'd agreed to be the night watchman in the waking world for us, and
to 'talk us in' – to get everyone down into sleep. So he wasn't on
the foggy walkway; everyone else was, though.
There
was some general meet-and-greet among the students, but they settled
down when Gina waved them all up and started walking, very slowly.
"We're
going to do shared visualization exercises later tonight. It's to
help you build some of the mental muscles you use when you're lucid
dreaming, and might help us with some other stuff as well. When we
do, we're going to use this walkway as a kind of platform for those
exercises. So, I'd like you to just walk up and down the walkway,
from the big lit torch here to the unlit one at the other end. Try
to get a good feel for the details; the way the railing is held up,
the paving, the monuments, everything. Go on; I'll join you."
And
that's what we did, for a good twenty minutes. Walked around in the
fog, in the dark, up and down that walkway, memorizing details.
Then, Gina called us all back, and made sure everyone had a car, or
someone that could give them a ride to the shop. We jumped in the
jeep ourselves, and shot down to the store in almost record time.
As
everyone else arrived at the shop, I took their money, and Gina
assigned them spots. Two had skipped out between the walkway and the
shop, leaving us an even dozen students. She'd put the shelves in
back, so the shop was basically a big bare room, just a ring of
sixteen Tatami mats and little pillows laying on the blue tile,
around a little pillar. The big front windows had blinds, which we'd
pulled across for the night.
Gina
spent a bit of time talking about mediation, and visualization, while
Clara and I laid on the tea for everyone – chamomile. The 'class',
such as it was, seemed pretty mixed in their attitude. A couple were
clearly wondering why they hadn't bailed between the early bit and
the shop. The others were listening on and off, but most were
wondering, at least a little, when we were going to bring out the
incense, if it was going to work it's magic on them again like it had
before... Nervy. Gina, talking, calmed them down a little.
We
she was done, I brought out the "incense tent", a fancy
version of the 'burn it in a bowl with a cloth over your head and the
bowl'. Fancy bowl, burner, cloth, all very mystical-looking. We
gave each of them a little over half a dose; we wanted them to have
time, but we also wanted to collect them ourselves. Everyone was
offered the opportunity to to put on a headband with a few nested
electrodes in it, in case they wanted a 'sleep record' we could go
over with them later; most accepted.
Ray
talked us down. He had us lay back, pillows under our heads, lights
dimmed, and talked about an endless grassy plain, where a circle of
towers stood, fog around their bases. How each of us had our own
tower in the circle, and they were all connected. How there was lit
torch outside each of our towers, in the fog, and a short stretch of
walkway from that lit torch to the unlit one at the central plaza
between towers. He went on, describing it, and we faded away.
Ray
and Gina hadn't been sure what kind of connections this whole set of
exercises would create; so long as it was some kind of common, useful
link, they had decided, that would do. But the results were
significantly better than any of us would have guessed. Between us,
we actually pulled our pillars into exactly the configuration Ray had
given us. There was no need to come into lucidity in the usual way;
each of us arrived at the doors of our pillars, walking down a copy
of the walkway to a circular courtyard we'd called into being. We
hadn't managed to work up much of a mist, though; it blew away
easily.
Listening
to them realize that we had called up a shared dream, or at least the
appearance of one, had them talking excitedly, slowly growing louder.
Gina shocked them all back into silence by walking to the center of
the courtyard, reaching out with one hand, and grabbing hold of a
rope ladder that hadn't been there until she grabbed it. Everyone's
heads tilted up and back as the ladder spun itself out of the air, up
and up, and Gina's battle zeppelin came into being.
"So,
class. As you may have guessed by this point, there's a little more
to this whole thing than you expected. Come on up, and we'll take a
fly around, look at your pillars. Sorry, I mean, your towers!"
They
scrambled for it, of course.
That
night, Gina talked about pillars; about how they contained memory,
and weren't just things Ray had called up. We visited a few memories
people had, stopping the ship here and there. We also played a few
different recognition-code games, so everyone people would have
statement-and-response patterns for the morning, and could verify
that the night had, in fact, happened.
One
of our students stood out as a bit different right from that first
night. This was Kimble, a fairly small red-headed man. He wasn't
remarkable himself, exactly. The remarkable thing was that
his pillar didn't reach down to the ground; it just stopped in
mid-air, hanging above the torch monument he'd envisioned for
himself. When he noticed that his tower was different, he was
worried; was there something wrong with that? We told him, flat-out,
that we didn't really know. It was a new one on us; we'd have to
explore it a bit, but it didn't really seem like a bad thing.
In
the morning, recognition codes, and intense excitement all over
again. It had really happened! Again, Gina took control of the
room. This had been an introductory lesson. There would be further
sessions in future, as well as more introductory sessions. We'd call
them. She cautioned them against talking about shared dreaming too
much with people who hadn't experienced it, but encouraged them to
send their friends. And then she sent them on their way, smiled,
shook hands.
We
locked the door behind them, and collapsed into the recliners in the
back.
Ray
did have a few words, though - "Did I hear your pitch wrong, or
are you pretty much starting up a mystery cult, Gina?"
"I
was trying to break it all gently, not scare them off, help the avoid
looking crackers. I was", and she sighed, "Yeah. I guess
I did. Not quite what I was aiming for, but yeah."
We
leaned back and reflected on that for a few minutes. At least, I
did. I think Gina did. Ray went to sleep.
