Justin sleeps. And dreams.
He is prone to lucid dreams. It’s been a small advantage in his life; nothing compared to the benefits of consistent, mentally focused effort – it’s not work if you enjoy it, and enjoying it is just a change of mindset - but from time to time, it’s helped. Mostly academically. But as his proficiency with the law and negotiation and arguing cases in court grew, some times he would dream lucidly before an upcoming challenge, and end up better prepared for those as a result, too.
And then there are the other times. Also mostly good, when he gets to relive a series of happy memories. They aren’t perfect, aren’t eidetic, but they’re close. Like a low-resolution virtual reality recording of his life, one that he can pause and zoom and study for all the tiny details his conscious mind had filtered out at the time. He usually doesn’t bother, though. He’s too busy enjoying the experience.
This memory is one of his favorites. It’s an after-Services Sunday lunch with the Farmers; Jolie’s chicken and dumplings, steamed nawlins vegetables, hot multi-berry pie with cheese and whipped heavy or ice cream for dessert. Delicious. The weekend after the one he first met Chloe and her friends at the Keystone Escape rooms. Frances’ belated 15th birthday gift ‘from the firm’s senior staff’, i.e. her father and aunt, combined with a ‘team-building’ exercise. Made a good write-off, too.
Except the Walker case had blown up that morning, and everyone else had to cancel and rush back to the office to put out the fires as soon as they heard. Everyone except Frances, who didn’t work there, still in high school, and Justin, who shouldn’t touch it, due to his conflicting interests. So they’d joined up with Chloe’s team, who were missing three people, at her invitation, and had a great time together. Set a fastest solve record for Congressional Conspiracy, the venue’s toughest room.
Even both including, and despite, Frances’ poorly concealed matchmaking.
And now, asleep for the first time since his arrival here, Justin is re-experiencing the Farmer’s regular post-lunch old-school karaoke in the high-ceiling parlor of their Second Empire Victorian home. Jolie, Frances’ mother, at the piano, her hair pulled back in a big poofy afro pony-bun, and Frances in her new primary-color-bead birthday cornrows, whispering in her ear and smirking at him. Big bald TJ, his boss, senior partner, her father, sitting in his recliner with a pilsnerfull of peach Lembec, just the barest hint of sediment curling like smoke in the bottom of the glass.
Throttle, Frances’ weeby-appearing little brother, technically Thomas the Third, in the chair in the corner, reading history, fingerprint smudges on his glasses. The book is Woodard’s The Republic Of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. From the local library. He’s deep into it, even more than he usually is, half a dozen differently colored pastel Post-It bookmarks sticking out of the top. Cousin Belle and her swain, Joseph, on the couch, Sunday best, skirt and suit, behaving decently, but not paying much attention to the rest of the room. The rest of the extended family out back in the yard, or off to do other things.
And Jolie turns, and looks at him, and then turns back to the keys and starts playing.
Justin can see every particle of eyeliner on Frances; trace every tiny blood vessel in her sclera; observe every muscle movement on her face as she grins at him. She knows. She’s in contact with Chloe – the deductions come fast; Chloe has called the office, as he’d heard Frances suggesting when she huddled up with her in the escape room; left her a message, and now they’re phone friends. They’re alike in that, he suspects. Unlike him, they make connections easily and quickly, although Chloe’s much shyer. They’re conspiring.
He doesn’t mind. Chloe is interesting, in ways few people have ever been to him. He can’t always predict her – sometimes, but not always. And she doesn’t just seem to have a moral center; she practically is a moral center. A legacy of her Amish upbringing, in part, but he thinks it’s attributable to her inherent character also. Maybe even moreso.
And, well, she’s adorable. And doesn’t seem to realize it. People’s eyes follow her, unconsciously compelled. She’s not beautiful; but she is cute. She’s not overtly sexy, not glamorous, but she’s charismatic. Like some inversion of Amy Greene’s story about Marilyn Monroe, one where the Chloe Effect turns off the instant she meets the eyes of those watching her. Because she thinks they’re staring at her because she’s weird, a dorky, nerdy, unattractive little Amish exile, and transforms into precisely that the moment she notices their attention.
