Dream Oblivion

By Hayden Chance

Enter the Dream, lovers...

Life too rough? Wanna get high, baby? How about some O? Vitamin-O? Kay-O? Or do you prefer to call it just plain Oblivion? It’s the drug that’ll give you want you need. Better than sex and sweeter than life. It’s sour and stinks, but you’ll never notice. It’ll take the sting out of your existence. And this New World stings, baby. It’s 2075 and life is dark and rotten, but sugary like old cake, and lit up with colored lights like a carnival dream.

Society’s divided between two classes: Privilegeds and Unders. And you’d better know your place, baby. Or else it’s termination for you.

What’s that? You say you can’t handle it? That’s OK, lover. We all want to escape. And luckily there’s the Oblivion Dream... Where your inner world comes to life, and you forget. And maybe, for a just a moment, you feel alive. Good thing it’s sanctioned by the New World Government, The Cause.

And then there’s Mechs. Oh you don’t want to forget the Mechs! Android lovers. Oh, how hot they are! Synthetic life. Tech and sex. To fulfill your needs. That is, if you can afford them.

See, love is illegal now, except with Mechs. And why wouldn’t it be, baby? We asked The Cause to regulate it for us ‘cause we needed security. To be protected from those big, bad feelings that are classified now as a disease.

All men are not created equal. So in the midst of this dark, new world nightmare, John Thayer decided to level the playing field. Blinded by the pain of his existed and aching for love, he struggles against The Cause to change his lot. Join him on his adventure to break the chains that bind him as strong as any O-dream and prove that one man can make a difference in changing the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorje, Inc
• Release date: Feb 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9780982738467

Hayden Chance

Hayden Chance was born with the insane notion that he came here to bring magic back into the world. At 30 he discovered, much to his chagrin, that there was not a world of enchantment living behind the dusty shelves of University offices and libraries the way children’s books had sworn there was. What did live there was mold, contact dermatitis, angry women who hated Shakespeare for being a man and pale introverts with non-gender specific names who liked vegetarian Pad Thai. Unimpressed by these discoveries he decided to leave teaching forever and strike out for a life of adventure! He believes in showing the numinous behind the mundane. The mystical in the everyday lives of men and women (and animals). And he believes that truth is best received wrapped in a tortilla of laughter. (Did you like that poetic imagery?) He is a Virgo, is vehemently against political correctness and knows how to kill in three seconds. Seven seconds if he hasn’t had his coffee yet.

Book preview

Dream Oblivion

By

HAYDEN CHANCE

Smashwords Edition

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Dream Oblivion

Published by Dorje, Inc

2533 N. Carson Street Suite 4907

Carson, City, NV 89706

Copyright © CW Press, 2014

All Right Reserved

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

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Massive gratitude to the following people without whom this book would not exist: Paul McDowell, Starbuck Jones, Katana Lee, Martin Shaver, Arya Johnson and Wes LuAllen.

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I know you're only for a while

You come alive before my eyes

We can't control the way we feel, feel, feel…

Tonight

These neon lights are blinding me

I catch you looking at the sky

We can't control the way we feel, feel, feel…

--Le Cassette, Tonight

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In my house there's a circle, where the life comes in. From the stars to my home, down through the stone, I could have been so alone without my Precious Box. Have I a family? I guess not.

I've never seen a lot of beauty in my life…

--George Michael, Precious Box

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That’s the price of love

Can you feel it?

If we could buy it now

How would it last?

--World, New Order

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For those who truly wish to revive… in spite of the damage...

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Man’s Dream…

In 2015 the world changed forever. The globe fell first to the Military-Industrial Complex and then to the superior technological and military power of the Chinese. Shortly after that, all of the world governments consolidated under one new regime called The Cause.

Very few had known that this consolidation had been in the works for two generations and most of the population were so stunned by how quickly the old world fell, that they never recovered from the loss of their old way of living. Their security threatened, the population became easily pliable and settled for life conditions that, in the old days, they would have considered deplorable and unthinkable. Even those in impoverished countries saw a decline in their quality of living. Much of the population was wiped out in the initial consolidation process which happened by military and industrial force.

