Raitch’s hands gripped the well-worn handles of the rickety cart that grew heavier with each new body. It lurched forward, the lone wheel creaking along the way while he sauntered forth in the darkened hallway following close behind his partner, Jout. Since taking the job, the only available one allowing him the luxury of not becoming a dreamer himself, he’d grown accustomed to the stench of rotting corpses festering in the stale air of the tunnels.
“Stop falling behind,” Jout growled at Raitch. Compared to the hunched over, diminutive Raitch, Jout was strong and authoritative. “We’ve got ten more reported drifters to check on today.”
“Sorry.” Raitch hefted the cart back up and tried not to grumble.
Jout stopped at a heavy wooden door, pounding his gnarled fist against it in an unsteady rhythm that gave him pause for the briefest of moments; one, pause, two, three. He was a pro, able to compose himself in a hurry, but Raitch saw the recognition that washed across his decaying face in that moment; he’d come dangerously close to banging out a rhythm, a sign from his past life. A past life he’d only mentioned in passing to Raitch, where he was a musician. A drummer at that. He’d scoffed at how foolish he was, and how being an artist was always a path to the tomb. The only artists who didn’t turn into dreamers were the ones that made someone else money. After a pause, the door creaked open, a sadder wretch than either Jout or Raich answering the door, cables leading from the panel in the wall into his head that kept him tethered to the room. Raitch scratched at his naked, flabby stomach waiting for the wretch to say something, feeling that rush that he could still save this one. He picked the cart back up and turned to the eager Jout, with his club at the ready.
“He seems fine,” Raitch said. “Let’s keep going.”
“Fine.” Jout’s desire to keep the bosses happy proved to be his lone, driving force. The only way to keep their bosses happy was to meet quota, clear out the rooms, and make way for more dreamers. Dreamers who hadn’t been wrung dry. He hung his club on the cart and snarled at the wretched. Raitch felt like he needed to be a counterbalance to Jout’s nihilism by showing compassion, no matter how frustrated it made Jout. “We’ll be back for this one later.”
The wretch nodded, his sunken eyes wild and roaming, not used to the dim light from the grand hallways built by the visionaries just a decade before, although it had taken on a much different appearance with continued use. The tech that buzzed inside of the wretch’s room betrayed how primitive the great hall was in comparison. While the hall was cold, carved concrete, the chambers were lined with astounding tech for what equated to a soul-sucking prison cell for failed artists. Without a word, the wretch shut the door and through the small notch in the top Raitch saw light from the monitors pouring through, along with the telltale sounds of the wretch moaning at the machines sapping away at him.
A body in the cart made a soft groan just as Raitch shifted to move it forward, a hand emerging from the lifeless pile of gray bodies they’d accumulated that morning, forcing Raitch to drop it and pull a rough wooden club from the side of the cart. The dim lights flickered above, providing an even more gruesome pall to the contents of the cart, while Jout was already forging ahead, stopping and sighing.
“What now? I thought I told you to keep up,” he said.
“I think one of ‘em is still alive,” Raitch said.
“Give me that.” Jout snatched the club from his hand and flattened Raitch against the cold concrete wall with a firm grip. With his usual trained precision, he raised the club up high above his head and sent it crashing down towards the pile, a sickening thud and a whimper escaping from the pile. After another three, there was no more movement, and he handed the bloodied club back to Raitch. There was a reason when they worked together why Jout took the club and Raitch took the cart. “There. We’ve still got a full slate ahead of us. No more delays.”
Again, the cart lurched forward and squeaked along until they reached the next door in the seemingly never-ending hallway labyrinth that was the underground cave, carved out into what they called the great hall. The pounding heart of the Dream Tomb. Jout knocked, this time careful to do it in the least musical way he could, with no discernible rhythm. After not receiving an answer, he snatched the club free from the side of the cart and nudged the door open. Light from the wall console spilled out into the darkened hallway, illuminating Jout’s malnourished and corroding body that was stuffed into a pair of worn brown trousers like a sausage casing. Raitch gazed down at the cart’s handle, at the subtle, ornate pattern he’d been etching onto it during their downtime. There were a few pigments stuffed into his pockets, a mixture of dirt, crushed rocks and whatever he could find to make different colors, along with a makeshift pen. Now wasn’t the time, though. Jout was in a mood and barely tolerated his remaining artistic ambitions.