But she isn’t. She’s more like the female lead in a classic screwball romantic comedy, except much smarter and much less annoying. Interesting.
And now Frances sings I wan-ted to be with-you a-lone at him, just as always, and Throttle, Belle, and Joseph look up, because what? Justin? Too old, and isn’t she dating Orestes? But TJ is joining in, smiling into his fruit beer; so now it’s obvious to them how that’s not it.
And if TJ knows, then the whole office must know, and Justin still doesn’t mind. He gets up and stands next to Jolie, across from Frances, and comes in on the chorus with her, some-thing hap-pens and I’m head-over-heels, staring her down because he’ll be damned if he’ll let a 15-year-old embarrass him with his sudden attraction to a single, unattached young woman of marriageable age.
And then, suddenly, the way dreams can change, it’s later that afternoon, and he’s in the kitchen drying the dishes that Frances is washing. And he carelessly, thoughtlessly starts singing again; Freberging, his father used to call it; filking, he later learned from Chloe and Carla and Derek and their social group:
Dumplings happen and I get ‘em for meals
I always pii-iig ouuut
When I get ‘em for mee-ee-eals
Dumplings happen and I get ‘em for meals
and Frances holds up a hand to make him stop and sings back
Ah-ah don’t take my part
and he jumps in and sings
Don’t take my quart
and they harmonize together
Don’t, don’t, don’t throw them away
and then TJ’s deep, dark bass rumbles from the next room
This is myyy. . .craaazy white boyy, ahh-ahhh. . . .
“Thomas!” they hear Jolie say indignantly from nearby her husband, but she’s laughing underneath that. So are Justin and Frances, and no underneath about it.
And then he’s in the meeting room at Turner, Mitchell, and Wright, years before that, barely starting out at Farmers Law, sitting beside TJ. They’re meeting TMW’s Devon Greene for the first time, and unfortunately not the last.
Devon sneers at Justin’s then new-to-him boss, saying your token cracker doesn’t belong here, and TJ replies, that’s inappropriate, Mr. Greene. And in-dream Justin, unaware Justin, doesn’t expect any more than that, outsider newbie hire as he is; in fact, he wouldn’t say more himself, in TJ’s place. He’d merely call out Greene the way Senior Partner Thomas Farmer Junior had.
But lucid dreaming Justin knows better, and turns his attention to the older man next to him as TJ continues, he’s from New Hampshire, Devon; he’s a generic honky; crackers are from south of the Mason-Dixon Line; don’t you know your damn taxonomy?
And then the dream goes more commonly dreamlike; the two of them, he and TJ, have their elbows on the table, leaning their heads on their palms, facing each other, pointing, laughing, tossing made-up slurs back and forth, words that don’t even exist, none of which happened in real life, while Greene and his client Trevor wobble and judder like hot outraged licorice jelly men across the table from them, joined at their middles like siamese twins, and each new un-word Justin and TJ create diminishes them-him-it somehow, and Obu is above him, holding his shoulder, he’s back on the Right, Taiko and Tzo are on his right, looking concerned, and Justin scuttles backwards on his hands and butt and feet until he hits a wall, and the impact shocks him out of his dream-fugue.
# # #
“Prominence?” Obu asked.
“Wow,” Justin said. “Make a note, whomever; Potion of Prominence may increase likelihood of vivid dreaming. Wow. I haven’t remembered any of that in years.”
Obu gave one of his assistants a look, and the man picked up a scroll from a neat stack nearby, unrolled it, and jotted down a few words.
“Bad one?” Tzo said.
“No; good ones; second family good. Colleague uncle good. But vivid. Uhhh, right – how long was I out?”
“A ninth of an hour, Prominence,” Obu said. “We are close to the end of the Hawk.”
“Plenty of time, then,” Justin said. He slid back towards the others across the smooth, silvered-green Sunwood flooring, picked up his pillow, and lay back down again. “Now, where were we? Hokyukko powers. Taiko – dammit, still stuck there, aren’t we -”
“No; I will teach you, Brother,” Taiko interrupted. “I must. . .I have become – been granted - Inlightenment. I must grow to meet it; to meet my new responsibilities. I must. . .push – no; test the boundaries I set for myself, so long ago.”