The remaining populace was molded and sculpted based on the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders #5). After careful analysis of this remaining population by the Department of Global Psychological Welfare (The DOGPW), it was determined that most humans suffered from Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). It was a disease which resulted in its sufferer experiencing anger, disobedience, hostility, defiance, argumentativeness and being easily annoyed. That combined with the lack of resources needed to support a vastly overpopulated planet led The Cause’s Department of Global Medicine (The CDOGM) to conclude that the best course of action was to scrub the world of 90 percent of its population.

This action, it reported, would cleanse humanity of its unpleasant traits and result in a smaller, more docile and obedient people. This directive was fully carried out by 2018. The resulting populace was, in fact, smaller and more compliant. Every once in awhile, however, Man’s DNA asserted its desire to resist oppression. Such anomalies were quickly and quietly handled by The Department of Humanity Purification (The DOHP) so that no one knew such genetic anomalies could occur.

The remaining society was divided into two classes: the wealthy, known as Privilegeds, or P’s for short, and the underprivileged, known as the Unders. Breeding was illegal for all except Privilegeds and then only by special sanction from The Cause. All children were raised by The Cause in stables. There were no families anymore, at least that’s what most Unders were raised to believe.

It may sound like all of this was horrible, but the New World did have its coping mechanisms. This New World gave people the perfect alternative to living. They called it Oblivion; or, as it was referred to on the street: O, Total O, Blind-O, Kay-O and Vitamin-O. It was a drug that gave users the ultimate escape from their lives: a euphoria that bent their consciousness around their reality in ways that were much preferable to effort, self-control, balance and discipline.

Some drank O. Some snorted it. Some smoked it. Some injected it directly into their veins. This versatility gave users the chance to express their freedom and creativity in how they chose to get blind.

Oblivion was controlled and regulated by The Cause and gave people what they had always wanted.

More than love.

More than success.

More than self-sufficiency or self-actualization.

It gave them a false sense of security.

By 2058 people had become completely reliant on The Cause to protect them from all manner of harm: physically, biologically and emotionally. Since people had decided that Security was the one prize worth giving everything for, human relationships fell in importance; and, it’s true, many found them so painful that they begged The Cause to legislate them so that they might be protected from ever being hurt.

Love had its shot in the old world and it was abused. Relationships were embroiled in politics, became the means for control and social agendas; gender and identity philosophies replaced whispers and laughter.

Even with marriage love couldn’t last. Each person wanted what they wanted despite the other person’s needs. They broke their vows to each other. They dismissed their beloved’s experience as invalid. They cheated, demanded, dismissed, overlooked and finally despised the person to whom they had initially professed, I would brave a tempest for you…

It all started with the lack of understanding of the preciousness of a kiss, the value of a touch. But regardless of the reason, all romantic roads eventually led to suffering.

In the end, the populace begged The Cause to regulate these horrible and messy feelings. The Cause responded by opening the Department of Inter Personal Development (The DOIPD).

After that, no one said, I love you anymore. No one knew what it was. This was the inevitable evolution of people taking each other for granted.

That year love was made illegal by the DOIPD because it made the populace unstable and unpredictable. It was officially classified as Emotional Irrationality Disorder (EID) in the DSM-VII.

The alternative to human love came in The Mechs (Mechanized Humans), also called Synths (Synthetic Humans). They were androids that people could use to satisfy their desires without succumbing to the disease.

Mechs were not like us.

They were not unlike us.

Some were perfect in every way.

All Mechs were not equal except in one thing: they were all empty inside. Thanks to the Oblivion, most people didn’t even notice.

By 2075 most of the world was run by technology. Mechs filled most non-Policymaker jobs. Humans filled those jobs that provided support for the Mechs. Most of these were mind-numbingly horrible, but for most people the Oblivion was enough to placate their dissatisfaction with their wretched work weeks.

Everyone had food. All were fed genetically-engineered sustenance perfectly balanced for human health by Department of Global Nutrition (DOGN) standards. Everyone had a home, though the homes of P’s and Unders were vastly different. Healthcare was free, providing people paid a monthly Cause Donation for it. Those who couldn’t afford the donation were used as lab rats.

Humanity had the security it had always wished for. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it, people still died. Well, some did anyway. The highest echelon of P’s had their brains transferred into Mech bodies before their human bodies gave out, so they could continue to live on in a new form. Those combinations were unstable, however, and many of those procedures resulted in madness or worse. But this happened on private islands and most common humans never even witnessed this horror. Those likely to go mad because of their DNA chose to harvest human bodies to host their brains instead.

