Dream Job: a Dreamtropolis Tale

By Lee Edward McIlmoyle

Morgan Summerwind is a genetically-modified woman living on Tabyss, a technologically advanced colony planet at the center of a web of mining colonies and trading outposts, light years from mother Earth. In this society, racial prejudice and sexual discrimination have been completely eliminated, as all people are the same hybrid race and gender.

On Tabyss, money is made the dirty old fashioned way: technological good manufacturing. Everyone who lives on Tabyss works for the Great Pyramid Corporation, one way or another. The GPC has been so successful on Tabyss that it ahs bought up many of the surrounding planets and is working hard to colonize them all. And of course, the most remarkable achievement of them all, even greater than the Great Pyramid Project itself, is the invention and implementation of the Dreamwerk Network, where every person holds down a second job, in their sleep.

However, this isn't the story of Tabyss, or the Great Pyramid, or of Dreamwerk. This is Morgan's story, and it starts with a chance meeting with a woman in her dreams, who kisses her and then jumps to her death. This same woman, now pronounced dead in both the waking and dreaming worlds, leaves digital breadcrumbs for her to follow in order to unravel the deep, dark secrets of Tabyss and the GPC. Then again, perhaps it IS about all of those things, and more.

Even love.

But even as Morgan begins to learn the truth, the powers that be are moving to stop her by any means necessary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Edward McIlmoyle
• Release date: Dec 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310301407

Lee Edward McIlmoyle

Writer/Artist/Musician/Cartoonist/activist. Canadian. Married to NYC book reviewer who won't review my books. Two cats, both insane. Help.

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FOREWORD

Hi, I’m Lee. Thank you for buying this ebook. It’s a short story introduction to the world of Dreamtropolis, a science fiction adventure series I plan to write, set in a futuristic world inspired by equal parts Samuel R. Delaney, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Robert A. Heinlein, The Four Marx Brothers and especially scenarist Thea Von Harbou and director Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

In case you’ve forgotten which book this is (eReaders are fun!), I’m the Canadian self-published author who writes stories about thieves and sorcerors, gypsies and spies, detectives and paranormal hunters, and a down-on-his-luck so-and-so named Richard Burley, currently of no fixed address. I ask you to read this story with as open a mind as possible, and, if you enjoy it, to email me at [e-mail] and tell me so, particularly if you’d like me to hurry up and write more.

Again, thank you.

Lee Edward McIlmoyle,

Listening to the latest Spock's Beard, craving coffee, and publishing short stories for Christmas,

Somewhere in Limbo,

Saturday, December 21st, 2013.

LETTING IN THE DRAUGHT

Morgan finally looked up from hir book and noted the time. 7:7:5 peehm. sHe depressed the page marker button and slipped the floppy tablet back into a satchel sHe kept by the side of the REMcot. Settling back on the raised end of the mattress, sHe slipped hir hand along the edge of the bed frame and moved a raised slider a couple of centimetres back, and the mattress configuration settled into the rest position. Hir cot shifted backwards toward the inner wall, and hir head came to rest under an overhanging panel of soft grey foam rubber.

An armature covered in tubes and nozzles descended carefully from an aperture above the foam pad and slid forward silently, coming to rest a fingers' breadth from hir face. sHe leaned ever so slightly forward and opened hir mouth, taking the nozzles into hir mouth and nostrils and clamping hir teeth down before leaning back into the raised headrest. The slow circulation of fresh oxygen began pushing though hir nasal passages, and then a warm gush of fluids entered hir mouth.

There was something about the viscosity and taste of the dream state fluid that always made hir think of a burned pot of vegetable soup with too many spices added to mask the taste. Hir last thought, as always, was to get up and move the soup from hir motHir's antique stovetop, just before the foam pad descended and engulfed hir head completely.

FIRST BLUSH

Waiting for the familiar rush of information to settle into an eddy, sHe felt hir body drift away, and with slow, even breaths, began to push outward gently. This always took more time than it seemed. The fluids made this process happen more smoothly, but it always seemed a little

squirrels in the park, racing behind benches and up trees. sHe looked up and saw feathers in the trees, which seemed to expand and contract gently in the breeze, which rolled along the ground like a fog and danced up hir legs before flowing into the space above, under the canopy of trees.

Something stirring behind hir caused hir to turn reflexively, and a

bright light from the front of a commuter train pulled into the station, and sHe shuffled onboard along with many other commuters, all dressed for another shyft at the office. The windows opaqued and the advert panels kept shifting, as the words became less and more comprehensible, the symbols dancing until some sense returned, though