Chapter 01

   David looked down from his computer screen, its irradiated glow dancing about the contours of his young but tired face, and bit his thumbnail as he slowly perused his notes. The writing was almost illegible, and at times, even he had little idea what he had written the day before.
   He took off his glasses, closed his eyes, and rubbed from the bridge of his nose, almost ready to give up. It had been almost 5 hours, and he had little more than a line written down on the computer. The notes he had written in the middle of the night were now not only illegible, but totally incomprehensible. He put his glasses back on, pushed them to the top of his nose with his middle finger, and looked back up to the computer screen.
   The holographic screen slowly shimmered, showing the one line he had been able to discern from the notes:
   “I start out in a square room, lined with marble pillars, and a wooden table in its center.”
   After that, there was little he could relay from the notes. He had tried going to the end of his notes, to the middle, and then back to the beginning. No matter what order he looked at each bullet, none of it seemed to make sense. Some of the notes were not even complete sentences.
   Before he had the chance to finally give up and power off the terminal, he heard a knock resonating from behind him.
   “Who is it?” he asked in slight irritation.
   “It’s your mother. Who do you think it is?!” a muffled voice shouted with equal irritation.
   “Come in, Ben. The door’s open.”
   David swiveled away from the humming terminal in time to see the door open, and a slender man with chin length brown hair walk through. Ben was an attractive man who had to do very little to keep himself in shape. He wasn’t particularly muscular but also had very little fat. He always had stubble on his chin and above his lip, as if his goatee was just too stubborn to leave his otherwise clean face.
   “How long were you going to make we wait out there before I came in?” Ben said to David, who had already turned his attention back to the terminal. “You’ve been sitting in this lab for the better part of a day. It’s sick.”
   “I’m…I’m sorry, man. I guess I lost track of time,” David replied, still intently diving through his notes.
   “This is ridiculous. You haven’t accomplished a fucking thing since this started,” Ben said, hoping to convince David to give up for at least the night. “You do the same thing every other night, and the next day, you sit in this lab trying to figure out what the hell you wrote down in your notebook when you woke up.”
   “Look,” David looked at Ben with bleary eyes, “I know how ridiculous it looks, but I really don’t have much choice. The dreams are...” David stopped a second to ponder his choice of words.
   “David, just go get your head recorded. Get it over with. Get an appointment with a synaptic clinician and get a brain tape done.”
   “You don’t think I’ve already thought about it? I’ve already tried to get a Synaptic Impulse Record done. Hell, I’ve tried three times!”
   “And?”
   David’s eyes lit up, and he swiveled back to the notes on the table. He traced a finger across every line, partly looking for a specific bullet, partly avoiding Ben’s question. He could hear Ben repeating the question behind him, but he didn’t flinch. He continued to leaf through his notes. Finally, Ben grasped the back of David’s chair, and jerked it around to face him.
   “What did he say?” Ben said slowly, looking right into David’s eyes. David tried to turn back around, but Ben held him in place.
   “He said...he said they don’t exist.”
   “Wait, he said what don’t exist? Your dreams?”
   “See, this is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
   David got up from his chair and walked over to the coffee machine that sat alone in the corner of the computer lab. He opened the beige cupboard above the machine and pulled a mug from the lowest shelf. As the machine slowly filled the mug to the brim, David turned around to face Ben, awaiting his reaction.
   “Are you telling me you have PEPs?” Ben asked in disbelief.
   “I don’t know what I have. Whatever they are, though, S.I.R.s don’t seem to record them,” David replied with a tinge of defeat in his tone.
   Phantom Essence Precognitions, or PEPs, were not a common phenomenon, but they were well known enough to garner a unique name. PEPs were classified as synaptic impulses that could not be recorded with conventional cyber-cerebral interface technology. Many theories suggested that the culprit could be anything, from immense mental stress to extreme emotional exertion. Some unconventional researchers, though, had theorized recently that PEPs were a side effect of electronic integration with the complexities of the human brain. Most synaptic technicians grudgingly admitted in several public forums, that the brain was still not well understood, and that a cyber-cerebral implant’s basic functions could still have unknown side effects and vast ramifications for the rest of the cerebral complex.
   “Dave, this is serious stuff. You have to keep this quiet. Do you understand?” Ben’s face morphed from one of disbelief, into one of grim seriousness.
   “Why? What’s wrong?” Dave replied, unable to read Ben’s expression.
   “Just trust me. Just do me a favor and don’t tell anyone that you’ve been having these dreams.”
There was a strange sense of dread that slowly crept up David’s spine. He felt like there was something Ben wasn’t telling him. Ben was usually not one to give advice, and his sudden grim tone gave David the most unexpected of chills. David walked away from the coffee machine without picking up his mug, and sat back down at the terminal he had been using. He looked to Ben, who along with the room, was bathed in the turquoise fluid light of the holographic projection, and then back to the notebook.
   “Ben, I forgot my coffee, man. Could you just grab for me real quick?” David stuttered nervously, pointing in the general direction of the coffee machine.
   “Uh, yeah, sure man.”
While Ben’s back was turned, David quickly flipped to the back of his notebook, and scribbled “Ben – Precognitions: does he know?” on the back cover. As soon as he could see Ben coming back with the coffee, he closed the notebook and smiled nervously.
   “I don’t know why you still use those things, Dave,” Ben said, handing the coffee to Dave slowly. “Your notebook, I mean. Personal Datapads are so cheap now. I picked up an Aratech one for like, $150 last Tuesday.”
   “I guess I’m just old fashioned,” Dave replied and looked at his computer screen for a moment. He then looked to Ben, and sighed. “Looked Ben, I appreciate you coming by, but I don’t think I’m going to go out, tonight.”
   “You’re kidding me, man.”
   “I’m really sorry. Look, can I take a raincheck?”
   Ben let out an audible sigh.
   “Yeah, yeah sure. I’ll just call Liz and tell her to get reservations for two.” Ben turned around, walked towards the door and stopped. He touched his temple, and a faint beeping could be heard.
   Anyone unacquainted with cerebral telephonics would think Ben was merely mad. In recent years, mobile phone companies had found lucrative opportunities in cerebral electronics, and had secured a number of deals with several cyber-cerebral technology companies in hopes of making the mobile phone that much smaller.
   And smaller they became. Now they were merely a chipset that resided behind the right eye, fixed into an expansion slot on standardized cyber-cerebral connections. Calls were placed or answered by gently pressing the right temple. Numbers and contacts were retrieved from the address book databanks using “cognitive database” technology, essentially allowing the caller to think of a number.
   Using the cyber-cerebral retinal connections, heads up displays would focus into view for the user on the surface of their eyes, superimposing over whatever their eye was perceiving. Conversations could then be held by either talking out loud, or merely thinking about what they intended to say.
   While Cyber-cerebral holographic interfaces were not new, commercial use was. In the past, only paramilitary programming and functional consumer programming, such as calendars, medical monitoring technology, and hyper memory storage, were deemed okay for use in cerebral expansion slots. When first receiving their cyber implants, the civilian consumer was then preloaded with functional and practical programming that would make their lives easier. Depending on their various day to day needs, different packages were designed that contained different programs tailored to each consumer. All of these programs were designed and programmed by government organizations, and cyber-cerebral implants were only maintained and upgraded by government sanctioned technicians.
   Cerebral telephonics was a step in a new direction, where a commercial body could receive a license to design hardware and software for cyber implants, and sell it in their own stores, instead of through government channels. The advent of cerebral telephonics would no doubt be only the first trickle in the wave of consumer intended cerebral programming. With that, though, would also be the concern of consumer privacy, tampering, and even brain hacking. Without governmental safeguards in place for these commercial entities, the common civilian implant was now in that much more danger.
   When Ben had finally finished his conversation with Liz, which as usual, ended in a barrage of “yes dears” and “I will dears,” he turned to David to say his goodbyes.
   “Don’t work too hard, champ,” Ben said, genuinely smiling. “We’ll miss you tonight.”
   “Thanks. I’ll take you up on dinner one of these days.”
With that, Ben walked out the door, and David was finally alone to continue with his work. Before he could open up his notebook again, he noticed a blinking string of words in the corner of his eye.