“That’s how it gets done,” Justin said, pleased. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard leading Taiko - and Tzo, in light of his display of deducing forbidden knowledge a few minutes past - into less formality with the Dawn after all.
“Then how about you think about what I need to know first and best, while I take a first swing at my – er, phrasing? And Tzo! Why don’t we collaborate – oh bother; Obu, I hate to keep doing this -”
“Prominence – if I may -” Obu said. Justin rolled a hand in a go-on gesture. “It is our job to come, and go, and come again, as needed; we are pleased to do so.” He ducked his head in Tzo’s direction. “As retainers to the Ling Fei, discretion is among our primary duties.”
“Quite so,” Tzo said approvingly. “Captain Ougo himself was recruited for that very reason. And though I do not relish the prospect of the hiring cycle we shall have to undertake soon, the benefits far more than -”
“What if we had your applicants buy something from someone, or several someones, temporarily in my employ?” Justin broke in. He cocked his head at Obu and his assistants, who, mistaking his meaning, rose to exit. “I would be pleased to do so,” Justin added, letting the misunderstanding go without comment.
“That would be a great advantage, Prominence,” Tzo said, dryly. “And I am sure we can come to an agreeable price for your counsel.”
“Good. Then let’s – hmmm, no; you two should work together instead, combining your knowledge, about how to phrase a Minor Wish granting me Hokyukko powers. The right to which I’ve earned, by beating Taisa.
“The focus should be on impermeability; I wisahaahaha no I don’t I never said the word! I, uh, need to lock away some Void materials I brought with me as much as possible from the natural laws of this world, to prevent their, ah. . .normalization. So I can later use that quality of theirs to, to. . .exploit their suitability as magical foci in spellcrafting; spell-casting.”
“Yes, Brother,” Taiko said, simultaneous with Tzo’s lip-curled “As you don’t wish, Prominence.”
“Ha ha, yes, rub it in, the pain is part of life's lessons,” Justin said. “Taiko, you’ll keep a list of anything I might need to check with the Dawn about oaths-and-secrets-wise?”
“Yes, Brother.”
“All right, then, I’m going over there to think in the quiet.” Justin got up, booted the rolled coverlet-pillow into the farthest corner of the room, and followed it over. It had loosened in flight, so he tightened it up again before lying down and linking his fingers over his chest.
His previous Minor Wish – a variation on several he’d had prepared, depending on how the conflict turned out - had been a lot easier. This one was going to take some more serious thought.
He started with the usual. Maybe, buried somewhere deep in Earth’s junkpile of mythology, there was a solar deity who was as liminal as they were luminal, har har. Or, more likely, a few. But Justin had never come across any in his preparatory research. The closest he could think of was the Hindu Agni, whose portfolio included the transfer of votive offerings and messages between mortals and deities, alongside a few other boundary, threshold-related aspects.
But perhaps that’s for the best? Yeah, come to think of it, the less Sol’s grubby little fingers are on this, the better. Okay, then, not so much with the godly enhancement on the Wish. What else?
Music. Barriers? Walls? Stars? Justin let his mind drift, hoping for inspiration. For symbolism. Sooo. . .if he had to pick a single most representative symbol of a box, or a container – no, he thought, of a space; the abstract concept of a bounded area, preventing the normalization of the contents to this cosmos’s laws – so different laws on the inside, and do specify them, Justin! Don't just accept anything random, let alone what some other being might insert - and bigger on the inside than the outside, magically so -
- except I’m not from a magical culture. ‘Masters of technical arts and crafts.’ And any sufficiently advanced technology -
Ohohoho! That’s perfect! And the Monolith’s a lot more Void-ish, a lot more ‘beyond-the-stars’ than it’s locally solar. One could even make a case that in ‘2010’ it thematically begets a sun.
And that gives me a song, too!
What else? Interface. CAD software. KISS; model it on – oh, dammit, push through –
- he forced himself not to think of Chloe at her desk, studying interior design –
- Tinkercad. What next?
Taiko and Tzo’s low-voiced conversation faded from his awareness as he focused his full attention on the task at hand.
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