“This is a big one,” he called. “Get in here.”
Raitch sidled alongside the cart to get around it, his persistent limp only making traversing the concrete hall worse, peering into the room where another wretch, dressed similarly to both Raitch and Jout in a pair of torn pants, his clublike feet protruding out from the bottom flat against the floor, while his body slumped over in the webbed polycarbonate chair, head lolled to the side and kept up by the series of cables running into the console.
“Fresh meat.” Jout motioned towards the dreamer. “See the color on the waist? Still some pink on ‘em. Poor wretch couldn’t handle the dreams.”
“I wonder what they had him working on,” Raitch said. “Maybe it was too much for him?”
“Nobody cares.” Jout tugged at the cables with a snap, pulling a handful free from the wretch’s various ports installed in his head, tipping it to the other side. Jout glared at Raitch, who was more careful in unplugging the wretch from the interface. “If you’re so curious, why not join them? We’re not strapped into the zone for a good reason, because we do this. If it wasn’t for me you’d be right here with them, so keep up and stay grounded already.”
“No, it’s not that...” Raitch knew Jout wouldn’t understand.
“Then help me get this one onto the cart,” he snarled.
Jout spun the chair, so the body was facing away from the console, but Raitch couldn’t help but glance over at the monitor to see what program was running. This one was generating a series on migratory birds a surface-dweller requested, but without generalizing, he’d reached for too much data and burned himself out. Now it would pass onto the next one in the node to create the collection of images, sounds and narrative without interruption. A part of a perfect process. The receiver up on the surface would get what they want, never knowing they’d asked for too much, burning a dreamer out. Each grabbing an ankle, they tugged the large wretch from the chair, his body slapping against the concrete floor and squealing while they pulled him into the hallway towards the cart.
“Here, sit him up, then we’ll each take a side,” Jout instructed.
They leaned his torso against the cart, each grabbing an arm and draping it over their shoulder, squatting down and hoisting up in unison, dumping the body onto the pile. Admiring their work, Jout shook his head.
“Feels like time for a break,” he said. “The cart’s full, anyway. Go dump it into the incinerator and bring us back some water. I’ll keep knocking on doors. And hurry this time. Enough of your daydreaming.”
“Yeah, right,” Raitch agreed.
***
The cart creaked along through the empty hallway, only the occasional moans and groans escaping the heavy wooden doors from the individual cells. Up ahead at the junction, there was a commotion coming from another pair of collectors. Raitch gave a curt nod to the wretch holding the wagon while the other one was engaged with a wretch begging for his life. The club hung high overhead, ready to crash down and finish him.
“No, please!” the wretch cried. “I thought they said if I did enough, I could ascend! My work is good! I could be one of them, please.”
“You either get back to work or I bash your skull in and load you onto the cart!” the clubbed wretch cried. He tried to push the wretch back into his room, but he fell to his knees and clutched onto his legs, pleading with him. The wretch with the club guffawed, trying to kick the dreamer off of him, only for his grip to tighten, bringing the handle of the club down across the back of his head with a dull thump that made Raitch’s skin crawl. The dreamer whimpered but held on, another blow sending his body splayed out onto the floor, twitching a few times until another blow stopped him for good.
“Ugh,” Raitch murmured, trying to limp by unseen.
“Another dreamer.” The man with the club glanced at Raitch with disgust. “The circle of life continues.”
“Uh huh,” Raitch said, quickening his pace.
He and the other man with the cart locked eyes, both looking defeated and gaunt. The man shook his head solemnly and went to help his partner load up the new body onto their cart. Raitch took a left at the junction down the ramp that led to the furnace, passing only one other cart on the way up on his journey through the cavernous hall, the right wheel of his cart squeaking the entire way. The heat intensified with every step and the lights dimmed the further down he went until the hallway opened up into the mouth of the incinerator.
Up ahead, great flames danced at the lip of the platform, a thin metal grating there to catch any wayward carts and prevent them from falling in. Raitch wheeled it up to the edge until the wheel kissed the grating, then hefted the handles up high over his head, trying to ignore the thumping of the bodies tumbling from the cart and into the incinerator.
