The city seemed to sprawl across the entire planet's surface. It went on for miles, stretching out over a majority of the landscape. There were always skyscrapers on the horizon, no matter which way you looked. Billions of people bustled through the streets by day but every single one of them returned home at night, when the city lit up like a thousand fireflies. The city always glowed so brightly that you could never see the stars from where they hovered above, millions of light years away. Above all the haze from the light, the faint outlines of a pair of moons could be seen in the sky above.
But the people never looked up. They had no reason to, not when everything they needed or desired was down there, on the planet's surface. So the moons watched over the people, hoping one day that someone would look up and notice them. Maybe that person would begin to wonder what else was beyond the glow of their city skies and make an effort to clear the haze away, revealing the stars who had long since been forgotten. One day, the moons hoped. One day.
Just as the grey skies began to darken and the city lights turn on, the streets emptied themselves. Like animals running from a storm, the people began to scurry back into their homes. They weren't running from anything, just following their daily schedules. For some reason, they were always home before nightfall, although no one ever thought to question why. There were no night-time activities, no going out for dinner or walking along the streets, just the order of getting home and going to bed.
Except on this night, the fourth of September in the year 3408, something did not quite go to plan.
It was half past six when Lysa Connors slipped into her apartment. The automatic lights switched on, going from dim to bright in a matter of seconds and lighting up the apartment. Placing her bag by the front door, she walked through the apartment, making a brief stop in the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. Stepping into her bedroom, she headed straight for the metallic door at the other end of the room, completely ignoring the hovering bed and the moving image of mountains covering an entire glass wall.
She stood before the door and pressed her thumb to the digital panel in the wall beside it. For a second, she waited as it scanned her thumbprint and then went to her wardrobe menu. Her long, elegant fingers tapped the nightwear button and selected a set of cotton pyjamas. The wardrobe door slid open and she entered the small room, waiting in the centre as robotic arms pulled away from the walls and whirred around her, changing her clothes. She didn't bother to glance at herself in the mirror once they were done, instead ignoring the raven-haired reflection and walking straight back into her bedroom to wait as another robotic arm pulled back the covers on her bed for her. Lysa laid down on her bed as the arm dragged the covers back over her. The lights in the apartment dimmed and she closed her eyes as another robotic arm strapped a tiny device to her head, waiting for sleep to come.
For the people of the city, sleep did not mean dreams or nightmares, they never experienced anything of the sort. Sleep was nothing more than a black void in which the body slowed down, delta waves taking over the brain and keeping it in an unconscious state until it was time to wake up. Each stage of the sleeping process was controlled by that tiny device strapped to everyone's head as they fell asleep. The sleep control devices monitored a person's brainwaves as they slept and ensured that they were in a certain stage of sleep at various times throughout the night.
Just like everything else, the reason why these devices prevented rapid eye movement sleep went unquestioned. Perhaps it was simply so that there was never the chance that someone got a nightmare. Perhaps it was for another reason, one which wasn't quite so pleasant as preventing nightmare.
But this night, the sleep control device did something rather unexpected. It allowed Lysa to slip into rapid eye movement sleep and let her dream for the first time in her life.
She was standing before a window, a clear sky in front of her. That was the first thing she noticed was wrong about what she was seeing. The sky in Utopia was never clear, instead it was always smothered in thick grey clouds and hidden behind a smoky haze. But this sky, it was bright and blue, a strange sight for eyes that had never seen what it looked like beneath those clouds before. The second thing she noticed was the golden, glowing orb high in the sky. The sun was a sight just as rare as the blue of the sky. Some days you could see a faint glow behind the clouds, but that glow was always red, not gold like this one.
Lifting a hand, she was reaching out to touch the window when her scenery changed. This time she was seated on a couch, staring at a screen mounted on the wall. On the screen, images of burning buildings and people running were being shown. Feeling people beside her, Lysa tried to turn her head to look at them but found herself unable to move.
'The council warns everyone to be wary. We can only hope...' The voice coming from the screen trailed away as Lysa's world shifted again.
She could feel her legs moving but couldn't quite see ahead of her. There were people around her, all walking in the same direction. She was following them into the darkness, that much she could gather. Aside from that, she had no clue of what they were all doing in this place. Somewhere ahead, a soft glow appeared before them and they moved towards it. As they grew closer, Lysa could see that the glow came from a large open space with lights in the ceiling. Covering the floor were hundreds of people, perhaps even thousands. They huddled together in small clumps, all looking lost and alone. All looking afraid.
Before she could find out anything more, the people disappeared and she was on a street, leaning on a car. Someone was beside her, but she suddenly became aware of the people on the other side of the car. They were standing, almost appearing to be marching towards her. Something exploded to her right and she leapt sideways into the person there.
'We have to go,' a male voice told her. Involuntarily, she nodded and stood. Lysa tried desperately to stop her body as she and the man ran out from behind the car, another explosion going off just ahead of them. She wanted to scream but couldn't open her mouth as her scenery changed again.
Now, she was sitting, her back leaning against a wall. There was a man beside her again and this time, she was staring at his face. Only, his face was made entirely of metal.
'Alex,' her lips moved with permission and the voice that came out didn't exactly sound like hers. 'If I die, what will you do?'
'You don't have to worry about that,' the voice that came from the metal face was the same as the one she'd been behind the car with. 'Because I won't let you die.'
She didn't say anything more, only continued to look at his face. His human-like, metallic face...
Lysa's eyes snapped open, her pupils swallowing her bright blue eyes as they struggled to take the scraps of light in the darkened room. Her ceiling came into focus above her and she turned her head from side to side, looking around her darkened room. Her brows creased in thought, she was confused about the flurry of images she'd seen. And whose face had that been? Lifting her head from her pillow, she scanned her room, searching for any of the things she'd just been. None of them were there.
So what had she seen?
Her train of thought was interrupted a moment later when the device on her forehead sent a few sparks raining down across her vision. With a little yelp, Lysa ripped it off and flung it onto the floor.
Crack.
A thin, white line ran across the device's smooth surface but that wasn't the only thing that was wrong with it. Tiny, golden sparks flew from it and the blue light that indicated whether the device was on or off flickered constantly for a few seconds before switching off. The sparks stopped.
She climbed out of bed, bending down to take a closer look but not daring to touch it in case something happened.
This was the device which controlled her sleep and if it was broken, it must have meant that what she'd just seen had all been a dream. That place, that other world and all of its people, had all been a dream, created by her own mind. But the people of Utopia were not supposed to dream, that was the whole reason that they had the devices in the first place.
And yet she, Lysa Connors, had just had a dream.
She didn't know what to think. The dream had been kind of wonderful but scary at the same time. The world she'd created had seemed incredible, but bad things had happened to her in it. The people in it had all seemed so sad and lonely, too. All except for that man, Alex. The one who had said he wouldn't let her die. But why would she have died? And why hadn't she been able to control her own actions?
The lights in the ceiling turned themselves on, having of sensed that the movement in the room was because she was out of bed and not just rolling around in her sleep. They were very dim, but the light still burned her eyes which hadn't had any time to prepare for the assault on them. A robotic arm extended from the wall to smooth out the bed covers she'd tossed aside and waited for her to climb back into bed.
With a final glance at the sleep control device, Lysa straightened and climbed back into bed. The device was a problem for the morning and at that point in time, it was night and she was far too tired to sort it out. As she rested her head on the pillow once more and the lights dimmed, she closed her eyes and a part of her hoped she'd dream again while another part wished she'd never had that dream in the first place.
For the rest of the night, no dreams came.