Dreamworms Book 1: The Advent of Dreamtech by Isaac Petrov (drm ebook reader TXT) 📕

a signboard, but not one made to be seen by eyes, but to be felt by minds. Guess marais can’t read, Ximena thinks.

“Incredible!” Mark mutters next to her.

A young man appears a few seconds later, not far away from Edda. It’s the Oosterbeek farmer, worn working tunic over brown pants. Rew bestows a number two on him.

“These Geldershire mensas are… wow!” Mark says, still wide-eyed. “Funny how nobody’s ever found out what made them so good at this.”

It’s almost half a minute until the next person appears: the farmer’s sister, three. Then, a few seconds later, Aline, four, and Gotthard, five. And then some people Edda doesn’t recognize. There comes Pieter—Aline’s lover—nine. By the time the count reaches the high teens, a couple of minutes in the waiting, the next familiar face arrives: Janson—Pieter’s brother—eighteen. Rutger—Gotthard’s best friend—nineteen. Valentijn van Kley, twenty-four. Louisa van Kley, twenty-five.

The last familiar face, eleven-year-old Marten, makes number thirty-two. His face is a mask of disappointment as the number falls into him like a tombstone. He watches as many of his peers—inevitably the low numbered ones—cheer and hug each other. He begins to weep—the boy still very much under the surface of the man—and then disappears at a gesture of Rew’s Walkers, together with Louisa van Kley and the other high-numbered people.

Only twenty-four remain.

Edda releases Aline’s exultant embrace. We’re both still in the race. Ha! Ximena can hear her thoughts, threaded together with exhilaration. I was the best of all, Goah’s Mercy! The best! Edda sighs inwardly with satisfaction. It was all worth it, every dream minute of painstaking concentration. The price—the Path in the Shadow, the power to infiltrate others’ dreams and manipulate them to her will—is hers to lose now. She’s really got a chance at it.

Edda smiles widely, eyes beaming as she scans the other… human piercers—she imagines Yog’s voice in her thoughts. She feels strong, energized. No, more than that. She feels… liberated! What she has achieved—this awesome success—was a pure act of will. Literally. Elder Rew just taught her how to deploy her will, and the results… Ha! She feels like she can do anything if she just wants it enough; if she puts every atom of her soul into it. Why hasn’t she acted before? Life is short, and she feels like she has been adrift, at the mercy of the winds of convention. But now… Is she going to keep taking everything that life throws at her to show her her place, or is she going to do something about it? She could of course wait and learn more. There is power to be found in the Paths of the Mind Walker. But why wait? She could begin acting now. Yeah, like she should have years ago. Like a true, free woman, that deeply knows what she wants, and reaches for it, consequences be damned. Consequences are for the weak-willed. For those free of the shackles of convention, consequences are just, yeah, steps. Steps on a path. A path to self-fulfillment, to control over your own fate—and the fate of others.

A path of will.

A path to power.

Fifteen

Juf Edda

“Sixteenth of December 2399,” Professor Miyagi says. “Barely two weeks until the Century Festival.” As he paces across the amphitheater stage, he points at the scene floating over his head. “And Edda van Dolah is pumped up.”

The scene is frozen in time, but vivid, as if they were watching a set of actors that have been asked to kindly stand still. It is a classroom, recognizable in every age and place: a blackboard covered with chalk-written dates and names of people and places, a world map hanging on the wall, six rows of young adults with bored expressions, elbows and forearms on wooden school desks, tunics wrapped tightly against the chill. And looming over them all at the front of the classroom, like an altar in a temple of knowledge, the teacher’s desk, and Edda standing next to it, staring down at her pupils like a priestess of wisdom at her faithful.

“Can you feel her energy through your psych-links?” Miyagi asks rhetorically. “Her zeal? Yesterday she was just a girl trying to learn the first step of the Path of Light. Today she’s a woman with a mission. And she’s using the only weapon she knows how to wield: the teacher’s pulpit. This,” he points at the classroom, “is her Mondays’ and Thursdays’ evening lessons for adults. What do you say, people? Can a schoolteacher on a remote colony cause a shock of historical proportions?”

Ximena smiles to herself. Another rhetorical question.

“Let’s watch. Ank, please.”

“So picture this, mensas,” Edda is saying, “Rewind the clock to the twenty-second century. We’re at the peak of the second collapse, yeah? Death,” she gestures passionately with her arms, “is all around us. People are dying younger and younger, society is breaking down everywhere at the same time. It’s so bad, Goah awsself comes to the inevitable conclusion that we are truly too stupid to keep ourselves alive, and decides to take matters in aws own hands. And you know the rest, yeah? Kaya Fahey flees to Townsend, Goah’s revelations, aws Gift, aws Compacts, aws Womb, yada yada yada, and,” she claps her hands, “Goah’s first Imperium began. Initially just a small area around Townsend,” she points at a big black star on the world map, in North America, “in the province back then called Montana,” with vigorous strokes she writes the name on the blackboard. “But since they were the only ones staying alive, other than a few scattered barbarians still giving birth through vaginas,” some students, mostly the females, cringe at the image, “here we are now,” she points at the six Imperia of Goah, covering with bright colors most of the inhabitable parts of Earth’s landmasses. “You’ve heard it before, yeah? Peace and prosperity for all. The Goahn Pax. Worldwide. Blessed be Goah, our Pontifex and all that. Sounds familiar?”

“Boooring,” a man in his twenties in the