And The Blind Can See . . .

In the back of those thoughts that Karen had during her dream, she knew her mother would die again. She was seven; they were driving to school. She didn't want to go and she was in the back, yelling and screaming, throwing stuff. Her mother, with her curly dark hair and fine white skin, turned back to yell at her. Her bright eyes stared Karen down, with annoyance at her antics, but also with love.

And then she went blank for a moment, fuzzy around the edges. this is where it gets confusing. The little girl that was Karen crashes into the back of the seat. Karen thinks her mom crashes through the windshield and impales herself on the glass. When Karen gets the blood out of her eyes, she sees her mom's bright eyes dim, as she crawls over the seat to touch her cheek, to poke at her like she always did to get her attention. And her mom wouldn't move, just manage to get blood on her fair skin. and the blood would crawl up Karen's hand, marking her.

"You should have been the one that died," her mom's head croaked, bloody bubbles passing her lips.

And that would be when she woke up. Normally.

And everything was the same. She sat in the back. She didn't want to yell and distract her, but she did. She turned back. Somehow, Karen turned her head, and saw the other driver coming. His face was a leer, and sharp teeth. His hooked fingers hung over the steering wheel, bony knuckles white with speed.

He was going to hit soon.

But something was different. Karen looked over the window, and saw another car -- no, it was a big truck, the kind she would try to get to blow their horns when they went on trips on the highway.

Before it rammed the other car off the road and crushed it, Karen noticed the occupants. The first was a stocky man, mid-twenties, with a goatee and friendly green eyes. The strangest part was the smile on his face. It was a half smile, the right side of his face twisted up as though all his marbles were not in the bag.

But the other person was what drew her little girl eyes. She had to be fourteen, or at least look it, with dark hair, light skin, a nice smile and sad eyes, looking right at the girl in the back seat. She was so pretty, Karen thought in 7-year-old girl thoughts. She winked at her, and then the truck drove off.

"That was close, Karen," her mom, still alive, said. "You ok?"

Then Karen woke up.

Karen Windham was having a remarkably great day. For once, her head was clear, and the demons that had haunted her the past few years were gone. Her dreams were a lot nicer now for the past week, but sometimes, she thought she saw that girl with the sad eyes, and the girl always winked at her. Even if she couldn't remember anything about the rest of the dream, she always remembered the girl.

"And why are you so happy?"

Karen looked over at John, who once again was burnt out and spent. His eyes were rings from lack of sleep, and Karen noticed a spot or two where John must have missed shaving.. "I don't know," Karen said through her smile, "just had a good night's sleep."

"Haven't seen one of those in a long time," John said, his voice not quite carrying. "Been working on the design for the new engine, but I can never quite stop the flow problem. I keep on dreaming about it, and it's working, but then it explodes, or gunmen bust in and steal it, and the next day I can't even think about the engine. I have to get those specs done, or I am going to be out of a job."

Karen shook her head, laughing. "Maybe I should send the girl over that keeps on popping up in my dreams?"

Karen was looking over the engine. Parts of it were incomplete: the cylinders and the bearings. Those, she saw quite clearly, as she had worked on them.. She was in a workshop. No details, nothing stood out, just a workshop that held the engine on a stand. Slowly, however, the other parts of the engine filled in -- spark plugs and the new distributor cap design and the flow regulator that had a crack in it.

"Karen, what the hell are you doing here?"

Karen turned to the new door that appeared, and to John who had just walked through it. John was in coveralls, holding a spanner in one hand and a notebook in the other. She couldn't read the scrawl on the notebook, but saw the outlandish designs and diagrams of a creative mind, and they made sense to her. Here, John solved the problem with the flow, and it wouldn't cost more than a few bucks per unit.

"Well, you're here, hand me that wrench over there. Might as well get your hands dirty. And you're a tomboy anyway."

Karen handed John the wrench that came into view on the table that was not there before. John dove into his work, making adjustments, measuring, adjusting some more. The engine came to life, running even as John reached his hands into it, not harming him, bending to his will, as dreams tend to do.

But then a wall ripped open. John was tackled, and pinned to a wall by a rather large man. He snarled, his yellowed grin twisted up, showing a jagged row of teeth, thrust up like tombstones in an abandoned cemetery. Karen saw the terror well in John's eyes, first at his immediate situation, and then at the smashing of his engine by two men with hooked fingers and menacing hunches in their shoulders. They crashed hammers down on the engine, smashing John's dream, cracking the block and spraying oil all over the workshop.

"Here, take this." Karen heard a voice behind her, and something fell into her hand. "And swing!"

Karen gripped the object in her hand; it was heavy. She swung it with ease, and felt little resistance from the skull of one of the... men? No, not man, a thing.

The creature sort of bled, but more just oozed and mixed with the oil. The other man-thing flew back as the stocky man grabbed his hand and twisted. The bones in its hand cracked from his grip, and it screamed as it was tossed to one side, lifted up with one arm by the stocky man, and thrown through the wall. The stocky man blurred forward, inhumanly so, landing upon the thing, bearing down on it with a cane. He seemed to enjoy breaking the creature open, pounding it on the floor, causing it pain.

