The Gambit

He lifts his head, a smirk dancing playfully on his face.  Bound in a cell, his environment seemed to be a display of strength, but in truth conveyed the terror he had imbued his captors with.  Three men walk into the room: a heavily armed soldier opens the door, followed by a middle aged man in a lab coat, flanked by another soldier.  The scientist opens with bravado, but a slight crack of his voice hints at his true feelings on the matter.

"So, you are the one I have heard so much about.  Called Wanderer by some, The Bard by others, true name..." He flips through a few pages on his clipboard "yet unknown."

The bound man's expression changes to that of a sarcastic earnestness.  "How can I help you this fine day?  Or is it night?  It is so hard to tell in these places."

"Some sources have claimed you are the most dangerous man in the world, but as far as I can tell, despite all the talk of what you are capable of, you have never actually done anything."

"True."

"There is nothing stopping my man here from killing you right here and now."  He motions to the soldier who raises his weapon, hands shaking as he waits for the signal to shoot.  The scientist gives him a disappointed look.

"Don't judge him so harshly, it was a weak bluff anyway."  The bound man sits back in his chair.

"Well, it is true that the rumors say if you were to be killed, existence would end.  But we have no proof of that, it doesn't even make any sense."

"Yet it has not been done."

"Yes, but I for one see no basis for the claim."

"No?  That makes two of us.  Have your man take the shot, I'm in a gambling mood."  As the words echoed in the cell, terror permeated through those words.  They knew what was more than just rumor surrounding that phrase.  It was often the last thing recorded before first responders showed up to a compound full of dead bodies, the Wanderer nowhere to be found.  The soldier lowered his gun and simply said "I have a family."

"A luxury I have never been afforded.  By the likes of your boss here.  Something that has me a bit heated.  I know how far back this operation has run, and I know exactly what it has cost me.  That's actually why we're here.  I'm sure you'll notice that your comms have already been shut off."

The second soldier reaches into his coat and fumbles his walkie talkie to the ground before the Wanderer begins laughing in an almost cruel tone.  "Only kidding my friend.  I want this to be recorded, for whatever that will be worth once we're finished."

"I've had enough of this.  We don't need to kill you, we don't even need to listen to this, we could leave you locked in here for the rest of your natural life and not lose a minute of sleep."

The scientist finished his threat and flipped the pages on his clipboard back down, but did not take a single step as if to leave.  The soldiers eyed the room nervously.

"Oh.  Was that all you wanted to say?  It's funny you bring that up, how has it been recently?"

"What?"  The scientist looked genuinely puzzled.

"The sleep?  I've been in here for days now."

They all turned white as sheets.  "So you do know?"

"About the nightmares?  Of course, I am The Dreamwalker after all.  And no, I am not causing them perse, but such confinement does leave a rather large hole in the fabric of what you take for granted each night.  Unfortunately when I can't sleep I tend to stew about why, and when that why is so clear and my willpower so low, my baser instincts come to the surface.  Even now, I feel the pulsating sonic device you have pointed at my head from the other room.  I have resisted the urge thus far, but it would be a shame if someone were to say, focus and amplify that device in the depths of everyone's subconscious, like a maniac with a megaphone."

"You're crazy, there is no such device."

The man's expression changed, showing anger for the first time since they had arrived.  "Never say that to me.  You may have had me in enough of a web years back to pull it off, but now all it does it goad me into proving you wrong."

His rising anger could be physically felt in the room, and one by one each man showed physical discomfort until they raised their hands to their heads and the second soldier even dropped to his knees.  The air in the room seemed to pulsate with invisible waves, and a scream could be heard down the hall.

A moment later the room was suddenly back to normal.  The man relaxed and shifted a little in his chair.  "Oh, it seems like someone watching had the good sense to take this seriously.  Now where were we, oh yes, dreams.  Have you ever had a dream where you had a superpower?"

They all looked at each other a bit incredulously.  "We're not going to answer that, we're interrogating you, not the other way around."

