Translucent (20 page)

Karena didn’t have any way to express her shock except for through her own thoughts. How could this be? What was going on now? Karena was scarcely able to try and come up with a rational explanation for this at the moment, however, because she was too busy being shocked at the fact that
she had just become a bundle of cords!
What on earth was the Sandman doing to her now?
What was he even hoping to accomplish through this?

With much difficulty, she was able to manipulate her new appendages to the degree that she could stand up, if it could even be called standing. It was more like she was still in the same shape, but somewhat more off the ground, wobb
ling around like a piece of gel or some rubbery substance.

Suddenly, Karena heard something at the end of the hallway, which was very far away. Looking in one direction, she couldn’t even see an end to it, and looking in the other direction she was able to just see a door very far away. It was this door opening that was the sound sh
e’d heard, and she could see two
t
iny figures walking towards her from the distance.

They covered the distance surprisingly quickly, and in no time at all Karena was able to see that they weren’
t
bundle
s
of cords and wires like her.
She couldn’t exactly determine what they were, but as they got closer she could see that they appeared to be somewhat small and very stretchy.
The
way they moved
around was by stretching their body to the point where Karena was sure they would break before using the elasticity to bring their whole body forward again, and then repeating the process all over. They did this remarkably fast, so that within a minute Karena found that they were perched right in front of her.
They had no faces, no real features either. They were merely fleshy, tan-ish blobs.

For a moment, Karena wondered if she would even be able to talk without a mouth. But she figured she’d give it a try anyway, thinking that this new body would automatically allow her to communicate in whatever way it communicated, hopefully.
Of course, standing hadn’t come naturally to her, and so there was no guarantee that this would either.

“Who are you?” Karena asked. The question did not come out of her mouth, and she could not really tell where it was coming from, or even if it was making an audible sound. She just knew that that was what she’d said. Hopefully the blobs, if they were even sentient, would understand her.

“What should we do?” asked one blob to the other. It appeared to speak by creating strange shimmers across its body that rippled around in a most fascinating manner. Karena could understand it, fortunately, which meant that she must b
e communicating in a similar fashion
. This also confirmed that the creature was, indeed, sentient. However, it had made no sign that it had
actually
understood her.

“Deactivate it,” said the creature. “It can’t hel
p u
s anymore, and it has served its
time.”

“Hello?” Karena asked. “Can either of you even understand me? I asked who you were, and I also want to know where I am.”

“You’ll remember soon enough,” said one of the creatures. “It usually takes about a half hour or so to fully recover your memory.”

“What are you talking about!?” Karena practically screamed. She could scream, she found, by creating greater oscillations in her wires when she spoke, and this seemed to have the same effect that screaming would on a normal person.

“Should we briefly explain?” one of them asked the other. “As we are about to deactivate it?”

“I’ve got to go, actually,” said the other creature, and Karena could
tell it was somewhat annoyed. “I have a meeting to attend.
And unfortunately my physical presence is required.
”

“I’ll explain, then,
I suppose,
” said the other creature. “And then it will be disengaged.”

“Explanation is not a part of standard protocol.”

“Well, I have no current obligations, and so there is no logical reason why I shouldn’t.”

The second creature did not quarrel
further and instead backed away, flinging itself
towards the end of the hallway
that it had not come from.

“All right, please explain this to me,” Karena said. “I want answers, and I want them now. I’ve waited a
very
long time for this.”
She had a feeling that right here, right now, everything was finally going to be explained to her. She somehow knew that these creatures were not copies of the Sandman, and that this one was going to tell her who the Sandman really was. Who Shawn really was.

“Not as long as some others,” said the creature.

“What do you mean?”

“Just let me explain.
You were in a dream. That’s the first thing you need to know.”

“What do you mean, a dream?”

“Everything that has ever happened to you that you currently remember was part of a dream.
”

Karena wanted to laugh, but found that this body had no way of doing so. A dream? That was ridiculous. But if it was true, then it meant that phyco
logist had been right all along, something she found quite amusing, considering the fact that she’d dismissed his dream theory a long time ago.

