CHAPTER XI
ILLICIT DREAMS

SOUNDTRACK- The DreamSeed Matrix
        Janus felt as if he was floating in a void of eternal blackness. After a while in the void, a dim light grew from nothing. It was a white light, dull but very vibrant, like a fluorescence of technology. The light grew nearer until it wrapped itself around him.
        The light faded with the numbness of his body. He began to feel again- it was cold and damp where he was. His body ached and his gut was famished. Janus’s mouth was incredibly dry, and he was drenched in sweat. Janus’s stench filled his own nose and stimulated his awakening. He slowly lifted his hands, pulled off a chrome helmet.
        Upon doing that, an incredible wave of pain filled his head- a migraine so intense that he nearly fainted. Blood slowly began to pulse into his tightened muscles and Janus could feel the pounding of his brain even more. When he opened his eyes the light was blinding. By squinting, Janus managed to see that he was in a strange laboratory, seated in the chrome chair that he must have sat in for the first time three months ago.
        The monitors around him had streams of data flowing on the screens. Scientists in white lab coats and machinery surrounded him. He threw the helmet down, the huge cable connected to it wiggled like a sluggish worm. Janus noticed that he was wearing his mage-uniform, even the mana-tanks.
        “He’s alive!” a scientist shouted. Janus’s ears were not completely active, yet, so the computer noises and voices around him were muffled. Men covered in lab-coats rushed at Janus, picking up his body and quickly moving it to a cold-water tank. They had to wake him up fast, or he could be lost forever.
        The scientists stripped him of his clothing as another one attached an oxygen mask over his mouth. They dropped him into the tank. Either his muscles were to tired to tread water, or his mind was too exhausted to tell them to tread water...
        His body stung all over as he convulsed in the ice-cold water, which slushed out of the tank from his freakish seizure. His body calmed itself, but his mind was too tired to go on...to tired to think. He collapsed in the tank and fell asleep, only he did not dream. His mind needed to rest.

SOUNDTRACK- The Girl From Long Ago
        That morning, all of the members of Revenant sat in Janus’s room in the Zetah castle. No one had slept. Cevo stood, puzzled. “Hmmzt. I am confused, Canen. Where is Janus’s body?”
        “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Canen said, rubbing his eyes.
        Abant shook his head, “I’ve never seen anyone just disappear when they die.”
        “I just can’t believe he’s gone,” Audrey said, wiping tears from her face.
        Abant put an arm around Audrey and patted her shoulder with his paw, “It’ll be all right, my dear.”
        “Why?!?” Audrey demanded to know. “Why did he have to die?”
        Fox rubbed his chin. “Maybe it was because he was the Chosen One- the one chosen to die.”
        “No, Vako told me he was to lead us to an age of prosperity. And the Prodigy of Magic was most certainly not meant to die. At least, not this soon,” Canen clenched his fist. He had the worst headache in all his life. “We must return to the Mana Acropolis. It is vital that I speak with Vako.”
        Cevo made his usual computerized noise before speaking, “Hmmzt. Vako knows fate, but fate is always being altered by evil. She does not foresee these alterations, therefore she may not know about Janus yet.”
        Abant nodded.
        “I don’t know what his death means,” Canen began. “And why was Sa’gaht there?”
        After a few minutes of silence, Canen stood. “Janus was a good man, even if he actually wasn’t the One. He will be sorely missed,” the leader of Revenant gritted his teeth.
        “Chaos and hatred are the downfall of so many,” Abant said. “We must take time to allow our anger, sorrow, and confusion to leave us. There must be a logical explanation for all of this.”
        “Abant is right,” Fox said.
        “Then we shall spend some time back at the Mana Acropolis.” Canen went for the door. “I shall speak with King Burroughs again today,” Canen sighed.
        Abant rubbed his chin, “We must remain tenacious with our beliefs. We must not loose our direction.”
