Chapter Eighteen - Tattered and Torn
Project 86Chapter Eighteen - Tattered and Torn
“No answer, her phone just keeps ringing till I hit voicemail. Tried it three times,” Hyoyeon stated as she walked into the kitchen of the shrine. Everyone was seated around the rectangular table that comfortably sat four people so it was a bit of tight squeeze to fit around it, everyone sitting almost shoulder to shoulder creating a rather intimate setting for a group of strangers. Sooyoung hovered over the hob with the food.
“I guess we need to start without her. We’ll leave her a portion,” Sooyoung said as she finished giving out the last plate and then sat down herself. Once everyone was seated with food in hand, Jessica began her explanation of the Beyond.
“What I’m about to say is by no means an exhaustive or complete explanation of the cosmos, but just a way to interpret the theory and to make it into an easier format to understand. It was how my mother explained it to us when we were kids and in its simplicity is pretty effective at communicating the main points.”
Jessica took a deep breath and a sip of water before continuing.
“Imagine the world is a cream filled cake with many layers,” Jessica started immediately noticing a few looks of incredulity and surprise.
“I can see why you would like this explanation,” Taeyeon said from her seat with a smile. Sooyoung with food in could only whine with a muffled voice like some grazing water buffalo. Jessica continued.
“Yes, so a cake. It has multiple layers. The first layer of the cake is the base made of dough, and that layer is our physical world. That is where most humans and people live and that is where our everyday life happens. That first dough layer is where we all are right now, sitting in this shrine.
“Now on top of this dough layer there is marmalade or jam, pick your favourite topping. This layer of jam is like a thin veil between our physical world and the dream world. This layer can only be accessed by people with special abilities, much like Sooyoung and myself. People with an extraordinary mind. This jam layer is also where most of supernatural occurrences happen. Spirits, ghosts, demons – they all exist in this layer between the physical reality of our world and that of the next layer which is the dream world.
“The dream world is the layer on top of the jam ether, let’s say this dream world is the first layer of whipped cream. This is where our mind travels when we sleep. Essentially every dream is connected through this layer but they live in their isolated pockets most of the time. People like Sooyoung, Hyoyeon, myself and it would seem Yoona also, are able to travel here at will. Most others can only access it when dreaming.”
“Why does that happen though? Why do people’s minds travel to a completely different realm when they sleep?” Tiffany asked with great interest. She had accepted that this was the case but in all her studies she had not found an answer to this question. Maybe Jessica knew better.
“Unfortunately I don’t know. We don’t know why, we just know it happens. Maybe our whole being and mind are essentially tied to that layer and have to have regular direct connection with it to keep this tie together. Who knows.
“Now these first three layers; the base dough, jam and cream, are safe for all of us and require just our mind to travel in. The problem comes when we move up another step from the whipped cream of dreams. This is when we hit the second layer of dough. To access this place you should travel there with your body and mind together. In essence it is a whole other dimension in a way. It’s a place where time and space are the same and where everything exists. History and the future are all the same in there. A kind of time loop.
“It is from this second dough layer that material slips down into the dream world and this is the reason our dreams tend to be wacky, because of its connection to the second dough layer. If you travel to this place without your body just with your mind alone, you can only stay there for a limited time. Sooyoung, Hyoyeon and Yoona were there recently and had to get out quickly. If you stay too long you will lose your connection to your body and die.”
The shrine room was silent at the mention of this. They all stared at Jessica who paused to let all of what she had told to really sink in and to give them a chance to ask questions now if there was anything unclear. Taeyeon was once again ready with a question.
“So, I’m assuming that this second dough layer isn’t where Yoona has gone as you didn’t call it the Beyond?”
“You’re correct. Everybody still with me on this so far?” Everyone nodded and Jessica continued. “So, what we call the Beyond is the layer above the second dough layer and I’m afraid to say we know next to nothing about it. All we really know is that it is a very empty place and very lethal to people. We don’t know its purpose to exist or how to even really get there. We only have records of people with extreme mental capacity ever having reached it and even fewer returning.”
“So it’s some kind of void?”
“Yes, as far as we know. The records from the few that have gone there are very sparse and incomplete. The ones who returned were very changed upon their return. They had lost something of themselves there and never really recovered. They only spoke of the darkness and emptiness.”
“Is there anything beyond the… uhh… Beyond?” Yuri spoke for the first time in a while. She had been following Jessica’s explanation as closely as she could while sneaking a peek at Taeyeon’s clear and excellent notes to help with her understanding.
“We don’t know. There could be, or maybe the Beyond is the end of it all. Maybe the gods or supreme beings or whatever you want to call it exists above the Beyond or maybe there is nothing there.”
“And that void is where Yoona is now?”
“I’m afraid so…” Jessica ended her explanation as her thoughts lingered on what happened to Yoona and what she could experience in there.
