Chapter 36: Fight Night
Hillwalking was low down on my list of fun activities. I’d never owned the kind of boots you see on proper hikers. Yet the day was so pleasant, the paths so evident and mostly dry, that in order to tire myself before my million-person dream I walked over the hills of Clare Island for hours. I discovered that walking for long enough dissolves your ego and it was as Celine that I became immersed in the song of the birds and waves and wind and light and prophecy and myth and I became someone who with an idle speculation on the pattern of stone-monument building discovered the key to deciphering how a tarot reading could reveal the location of King Arthur’s cave, only to fling the thought aside before I could grasp it as Cyn.
The walk had the desired effect and with the sun set, teeth cleaned, bladder emptied, curtains closed, it was a relief to lift my tired legs onto the bed and manoeuvre myself under the duvet. Then I rolled the DreamAds hood over my head and lay back.
Do not be afraid. Noli timere. Celine recalled to our thoughts yesterday’s message delivered by the wren.
I’m not afraid, just don’t humiliate me.
***
The episode begins with a woman dead on the carpet of a living room.
‘I’m Margaret,’ she says. ‘Find my killer.’
The usual suspects are here: Niall; Oscar, the female butler; Neo, the Edge; my father; Amanda; and Jenny Madox, the woman who had given me a lift to Derry. Around the house I go, looking for clues.
It doesn’t take me long to identify Neo as the murderer. Everyone else is aghast and, until he admits the deed, disbelieving.
‘Murder, schmurder.’ Neo is wearing all black: boots, jeans, open-neck shirt, sunglasses (yes, sunglasses indoors). ‘Get over it.’
Carried along by his rhetoric, I am about to change dreams when Oscar leans towards me and whispers. ‘Excuse the interruption, m’lady, and I hope you don’t find this impertinent, but he murdered you too.’
Murder. Execution. A desire to inflict vengeful and unforgiving violence on Neo has me tunnelling through the universe in a red, swirling chariot of fire. Yet to plan the death of another being and carry out an assassination is so repugnant to me that I find that I can’t be a murderer. Not even if Neo is my victim.
‘Can you dream up a guillotine?’ asks Amanda, looking at me with narrow mouth and stern posture. Had I really once wanted to kiss her? The thought was abhorrent now. Or was it?
‘M’lady should not be too self-critical. When we met her, Amanda was only just beginning to show signs of the Amandus within.’
I’m suffering over the fact of my having been murdered and I leave the house for a music studio in which the Beatles are writing songs. How restorative is music. And how easy it is to be in the company of these Scousers in their grey suits. This room is a monochrome bubble as though a television broadcast from the early 1960s; at the periphery of the scene is the blazing white energy of the formless universe. Both living and dead are allowed here and I feel that my current post-mortal condition is now an asset. Neither addressing me nor minding my presence, the four of them work with professional focus – and the occasional laugh – on a song that is unfamiliar to me.
The unfamiliar song with its familiar voices stays as the soundtrack to the dream as I become Queen Lear, complete with full memory of the birth and subsequent history of my three children. Each of them has an army (cavalry, archers, infantry). To the north are the green flags of Neo, the Edge. To the east, the purple flags of Amanda. To the south the yellow flags of Celine in her form as a female Oscar Wilde, albeit one in a suit of armour with a cavity where her stomach should be. And to the west is a forest of a million trees.
Her prancing horse carries Celine forward and with a voice that resounds through the skies, she stands in her saddle, gesturing.
‘We have a dream.
‘Of a world where there are no weapons. Of a world of love and peace. Of a world where the stranger is a friend. Of a world of freedom.
‘We have a dream.
‘Of a world without greed. Of a world without rich and poor. Of a world where we are in harmony with nature. Of a world where everyone is safe, has food and water and shelter. Of a world where everyone is cherished.
‘We have a dream.’
‘Of a world without adverts. Of a world without bullshit jobs. Of a world where addictive junk food is not displayed at checkouts.’
‘We have a dream.’
‘Enough!’ Neo rides forward on a huge black stallion, his voice also seeming to come from above. ‘Enough of your Brave New World. People haven’t come here for that. They want sex and violence. Or both combined.’ His laughter rumbles like thunder.