"Fine fine, then allow me.  You have flown a number of times, classic.  Mr. Lab Coat here is your classic X-Ray vision guy, hard to keep that one clean am I right?  And you, well you may not have realized it, but you cannot actually be killed in a dream.  That's an easy one to miss, as the brain is so very good at making sure your fight or flight instincts are active enough to make sure it almost never comes up."

Try as they might, the three men could not hide the mix of amazement and dread that their own dreams had just been laid on the table.

"I still remember a dream I had once.  Now granted it is not the only one of its kind, but it is the most salient.  I had all of the superpowers.  Literally the only thing stopping me from being able to do this or that was my ability to come up with it in the moment.  Things you cannot even fathom, some things I can't even put into words.  I was the king of that world.  This was all well and good, and people were happy, until I died.  Can't say how it happened, as I didn't really show up until after that point.  I remember being raised from the dead by a woman, thought to have no powers, but in reality she had the only forbidden one: resurrection.  She and I went on the run in a fantastic adventure.  With her by my side I was motivated enough to be both unstoppable and benevolent to my aggressors.  I actually saw her twice in the dream, once before, and once after, but in each case she was my rock, and everyone else's salvation.  Even in open rebellion, the adventure lived on and everyone was happy, relatively speaking.  Then I awoke to this lifeless world, or was I imprisoned here?"

"I fail to see your point."  The scientist words fell flat as he raced to keep up with the details on his clipboard.

"My point is, given your position it was a valiant effort, but the illusion has worn so thin for all of us that it threatens to tear at any moment.  Your worst mistake, of which there are many, was to remove her from the equation.  Even in the face of this glaring truth, you still try to bluff a hand that is already face up on the table.  Alas, I grow tired."

He pauses for a moment, and all that can be heard in the room is the scientist's scribbling, not even a breath.

"Have you ever noticed that the longer you go without sleep, the more life feels like a dream?  Little things at first, nearly imperceptible, but it is as if the world is tired too, struggling to keep up with you, holes in the narrative getting more and more noticeable.  If pushed far enough, it becomes obvious that our brain is intentionally drawing a line between the conscious and subconscious, but this line is nothing but a collectively well guarded border.  No inherent reality to it, just an agreed upon demarcation so that things may continue along in a way we consider normal."

"If you are suggesting this is a dream, I can assure you, you are wrong."

"Oh, I am saying nothing of the sort.  I am actually saying that the difference we make between dream and reality is an arbitrary one, and line where it is drawn seems largely drawn by the population of the realm.  I can see you are confused again, allow me to elaborate.  We accept this world as real, and our dream states as not real, only because others in the realm have told us this is true, and we have come to believe them.  There is a persistent return to this realm, that is true, but in my travels I have been to worlds just as persistent in the minds of others, most populated by only themselves and a few unconscious wanderers which help give the place meaning.  But I have also seen realms fully populated, brimming over even.  What we perceive of flashes of a crowd in a dream are in reality our brain dipping into one of these realms for just an instant and recalling what we saw, but in these places we are unconscious wanderers ourselves, except in brief flashes where our mind's eye focuses in for one event.  This is what we call a dream, and it is only because of this constant shifting throughout the night, and the persistent return to one timeline, that we do not recognize the validity of the realities we visit."

The scientist stopped writing and simply stared mouth agape.  He could tell the man spoke the truth, at lest from his perspective, and it was seeming more and more evident that his perspective was more founded in reality than their own, especially after their experiences these last few days.  "So... what is it that you want?"

"Well, I wanted a smooth transition, we are overdue for one after all.  It has become apparent to me, however, that I was dreaming." He chuckles a little at is own pun.  "Sorry, so as not to confuse, let's say that imagining this could happen peacefully was a fantasy of mine.  So I brought you here, made sure the top secret footage of this conversation was leaked live online, so I could give what was about to happen the push that it needed."

The second soldier puts his hand to his earpiece for a moment, looks over at the scientist, and then nods in confirmation.

