Koontz, Dean - The Fall of the Dream Machine Read online

  There was a short, low-key humming. The card-tapes popped into the reception tray. Cockley dropped them into the player. Moments later, the crackling voice of the artificial brain sputtered out of the speaker, spewing figures and numbers, dates and places. But there was nothing of immediate value. It still had not unearthed the exact location of the Appalachian shelter, and that was the only fact anyone was interested in. He tore the cards in two, tossed them into the trash slot of his desk.

  "How much more time?" he roared at one of his aides working at the collapsible desk next to his own.

  "Two, maybe three hours, sir."

  Cockley placed a thumb on his watch, listened to the time. Five minutes until three o'clock. They would have the bastards by sunrise. Bring them out in the sun and let them die, let them turn to dust, let their vampire, bloodsucking mouths shrivel and die. That reminded him that they had fed the audience no strong psychological material for a while. Perhaps they could bring a demented mental patient in from somewhere. He would not transmit clearly, but then he would not have to. Yes, that would be good. A bloodsucker. That would be very good. He pressed his watch. "Four until three."

  "Speed that damn machine up!" he bellowed in exasperation.

  The floater van carried exactly twenty men, counting the driver.

  Pierre looked up and down the two rows of men, backs against the wall, facing each other, looking, perhaps, a bit more grim than they had a right to. After all, this would not be the first revolution ever undertaken. Perhaps, he thought, the most righteous one, but certainly not the first. It would give him a chance, though, to see how well his training had taken hold in the minds of these men. Would they be careful to do the things he had told them to do, or would they fight like a mob of untrained ruffians in their enthusiasm? He wanted a great deal to be a success.

  The word success associated with the word failure in his muddled thoughts and sent him skittering along thought-ways, back through time mists to other eras, other places. There had been a dark girl. Her name had been Rita. "Rita, Rita, Rita. It was like the call of a solitary bird above white cliffs that hung over a blue sea with wind that was warm and cool at the same time. She had been solitary. Alone in a cafe. Rita. Sitting at a dark table, sitting with her head down, staring into a cup of coffee. And he had come in. No one was ever suave anymore, debonair or romantic. Women married less and less, for they could share the body of a Performer. They needed less and less real love, real sex. Men were the same. It died, slowly but certainly, this thing called sexual love. There were a few, however, who needed more than an aura and an artificial hour of Before, a brief fifteen minutes of During, and an hour of fondling called After. A few people needed much more. There was Pierre, and there was Rita. . . .

  The floater jolted over a bump, tossed Mailor off his seat at the end of the bench. That broke the gravity of the moment. Everyone laughed, smiled, and laughed again.

  "You don't get the Valiant Heart Medal for that injury, Mailor," Nimron said.

  There were Valiant Heart Medals for wounds acquired in action, Gold Stars of Valor for deaths in action. There were five awards in all, each a certificate and an impressive pin of precious metals and jewels. Pierre mused on what a fortunate thing it was that they had Roger Nimron. The medals had been his idea. To instill pride and glory into their cause, the President had said. Nimmy came up with all sorts of things to make the people want to follow him— not least of which was his warm and friendly personality.

  Slowly, the men sank into silence again and Pierre let his mind drift into memories of a bird floating over cliffs and carrying out to a vast and bottomless sea. Then to a dark girl in a cafe . . . then to love, mutual and fulfilling. Fulfilling—for a time. What had happened? Where had he been a failure? They had had three years of bliss. By the fifth year, she was totally bored. Had she expected too much of it? He rather suspected that was it. She had been a Romanticist, a dreamer of crystal dreams. Actual physical love was a rarity. If the birthrate was not high enough to meet Show's standards, the Government chose certain women for artifical insemination to bolster the population. Everyone submitted, for there was no willpower left in them. Had Rita expected Heaven Supreme, then, and found only Paradise? He did not know. But he would always be haunted by That Night. That Night, coming home . . . finding Rita. Coming home and finding Rita . . . finding her dead. Finding her an Empathist. . . . Finding . . .