Scrambling back up the ramp with an empty cart, he couldn’t help but remember back to the poor wretch crying for mercy. A mercy the wretch wouldn’t give him. The Dream Tomb had a steady stream of new dreamers introduced to it, forced to dream to create the visions for those up top after being unable to pay their bills to remain topside. The best dreamers were the ones from the creative class, the ones who dreamed daily, painting vivid pictures themselves until the world gobbled them up, leaving them to rot sitting behind the generators. In contrast, there were a few aspirational dreamers on the topside, the avatars for the program, public-facing and slick. They dreamed and did so in plain sight, their bodies pristine and not subject to the putrefaction that came from being jacked directly into the machines. All they really did was cover up the true conditions of the Dream Tomb, every new dreamer informed they, too could be just like those topside if only they worked hard enough. Raitch had been afraid of those machines from day one, volunteering for this miserable duty instead, knowing there was a high risk, high reward for jacking into the machines.
His fears were genuine, though. Very few made it out of the Dream Tomb and back to the surface, especially after their bodies broke down and their minds fell into the grip of the hallucinations. Raitch chose not to let his mind decay like that, although he lacked the cruelty of a Jout to enjoy his work. This was never what he imagined he’d do with his life when he pursued painting.
***
“Took you long enough.” Jout stood over a pile of three dead wretches, two women and one man, a mere few doors down from their last pickup. “Did you fetch the water?”
“Oh, no,” Raitch said. “I knew I forgot something.”
“Your head is always in the clouds,” Jout said. “Surprised you haven’t given in to the dreams yet, like the rest of these wretches. If the overseers saw what you’ve been painting on the walls of your quarters, or on our cart...”
“Three in a row, then?” Raitch tried to change the topic. He’d gathered up stray hairs to make a brush, fashioned a stick into an etching tool, and used various dirt and dried liquids for pigments to make paints, unable to contain his sadness to just himself.
“Oh, yeah.” Jout puffed out his chest. “Two were already spent. One needed a few whacks to bring them home.”
Raitch let go of the cart, walking around to help Jout pick up the first one, gingerly tossing it into the cart. She laid there, her neck at an extreme angle and skull smashed in. This one was so far gone there wasn’t any blood or gore, making Raitch wonder how she held on for as long as she did, and enough to need Jout’s club treatment. Jout prodded him with the end of the club, noticing the pause.
“Hurry it up! After these three, we’re almost at quota. You can thank me by taking them to the incinerator while I turn in.”
“Okay.” Raitch shrank down, trying to shake himself free from his wandering thoughts. There was a limit for how long he could do this, and he feared he was reaching the end of the line. For all his faults, Jout was trying to reel Raitch back in and keep him from this fate, even if it meant dialing up the cruelty.
Together they hefted up the two wretches, piling them on top of the battered corpse already laying there. The next two doors, the wretches were still going strong, Jout increasingly irritable and wanting to be done for the day already. At the third door, the poor wretch took longer to answer the door. Unable to wait even a millisecond longer, Jout drove the heel of his foot into the heavy wooden door, it smashing into the poor wretch on the other side who tumbled over his chair and lay motionless.
“We’ve got another dreamer for the cart here,” Jout said.
“N-no,” the dreamer said. “I’m just tired.”
“That’s what they always say,” Jout argued back. “Raitch, give me a hand.”
He stepped into the room to see the dreamer, still partially plugged in with a program running on the monitor. He wasn’t dead, still having more color than a bulk of the dreamers they saw in the cart. Jout grabbed the club from Raitch’s hand and the poor wretch recoiled, raising his forearms up to shield himself. Raitch’s stomach gurgled at the sight. Jout hefted the club up and before he knew it, Raitch had gripped onto the club, not letting him land the blow on the poor soul.
“What?!” Jout barked at Raitch and tried to wrestle the club away from him. “What are you doing?”
“This one’s not baked yet,” Raitch said. “Let’s just go on to the next one.”
“You’ve gotten soft,” Jout said. “A dreamer is nothing but a wretch, their only purpose is to be used. Our job is to clear this space for the next one.”