        Canen looked down at the floor, “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

SOUNDTRACK- No Music
        A long, cylindrical light bulb flickered on in the metallic room Janus was surrounded in. Someone turned them on from outside his small, damp room. The light awakened him. He didn’t remember coming into this rusty room. Janus also didn’t remember how he got in the old blue Intarma prison uniform he was wearing (which smelled). He had been laying in darkness on a tough bed all night; the sheets were old and torn. The metal door to the room opened and in walked Jonnan. This led Janus’s eyes up to the face of his father.
SOUNDTRACK- Haunting
        The rusty-metal door locked shut behind him. “Do you...remember who I am?” Jonnan asked. Janus remained motionless. “I’m your father, Janus. I’m your father.”
        “Yes, I remember.” Janus stared down at the rusty-metal floor. “Why did you leave?” He said softly, almost afraid to ask, but angered at the same time.
        Jonnan frowned, “You are at the southeastern part of the world. Intarma Island. It seems there’s a nice fantasy world you’ve made for us all. Fortunately, you can’t invent anything anymore. Quite a paradox that your fantasy is the very reason that I left you for Intarma so many years ago.
        “After the Mage-War, many rivers became contaminated with mana-radiation. Your mother drank from one of those rivers. She died. You were but a child, and I was so angered at the effects magic put onto this world, I went to work here. I’m truly sorry Janus, but we lost two loved ones from magic. Your grandfather, Winston, and your mother both died at the hands of sourcery. I didn’t want to see you die, nor anyone else.”
        “So you left me?” Janus’s brows narrowed. “You left me all alone to grow up by myself.”
        “I left you for a greater purpose,” Jonnan said. “I joined Intarma to rid the world of mana-radiation. That was the purpose of the reactors.”
        “I know.”
        “How could you know?”
        “Canen told me.”
        Jonnan laughed. “Somehow that, too, is a paradox. You invented that man, my son. Yet he was the one that educated you on this and many other matters. These matters have been woven into reality. These matters from your dream...”
        “What? I don’t believe that.”
        “Then what do you believe, boy?” Jonnan smirked.
        “I believe that Intarma used the DreamSeed technology to cover their tracks. I believe they rewrote the memories of the world- making them forget about Intarma during the Mage-War. I think this is all one epic coverup.”
        “Then explain your DreamClone,” Jonnan said.
        “My what?”
        “You were murdered last night, Janus. You watched your body fall to the ground as it gushed your own blood from its open neck,” Jonnan hissed. “You died, but yet you sit here in this rusty-room with your head perfectly on your body. Haven’t you wondered why?”
        “…” Janus remained silent, with a confused look on his face.
        “You wouldn’t believe what has happened to the very fabric of reality since the day you sat in the chair of the DreamSeed machine. Its all because of you.”
        Jonnan continued, “We, Intarma, have reason to believe that whatever was in your armor caused the reactor, to which the DreamSeed machine was hooked into, to overload. This reversed the power of DreamSeeding. Usually the technology will program dreams through people, but you programed your dream into the technology. Since that technology projects into reality, you’ve changed the world with your dream.”
        Jonnan sighed, looking forward, “What I’m about to tell you will be hard for you to understand. It is simply the truth, nothing more.”
        “What is it?” Janus leaned up.
        “You were not really fighting Sa’gaht, or training at the ‘Mana Acropolis’ with ‘Revenant’. You were back at the Intarma complex, plugged into the DreamSeed machine.”
        Janus gasped, “What?!?!?”
        “We found out that your mind was locked into the DreamSeed machine. By the machine overloading, your fantasy has been poured out into reality. Your dream merged with the real world. I’m not even sure if that desert castle really existed, before you changed reality.”
        “Your saying that was all a dream?” Janus’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
        “Partially, but I’m also saying it is reality. The overloaded machine merged your dream and the real world, together as one.” Jonnan leaned against a wall, “And you made us look like the nightmare! Intarma was never involved in anything corrupt until your fantasy rewrote history! There was never was a Mage-War- it was a war fought over something much simpler.
