The Same Three Crows

A heartwarming tale about one man losing his ability to dream, along with the love of his life, in an Orwellian, dystopian society.

It’s 1am. As usual, I have not seen one minute of sleep. I am at my most lucid at this hour, when my only companions are the layers of discordant electrical feedback, my umbilical safety network. I used to sleep well. Now though, the flicking off of the light switch is a catalyst for a myriad of unwelcome thoughts. Birds I have failed to kill rove in flocks around my consciousness, their caws knowingly mock the absence in me of something vital. The war between gut instinct and rational thought rages on inside somewhere unreachable, somewhere it can’t be prevented.

   A decaying remnant of a dream lurks in the dark matter there somewhere too. The forms that may once have represented people in this dream have long since been muted, leaving in their place faceless mannequins. Often these creatures encroach into my day-to-day life. I see their figures in my peripheral vision, hiding behind cars and lampposts when I’m walking home from work late at night. When that happens, something inside me sounds a particularly resonant, screechy discord, akin to the noise you subconsciously here when your body experiences something horrifying, and has to deal with the shock. It’s not horror I feel though. Just grief. Grief, because we had allowed this to happen.

   I remember the last dream I had before my sector was called up for muting. So vivid and sensual was it that it made my soul groan to wake up to the grayness and monotony of the world I had helped create. I was floating in a pool, resembling the Blue Lagoon of Iceland, but as warm as a tropical sea. As I lay back, I looked up through clouds of steam and saw tall pillars of rock rising from the ocean like the limbs of subterranean giants, resembling the ancient landforms at Ko Phi Phi Li. Such is the manner of dreams, moments later I came to be on a cobbled coastal path with no recollection of the parts in between, floating on the heady scent of Nag Champa and clove tobacco, and the balmy heat of the night. The path was lit by gas-lanterns, as was the sky, which turned a colour of navy-purple I have never witnessed in waking life.

   As I moved over the hill, the waves were larger than life and appeared closer to me than they ought to have been, like a tapestry of every shade of blue being waved by children before my eyes, yet on the horizon. Navigating my way through the vast dune system, I became aware of what I first thought was my irregular pulse, but soon realized was the beating of distant drums. I picked up my pace and ran through the marram grass, the furor enveloping me, until at last, a film of sweat on my brow and catching my breath, I arrived at the beach. Almost instantaneously, I fell to my knees, unable to fully absorb the panorama that I was witnessing.

   What lay before me was a scene of breath-taking otherworldly beauty. Protruding from the beach like a statue of Easter Island was the remains of an ancient, extra-terrestrial castle made of stone. Conical in shape with the apex at the bottom, the exterior of the structure was adorned with a spiral of archways. Each of these archways was filled with revelers drinking from conch shells, smoking large ornate pipes and playing music with orbs of light.

   Out of thin air, a hand traced down the length of my back, causing me to wake suddenly from my trance like gaze, and search for the source of the hand. It was a girl, barefoot and walking slowly down the dune towards the castle. The way her dress fell on her made the sky burn bright white as if the whole planet were being engulfed by a star. I had just enough time to map the contours of her body with my minds eye before the chip kicked in. I was awake, never to dream again.

 

 

The same three crows sit on the power-lines outside his window each morning, their eyes expressionless beads in the dim light of dawn. They observe silently as he nurses his coffee as if it were a stillborn, and he very often observes them back. He wonders if they know that the only thing he’s ever really nurtured is the curvature of his spine, forged during bouts of insomnia, scanning the vast expanse of the web for something to care about enough to want to wake up, or go to sleep.  The two become much of a muchness when there’s no discernable difference between them. The coffee had no taste to it, the sole purpose of it being to rejuvenate the worker, though it rarely worked. A colleague of his claimed he knew where small amounts of the good stuff could be obtained, real Guatemalan blend. But coming by a commodity like that, even on his relatively generous scientist salary, would cost him months of unrelenting hardship. Sometimes, it was enough for him to just imagine, with what little capacity he still possessed to do so, that what was passing his lips had qualities of that rich, viscous drink he once took for granted. Thoughts like these would often lead to pensive moments though, and he knew that such moments were far from helpful.