  He pulled himself out of that reverie. What was it he told the men? What was it that he pounded into them during training? Before a battle, relax and think of nice things. Be warm and happy, full and tranquil. The only other thing one should think about was building a hatred for the enemy to make killing him easier. Well, he hated Show all right. He did not have to work on that. Now he must think only of nice things. Through the front windscreen, he could see the road rushing toward and under them. There was a great deal of snow falling. He would think about snow, for it was pretty, cold, soft, and white. Yes, he would think about the pale-throated snow. . . .

  Three o'clock," the little man in the white smock said.

  Three o'clock," the chief technician echoed, slamming down on a switch.

  Nimron was gone, off with the raiding party headed for Show studios at top speed in a superfast van floater with nineteen other men, ready to risk his life before he knew whether the jamming would work or not. Mike looked to Lisa. They held hands, sitting in chairs so close that their knees touched. There was fear etched in her face, Mike could see. It was most likely drawn all over his own face too. He laced his fingers through hers.

  "You're on!" someone said.

  They began broadcasting hatred for the viewer. It was not difficult. Mike found that he had always hated those faceless masses who shared his secret thoughts, his desires, his excesses. Show had trained him how to control his basest of emotions, how to keep the hatred from leaking out. Now, unchecked, it poured forth in a torrent after so many years of storage. He could see that it was the same with Lisa. There seemed, no longer, to be fear in her face so much as relief. Her features relaxed, but her teeth wedged into gritting position as she concentrated on spilling all her loathing.

  Into all those minds.

  Mike was enjoying it, and he could see that she was too. What must they be doing to all those leeches out there, all those mind-vampires? This time they were eating the Performer's thoughts, and they were getting indigestion.

  All those minds . . . with all the vomit-thoughts of self-hate.

  Vaguely, Mike was aware of cheering in the background. The giant board with all the lights, each representing a hundred auras, was getting darker by the moment. Thousands were tuning out, flicking off their auras. Millions were standing from their chairs, shaking in rage. They were shutting down Show! All hell was breaking loose.

  He concentrated on hating.

  Then Mike was suddenly overwhelmed by a warping feeling, as if someone had taken his head in one hand, his feet in the other, and wrinkled him like old yellow paper. The room swam. He stared at Lisa, saw that she was a vague outline, a shadow person. Fade Out. They were having a Fade Out, both at the same moment. But he had never had a Fade Out and realized it. It had always been a thing cloudy and unreal, not something this immediate and terrifying. Suddenly, the room was gone.

  He tried to scream, but it caught in his throat and hung there against his will. On all sides of him there was blackness, total and never-ending. A great night. Death? Before he could consider that possibility, there was a scream that punctured the blackness like a nail in a hand. And Lisa was there with him. A ghost Lisa, phantom-like.

  "Mike . . ."

  He looked down at his own hands, brought them up before his face. He could see through them. He could look directly through his hands and see Lisa. And, through her, he could see the almost material body of the night stretching to infinity, foreboding.

  "Mike," she said again. She was floating a dozen feet away, hanging there, very still but for a movement of her apple lip
s that were on the verge of issuing sobs instead of his name.

  "Lisa—"

  "Where are we?"

  He could see that she was on the verge of hysteria, ready to crack and spill all the fears and slimy things buried down in her id somewhere. He also was frightened—frightened, really, almost beyond endurance. Almost. But it was much better, he knew, to stifle his own fear and try to comfort her than to be trapped here with a raving madwoman— wherever "here" was. He moved his arms, as if swimming, but he could not cross the distance separating them. There was no water-against-flesh friction to propel him. The night was nothingness, not water; and his flesh did not truly seem to be flesh either. There was nothing he desired more than to be next to her and to touch her, but he could see his flailing was to no avail. He cursed silently . . . and was suddenly next to her. He almost screamed again, but fought it down and tried to reason this thing out. He had wished to be next to her—and here he was. It was certainly not the curse word that had propelled him, though it had seemed as if that were it for a moment there. They were not trapped in Hell, where blasphemy was a means of propulsion. If they were anywhere a religion had ever named, they were in Purgatory. And he doubted that very much, for they were alone.