        “But since your dream erased whatever the history of that war and replaced it with a war over magic, we don’t know what the real war was fought over anymore. All we recovered, by using DreamSeed technology, was that humanity was at the peak of its civilization. Then our technology backfired, forcing us into war. After it, we decided to go back to the Middle-Ages, safe from such dangerous technology!”
        Jonnan paced around in his room, “Janus, we’ve scanned your mind, we know everything! You invented magic- there was really no such thing. Canen, Abant, Fox Sage, the Mana Acropolis, the hybrids of the seaports, the desert castle! They never existed. You were making it all up as you went along, and because of that, reality became more distorted by the minute!”
        There was a long pause. “Like any dream,” Jonnan continued, “no one really goes to the places they dream about.  Your mind generates another you to explore your dream world. You can see what I’m getting at.”
        Janus put his hand on his chest, “You mean...before I woke up here- the body I was in, walking around with Canen and the others...that body wasn’t real?”
        “What is real? If you’re talking about what existed before they day you were plugged in, then I’m not sure if I can tell you what is real or not anymore. The machine had rendered a DreamClone of you into flesh and blood. Your DreamClone was just as real as anyone else on this planet, but your mind and the body you were born in was dreaming what you experienced here at Intarma,” he paused. “We shipped you here after the reactor exploded.”
        Jonnan chuckled, “You were the reason we are forced to drill for more mana...” He paused again, “...If there is such a thing.”
        “All dreams come to an end,” Janus said. “You tried to kill me, or my DreamClone, to restore reality. Is that it? Now that I “woke-up” shouldn’t everything be back to normal?”
        Jonnan let out a sigh, “Recent testing at the lab has proven that whatever is dreamed through the DreamSeed machine is set. It cannot be reset. We just wanted to know if there was a way out- a way to wake up.”
        “By killing me?”
        “By killing your DreamClone. Then we realized that if you die in a dream, you die for real. The mind makes it real, because the body cannot live without the mind. But, if a dreamer voluntarily wakes up, the effects will be, of course, much less catastrophic. An alarm clock will wake someone up, but that is a reaction from the outside. Your mind was locked in the inside. We tried to wake you up, here at Intarma, but every attempt in doing so didn’t work.”
        Janus shook his head, “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” He stood up and backed into a corner. His mind was racing and his blue eyes were dashing from left to right. He became overwhelmingly dizzy.
        “I never said it would be easy, Janus. I just said it would be the truth.”
        “No! Stop! Go away! I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Maybe that’s all the DreamSeed machine did. It didn’t broadcast my “dream” into reality. It just projected another point of view, the DreamClone. Yeah, that’s it! Maybe I didn’t even dream at all- I just used the machine to wonder about the planet as a DreamClone! Intarma is covering this all up- there was a Mage-War, there is magic, there always was! Canen, Abant, Fox....Audrey!”
        Jonnan walked up to the young man, who was frantically trying to escape from the cell. “And do you know what else?” Jonnan said as he put his hand around his son’s neck. “Do you know what I find more disturbing about your fantasy than anything else?”
        Janus remained silent, his eyes wide and his heart beating fast. Jonnan’s grip tightened, “Your dream made Canen...” Janus couldn’t breath and his eyes felt as if they were to pop! “And your dream made Canen my brother!” The blood inside Janus turned to ice water.
        Jonnan squeezed Janus’s neck tighter, “Yeah...that’s right, a freakin’ dream! My brother is a freakin’ dream! That’s how he knew about father!” Janus was struggling desperately for air. “That’s why I left the family! I should have gotten all the attention! I was his first born! I was his one and only real son!”
        Janus watched his peripheral vision collapse to the inevitableness of what was about to happen. Jonnan screamed in anger at the top of his lungs, “And whether father knew it or not, I was his true son! Canen was a dream!!!!!” Jonnan was strangling Janus. Then, the young man’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he collapsed in his father’s hands.