“At first you were in a dream in a dream in a dream in a dream,” the creature continued. “And then you were in a dream in a dream in a dream. And then you were in a dream in a dream. And then you were in a dream. And now you are in reality.”

“What!?” Karena asked. That had to be the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. This was reality? “But that doesn’t explain the Sandman and the hourglass and…”

“Yes, I know. I will explain if you will show some patience. Your ancient human side is showing from being in the body of one of them for so long.
Don’t worry, that will wear off soon. Though of course, you’ll be deactivated soon, so it doesn’t really matter.
Now, these dreams are able to be manipulated. The dreams were created using vortex technology, which allows us to conjure our own dreams that we can then implement into one’s mind.”

“Vortex technology? What are you ranting about? Please just explain to me what is…”

“I am, if you will show some patience please.
” The creature was clearly annoyed with Karena’s
‘
ancient human
’
tendencies.
“
The vortex is
a
substance that controls the subconscious of an entity’s mind and allows them to dream. It is in everyone’s mind at once, unless you are able to harness its power and take it out of your mi
nd, as has been done with me, naturally.
”

“What does any of this have to do with me?”

“I will explain, if you will show some patience-”

“I’m sick of showing patience. I’ve had enough patience in my lives. Just explain what is going on.”

The creature refrained from asking her to show patience again and instead went on.
“You were put inside of this dream for a very specific reason. Those who do wrong cannot go unpunished, and thus they are put into a manipulated dream until they are ready to come out. Usually this takes around 20 to 30 lifetimes. You, however, served a quite short sentence. Your anxiety levels reached the required point quicker than a normal person’s and thus you were able to be taken out sooner.”

“Hold on,” Karena said. “Are you trying to insinuate that I’m in here because of something
I
did?”

“Yes, that is why you are here.”

“And I got out early?”

“Remarkably early.”

Karena was shocked.
All that was being done to her
, all that had been tormenting her this whole time, she’d brought it upon herself? How could that be? All this time, all her lives, she’d been serving some sort of punishment? What could she have done that would lead to that? Never would she have guessed that that could be the case.
The information was too hard for her to believe. She needed evidence, proof. But if what the blob had said was true, then she would be regaining her true memory again shortly.
And if it was,
then there was one thing she had to know. W
ho was the Sandman?

“Who did this to me?”

“Do you mean who was the one put in charge of your sentence?”

“Yes, whatever. I need to see him. I need to finally see the real Sandman with my own eyes.”

“Unfortunately for you that is not protocol.”

“I don’t care about protocol.”

“Well the rest of us do. I may have gone against protocol in explaining this to you, and that is enough protocol deviation for one period. You are now going to be deactivated.”

Karena looked down at herself once more. She realized that the creature had used the word deactivated rather than simply saying killed because she must be a machine of some type. She had a hard time believing this, but that was where all the evidence pointed.

All of a sudden, t
he blob began to expand its body so that it became unusually large, and so that it was stretching out flatter than a pancake. It rose into the air, swaying back and forth, and when it spoke its ripples travelled along its whole body, which was now at least eight meters high. “I cannot deviate,” was all it sai
d, and it began to move forward, turning its body into multiple limbs, all extending towards her.
Karena shut off her optical transmitters, waiting for death.

“You have permission to deviate from pr
otocol once more,” said a voice
suddenly.
Karena detected it coming from behind her, and found that there was another, identical creature coming down the hallway. “I will take it from here. I believe the console has another assignment for you.”

“Yes,” said the first creature,
shrinking back down to its normal size exceedingly quickly. I
t
then
went back down the hallway the way it had come.

Karena turned aroun
d to look at the other creature, wanting to breathe a sigh of relief that she was alive for a moment longer at least. She still had questions.
“Who are you?” she asked.

“Well,” said the creature. “The name you know me by is ‘The Sandman.’”

