by Christy Shorey and you

ARCHIVE: NOV. 19 edited for spelling and grammar

1955 words

Much to Logan's frustration, Lacey wouldn't leave him alone. He had been hesitant to tell her about his experience with the memory that had apparently taken control of him for a full hour. Three weeks of living with her had him expecting the barrage of questions, but when he finally told her that he couldn't remember the memory, he realized he wasn't up to dealing with it. He wished he could just go to bed, but was hesitant to navigate the stairs in the dark. Even after three weeks, he still got confused in the townhouse, sometimes thinking he was back in the loft where he had lived the past eight years.

"Has this ever happened to you before?" Lacey was asking again, her voice a spot in the darkness of the kitchen.

Logan gave a sigh, and told her what he had said the last two times she had asked. "No, this has never happened before."

And there was the familiar pause, as she worked out her next question, which he was sure was going to be the same as last time. Logan started, as there was a pressure against his leg, and pushed back in his chair, tipping it over, and only just managing to keep his feet.

"Mrow?" came the response from George, who had apparently decided being upstairs alone wasn't as great as he had thought, now that the thunder was a distant rumble.

"Are you okay?" Lacey said, her voice getting closer.

"Yeah, the cat startled me."

"Seems fair, you gave me quite a shock myself. Hey, Logan, I was wearing the necklace when I was holding on to you earlier. You mentioned that it the necklace didn't seem to work on me, but does it work on you?"

Logan shook his head in the dark, his bangs falling in his eyes, making him blink. "No, I don't dream, remember?"

"But, bear with me, your memories are kind of like dreams, right? And if I was wearing the device, and holding on to you, could the necklace somehow have caught your memory?"

"I don't think so. I mean, normally it isn't the thing that catches the dreams, it's the other device, in the nightstand, that connects me to people's dreams."

Lacey sounded disappointed. "I guess you'd know best. It is your device, after all."

"Well, why don't we check," Logan said. "If you think the flashlight will last long enough to get us to my room."

Suddenly Lacey's hand hit his chest, then followed the path down to his hand. "Don't need it," she said, and started to pull him along behind her. Logan started to protest, but Lacey didn't listen. He tripped on the first step, but they made it the rest of the way to his room with no incident. A rumbling purr notified them that George had accompanied them; Logan typically kept the door to his room closed, so being here was a treat for the cat.

Lacey let go of his hand, and fell back onto his bed with a groan. "Damn power being out."

Logan couldn't help but smile that it just dawned on her that there was no electricity. He let her agonize over it for a moment, then said. "Doesn't matter. It's got some sort of internal power, though to be honest, I'm not sure what. I'm afraid if I open it and start poking around, I might break it."

Lacey gave a snort. "Are you sure you built it?"

"Just give me the necklace," he said, extending his hand towards the direction of her voice. He collided with her as she was reaching towards him. "Oh, sorry," he mumbled, glad it was dark as his face started to flush as they untangled their limbs.

"Here, I'll hold the necklace out just over the edge of bed, about three feet in front of my voice. There, you have it?"

"Yes," Logan said, and she released the chain to fall into his hand. He made his way around the bed to the nightstand, and put the necklace in its holder, and watched the larger device blink into life.

"Wow." Lacey's voice came from closer than he expected. Evidently she had lain across his bed to get closer to the nightstand. "Its, well, not as exciting as I thought it would be."

Logan snorted. He understood the impression that a device that did something like no other that he knew of would be spectacular in it's functioning, but his past life selves had gone for functionality over form. "Sorry to disappoint, but it works, and that's what's important, right?"

"I guess. So how does it work?"

"I'm not sure."

"I mean, what results do you see. You said you lie down to sleep, and it steals dreams of other dreamers. Will you be able to see this if you go to sleep?"

"First, I'm not sure this will even work, but no. Since the device isn't collecting the dream right now, that is, if the necklace collected the memory like the bigger device collects dreams, then it will be stored in the database, and I should be able to view it on the output device as a 2-d image. The emotional aspects and some of the perceptions there are different than experiencing the dream, so I use that more for reviewing dreams that have been collected, rather than the main method for experiencing the dream."

"Visual 2-d output device?   You mean a screen?"

"Not quite," Logan said, finishing his programming the device. He was rewarded with a persistent blue light.

"What does that mean?" Lacey said.

"I don't know. Never seen blue before, usually only green or red. Once I saw yellow, but I never did figure out what that meant."

