Where Our Dreams Go

Andrews | Chapter 2

It's been a painstakingly long ten minutes since my last communication with base, which was just basically telling me to wait. To kill time and because I have to do it anyway, I start my suit checks. Whenever I do, I'm reminded of the promo vids they used to play every night in the middle of my mum's favourite space detective show.

"Why not walk with our ancestors as they return to energy? Experience their last moments in suits sewn into the fabric of their last dream. As heroes of our world."

Immediately finding a broken seal at my elbow draws a wry smile from me, "fabric of their dreams." I mutter to myself while patching the breach with duct tape and a prayer.

Your first year as a Dreamcatcher is essentially probation, which means you only get access to basic hand-me-down equipment. Personally, I think it's the main reason for the 65% death rate for first years. I'd have gone the same way more than once, if not for Harriot being nothing short of magical. How she's managed to fix my suit so many times, with so little equipment, will be the last great unsolved mystery of the universe. Right behind why she's sticking with me. Especially with how often my suit breaks. The previous engineer I had sent me planet side without a helmet once. He told me it was to teach me the value of my gear, but I'm pretty sure it's because I'd cracked the visor three times in one week. After that we'd felt like that relationship had ran its course.

Besides being a pain point for any engineer assigned to me, the suits themselves are pretty durable and airtight most of the time. They have multiple layers to them, which makes them hard to be in for too long a period of time. The outer layer is by far the coolest. The others keep you alive, yes, but the outer layer acts as a kind of dream skin. Our partners use it to reforge us into something relevant to whichever dream we enter, like a living camouflage. If I walked into a war for Rome during the reign of Alexander the Great, then I would look and feel like a member of the Roman army or maybe a peasant during that period. But it gets a lot weirder than that. It's the main reason, outside of the pay, that I did this job. There's no other job that lets me come home with stories about how I've been a singing mouse, a conker, flying lobster and even a grain of sand. That last one still haunts me sometimes in the moments when I'm alone. Harriot still has a recording of me attending a cocktail party, in which the guests were ingredients and all over six feet tall. My suit and partner decided I would be best hidden as a stuffed olive, which ended with me being chased around the room by a toothpick. Harry played it every other drop for a week straight.

Slipping on my helmet, I try to contact her for an update. "Danger, is there a status update?" I waited for a couple minutes. Still getting nothing back, I decided I could at least assess the damage from entry physically and try for my target. It needs to be done anyway. "Harry, if you can hear me, I'm stepping out. I'm gonna take a look at the damage up top, then hump it to the target and try to fix this mess. Track my suit and drop the mags near the target. If I make it."

I grab the empty spirit chamber fitted to the left side of my pod. A twenty-centimeter-long, glass cylinder forged from the sand of this planet. I fit it into the holster strapped across the back of my waist, then unclip the small copilot canister and watch the whole pod power down. It's such a small thing, about the size of a ballpoint pen or test tube, but it holds enough energy to power my entire pod and now my suit for a long, long time.

"Come on Ash, it's time for our walk." Flicking open a narrow compartment on the inside of my wrist, I slide the canister into the gap and fasten it down. Warmth spreads from it as my copilot's energy is released into the suit's outer layer, so cool. The star itself slowly makes its way to rest above my heart, from there, the mist surrounding it stretches out to fill every corner. "That's it, get comfy. Must be nice to spread out a bit after being cooped up in there." I monitor the patches of duct tape carefully as the mist passes across them. The suits come together in sections, so I'd be able to isolate that area of the suit if it's damaged anyway. It's just better to find out if I've missed any holes or ruptures while still inside the pod, it makes it more difficult for the energy to completely escape.