The one holding up John dropped him, turning to Karen in an infinite pause before springing forward. It was inches from her face before a muzzle flash dazzled Karen, making her drop to the ground, covering her eyes which were stung with powder. Some more shots tore open her ears as she cowered on the ground.

"Hey, you ok there, Karen?"

The stocky man stood over her, his trench coat swallowing Karen. He helped the stunned woman up with one hand, putting her against the wall and brushing her off. The man brushed at Karen's eyes, blackened by powder burns.

"I should be fine," Karen groaned, "um." She searched for the name she did not know.

"We call him Mojo," a girl's voice said, "I'm Emily."

Soft hands brushed at Karen's eyes, slowly reducing the swelling, restoring her sight. Karen glanced around, and looked down at Emily's sad eyes. Emily smiled at her, her eyes opening just a bit more when she looked up at Karen. Mojo looked over Karen for a moment, then cursed when he looked at John, sprawled against a wall, bleeding from the mouth. He rushed over, opening John's eyes up and shining a light into them.

"Damn... no..."

"What's wrong with him?" Karen asked.

"He's dead. Dead here, definitely, but maybe WakeSide too." Mojo stood up, closing his eyes tightly.

"Not your fault, Mojo," Emily said. "He's not dead Wake-Side, we'd be Tossed. We best wakey and call him a doctor, in case he's bleeding."

"Bleeding?" Karen said, stepping between the two. "What are you talking about?"

"Shut your hole, Karen! We'll explain in a bit," Mojo said as he put John in as a comfortable position as possible. "We gotta hop, because more darklings might show up, or maybe another Lucid. Emily, get that notebook and grab that engine, might as well make his work live on. By the way, nice swing with the hammer."

Karen looked down at her hand, and saw the hammer in her hand. A ball peen hammer, but very light. She gave a practice swing, and let go of the hammer. It flew past Emily and into the concrete wall, breaking a section, jagged cracks in stone...

Mojo paused for only a moment, while Karen stared in shock at what she had just done.

"Karen, remember, it's all a dream. And when you wake up, you just might remember some of it. Now sleep." Mojo waved his hand in front of her.

Karen passed out, falling into Mojo's grip. He threw the unconscious woman over his shoulder. Emily grabbed the notebook, threw the damaged engine over her slender shoulder, and they both walked out.

Karen was a dynamo at work the next day. She solved the flow problem on the engine, made a few more modifications to conserve fuel, and got it to stop making that rattling noise it was prone to do at high speeds. Good thing that Karen was able to solve all those problems, because John had a heart attack last night and slipped into a coma.

"Hello, Karen."

Karen sat up quickly out of bed, shrugging off the last vestiges of sleep to look at the two people in front of her. Emily and Mojo.

"To answer your question," Emily said, "yes, you are dreaming. But not just any kind of dream. You are Lucid. And we can use all the Lucid we can get."

Karen paused, trying to comprehend what Emily said. "Alright, how the hell did you get in here?"

"Karen, you are in a dream. Your dream. A little haven where people clear out the junk in their head at night, but a whole lot more." Mojo said nothing, nervously scanning the room.

"I don't like this here, Em. Being so blatant. Othertimes, we can fake being part of the scenery, or sit in our own DreamHold, but we're sticking out. Darklings will come. She ain't got her DreamHold solid yet, hidden. It's a wonder she walked from here to her friend's Sphere without getting jumped. Darklings will come." Mojo tightened his grip on his cane, his knuckles flexing. Karen saw blue on his hand, the product of pen ink shot under his skin with the ballasts from fluorescent lamps. Prison tattoos.

They moved. On his hand, they rippled, the gang signs of the Ayran Brotherhood twisting and bending into impossible shapes, prison shapes that frightened and tormented. Only for a moment, and then they went back to normal tattoos. Mojo looked to Karen's eyes, then to his own hand, and covered it up. He snarled at Karen, his lips pulling back over to show his grinding teeth. Karen took a step back and shrank.

"Mojo, calm down," Emily purred into his ear in her little girl voice. "She doesn't understand yet."

Mojo relaxed as much as he could. He walked over to the wall, placing his hand on it, searching for a soft spot. "Karen, welcome to your new world. Ever wonder what happened in the space between your ears when you take a sleep? All the half-remembered thoughts, the images that seem like they are out of an acid trip? Ever think they might just be more than the way the head clears out the day's junk?"

"Uh," Karen stammered, intimidated by this rather large man, "no, not really."

"Well, here you go, Karen. Take a look." Mojo reached over to the wall. He pulled at the wall, and then through it. He reached farther, hitting something iridescent. He took a hold, and pulled. The material parted, and Mojo stepped to the other side.

"Well, come on... DreamSide is waiting"

Karen looked out, for just a moment. Dotting the landscape were spheres, all different colors and sizes, thousands of them resting on the ground and hovering and all states in-between. The sky was dusky; the air tasted warm. "Tasted?", Karen thought, as she breathed in the new world in front of her. She poked her head out, saw the vast horizons in front of her, saw that dreams were not just what are confined to her head, but what she was looking at in this new world... And she fainted.

Mojo shook his head. "Rookie..." He picked her up, put her over his shoulder, and he and Emily took a walk DreamSide.