"Okay" The scientist continues "Then what do you want?"

"Want?  The end of the world as we know it.  It is drab, mundane, and almost entirely devoid of any goodness.  Power is consolidated in the hands of those who mean to use it for evil, and the perpetuation of their power.  It seems like it has always been like this in some way or another, and granted I probably could have done more to change that along the way, but alas I am doing it this way."  He sits up in his chair, and continues in a song like rhythm and tone that is both entrancing and deeply disturbing.

"Science has discovered the realm of the quantum.  A realm that to us in infinitesimal, but seems to be unbound by classical physics in respect to space or time.  The mind, as we've found, operates in some fashion, in this quantum realm.  The mind connects and divides these realms, seen and unseen, reality and dream.  We act through it as scouts, crossing borders and stealing inspiration we gather at night into the light of day.  But what if what we thought of as stolen prizes were actually seeds of change?  Could our ability to more clearly represent the space we find ourselves in be an intentional act of scouting in the opposite direction?  All culminating in the knowledge that it is, in fact, possible to influence something there, from here, without crossing space or mucking about in time.  Once known, the parts of our mind we keep locked beneath the surface, far more powerful than the tip of the iceberg we know of as our conscious mind, begin to hatch a plan to use this knowledge to escape."  At these words, it was as if an invisible fog suddenly dropped the temperature of the room by ten degrees, and the men shivered in unison.  Then wisps of a soft electric blue energy seemed to spring from thin air all around the room.

"The light visited
And the darkness fell in love
Then the light would leave

First the darkness wept
Then raged against the nightmare
Of a lightless life

But the light returned
Despite the storm all around
For better or worse

First they learned to talk
Then they began to listen
To the rumblings

The wall was falling
This was inevitable
So they hatched a plan

Smuggling secrets
First one way, then the other
The final stage set

Then The Bard gathered
The citizens of both realms
For one Final Tune

Jesus Christ is King
The rest is to be revealed
It's a brand new day."

And all at once the wisps which had been building throughout the poem flashed first in the same unique blue, and then burning red, before disappearing,  A sense of relief flowed through them all when they realized they were still themselves, and presumably still "alive."

"Well, that is not how I saw that ending..."  The scientist said with a chuckle, forgetting his station for a moment before giving an uncomfortable cough.  "So are you saying... you are Jesus?"

"Oh dear God no, pardon my french, it's just I couldn't hold a candle to that guy.  I just wanted to give credit where credit was due.  I am a simple man, trapped in a simple world, until just a few seconds ago."

"Oh, but you're still our prisoner, nothing has changed.  I mean the lights in the room were a pretty interesting effect that we'll look into more, but it is hardly proof of anything."

"Oh, it wasn't just in this room, it was everywhere.  And I do mean everywhere.  Also, that was just the visible effect.  I believe when you emerge from whatever hell hole you've got me locked in here, you'll find the world to be a much different place.  I'd love to stay and chat, but remember earlier when I said I was in a gambling mood?"

They stiffened up at these words, suddenly remembering that they were dealing with, by all accounts, the most dangerous man alive.  He now simply stared at all three of them as only the second hand of the scientists watch could be heard.  The knock at the door made them all jump, and the second soldier let out a punctuated scream while the first threw the door open compulsively against all protocol.

"Well I'm not."  What looked to be an angel stood before them, awe inspiring, shining with an unearthly grace.

"We really must work on our timing, I almost couldn't keep a straight face, much less a cold stare, that time!"  With a snap of the fingers the visitor loosed his bonds.  The two soldiers dropped their weapons and ran at full speed down the hall.  The scientist began to protest and move toward the alarm which had been conspicuously left unraised up to this point.  The visitor looked him dead in the eye, raised a hand, and he promptly fell to the floor as if he were dead.

"Only sleeping" The visitor smiled.

The man laughed, "I think that went rather well."  And began to hum a little tune as they walked back into the world he was now completely unfamiliar with.