The Realisation Consultant

Nora lay back in the chair in the small waiting room, stretching out her arms and legs. The chair was cushioned but scratchy, with the padding flattened by the impression of many thousands of sitters. The furniture’s rust-orange complimented specks of mould creeping in the corners of the ceiling. In the window someone had hung a glass pendant which threw the summer sun across the room in rainbows.

A girl she would have guessed was about her own age, sixteen, emerged from the corner doorway. She trilled a goodbye to the room’s occupant and immediately got her phone out from her pocket, putting it to her ear. On catching Nora’s eye, they exchanged smiles.

“Oh, hey mum. I had to call you straight away,” she spoke slightly breathlessly, and crossed the room quickly. “She said that by next time I might even get my singing dream!”

She passed through the rainbows and out into the sunlight. Then it was just Nora, and the posters.

The walls were crowded with so many of them she really had to focus to take it all in. Small flyers had been stuck over the corners of huge posters, the whole thing held in by a confusingly arrayed selection of drawing pins: too many in some places, not enough in others. Some posters were browning printouts, others glossy professional prints. 

A young man jumps, a triumphant hand grasping his phone and raised to the sky. Fulfill: top them up to keep on top!

A photo of a glorious banquet table. The feast of life is eaten one bite at a time.

A woman sat at a kitchen table, surrounded by children’s toys, head in hands. Feeling stuck? Speak to one of our special advisors*, available 24/7 with practical support and guidance. No RealRate too low.

A poster which featured the same branding as Fulfill. A group sit around a table with coffee, cake and phones. EVERY QUARTER IS WHEN YOU OUGHTA. Set up a dreamshare with your friends and family today.

The door of the room opened again, and this time a woman’s head, disembodied, popped out halfway down. 

“Nora?” she asked. “Come in, come in.”

She ushered Nora over to an identical seat, separated from hers by a desk. The desk was large but contained only a tablet on a stand and a nameplate which said, Rose Bellamy, Realisation Consultant.

Rose Bellamy had dark helmet-like bushy hair, which was clearly not coiffured. She wore a mauve jacket with intricate beading spilling over each shoulder and clinking lightly with each movement, and even though she couldn’t have been much younger than Nora’s mum, she expended a great deal of energy lowering herself into the chair.

She focussed her dark, badger-like eyes on Nora.

“My name is Rose,” she said, gesturing to her nameplate. She was speaking slowly in Nora’s first language, East English. “Welcome to our lovely city. There aren’t many who make the journey you have - it’s nice to be able to welcome a newcomer!”

Her East English was very poor, with additional syllables wandering unknowingly around the place, an accent which fought with the shape of the words, and with strange, accidental implications in her phrasing, words which suggested that she and Nora might be cousins, or something closer. Nora tried not to wince. She left a polite moment before intervening.

“I do speak West English. Pretty well, I think.”

Rose blinked, recalibrated, shaking her shoulders a little then coming back to herself. She continued in her mother tongue: “Apologies, it’s just very unusual…” 

“My mum taught me.”

Rose laid a hand flat, splayed on the table. “Well, if there’s anything at all you don’t understand, please just tell me. I suppose East and West English aren’t too different when it comes down to it.”

She laughed and turned to the small screen in front of her, flicking it brusquely several times.

“So what brings you to West England? It seems your parents both got jobs in New Oxford?”

They’d been on the final drive home from the Secure Youth Facility, Greenways, when Nora’s mum had told her the news that everything was going to change. A new beginning, she’d said. Maybe even a last chance. Nora had said there was no such thing as last chances.

“It was mum’s job. She’s an Agricultural Scientist. Her company found her a promotion over here.”

Rose raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Very nice, very nice. Gives you a lot of potential - but I’m getting ahead of myself. Mustn’t get sunrise-eyes now, should we? But I have to admit it’s very exciting to be Dream-setting for a young person such as yourself! Normally by your age children are quite settled.”

Nora frowned on hearing the unfamiliar term. “Sunrise-eyes?”

“Oh yes,” Rose paused in thought, and then by explanation said a word in East English which meant “carried away”.

“So, welcome, Nora. Has anyone explained what it is we do?”

Nora shook her head and shifted in her chair, then sat up straight. Mum had told her to make a good impression.

“You help me realise my… dreams?”

“Have you heard the word “dreams” before?”

Nora bit her lip and thought back to her mum speaking West English.

“I think in my language it means what I hope to achieve?”

Rose laughed, a close-mouthed chuckle which shook her shoulders.

“I shouldn’t laugh - forgive me - but such an old word coming from someone as young as you. I believe many hundreds of years ago it did mean something like that. Something fantastical. Night visions, illusions, unreal thoughts, back when people believed in that sort of thing. Of course as societies evolve, so does language, and well, hope is no good unless it’s manageable, isn’t it really? The safest hope is the kind that fits in your hands, not your head.”

