By David Scholes
It seemed innocuous enough. A small nondescript building in a forgotten street in London’s East End, though the security was beyond what might be expected of such a mundane establishment. Despite that, two people had broken in.
I couldn’t fathom what this business’s purpose might be, particularly given the damage to the main room of the small building.
There was nothing about this place on the allnet — that we could find. We would just have to await the arrival of the building owner to enlighten us. His holograph had been evasive at best. The enforcers would bring him to us via hyperloop
“What was the cause of death?” I asked the med-bot.
“Well,” replied the robotic medical examiner, “it seems they died from sheer fright. All the conventional signs are there, and their mind prints supports this. Both of them experienced a huge increase in heart rate and blood pressure before their automatic personal protection systems infused them, too late, with meds.”
I scratched my head. What could have scared them so much?
I said, “Everything is so smashed up. Some of this equipment is suggestive of an extreme virtual reality experience. Simulated alien combat or alien invasion perhaps.
It would have to be illegal.”
“An extreme experience could result in what we see here,” said my Borg offsider. He sounded doubtful. “There is something else, though,” offered the bot-med examiner. “I tried a dreamcorder on them.”
I shuddered a little at that thought. The thought of extracting recent dreams from a dead person revolted me.
“And?”
“Both deceased experienced the same recurring nightmare, similar visuals.”
I twigged to it. “This is a repository,” I said with a degree of certainty. “An illegal dream repository.”
I looked around at the damaged equipment — it was easy to see how I had mistaken it for an extreme virtual reality experience set up. Similar equipment.
We called in a dream tech expert to give the place a full going over. While they were doing so, the reluctant owner and his formidable escort came in on the hyperloop.
“We recovered a lot of dreams here and I do mean a lot,” said the dream tech much later. Surprisingly, she was human. “In fact hundreds of millions of dreams.”
“It’s not just any old dream repository then? I exclaimed.
Later, under some coercion, the owner admitted that this was the principal dream repository for clients ordering other people’s dreams using the darknet — getting their thrills vicariously from other people’s bad dreams.
The two unfortunate deceased probably didn’t know what they’d broken into. Perhaps they were just thrillseekers and suspected this place had something to offer them — in this case something much more than they had bargained for.
About the Author
David Scholes
David has written over 200 speculative fiction short stories. Some of these are included in his eight collections of short stories (all on Amazon).
He has also published two science fiction novellas and been published on a range of speculative fiction sites. Including: Antipodean SF, Beam Me Up Pod Cast, Farther Stars Than These, 365 Tomorrows, Bewildering Stories, the WiFiles and the former Golden Visions magazine.
He will soon publish a new collection of science fiction short stories “Contingency Nine and Other Science Fiction Stories”.
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
Terry Persun’s poems and stories have appeared in many magazines including Wisconsin Review, Kansas Quarterly, Riverrun, Rattle, Hiram Poetry Review, Bluestem, NEBO, Cirque, Eclipse, Bacopa, and many others.
Andrew settled in the state of Maryland on the eastern coast of the United States after living in southern California for many years.
Grace Chan is a Melbourne-based speculative fiction writer and doctor. Her family immigrated from Malaysia to Australia before her first birthday. She completed a medical degree in 2012 and is currently working and training in psychiatry. In her downtime, she enjoys coffee, space operas, and thinking about where we come from and where we’re all going.
Karen Andrews is an award-winning writer, author, editor, poet and publisher. Her work has appeared in journals and publications throughout the country.
Michael Connolly lives in Bowraville NSW, Australia. He has worked as an art teacher, music teacher, printer and illustrator among other things (such as chicken de-beaker), and has a keen interest in science-fiction and the natural sciences. He has illustrated for the magazine Tabula Rasa, which specialises in the horror genre, and is a regular contributor to AntipodeanSF.
Eugen Bacon has sold many stories and articles, together with anthologies. Her stories have won, been shortlisted and commended in international awards, including the Bridport Prize, L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest and Copyright Agency Prize. Literary speculative novel — Meerkat Press (2019). Creative nonfiction book — Macmillan (2019)
I am a chap who speaks four languages to the perfection.
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
David Whitaker is originally from the UK though has travelled around a bit and now resides in India. He has a degree in Journalism, however decided that as he’s always preferred making things up it should ultimately become a resource rather than a profession.
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.
Margaret lives the good life on a small piece of rural New South Wales Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, and several rambunctious wombats.
