by Christy Shorey and you

ARCHIVE: NOV. 20 edited for spelling and grammar

2499 words

Lacey cued up another dream in the device. Ever since Logan had shown her how to use it, albeit begrudgingly, she had been going through the dreams he had saved as possibly important. He had been reluctant at first, but she had pointed out that four eyes were better than two, and she might pick out things that he missed. She also pointed out that she would just help herself to the device while he was at work even if he didn't let do it while he was there, and then she might end up breaking it.

He showed her how the device worked, though he admitted he hadn't figured out everything about it, then asked if he could sleep, as he did have to work in the morning. He had refused to gather another dream, allowing Lacey to watch him sleeping to see how it affected him. She had argued that point to, that it might be important to their search what happened to him physically when he was sharing someone's dreams.

"It's too much for one day," Logan said. "I just want a peaceful, dreamless sleep."

Lacey had breakfast ready for Logan when he got up. She didn't mention the vision from the night before, as she had seen how it had affected him, even though the scene kept playing across her mind. When she had started the device, she watched the vision again. The ancient looking room, the perspective of Logan, or rather the woman Logan had been in that life (he had let on that much). The short balding fellow who entered in such a rush, desperate for Logan's help. Without context, the conversation seemed generic, asking for help with a particularly troublesome person, a man who was pleading with the past life Logan, saying that she was the only one who had could possibly hope to sway the man.

The past life Logan had protested long and arduously, but had finally relented after another two or three had come into her room to beg her assistance. Lacey had gathered that these were no simpering idiots who were seeking Logan's help, but rather members of some high council in the society.

Then the memory had faded into a later one, where the woman Logan had been was confronting the man in question, and it appeared something was going wrong. The man had approached and grabbed Logan's past self, and there was a brief flash of light, and he was groaning on the ground, cursing her. There wasn't much after that, and Lacey was surprised that it was so short in comparison to the amount of time Logan had been out of it.

As the new dream started, zeroing in on a house in crystalline detail realization struck her. She stopped the dream, and sat back on the bed, rubbing her suddenly tired eyes. She had only been holding him the last minutes of the memory, and that was the only thing the necklace had captured.

Either the rest of the memory was lost, or Logan had chosen to not reveal it to her. The phone rang, and she looked around, then realized it was her cell. She got to it just as it sent the caller to voice mail. She looked at the missed call roster and saw it was Rocky. Without waiting for the message, she called him back.

"Oh, hey honey," his gruff voice carried over the static. "The fire department has cleared the building, and the building inspectors and all that. We can go back in. Earl wants us all to clean up the place, see what is salvageable and assess the damage."

"Okay Rocky," Lacey said. "I'll be over in about an hour. I didn't sleep last night, though."

"Storms scare you?"

"No, I think there was something wrong with the food. My stomach has been bothering me off and on, and my skin feels sticky, you know? Can you call Earl and tell him I'll be a bit late. I still have to get dressed and catch a bus."

"Food poisoning is nothing to mess with, honey. I'll tell Earl you're sick and on bed rest."

"Thank you, Rocky, but I really think I should be there. I mean, we're all responsible for the place, and I would feel terrible if everyone else was there cleaning up, and I was just here lying down."

"If you show up here, I promise you that I will personally pick you up, walk back to your place and bodily put you in your bed."

"I guess I'd better just lie down, then."

"That's right, you'd better. I'll call Earl now."

"Thanks Rocky."

"Anytime, honey. Take care of yourself now."

"I will, bye."

"Bye."

Lacey closed the phone, and turned it off for good measure. She stretched and looked at the clock. It was almost time for Logan's lunch break. She headed to get her shoes and purse to meet him for lunch. If his memories were getting worse, she didn't want to chance him getting another one while she wasn't there.

Maybe she could capture more, and really figure out what was going on.

****

Margot looked anxiously at the clock, wondering when the day would be over. Rose had gone in for her first round of surgery, leaving Margot alone at the reception desk in the afternoon. That meant she was quite busy taking patients information as they checked in, and unable to use any time to look through the records unobserved. It was ending up being a very unproductive day for her, and she was eager to see if Dresden had turned up anything useful in his research.

She wasn't sure if he remembered seeing her true form the night before, but if he had, he seemed very lackadaisical about it when he left that morning. She had expected more of a reaction, since he seemed to be overall more impressed that she was a dragon than Kyle had been. Kyle had merely looked at her dragon form and said "Cool, can you teach me how to do that, or is it a special thing?" She had been hesitant to show Dresden her dragon form, but frankly she was tired of trying to keep it from him, given the amount of time he had been spending at her house.

And he seemed agreeable to her suggestions. He had settled into the research without much question, just a few clarifying questions along the way. She didn't hold too much hope that literature and fantasy stories would hold the answer to her problem, but given the world she was on and the development of this world, it was the closest she could hope to find to conditions on the world where her problem originated.

Another group of patients were brought to her to check in as her co-worker for the day, a temp named Pierre, put the "closed" sign back up at his station and headed once more for the break room.

She was sorely tempted to leave, just quit on the spot. She hadn't been lying when she told Dresden that she didn't need to work. Investments over the years transferred to her new personas had ensured she was well off, as long as she stayed on this planet. But work gave her opportunities to research, and as technology had advanced on this planet, she had hopes that it would evolve to the point where it would provide answers to her problem. Besides, the last planet she had been forced to leave by the inhabitants when they found out her true nature; part of the reason she was hesitant to reveal it to anyone.