  "Where are we?" she asked again, more ugently this time.

  "There was a Fade Out," he said, putting an arm around her. He found that he could hold her solidly, that she was very real to his touch.

  "But we've had Fade Outs before. Nothing was ever like this!"

  "We've crossed into some sort of ... other . . . dimension. A nether world, a world which is a ghost of the real world. Maybe we went through this in every other Fade Out and did not remember it."

  She was not trembling so terribly, but she was not yet convinced.

  "Look, there were two transmitters working at once, both global models. Show's and the Revolutionaries'. The power output would be twice as great, all mingling together, one carrying the other. Maybe this Fade Out is the first complete Fade Out ever. "

  "Then we're trapped here?"

  "Maybe not. I wished, simply wished, to be next to you, and I was suddenly there. Teleportation of sorts, a longtime dream. Maybe we can just wish our way out of this darkness. Hold me. Wish with me. Wish to be out of this darkness and in the real world. Wish it very hard."

  She clutched him.

  The blackness was everywhere.

  And through all things.

  They wished.

  This time there was terrific speed. They were bullets sailing through a wind that had sprung up from nowhere. And there were many colors. Neon lights. Orange, green circles—five thousand concentric green circles, five million. . . . They were trying to scream, trying to laugh. For a brief moment they heard voices all around them, moaning voices that babbled and said strange things that made little sense. Then they were past that spot and gone.

  Alice Bello crawled over the purple squiggly and slid down into the pool of amber where the others were, where the others lay like souls in Hell. Searching, she found the man she had met earlier.

  There was screaming and moaning all about her.

  "Why didn't they stop and help us?" she demanded of him.

  "They were Performers."

  She was irritated with him. He was complacent. Instead of searching for some answer, he had given up, had set himself down in the amber pool of madness. "What has that got to do with it? They still could have helped. They went right on by. How could they go right on by like that? Why weren't they trapped like us?"

  "I told you. They were Performers, not Empathists like us. We fell in toward the center, became a part of this collective mind that is all about us. But the Performers are falling from the center outward. They are going to the rim. They are expanding, not shrinking. They are using this dimension as a highway between points on their own world. They are free. That is the only way it can be."

  "It can't be," she said. "We won't be trapped here forever."

  "I'm afraid it is and we will be."

  "But what can we do?"

  "We could go insane like the rest of them," he said. And he began a strange high-pitched howl that mingled with the others all about them, rode the crest of their mad wave.

  Somehow it sounded very nice to her. Very nice indeed.

  After the voices, there were more lights and more darknesses for Mike and Lisa. They were plunging faster and faster. It seemed as if they were falling up, however, upward and out instead of down and in. It was not an altogether unpleasant sensation. Then, abruptly, the darkness was gone; they were both falling over a woman in a chair, tumbling out of the dome of the aura and onto the carpet of a living room floor. Mike jumped to his feet, helped Lisa up.

  The woman they had fallen over was picking herself off the floor, rubbing at her knees. She was a matronly, plump, gray-haired woman. "What the hell?" she said, turning around to look at the chair. "What the hell, what the hell?" She suddenly caught sight of them standing to the left of the chair. She opened her mouth to question, seemed to think better of it, collapsed sideways onto the chair and bounced to the floor in a dead faint instead.

  "Is she dead?" Lisa asked.

  "Unconscious, I think."

  They turned to look at the aura. "What happened to us?" Lisa asked.

  His mind was racing itself, trying to come up with some sort of answer to give her. They were back in the real world—or so it seemed—but in the wrong place on the real world. "We teleported to reality."

  "What place is this?"

  "I'm not quite sure."