Karena stared, un
able to believe that the strange blob sitting before her was actually the person who’d been tormenting her for all those years. This was the man who’d held up the hourglass all those times, and who’d made her start over all those times.
This was the man who had haunted her worst nightmares for so long, right here in the flesh.
Karena wanted to do something to him; she wanted to lunge forward and strangle him and make him pay for what he did. But she was a bundle of cords.

“Before you do anything, allow me to explain,” said the Sandman. “You may think that you had a terrible experience in your manipulated dreams. But first of all, you should know that you brought this upon yourself, and you will remember this soon. Second of all, you should know that you had it very easy. I heard that worker who just left telling you about how most people have to go through 20 to 30 lifetimes before they are able to go free. Think about that for a minute.”

“I don
’t care,” Karena said furiously.
“What you did to me was still wrong.”

“What I did to you was right. Listen. Normally, you would have had to stay in the cycle for 20-30 lifetimes. But I was the one controlling you, and I was the one who thought that it was wrong to keep you in there for so long. That was why I said I could help you, because I was the one who sped up the process and ensured that you could get out of there quicker.”

Karena refused to believe what the Sandman was
saying, appalled that he was trying to defend himself and saying that what he had done
to her
was somehow magnanimous.
This was the man who had chased her in the night,
who had caused her all her suffering.
This was Shawn, who had betrayed her so deeply that it still hurt.
There was no way this creature could have been taking pity on her in
doing that. It just felt wrong in every way.

“What cycle?” Karena decided to ask out of the millions of questions swirling in her mind. “You said you sped up the cycle. What exactly was the outcome you were looking for?”

“It wasn’t the outcome I was looking
for;
it was the outcome this
group was looking for. And that outcome is anxiety. They wanted to create the feeling of anxiety in you, as strong as possible, and they felt that the only way to do that was to keep repeating one’s life over and over again for absurdly long amounts of time. But I was the one who wanted to prove them wrong. So I decided that instead of prolonging your anxiety, I would try to put it all into you in a big rush, in just four lifetimes, something the others said would never work. But I did it. By the end of your fourth life I had created the correct amount of anxiety levels for you to be released early from your sentence.”

“So you didn’t help me at all!” Karena cried, triumphant that she had discovered that the Sandman actually hadn’t helped her. “You still created anxiety in me, which was exactly what they wanted you to do!
And now I’m going to be killed sooner!
”

“Yes, but you have to understand something. If they had been in charge of your sentence, who knows when you might have gotten out? The anxiety levels required for your sentence were far greater than any other’s sentence. The way I did it, the anxiety levels could have been reached for a normal prisoner in just 2 lifetimes. You had to do double. That was why it was so unbearable for you. But nonetheless I helped you by getting you out sooner.”

“Wait, why did I have to serve twice as much anxiety as other people?”

“Because of what you did.”

Karena’s heart rate picked up, or at least the equivalent of her heart ra
te picking up happened
. She wasn’t even sure if this body had a heart. But she was sure that whatever it was she had done, she would be shocked by it.
Something that was so awful that she would have to serve double the regular sentence of a standard criminal wasn’t anything she could
begin to
imagine.
“What did I do?” she asked, and brace herself for the response.

The Sandman paused. He sat there on the floor, his small, blobby body hardly moving at all. And then, he made his reply.

“You were charged with assassination,” he said. “Assassination of the mo
st important figure in the
universe
. And
that was why you were going to be killed directly after your sentence was up. You wouldn’t even have a chance to remember what you did. But since I’m in charge of you, I have the power to tell you what happened.”

Assassination!? Karena couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had assassinated someone? And not just any old someone, but rather
the most important figure in this
world?
Just moments ago it seemed she’d been in that large, open area, surrounded by Sandmen, about to be killed. And now that she had the truth she found it utterly impossible to wrap her head around. There was absolutely no way this could be true, and there was a long silence as she tried to think of what this could possibly mean. About why she would possibly do such a thing.

“Why are you helping me?” Karena was barely able to ask this over her shock.

“Because I don’t think you did it,” the Sandman said.

“What?”

“I don’t think you’re the one who assassinated the most important figure.”