‘Here’s the thing. Listen up everyone, I have a two step plan. Step One: invent a technology to control people. Step Two: rule the world. There. Now the whole world knows my plan. And this is the point you never understand. Nobody cares. I mean, other than you and a few thought-police, or discontented ex-employees of mine. No one else cares.
‘It makes me laugh,’ but there was no laughter in his voice, ‘when you go running to your social media to express outrage. No one is outraged. I can say anything. I can do goosesteps and Nazi salutes. So what? I can round up whoever I want and use them for the Mars project. No one cares. I love it when you post on X that you’ve discovered my goals as if that’s sensational news and I reply “everyone knows” and get a million likes. No one cares. They just want to get up in the morning, knowing they are going to have a good day and believing in the future.’
With a click of her fingers, raised high above Celine’s head the soundtrack to the dream changes to Rainbow’s Stargazer.
‘You’re wrong,’ says Celine. ‘And as long as even one of us dreams of utopia, another future is possible.’
‘Even if that’s true – and it sounds like loser, wishful thinking to me – after tonight free dreams are over. I’m claiming back what is mine: all your dreamscapes.’
Neo points towards Celine and gestures with a downward sweep of his arm, immediately bugles sound all the along the ranks of his army. Banging their swords against their shields to create a terrifying beat, the green army marches forward.
It is all very well Penguin emoji telling me not to be afraid but I can sense that Neo is stronger than the last time he occupied my dream. He will kill Celine if he can. That’s what Neo wants: a world where all but a very few people are severed from their creative spirit. A world where we are drones, not humans. And I am afraid that this battle will go his way. The green ranks are orcs and although the yellow ranks are brave and determined to fight to the last, they are being overwhelmed by the ferocity of the fascists.
What will it mean if Celine loses? I feel the same terror as when I held the DreamAds hood that first night and believed that if I put it on, I’d lose something vital.
A rider comes to my hill from the purple army. It is Amanda herself.
‘This is a catastrophe,’ she says, ‘you have to let me in.’
I understand. A fence prevents Amanda’s people from helping. I appreciate that once I let Amanda past the fence, I will have surrendered something very important. If she defeats Neo and wins the battle, she will be able to take over the entire dreamscape now and forever. Victory won’t be freedom. It will be as though Galadriel makes the choice to wield the One Ring. Still, Amanda is not (yet) Neo and I hurry to a nearby cherry picker, which is as red as the fruit it is named after.
‘Get in then.’ I start the engine, take the controls, lower the basket and, even before Amanda has closed the gate behind her, begin raising it again. At the same time, I put the vehicle in first gear so that it rumbles forward until it is right up against the fence. With a momentary convulsion as my body tries to reject the command of my mind I control my hand and lower the basket on the far side. No sooner does Amanda’s foot touch the ground there than the entire fence disappears and, with a huge cheer, the purple army advances.
Like Leonidas at Thermopylae, Arthur at Camlann, or Mór Ní Tuathail in her abbey of Kildare, Celine is fighting to the last. My friends, my relatives, my passing acquaintances, my inventions, all who have chosen to take my side, they are not short of bravery and resolution. But they are nurses, shop assistants, teachers, artists, baristas, IT workers, builders, civil servants and poets. They do not rejoice in the destruction of imagination and beauty. Therefore they are losing.
Oscar is still on her horse, brandishing her sword and crying out in a firm voice that I can hear clearly over the screeching of iron on iron and the howls of pain. ‘It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
‘Comrades, you are made for victory. It has always flashed in your eyes and rung in your voices. Hold fast now. Our allies have entered the field and the night can still be ours.’
Drowning out Celine’s voice, Neo responds and his words reverberate as though echoing down from the dark clouds that have closed over the sky.
‘Why did hate evolve? There’s a reason for hate. It means progress. Without hate we’d all be painting unicorns on rainbows and humanity would stagnate. Humanity would be weak. At least Morlocks have bone, sinew and vitality. Eloi are delicate flowers, afraid to haul on a rope in case their fingernails break.
‘To get here I’ve had to eat glass. And not just once. My life has required me to eat a glass sandwich every day. That’s the cost of winning. I want to win, and not in a small way.
‘If you want to get up in the morning with hope for humanity, then fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
‘This realm is ours. Make dreaming great again.’