"Well, can you try to display the image?"

"Hold on." Logan closed his eyes, and focused his thoughts on trying to recall the memory from earlier. His hands moved over the controls, and he took note on the periphery as to what they were doing, while still concentrating on trying to regain the memory in his own mind. The blue light slowed, and a familiar green blinking joined it, indicating that an image for the visual output device was retrieved, and preparing to play. He let out the breath he had been holding. "Well, I think it worked."

"Really?" Lacey was leaning closer in her excitement, trying to see the device.

"Look over there," Logan said, pointing, then realizing it was still too dark for Lacey to see. "Um, look across the room from the nightstand. And scoot over, I want to sit on the bed."

She obliged, and they settled sitting facing the foot of the bed. Logan hit the buttons in the back of the nightstand that replayed images on the visual output. A faint blue glow appeared on the wall across the room, and Lacey went "Ah ha." Logan waited for the light to get to the final intensity, and started the replay.

Familiar surroundings appeared on the wall, with elaborate wood-carved furniture and stone walls, hung with some woven art in a style that was not quite of this world.

He heard Lacey gasp beside him and ask something as the memory came to life, but he was already lost in watching one of his own experiences and didn't really hear what she said.

****

Dresden got to the school just at the end of homeroom period, and managed to weave his way around the crowd of students into his classroom. He looked around in dismay. The room was in disarray. Rather, it was organized. He had spent months thinking about how to apply what he had learned during his degree program in order to create the idea learning space. Given his wide variety of students, from freshmen to seniors (though he had no juniors except in the optional literature class), and from standard English to an honors class, the task was not an easy one. He had even asked permission to come in two weeks early to arrange his room to the optimal learning center, not that his students seemed to notice or care.

But the substitute had taken down the quote and the audio station, and had locked away the word puzzles that he used to augment his class and make points. She had even gone so far as to rearrange the files on his desk. And now students were pushing in the door past him. He gathered himself, and went over to his desk. He opened the drawer afraid of what he might see. Relief flooded over him as he saw that his personal sacred ground had been left relatively unscathed. Some of the clips and pencils were in neat rows, but nothing was missing or drastically moved.

"Hey, teach, you're back!"

Dresden nodded, and gave a smile, as he watched his first period class settling in. The freshmen were more attentive than he remembered. "So, my desk and notes seem to have been rearranged while I was gone," he said with a small laugh. "Can anyone tell me where were we?"

A few hands rose, and Dresden cocked his head and did a mental count. Nine in total. He was used to two, three on a good day. "Um, yes, Angela?" he said picking a girl from the back row.

"I doth, believe, good sir, we completed act the third, scene the first of thy most respected bard's penning of the Twelfth night."

Dresden blinked at Angela, surprised she had jumped right in. He remembered her being a quite, despondent sort. He gave a small nod. "Doth that mean thou didst not proceed with thine readings of this work in my absence?"

This elicited a few groans from his students, and Trevor was banging his head quietly on his desk. Three girls all raised their hand at once, and started speaking over each other as he looked their direction.

"She was just awful."

"The sub had us working on Longfellow."

"She said that Shakespeare was for idiots."

"She wouldn't even talk to us about the assignments."

Other voices were chiming in now. "Am I failing the class now? She wouldn't give us our papers back, but said she was very disappointed with them."

"Promise you won't go away again."

"Never leave us with that sub again. If I see her, I'll scream."

Dresden held up his hand, and silence followed almost immediately. He gave his students a small grin, and ran his hand through his mussed up hair. "Okay. Well, honestly I haven't read the next segment in a while, and I would like to resume the unit on Shakespeare, so if you all would get your books-"

There was universal shuffling through bags and desks to get the book out. "I think we'll do a bit of acting today, to help us get back in the story. Can I get a volunteer to be Olivia?"

A few hands shot up, the trio of girls reaching for the stars in their eagerness to impress him. He assured them that they would all have their chance over the next several days, and started to assign roles. As he arranged them at the front of the class as a "stage" the boy he had assigned to the role of Sir Toby scooted closer to him, and whispered. "You look like you slept in those clothes, teach."

Dresden smiled at him, and matching the youth's pitch gave a wink "That's because I did. Don't tell the principal, or I may get suspended again."

The youth's eyes got wide, and he swore to keep the secret. Dresden took a seat on his desk, and settled in for an enjoyable day.