“This one’s still dreaming,” Raitch plead. “We can find more.”
“Grr, fine.” Jout spat at the wretch. “I’ll be back for you tomorrow!”
He jabbed his shoulder against Raitch’s, almost knocking him over. Raitch and the wretch locked eyes, the wretch giving him a thankful nod before fumbling for the cables to plug himself back in. The prompt on the screen blinked, reading something simple, but beautiful: a field of sunflowers, a boy crying over his mother’s grave.
What were any of them even doing anymore? Down there, in the tomb, they were the wretches, yet some surface-dweller needed a dreamer to show him his own humanity.
“If I told the overseers how soft you’ve gone, they’d toss you into one of these in a heartbeat!” Jout was seething. “I should club you over the head right now and save myself the trouble of being seen with you. To think I’ve been protecting you.”
“I’m sorry.” Raitch didn’t know how to reply to him anymore. “He wasn’t spent yet. Would you rather explain that to them? Wasting resources?”
“More logical arguments,” Jout said. “There will be a day when that’s not enough.”
They sauntered into motion again, Jout not relenting the club like he usually did, leaving Raitch uneasy. Jout’s fist pounded on the next door, giving it another knock while glaring at Raitch, almost in disgust, demonstrating how to follow procedure. He gave one more pound and kicked the door open. The laughter that followed made Raitch’s skin crawl.
“This drifter has gone to the great beyond.”
Filled with reckless glee, Jout snapped the cables from the wretch’s skull, throwing his gaunt, crumbling body onto his shoulder, sauntering out of the room and tossing it onto the cart. “This job is easy, and it keeps us alive. You can’t see it, because you’re a dreamer, just like them. One more and we’re done for the day.”
“Okay.” it tied his stomach in knots to watch Jout slip further.
He hadn’t bristled against Jout this bad in months since they’d been working the cart together. They were an efficient team compared to the others. Most of the cart teams broke down over time, the emotional toll of the job getting to one, or both, until they degraded enough to get strapped into their own room.
The next five rooms were clear, the dreamers still sentient and neither Raitch nor Jout willing to argue much. The telltale signs were still there for each; skin discoloration and decay hadn’t overtaken them, their eyes still able to lock on contact. But the next one was a different story. Jout pounded his fist, listless after so many disappointments, and he fell into a familiar rhythm with his taps. Jout stopped himself, closing his eyes and letting out a deep sigh, not looking over at Raitch.
“Don’t say a word,” he said. “I’m tired.”
“Okay.” Raitch was just as tired and weary, not wanting to see either of them strapped into a machine any time soon. Jout had hardened himself to the job, turned cold, but he wasn’t a complete monster yet. He remembered the team he’d passed in the hallway, and how far gone that wretch with the club had been. The look of sheer joy in his expression while he smacked the life from that dreamer. Jout was still more human than him. For now.
Inside the room, the poor wretch was so deep into the dream he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t dead yet, or at least seemed to have enough life in him to move on. Jout grabbed the club and inched forward, while Raitch shuffled in alongside him, dragging his gimp leg behind. The dreamer was deeply immersed, fingers twitching and eyes transfixed to the screen.
“This one’s ready to go,” Jout said. “Isn’t even responding.”
Jout snapped his fingers in front of the dreamer’s face a few times, with no response.
“This one isn’t on me.” Jout hefted the club up and Raitch outstretched his hands, shielding the dreamer with his body.
“Don’t do it!” he shouted.
“Get out of the way,” Jout ordered. “After this one, we’re done.”
“He’s not spent yet. Look at him. His color is fine. All the readouts on the monitor show him fully operational.”
“We both know there’s no point to this,” Jout said. “We’re doing him a favor by ending this misery.”
“But why?” Raitch asked.
That was enough to make Jout stop before swinging, lowering the club and letting it hang at his side. They locked eyes, and Jout shook his head, pointing down at the dreamer.
“You think this changes anything? Who cares if he lives past today? Not even he does.”
“I care, and so do you.”
“No, I don’t,” Jout corrected him. “I care about being done for the day and not being dragged into one of these myself. Now step aside and let me finish this.”