   His commute to work was unremarkable. There were different routes to be taken to the plant depending on whether you were a scientist or a prole, and corresponding security passes were issued for each. At certain conjunctures, the two groups of workers would come within close proximity of one another, though there was no hint of animosity between them. In fact, the proles seemed so indifferent to the presence of the scientists that he wondered if they could even see them at all. If they did, he witnessed not a flicker of any discernable emotional response. What struck him most, upon entering the plant, was the din of the place. Despite the policy of absolute silence amongst the proles during working hours, there was a constant humming sound permeating the air, as if it had snuck in to fill the vacuum of anything else. This was made even more curious by the absence of electrical machinery. The robotics that were once controversially brought in to replace manual labour had since been deemed unruly, and more prone to deviant behavior than their human counterparts, who’s behavioral traits were now better understood. Strange to think that in centuries past, man strove to constantly intensify the technology they had, pushing the boundaries of what was possible at an alarming pace, only for it to turn on them in the most unthinkable way.

   Walking up the gridiron steps with his team, their footsteps punctuating the drone, he found it impossible not to observe those men that had not been as fortunate as him. From above, they gave the impression of worker bees, all contributing towards a common goal, totally selfless in their devotion to the queen. However, there was a more sinister aspect to the way they held themselves. The majority of them had the demeanor of caged bears, their ambitions drained like bile. Tracing the caffeine residue in the crevasses of his teeth, he turns his head and fixes his gaze on the opaque window of his lab a short way down the parapet, and wonders if today something might change.

“How have you been sleeping?”
   

   “Well”, I respond unconvincingly. Better to play it that way, rather than endure the barrage of invasive interrogation that would have ensued had I answered differently. The truth was I was so tired I felt like I was clinging to life with the tips of my fingers. The only thing close to sleep I had experienced in the last few days came in the form of fragmented bouts of exhaustion induced blackouts. Countless hours spent criss-crossing back and forth between consciousness and the ‘not consciousness but not unconsciousness’ twilight zone, before ultimately jolting upright, drenched in ice-cold perspiration. It was exactly as she had described it, in the note she had left.   

   “Have you been experiencing anything out of the ordinary during your nightly sleep cycle?”
   

   Their phrasing was impeccable. ‘Ordinary’ was a state they perpetuated with fake endorphins, hormone pills and electrolyte impulses. These meetings, a formality for those bound to this profession, followed a strict format. Like Tim Robbins’ futile attempts at applying for parole in The Shawshank Redemption, both parties were well versed in the familiar rhetoric, and recited their respective parts by rote. Both the ‘councilor’ (presumably) and myself viewed these bi-weekly appointments as a necessity, a means to an end, whilst at the same time, neither of us particularly wanted to be there.   

   “No, nothing… nothing out of the ordinary.”
   

   They seemed to me to be about as useful as quizzing a eunuch on his sexual endeavours. Corps throwing salt in the wound, a wound through which I currently felt my soul was leaking. She had always dealt with these things so much better than I did. She kept precious things under her pillow. They helped her to fall asleep. Curled into a ball with her head nestled on my chest, the barely audible sounds she made melted my heart, and gave me some reassurance that there was reason amidst the strife. Being reminded of her like that winded me like getting punched in the gut, or falling unexpectedly into freezing water.

 

Skye had been a scientist like himself, though that was about the extent of their similarities. They first encountered when they were paired up during the trials for what they would later find out to be training for muting. Their eyes danced in avoidance of one another throughout their assignment, both trying in vain to play down the obvious chemistry that was present in an attempt to remain an air of professionalism.  She led and he followed as best he could, caring far more about her opinion of him than the important task at hand. Her graceful, elegant movements transformed a menial operation into something that was a pleasure to watch. She was like an artist, applying carefully considered brushstrokes to her magnus opus, a characteristic of her that he would later witness in everything that she did.  From the outset it was clear to him that she possessed boundless ambition and drive, far more than he did. He had stumbled unintentionally into his line of work, but at that moment, he had never been more grateful of that.

   To resume a normal day after those meetings was a chore. He always needed to take a few slow, deep breaths before feeling ready to get on with his duties afterward. He had nothing until 12.15 now though, according to his diary. He wondered why they made him clock in so damn early if there wasn’t anything to do. When faced with a dearth of responsibility like that, he found immense difficulty avoiding logging into his VitaCount, though he always regretted it. His stool analytics were a constant reminder of his faltering health, and the host of adverts for tailored pharmaceuticals that surrounded his stats page only served to sicken him further.

 

Reviews

[Kate Whitaker]

To be honest, I had a hard time understanding what was going on. The prose is beautiful and the descriptions are amazing, but the jumps in point of view are jarring and there is no over all flow to the piece.