Nora held in the hollow of her hands a butterfly, still wet from the cocoon. She imagined it there as Rose continued.

“Anyway, we’ve come on since then. When I say dream, I mean something you can have here today. I’m here to help you achieve and your dreams will help you do that.”

She tapped through to another screen on the tablet.

“To get you set up as a citizen of West England, we have to start with what you want to do in life. It’s important that we all have a focus. These focuses, or dreams, will help you and others understand your potential and direction. At your age, you can have three dreams, one educational and two vocational. When you leave education you have three vocational. If you do well in achieving your dreams you may be permitted one personal, but those are what we call earned dreams - no point me getting into that now.”

Nora realised she hadn’t been listening. She blinked and tried to focus very hard on Rose’s face. She heard her mum’s voice in her head, telling her ten times that morning: they don’t know about Greenways. Listen to them, and remember it’s a new start.

“Now I’ll put them into the system today, but I should let you know that it’s important that you manage your dreams. In fact, for a person of your age it is the law. There are a few different apps you can use. We mainly use Fulfill so your account will automatically sync with that. But if you choose a different one just let me know and I’ll contact you there. It is mandatory though, so please do tell me if you switch, I don’t want us both getting into trouble.” She chuckled again. “So where shall we begin?”

“I want to be an artist”, Nora said, without hesitation. Even at Greenways, when other studies had fallen away, she’d never stopped drawing. They only had pencil and paper at Greenways, but she’d got really good at sketching. She used to make monochrome comic strips featuring the others there and give them out as gifts; it was easier than making friends.

Rose folded her hands. “Wonderful, Nora. I like where you’re starting from. But I must share a saying we have here in West England: the strength of a thousand woven dreams cannot be shaken in the storm. Many small dreams together will withstand the mighty winds of life. “An artist” doesn’t give me a lot to go on, but we can improve, we can improve.”

She held out a hand as if to calm Nora, who had been sitting quite still.

“A small dream is an achievable dream. An achievable dream is a good dream. Here, we like good dreams. I’ll be seeing you in a quarter’s time, maybe sooner if you achieve all your dreams before then, so let’s pick something you can reasonably achieve in that time. It will help you maximise what is possible with the means that you have. And do try and make it specific.” She waved a finger. “It’s terrific to be specific!”

Nora thought for a minute. She saw her comic strips burst into colour. Violet, cyan, veridian and citrus exploded inside her, a vivid rush of possibility. “I’d like to use paints. Different colours. I don’t mind what I paint. Anything, really - I’d be excited for anything.”

Rose’s smile flickered, but she smoothed down her jacket and continued.

“Oh my dear, keep forgetting how much you don’t know. As I say, most of the young people I see - they’ve had this system in their bones since birth. I should have said sooner: your dreams must be aligned with The List. That’s the rule. No point setting off down a road which won’t take you anywhere at all.”

“Can I see The List?” asked Nora. “Did you write it?”

“Oh no,” said Rose. “I don’t make The List. No one does, not really. it gets fed in from West English businesses and run through the Dream Horizon algorithm, to take account of, well, the future. It’s very efficient. Updates live. Let me just check. I can load up the job/dream ratio, but if doing sketches is no good I’ll have to say no, I’m afraid.”

She typed rapidly, scanning through The List in hardly any time at all.

“No… no I’m afraid that’s not going to work. But perhaps if I change the parameters… If you already knew someone in that field, say if your parents were artists - did your father travel with you?”

“Yes. But he’s not an artist, he’s a construction worker.”

Rose pursed her lips. “Unless you know somebody here who is in art… I think with your parents’ income being what it is, I’m sorry, I just can’t widen out the realisation sphere that far.”

Violet, cyan, veridian and citrus - all merged, all became mud. “So I can’t paint?”

“Oh I would never tell you not to draw, my dear! It’s certainly not my place to do that. I’m not in the business of telling you not to have fun. It’s just about focus, you see. You can’t let fun get in the way of your dreams. We only get one life, after all. One real life.

“My job is to keep you from wasting it on -" she waved a hand, as if swatting a fly. "Fantasies. We don’t think of realism as a dirty word anymore. Things have improved since then. We’ve learned. These days, we set our dreams within our means. A phrase from Fulfill, but a good one nonetheless."

Nora felt embarrassed that her mind was as empty of dreams as the desk was of objects. She cast her eyes around the room, as she cast her mind around for some compromise. To buy herself a little time, she asked, “and what happens when I achieve my dreams?”

Rose picked up the tablet and turned it round to her. She could see what looked like a Fulfill profile page.

