You Can't Read in a Dream

We only have about ten minutes to get him to Everett.

Awake, the ride takes forty-five minutes, but we don’t need that long if he’s asleep. I once trained a guy who quit on the third night, because he didn’t like the pliability of it all. The way time wasn’t the only flat circle, but everything. Nothing but circles. Speech, behavior, and emotion--all could bend if you knew which way to pull and how hard. I can get anybody to Everett in twenty, but sometimes you have less than twenty, and that’s when it gets complicated.

I showed up at around 1:27am, because I’m a night owl. I’ve had bosses over the years who try to get me to stick to the standard schedule. That would have me coming in at 11:30pm, because that’s the average bedtime for Americans. My cousin lives in Italy and she goes in at 11pm, which is strange, because I always think of Europeans as going to bed later than us. Not everyone in my family works in transport, but my cousin says all the people who are great at it have it in their DNA. My mother did transport, and my father worked in transport admin. I have two sisters, and both do transport. My brother is a doctor, but we try not to hold it against him.

My preference is to show up deep into the shift, because that’s when the emergencies happen. If there’s going to be a crisis, I’d rather walk up to the beginning of it rather than have it hit me while I’m working on something else. My philosophy tracks with me, but my latest boss is one of those who thinks he’s going to break me of all my bad habits.

“Crystal,” he said, brandishing a half-drunk cup of green tea, “We have talked about your tardiness several times. One more time, and it’s a write-up.”

“Or just fire me,” I said, grabbing the coffee pot and dumping what was left of it into the mug I always use, the one that has two kittens sword fighting on it, “You see those red lights going off, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I see ‘em.”

“So what’s the deal?”

Henderson was sent over from Trauma, and that might be why he’s always on edge. I feel bad about giving him a hard time until he threatens me with that write-up bullshit, and then I don’t. He has a real hard time seeing the forest through the trees. Like when we have all three bulbs lit up above our casting screen and he’s harping on me about a somewhat late arrival.

“The deal,” he said, “Is a fourteen-year-old boy at Circle High. He immediately hid in a janitor’s closet when the dream started, so he didn’t trigger our alarm until a few minutes had gone by.”

“A few minutes,” I said, already dreading what I knew the answer to my question would be, “How long do we have for the transport?”

Henderson cleared his throat. I hate theatrics, even when the person doesn’t know they’re being theatrical. Like in a short story when it says that somebody sighs. When was the last time you saw anybody sigh in real life? It’s just something for the author to write down when they get sick of saying “he said” and “she said” over and over again.

“Fifteen minutes,” Henderson said.

“Which means ten,” I said, because it was going to take me at least five minutes to get my gear on and fall asleep. They used to knock us out using drugs until one lady didn’t wake up, and then there was a lawsuit. Now, we have to fall asleep without assistance, and some people can’t manage it. The anxiety is too much. It’s like waiting for water to boil. That’s why in spite of my less-than-stellar record of following company policy, I know I’ll never be fired. I can pass out anytime, anywhere, in a matter of seconds if I need to. That still doesn’t give me a ton of time to get to Circle High, grab the kid, and get him somewhere safe before he wakes up.

“Can you do ten,” Henderson asked, busting my chops, “Or should I send someone else?”

“Henderson,” I said, already strapping on a vest, “If you thought you could send somebody else, you would have already done it.”

Circle High is not the name of the high school. It’s Circle High, because it’s not really a high school. The same way that Circle Supermarket is not really a supermarket, and Circle Post Office is not really a post office, although I’ve only had to go to Circle Post Office once, and I’d rather not go back. In dreams, everything is like a studio backlot, and that’s how we behave when we step in to do our job. Never assume a door leads anywhere. Treat every building as though it’s a facade. Every so often, an agent will complete a transport early and decide to do a little exploring before they wake up, and then we usually have to send in someone else to go get them. After that, the embarrassment usually becomes too overwhelming and they quit. There’s no coming back from having one of your co-workers walking in on you proposing to your favorite Circle Movie Star while wearing a chicken suit.