"Margot, when you have a moment?"

She turned in her chair and saw the department chair sitting on the counter behind her. "Just two more records to file, sir."

"Take your time."

Margot finished the files, and gave her attention to Azfar. "I heard you were good with computers, Margot."

"Yes sir, I have some experience with them."

"Being in college now-a-days will get you that. Are you proficient with them?"

"How so, sir?"

"We are looking at going to a more efficient system for the records. We want a database, or something, that will allow us to access the files in more than one place at a time, and update them easily. If it works, we're going to equip the medical team with hand-held devices where they can pull up a patients record and search for more information on the Internet all in one place."

Margot sat back in her chair. "Well, I could certainly build something like that, but it is pretty time intensive to do it, and then to upload the paper records..."

Azfar waved a hand. "We'll hire interns and have them input the records. You can build it?"

"Yes sir."

"Right then, well, the board wants this as soon as possible. So you don't get distracted we'll put you in the office with Gayle, the executive secretary. We'll get you started when Ray-"

"Rose," Margot corrected, but Azfar kept talking over her.

"-gets back from his-"

"her"

"-surgery. That'll give us enough time to put in a new computer. If you can draw up the specifications you need, what hardware and software and all that, and have it to me by end of the day tomorrow, that'd be great."

"Absolutely."

"And how long do you think it will take to build something like that?"

Margot looked at the department chair. "At least three months for the prototype," she said, greatly exaggerating the time to give her more time to work with the records and research she would insist were critical access to her work.

"Sounds good."

Margot sat back in her chair with a smile. Maybe this job wouldn't be as worthless as she thought.

****

Logan looked at his computer screen, uncertain what to do. Finally he called the student assistant over to look at it.

"Uh-oh, you got the 'blue screen of death' there. I hope you were surfing the Net or something. Or at least maybe you saved recently?"

"No, why," Logan asked. He was still overwhelmed with computer technology, even though he had been around computers some at the library, how they worked was a mystery to him.

"We have to hard re-boot. You've just lost everything you were working on, unless you saved it. Even then it's iffy, unless you put in on the server, and not the hard drive."

Logan gave a sigh, and scooted out of the way to let the student reboot the computer. He looked at the stack of papers he had been typing in for Professor Thomas. Mostly they were notifications to different publications of his reaching tenure, stating that he now no longer had time to be on their review boards, and to expect no more publications in the future. One of them, which Logan had been putting off, appeared to be the professor's memoirs, but a rather fictional version of them. Some of the staff had been laughing over them when he had gotten in that morning.

He was relieved to see the large stack of typing. Because he still had to look at his fingers most of the time he typed, he was slow at the process. Dr. Thomas had seemed excited by that. "Great, my man. Nothing has a real deadline anymore. I've got tenure!" Most days the task was tiring, but Logan was grateful for the distraction. If he didn't have the typing, he was usually just sitting at the desk waiting to take calls or make appointments (none of which Dr. Thomas was in the habit of keeping). That gave him time to think. And he definitely didn't want to think today.

He knew that when he got back to Lacey's place she would bombard him with questions over the vision she had seen. He hoped that letting her watch dreams while he was at work would distract her. Hell, she might even actually find something looking at the dreams he had collected over the two years he had the completed device.

When he had watched the 2-d rendering of the memory, he was suddenly swept up in the moment again, as if he were experiencing the memory, and not just watching it. An unfortunate side effect of having lived the experience in a past life, rather than just viewing someone else's hodgepodge experiences thrown together in the form of dreams. He remembered the fear and disgust he felt towards the man that everyone was pleaded in put in his place. Marcus was a face he knew in an instant, when the scene had changed. There was such an emotional tie to this person from a past life, that even thinking about the memory afterwards left an acidic taste in the back of Logan's throat.

And he even remembered Laurallynn, his former self. He didn't tell Lacey, and hoped that he could keep from her, that in the time he was lost in memory the day before, it became clear to him that he was, at his core, Laurallynn, a strong woman in a high position of society on a planet and history that was definitely not from Earth.

He gave a snort. His memories proved that intelligent life had evolved on other planets. He just couldn't say where, exactly.

The student turned and looked at him. "You okay?"

Logan shook his head. "Sorry, what?"

"I was saying it must be tough to redo all that work and you laughed. Are you in denial?"

"No, well, maybe. But my mind was drifting, honestly."

"That's cool," the boy said, and went back to tinkering with the computer.

"He stranger, it's lunch time."

Logan looked up to see Lacey in his doorway. Given the absence of student at the front desk, she had let herself in to the inner offices. She was bouncing on her toes, and Logan realized he was in for questioning a lot sooner than he had hoped.

"No worries, I'll have the computer up and working by the time you get back. Have fun with the missus. "

Logan nodded at the student, and grabbed his coat. At the door Lacey interlocked her fingers into his. "I figured we'd go out to lunch today, dear," Lacey said, and reached up to plant a kiss on his cheek.

Logan sighed, but knew better than to contradict her. Every time he had tried to maneuver around her lies with other people, she out did him. And usually was curt with him later. He didn't have the courage to ask her why she lied, but didn't like being dragged into it.

"So, how was your day, dear," Lacey continued.

"My computer just crashed," Logan said. "And I'm going to have to type in everything I did this morning again."

"That's too bad. Let's get take out, and find someplace quiet to sit."

Logan sighed again.