  He took her hand, and they walked from the dark living room into a dimly lighted hallway. He flicked the overhead lights on to augment the little frilly table lamp that was burning. The hall was narrowed by great stacks of things. Large, medium, and small cartons of dull brown, light blue, steel gray, and black lined the walls in one direction, lined it double the other way. Mike walked to one carton. When he was near enough, it spoke in a tiny voice: "Bubbly Popsy hits the spot. Bubbly Popsy when you're hot!" A black carton chimed in from behind him when he moved away from the soda cartons. "Twistacheeses perfect snack; buy 'em by the case or sack! Twistacheeses perfect snack; buy-"

  "What?" Lisa asked, holding to him.

  "I don't know."

  "Why buy all of this? She couldn't possibly use it all!"

  "Bubbly Popsy . . . Twistacheeses perfect sna . . . Hope Soap for dirty spots and . . . Bubbly Popsy hits the . . ." Dozens of elfin voices began speaking to them, advertising themselves, whispering, whispering.

  They moved along, counting. Ten cases of orange Bubbly Popsy. Root Beer, Lime, Cola, Grape. There were thirty-nine cartons of twenty-four bottles each; two hundred and sixteen gallons of Bubbly Popsy rested in this hallway. Among other things. One quart in one of the lower row of cartons had broken, and the sweet liquid had spilled across the carpet, soaked into it and dried in a brown circle. It had happened so long ago that the residue was no longer sticky, merely a brown powder that rose in a cloud when stepped on. Against the opposite wall were all sorts of things. Be Sure Deodorant boxes lay strewn over the floor, at least a hundred of them. There were cans of tuna. There were four hundred cans of cat food. They found, by scent, the rotting corpse of a cat lying across the unopened cans, its face stretched into a wild, horrible yawn. It seemed to have died of starvation. Its ribs were vividly outlined, its deteriorating stomach still a swollen balloon.

  They went on—toward the kitchen.

  The kitchen was a warehouse. Mike picked through the things, led Lisa along the narrow aisles between the stacks that towered to the ceiling. There were cases and cases of Baby Goodums Pap Food. He wondered for one horrible moment, whether they would find a baby in the same condition as the cat.

  "Baby Goodums, Yum, Yum, Yum," a tiny voice sang.

  "Keep refrigerated," a lower, more sedate voice throbbed Continuously.

  "Baby Goodums, Yum . . . Refrigerated . . . Cracker, Crackity, Crackers . . ."

  Th
ere were great plastic skins full of cheese. Molds had eaten through the plastic where there had been small rents. Now fungus had blossomed grotesquely, yellow and black, white and blue, spreading completely over some cheeses and just beginning to contaminate other, more recent, purchases.

  "What is all this?" Lisa asked.

  It was seeping into his awareness, an explanation for this. This was a typical viewer's home, or Typ. V.H. as the economists at Show called them. This was a consumer's domicile. "The result," he said, "of the subliminal ads."

  "But she doesn't need any of this; she isn't using it!"

  "But a subliminal ad doesn't tell the viewer to buy it if he needs it. Every day there are five hours of subliminal ads. Thirty flashes per second—each flash only a few thousandths of a second long. Repeatedly, the viewer is told to buy and buy. Whether she needs it or not, she buys it."

  "But this is horrible!"

  "That's the economic system. State supplies the money with which the consumer plays his part by purchasing things the State has produced. This is just one viewer home. There are millions like it."

  She shivered. "The cat—"

  He grabbed her hand and led her through the maze of unused products. Little voices whispered to them, advised them, soft-sold them. They leaned too heavily against a column of canned fruits, sent it crashing into another column of glass containers full of heavy syrup. Glass shattered, sending syrup splattering the walls and other boxes. Syrup oozed out of the carton, spread across the floor, a quarter of an inch of it. A half inch. An inch.

  "Let's get out of here," she said.

  "Agreed."

  They made their way through the cartons, bottles, plasti-containers to the living room. With their new perspective, they could now see that it was a room crammed with far too many couches and chairs with walls far too cluttered with art prints, many of them exactly the same. The woman was still on the floor, still unconscious but beginning to moan her way out of darkness.

  "What do we do?"