“This is my profile,” said Rose, smiling, her hands framing the tablet. “For every dream achiever you get a badge, which is public, of course. People like to know. You’ll start to get ‘potential points’ and the more of these you win, you might even get the chance to get opportunities outside of your natural sphere. Once your dreams are realised, which you should do every quarter, you add more into the Completionlog.”

Completionlog. There was definitely no word for that in East English.

Nora had an idea. “I like translation,” she said. “Maybe I could translate some East English poems?”

Rose searched The List, eyes narrowed. Then - a small squeal. “Now, I do have something here... But poetry, lovely as it is… it might not give you the vocabulary you need to assimilate.” A pause. A tilt of the head. “Shall we say political speeches?”

Nora had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. She kept her voice even. “I’m not interested in politics.”

Rose deleted it from the search bar. “No matter, it was just a dream idea. Let’s keep thinking.”

“Can I change them, once they’re decided?” asked Nora.

Rose sighed.

“That triggers a consultation. Sometimes people feel as though they want a change, but quite often these things just turn out to be fantasies. You wake up with some idea one morning, quite sunrise-eyed, and it turns out to be a fiction. It’s important to recognise these moments for what they are. Fleeting. Disruptive. The root of unnecessary dissatisfaction. Disappointment,” she noted, as if reciting, “is the dam which stems the river of purpose.”

Nora loved waking up in the morning. She loved the clean possibility of them: the thought that perhaps anything might happen that day. Even in Greenways, she’d felt it, sometimes. She’d never given a moment’s thought to what happens to that skylark of a feeling: had just let it swoop, swoop, swoop. 

But perhaps Rose was right when she said that it was unhelpful. Nora tried to scrutinise her face, searching for a sign - had Rose already seen the skylark plunge, wings folding, into the dark?

She still didn’t know what to say.

“And… if I fail in my dreams?”

“Nora, you are worrying us to distraction here.”

“But just if.”

Rose took a long, slow breath in. “Well,” she said, “there is a type of person,” - her eyes narrowed on the word type - “and I’m sure you’re not one of them, that we think of as being “stuck”. Their RealRate, the rate by which you realise your dreams, will be low. Those who move quickly have a high RealRate, those who move slowly have a low RealRate.”

She folded her hands. “And when that happens, their range of opportunities starts to shrink. People notice. A person who stays too long with the same unfulfilled dream… well. Eventually, the dream is all they have.”

She reached across the table. “But please don’t worry. If it happens, it happens very slowly. Quite often the very “stuck” are languishing in fantasy. They’ve forgotten that old truth: no one stumbles on a humble dream. And we wouldn’t want that, would we? A person wasting their time on something implausible, when there are real, achievable successes waiting for them? The way we do things here, everybody wins. Everybody succeeds. There is always something to achieve, even if it’s only small.”

Rose checked her watch.

“Oh dear, you’ve got me on my specialist subject,” she said. “I don’t wish to hurry you but we must try to keep to time. Don’t forget I will be on the end of the line,” she waved the tablet, “on Fulfill, and there’s actually an excellent video in the FAQ section which explains the dream-system. Now how do you feel about those political speeches, just as a starting point?”

Nora nodded without looking at Rose.

“Good girl. OK let’s say each week you will translate the parliament address. That’s twelve translations. We’ll tick them off every week - measure and treasure Nora, measure and treasure.”

A moment of silence seemed to give Rose the permission she needed to return to the tablet.

“Let’s see…” Rose scanned The List once more. “Do you know which materials are used to build eco-houses?”

“No, I’ve never learned anything about construction.”

“Well, that might be exciting to learn, mightn’t it?”

Before Nora could answer, Rose’s fingers tapped the screen. It was done.

“And I will need you to speak to your Science teacher about achieving at least 85% in your next test, for your educational dream.” Rose entered this into the system and nodded neatly. It was done. “I think we’re done. Just sign here…”

Nora looked at the screen but didn’t read it. She didn’t know what else to do except scrawl her name, tick the box - yes, I have read the Terms and Conditions. She had this strange and very immediate sense that she was standing in a photograph of her own life. For the first time since leaving Greenways, in this small, blank room, she felt heat rising in her throat. Rose was slowly and uncomfortably extending a hand to her.

“Welcome to West England, Nora. We’re so pleased to have you here. You will be looked after.” Her words had a very precise cadence. “This is a place of realism. Here we live without disappointment or regret. I hope that what you are feeling right now is relief. As a Realisation Consultant I want to free you of your dissatisfaction. Thank you for letting me help you realise your dreams. I’ll see you in a quarter.” 

She looked down at the screen with a small frown. “Ah, I always forget the last bit. Don’t forget to download the app!”

She gestured to the door. Nora understood: she was dismissed. In the waiting room the summer sun still held steady. She opened the door. Across the floor, a hundred fragments of rainbow shook, quivering in tremolo.