Slumberland
King Morpheus
In his early twenties, he had finally admitted the truth of his sorry condition to himself.
The dreams were never going to return. At least not with the vividness of their original run.
And the succeeding years had proven his sad suspicion correct. During a couple of brief unpredictable intervals separated by decades, some paltry semblance of the dreams had actually recurred. But all the actors therein seemed mere lifeless simulacra, all the colors of the land beyond sleep now pallid and dull, all the events a rehash of the originals. And, worst of all, when he entered these frustrating reiterations, he entered as a five-year-old, not the adult he now was. The actual bodily reversion did not trouble him; that condition was probably a predicate of gaining his dream empire. But the fact that he also reverted mentally truly dismayed him. This shearing away of any wisdom or experience he might have gained over the years indicated to him above all other clues that these were not true ascents or descents, no eruptions of grace or glory, but rather mockeries sent to him by some malignant counterforce.
So he had attempted to become a good, productive, functioning member of society. He had taken a job almost at random. What job it was he no longer even recalled, for at age one hundred he had been retired almost as long as he had been employed, and the job had never held any more of his attention or concern than was absolutely necessary to perform it with minimal competence. After the death of his father and the loss of his childhood home, his mother had gone to live with one of her own sisters (the old man was an only child), and he had found lodgings for himself in a cheap boarding house, the first of many such before his eventual consignment–through the agency of failing health–to this cheap and tawdry nursing home called Slumberland.
Of course, he had never married. Never even courted.
To betray the Princess? She of the winsome sighs and unstinting devotion? Unthinkable! And besides: what flesh-and-blood woman could compare to that fabled child bride of his spirit?
Recreations he had none. What could substitute for the sparkling attractions of his dream life? Incomparable parades, festivals, parties, dinners: he had played the guest at more grand affairs than the richest, most popular terrestrial socialite. Games? He had ridden sleds down glaciers, dived to the bottom of the sea, and drifted in a dirigible around the world, visiting the dream doppelganger of every state of his nation and every country of the globe. Dinosaurs and dragons had carried him through forests of giant mushrooms and entire cities built of children’s blocks.
Really, what kind of travel could lure him from his lonely tenement hermitage? He had been a giant in microworlds, and an ant in macroworlds. Tropical islands full of cannibals had known his step. He had helmed naval destroyers across jade seas of miracles.
And all the love and adulation he had received! Those dream affections had been the most painful birthrights to lose. In his dreams he had always been the center of attention. People fawned over him, catered to his every whim. He was pampered and petted, cossetted and consulted. Even when thwarted by his primal antagonist, Flip, he had felt himself honored by the magnitude of his opponent’s efforts. And if this universe of sleep did not precisely revolve entirely around him–there was always a disturbing sense of ongoing agenda and schemes much, much larger than his small self–then at least he always felt that he was one of its most privileged citizens.
And never had he experienced this sensation more keenly than when he visited Shantytown, that ghetto precinct of King Morpheus’s realm, where, with his miraculous wand, he served as savior to its suffering inhabitants, easing their pains and tribulations like Christ himself.
Of course, awake, he occupied no such exalted position. No savior amidst the mortal dust of existence, he was just one more of the faceless millions, another atom in the uncaring cosmos. How deeply that pained him, to the core of his soul!
Anxiety had burned away the booziness in the Doctor’s voice. “Where are those goddamn beta-blockers? Have those freaking junkies we call aides raided the pharmacy again? Didn’t we get a new supply? Christ, I can’t lose another old fuck! I’m already under review. At least get me some goddamn aspirin for his rotten heart!”
The old man wanted to tell the Doctor not to bother, but couldn’t quite find his voice. The pain had transcended itself to become a vacuity, a hollow at his center. And the hollow was rapidly expanding to empty the old man from the inside out.
“What’s going on here?”