The high school is a common spot for transports. People are always going back to high school in their dreams. In the manual they give us at orientation, it says that if you’re dreaming about high school, it means you feel like you went wrong somewhere in life, and you want to go back to a place where you could make different decisions that would actually get you on the right path. I guess that means we’re all spending our days stockpiling regrets, because everyone I know dreams of being back at school with a test they didn’t study for or a class they’re failing. School transports aren’t the hardest assignments we get, and I couldn’t figure out why this would be a three-light priority. We’re not told why one assignment is more important than the others. That’s above our pay grade even though my boots are the ones on the ground.

I was given the location of the closet where the kid was hiding. That’s right, bud, I thought to myself, Make my life easy. Just stay in that closet until I get there, and we’ll have you in Everett before that alarm on your phone starts going off.

The closet he was hiding in was on the first floor to the right of the guidance counselor’s office. I didn’t see anyone else in the school, which was unusual for this kind of dream. Usually there were teachers and students everywhere, and you had to practice some kind of character so they’d leave you alone. You could treat the whole thing like a videogame and just push past them like they’re avatars, but I find that to be time-consuming. I’d rather just smile and say “I’m here to pick up my son. He’s got a doctor’s appointment.” People in dreams are only half-there. They don’t have the capacity to understand more than a sentence or two at a time. As long as you’re not instigating them, you can move through them quickly. In some cases, right through them. I once stepped through a transport assignment’s dead uncle and had to fill out half a dozen forms when I woke up.

When I got to the hiding spot, I knocked lightly on the door. I’d forgotten to get the kid’s name, but I didn’t want to ask him for it in case it made me sound unprofessional. Henderson would ding me for that later, but oh well.

“Hello sir,” I said, hoping the formality would flatter the boy, “My name is Crystal. I’m here with Fitch & Balm Night Terrors Rescue & Recovery. I’d like to help transport you from this location to a lovely seaside town called Everett where you can spend the remainder of the evening.”

It wasn’t exactly the script I was supposed to follow, but who has time to memorize corporate jargon? A second or two went by, and then the door cracked open ajar.

“Hey,” the teenager said, his eyes looking glassy and wet. He’d been crying in there. What was this nightmare anyway? School shooting nightmares are more common these days, but that’s a four-light alarm, and requires an entire team for transport. Had they sent me into an extreme priority by mistake? The kid looked terrified.

“Hey,” I said, dropping the professional tone completely, “What’s going on here?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing the door open so I could see inside the closet, “I can’t get you out.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, “I’m here to get you out. That’s how this works.”

“They needed to give me another few minutes,” he said, stepping out into the hallway. He was wearing khaki pants and a white button down with some kind of logo on it. I couldn’t read what the logo said, because you can’t read in dreams. Try it and you’ll see I’m right.

Wait.

“It says Henderson High,” I said, looking at the letters as they formed a circle above a pocket on his chest. His hair was a curly blonde with small patches of darker brown mixed in it.

“You have to wait here for them,” he said.

“Wait here for who?”

I was confused. This was a dream. I wasn’t really here. I had a transport to do. There wasn’t going to be enough time to get him to Everett if we didn’t leave now.

“They’ll be here pretty soon,” he said, “I’m sorry I had to hide from you, but I didn’t know if you brought anything with you. The last time, you had a knife, and you kept waving it around. I know you probably didn’t meant to hurt anybody, but--”

“What are you talking about?”

Behind me, I could hear the sound of doors opening. The slam that school doors make when they’re thrown open. People coming down the hallway towards me. I don’t know why, but I had the impulse to dive into the closet. To lock the door and hide out there until I woke up.

“Don’t do it,” he said, seeming to read my thoughts, “It won’t matter. It’ll just make it all take longer, and then we’ll be here all night. I really need to go home and get some sleep.”

I kept looking around me and seeing words everywhere. Words I could read. How could I read? You can’t read in a dream.

“I’m so tired,” he said, “You must be really tired too.”

And that’s the strange thing.

I wasn’t tired.

I felt wide awake.