There was one man that Oblivion did not work on. His name was Jon Thayer and he was a barber. He lived in New Chicago, the capitol of New Western China. He alone, because of his unique immunity to O, was unable to escape the world as it really was. And so, he was forced to face the one crippling fact that everyone around him could escape with a puff, snort, or swig. The fact that Man is exceedingly lonely…

Chapter One: Jon

It was June 23, 2075 and it was summer in New Chicago, the second capital of the New China Middle Western Alliance: what had once been called America.

Geoengineering was no longer working as it had before the emergence of The New World and so the weather was out of balance. Most days the skies were hazy: the result of the sky-striping. On rare, clear, beautiful blue days planes striped the sky with long white chemtrails. But now the aluminum particles they were injecting into the atmosphere were doing little more than causing birth defects, autism and Alzheimer’s in middle-aged people. The planet’s ecosystem was trying to rebalance itself and the weather was hitting extremes. The Cause informed everyone that there was nothing to be concerned about. Their researchers were working diligently on the problem.

In the meantime it was hot. So humidly, oppressively, angrily hot that it made people irritated and twitchy. Well, it made the Unders feel that way. The P’s had air conditioning and barely noticed it.

Jon Thayer had a respite from the heat in the subway, down under the city where the air was cool. And it was true that some days he rode the train back and forth simply because it gave him a break from the horrible summer heat.

The train was lit with green and red LEDs and the light from several television screens around the train. Lights were generally dim in public so that people could focus more easily and readily on the monitors. It was a simple technique that worked to make people feel as if they were sitting in their own living rooms. That made them feel more secure and safe. The Cause television programming was, after all, for the good of the populace, and people were not qualified to question what they were watching. Only members of the Department of Cause Propaganda (DOCP) were qualified for that.

There were televisions everywhere. Next to Oblivion, it was the human’s second favorite form of escape. The Cause used it to modify belief and tweak humanities’ preferences to coincide with its own agendas and policy-making. Because of the haze from geoengineering, people often assembled to watch sunrises and sunsets on them. It was a strange scene. People standing in their bright colored clothes, in the dark haze, watching the beautiful reds, oranges and purples splitting across the screen like a dream. On those days when the sun did actually come through, it was massively hot and scorching. And those people who walked tanned and burned very quickly.

There were screens in the sushi stands and dim sum bars, on the streets and surrounding the food courts. They covered the walls in the Oblivion bars. They were all over on the trains and buses. There really wasn’t anywhere anyone could go without finding themselves facing a TV. It was so much a part of their lives that they paid little attention to it. And yet, whenever they found themselves in front of it their eyes were naturally drawn to the screen. The color on their faces changed. Their breathing changed. Their features went slack and their focus intensified on the monitors. Few, if any of them, were even aware that it was even happening.

Jon’s handsome face was smooth and thoughtful as he stared at the picture on the five-inch Data Center screen in his hand. It was of a male, body in profile, his face staring at the screen. He was in rugged outdoor wear: faded jeans, a blue and red checked button-down and black plastic boots. His hair was short on his head and he was smiling.

Jon zoomed into the face and smiled. He saw the feature he most loved close up on his DC screen: the eyes. Mesmerizingly, hauntingly, perfectly blue. With a depth that he hadn’t seen on any human anywhere. It was those eyes that made him decide this was the one.

It wasn’t as though he had to look at his Data Center anymore. The picture was engraved in his mind because he’d looked at it so many times. He’d touched the screen so many times that it was smeared with his sweaty finger prints.

He stared at the price tag next to the picture. It read: Rural Style, 10,000 creds.

Jon had only 6,000 more credits to go. He could afford it in 3 more years if he kept on at his current earning rate of about 80 cuts a week. He might make it sooner if he could supplement with more manicures and pedicures and cut his meals to one a day instead of two. He slid his finger over the screen and logged out of the electronic catalogue.

He slipped his DC into the outer pocket of his rubberized plastic barber case next to him. It was a fat portfolio that contained his folding mirror, his shears, cape and clippers. There were several compartments on the outside that contained his manicure and pedicure equipment. He slipped the DC into one of these.