   INCOMING CALL FROM (UNKNOWN)

   Curious, David touched his right temple, and spoke.
   “Hello?”
   “David Paralen,” a low toned, computer generated voice uttered.
   “Who—who is this?”
   “Do you know why you have been having these dreams, David?”
   “Ben, this isn’t funny, man. You’re freaking me out.”
   “David, do you know why no S.I.R. can record your dreams?”
   “Ben, really, stop this!”
   “David, you know the answer to all of these questions.”
It was then that David felt the same chill he got before shoot up his spine. Whoever this stranger was, he knew that David knew fully well the origin of his dreams. This stranger knew that David was just playing everyone else for a fool.
   “David, listen to me,” the voice uttered again. “I know that you have hidden the cause of these dreams from your friends. I also know that you have been trying to convince yourself that your dreams have reoccurred for other reasons.”
   “Who are you? How do you know all of this?” David’s breathing became rapid and shallow, and he rushed to each window and peeked out, hoping to spot someone on a nearby roof or in a nearby window. There was no one in sight.
   “David, you have been brain-hacking,” the voice said with determination, but without and air of accusation.
   “No! No, I haven’t! That’s a lie, I don’t even know how to!”
   “David, you and I both know that you could not keep your dreams a secret for long. We also know that you have been brain-hacking. Do not lie to me.”
   “I…” David looked at himself in the reflective steel of the computer terminal face. “I couldn’t help it. I never tried to. It just...happened.”
   “I know, David. I am here to help. I am calling to confirm your worries. Your PEPs are side effects of prolonged unconscious brain-hacking.”
   All of David’s worst fears were finally coming to light. He finally knew that his sleepless nights were for nothing. In recent months he had become a recluse, shirking his responsibilities and devoting his time to analyzing his dreams. He had told his friends he was having reoccurring nightmares, and he had to spend his time analyzing them. All of this time, he had known why, but he wasn’t ready to believe it.
   “David.” The voice questioned sternly.
   “Yes. I’m sorry. I drifted off for a second,” Dave stuttered, returning to reality.
   “David, until I contact you again, you cannot tell anyone about what transpired here. Anyone who knows about your ability will be put in immediate danger.”
   David thought back, trying to piece together a timeline, consisting of all the people who knew anything about his dreams. There was Ben and Liz. He had told one of his old college professors about the dreams before he knew what they really were. But no, there was one other.
   “Oh god, Dr. McAbbot…” David froze in panic.
   “Correct, David. The synaptic clinician who attempted the S.I.R. scan knows too much.”
   “It’s okay, he won’t tell anyone. I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”
   “It is too late, David. We have already sorted out the matter.”
   “Wha—what? What did you do to McAbbot?”
   “The less you know, David, the better off you will be. Goodbye, David. We will talk soon enough.”
   With that, the line went silent, and David was once alone again. This time though, it seemed so much darker.

END OF CHAPTER 01