“Why do we have to do this?” Raitch asked. “Why?”
“Why what? Because this is how things are,” Jout said. “If the overseers hear about this, you’re done for. Now step out and let me finish this. Then we’ve met our quota for the day.”
“No. I can’t do this anymore.” Raitch’s voice surprised even himself. “I won’t.”
“Then someday I’ll have to load you onto the cart,” Jout said. “Don’t expect me to shed any tears over it.”
“You were a musician,” Raitch said. “You created things.”
“And I was a failure, just like the rest! Now, here, I can survive another day.”
“There’s more of us than there are them. Why are we doing this? It makes no sense.”
“Because we either clear the rooms or inhabit them.” There was a melancholy in his tone even he couldn’t hide. “Now get out of the way before I dent that skull of yours.”
“So we live for their entertainment? They made it so we couldn’t survive up there. It’s not our fault.”
Jout stared at Raitch for a long moment, still gripping onto the club tight. He hefted it up onto his shoulder and stepped behind the dreamer, leaving him be. His finger tapped to a rhythm on the handle before he tightened his grip; one, pause, two, three. Raitch waited for the inevitable blow that was to come from Jout. Waited for the crushing blow that would cave his skull in and leave him lifeless on the cart, along with the rest of the sad wretches. He tensed, closing his eyes.
“If I were to bring this club down across your skull right now, I’d make quota for the day.” Jout’s voice was a low growl, Raitch able to sense his vocal chords vibrating with each syllable. “Better yet, I’d get to show the overseers I stopped a dissident.”
“I know,” Raitch whispered, eyes clenched shut.
The sound of his fingers tapping against the stick were the only sounds outside of the groans from the dreamer; one, pause, two, three. Raitch balled up his fists and awaited the blow that never came. Jout tapped his foot to the rhythm, Raitch opening his eyes to see a devious grin on Jout’s face. They’d been together for months, kept each other in line and were a team. Raitch needed to remember that. Together, perhaps, they could do more than load bodies.
“Go on, then,” Jout said. “Ready the cart.”
“W-we’re moving on?” he asked, unsure of what Jout’s next move would be.
“You think we can fight the overseers?” Jout said. “I can see it in your fool eyes. You think there’s a way out of here? We’ve already lost. All we can do is survive.”
“I don’t believe that,” Raitch said.
“Maybe this chair will be yours some day,” Jout said. “Because you’re dreaming if you think you can stop this.”
“We’re a team, Jout. Together we can—“
“Get the cart, wretch,” he snarled in a low voice.
Raitch left the room, studying the handles on the cart where he’d been etching an intricate lattice of vines wrapping around each other. His hand fumbled around in his pocket for his homemade etching needle, the point pricking his finger. Instead of crying out, Raitch grabbed his tiny cap of red pigment from his other pocket, pressing his finger into it so the blood could seep into it, not wanting to waste a drop. The rose etched into the right handle where his thumb usually rested still needed to be colored in, and he could never have enough red. A scream echoed from the room and a chill ran through him, followed by a series of thuds and a crash.
Jout emerged from the room, the wretch draped over his shoulder, and his club dripping with blood. Raitch and he locked eyes, the look on Jout’s face one of satisfaction, reminding him of the wretch he saw earlier. The body dropped onto the cart with a thud, his lifeless face staring back at Raitch, eyes bloodshot, yellowed and coldly gazing up at him. Raitch pocketed his bottle cap of red dirt and blood and gripped the handles, unable to shake the sinking feeling in his gut at his own complicity.
“No more of this shit tomorrow,” Jout said.
“Okay, Jout,” Raitch replied. “But, what about…”
“What?”
Jout had already started to walk away, the club still in his hand, like an extension of himself. He’d always returned it to the cart before he left before, instead he’d forgotten he was even carrying it. Raitch nodded at the club and Jout glanced down at it, nodding and smacking it a few times against his palm in the familiar, downright musical rhythm; one, pause, two, three. He slung it over his shoulder and turned, heading down the hall, leaving Raitch with the cart of bodies. The sound of Jout’s club bouncing playfully against the concrete echoed through the Dream Tomb and Raitch’s mind.
One.
Pause.
Two, three.
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