He sat back and his blue eyes watched the people around him for something. He wasn’t sure what, but it was pulling at him inside. The warm strong arm of the man in the seat next to him brushed the skin on his arm gently and it sent a wave of feeling through Jon’s body.

People didn’t touch each other anymore. For most of them, touch happened in the Oblivion Dream: the euphoria that came when they took the drug. They fantasized about touching now. That was enough. Anything else stimulated them too much. Jon was different because he was a barber. He touched people all day so it wasn’t so strange to him. In fact, he liked it. And he knew that when he ran his hands through people’s hair, they liked it too, though none of them wouldn’t admit it openly. Introversion was encouraged by The Cause. Especially in Unders. Extroversion was mostly encouraged in Policymakers and Mech celebrities. It was their job to be extroverted for the Unders.

The man looked at him, and Jon smiled hopefully. He was dressed like a manual laborer. He was wearing a neon purple, mesh-nylon tank and raggedy jeans. His face was square and rugged and his soft brown hair was swept back carefully on his head. The man stared at him dubiously.

Jon tilted his head and tried to crack his neck. The tendons in his back were tight and they were straining his vertebrae. The pain and pressure was almost too much at times. He always felt like there was something heavy on his shoulders, weighing him down.

Jon adjusted his barber’s case: it had fallen against his leg. He heard the mechanized voice announce his stop next: New Capitol building.

He grabbed his case and stepped passed the man next to him, brushing the man’s arm again accidentally. The man looked agitated and irritable.

Excuse me, Jon said.

The man stared at him angrily.

Jon stared at the ground and moved towards the doors. Then he stood, holding a strap as the train glided to a stop at the New Capitol building.

The train doors opened and he stepped out into the blue neon of the train platform. There were televisions everywhere on the platform. There was an ad for Oblivion on one. On another there was a short-haired, middle-aged Mech dressed like a P Doctor saying that a new medication had just been tested on the Unders who worked in the DOIPD medical labs that was showing promise for curing Emotional Irrationality Disorder.

On another screen, one of the pornography stations played: a human woman was being forced down and raped by a large, black Mech. She was screaming that she liked it and wanted to be dominated. She screamed, Take me!

The Mech squeezed his hands around her neck. The camera closed in on her face as it turned purple. She looked frail as her eyes bulged. The camera held that way for about a minute and a half. For a split second, there was terror in them and it would be obvious to anyone who was paying attention that the Mech had just gone off script. But no one was really paying attention. Her light went out forever. Another actress had given her life for the artistic expression of The Cause.

Jon stared at it strangely, then walked on, passing two New World Security Administration (NWSA) Mechs who were leaning lazily against a steel beam. They eyed him closely as he passed with his black plastic barber’s case.

Watching that hot porn, human? One of the Mechs said. He was dark haired and short and had mesmerizing blue eyes, almost as compelling as those he’d been looking at on his DC a few moments earlier. He was wide and muscular, built like a little tank and he looked like he enjoyed killing humans. Like those feelings had somehow developed in his operating system. The beauty of his eyes made Jon stop for a minute and stare at him.

The Mechs laughed and rubbed each other salaciously. Come on! the Mech said, taunting him.

Jon realized they were bored and looking for someone to brutalize. He stared down at the ground and kept walking. The tendons in his back tightened. If he responded to them they might kill him. Mechs were insanely strong. Especially the NWSA models. They were trained in every kind of Martial Art that The Cause had researched over the last 60 years.

Come on back, human, the second Mech said. He was about six-foot-five and blond with brown eyes and sharp brutal features. He was licking his lips seductively. Want to act out that scene? You be the chick!

The NSWA guards were all over the place, watching humans. The effect was disheartening to say the least. Somewhere along the way humans had fallen below androids in the evolutionary scale.

Jon thought of their eyes as he walked up the steps to the street. There were escalators and elevators but those were reserved for P’s. P’s, however, rarely rode the subway because they all had cars. Crude oil had been manufactured from algae and the P’s were expected to support its production by using the fuel to heat and cool their homes and for transportation. There were fuel stations everywhere.

Jon thought of the eyes of those two Mechs again. Brown eyes. Blue eyes. It haunted him for some reason.

On the street, he gazed up in wonder at the skyscrapers. All that steel and glass. All that neon and concrete. Everything sharp and dramatic. The sky was overcast from the geoengineering. The planes had striped the sky earlier and