“Then what about the flying whales and things we have been seeing today?” Tiffany asked. The layer explanation worked somehow, it made sense in a way but it didn’t explain why these weird visions and phenomena were showing up in the real world. She assumed that it had something to do with her father and his machine but could it all be unrelated to him?
Sooyoung decided to take over and let Jessica take a break from all the explaining as she looked visibly tired.
“The reason for them appearing is because there is a rip in the fabric of the dream world, a serious one that has bisected all these different layers and is connecting them. You could describe it as a hole that’s appeared in the second dough layer, the time loop place, and it is leaking material from there all the way down to our world. The rip is a huge problem because worst case scenario; all these different layers just combine into one single layer and… well we can only assume it would be extremely bad. We don’t know what will happen but the world won’t be the same that’s for sure.”
“So it has nothing to do with my father’s work and machine?”
“Hard to say. I personally thought that the rip was caused when Yoona exploded into the Beyond. However since your dad is tampering with the dream world it could have been the cause. Most likely I suspect it’s a combination of both. Whatever your dad is doing is destabilizing the creamy dream layer and Yoona’s explosive escape into the Beyond was made worse than it would have been without all that tampering. Just, really hard to tell.”
Sooyoung raised her shoulders and rolled her head a little before leaning back. Tiffany looked back down on the floor, visibly defeated by the information she had just received. Every new piece of information just implicated her father more and made her own project seem riskier and a bad idea too. If artificially travelling to the dream world was considered tampering then her machine was also adding to the destabilization. But what her father was doing was much more; it was something completely different from hers. So maybe her research had redeeming qualities after all.
“How do we prevent that from happening?” Taeyeon spoke up after finishing up the final scribbles in her notebook before taking a good bite into the meat on her plate.
“Right now, given the information that Tiffany has shared with us, the best way is to try and stop whatever it is her father is trying to do and shutdown the project. Also if Yoona would return that could help us greatly.”
“How can we do that?”
“Jessica, Hyoyeon and myself will try and focus on her in the dream world. Maybe we can get a connection to her especially now that there is a rip that’s connected the Beyond with the dream world. It’s worth a shot. I will go in first though to scout ahead before Jessica or Hyoyeon come in.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Sunny asked as she got up from the chair to clear up her plate. Hyoyeon got up as a reaction and took Sunny’s plate along with her own and began clearing up the table while telling Sunny it’s okay she can handle it.
“Brainstorming for ideas with us is enough for now,” Sooyoung said as she moved towards the door to the shrine room.
Everybody had finished eating by this point and most of them clamoured to their feet as Hyoyeon kept clearing the table. Yuri got up and went to assist Hyoyeon with the cleaning of the dishes as she felt like she had contributed very little to today’s proceedings so far and wanted to help. She grabbed the rubber gloves hanging loosely from the drying cupboard above the sink and began scrubbing the dishes.
“Let’s move back into the shrine room,” Jessica waved for the rest of them to move out of the kitchen as Hyoyeon and Yuri stayed there to finish the cleaning.
The rest of them slowly filed out of the kitchen while thanking and complimenting Sooyoung for the well cooked meal. As they entered the shrine room it was about three in the afternoon, the sun had lowered slightly and rays of light now streaked diagonally into the room. Sooyoung moved to the open windows and slanted the blinds further to provide some cover form the direct sunlight.
The rest of them sat on the cushions back to the same places they had been sitting in earlier. Once everyone was seated Sooyoung began her explanation.
“So I will go in to the dream world now to see if I can find Yoona, if I can’t by myself I will come back and ask Hyoyeon and Jessica to assist me.”
“When you say go to the dream world you mean…?” Taeyeon asked incredulously.
“I mean, I’ll just go. I can close my eyes and can will myself into a ‘sleep’ although I’m not really sleeping, my mind has merely travelled to the dream world.”
“That’s… a pretty neat trick.” Tiffany chimed in smiling all the while. “No need for a dream machine, I wish I could do that.”
“It’s got its uses. So don’t be alarmed now, I will just fall asleep suddenly and that is completely normal,” Sooyoung glanced around quickly before focusing on Sunny’s thick thighs next to her. “Are you okay if I lay my head to rest there before I go to sleep? They look very soft, and I rather be lying down because I will lose control of my body as a result.”
Sunny’s face lit up for a moment before she mumbled shyly, “Oh, yes okay. Go ahead.”
“Thanks,” Sooyoung beamed back before she turned her whole body left to align herself properly and then laid her head to rest on Sunny’s voluptuous thighs. The short legs of Sunny possessed just the right amount of muscle and fat making them the perfect head rest. She was now staring up right at Sunny’s adorably flustered face. “Mhmm, perfect. I knew these were just right for the job. Well then, I’ll see you all in a bit.”
As she said that she saw Hyoyeon and Yuri walking out of the kitchen into the room having finished all the cleaning up. She saluted her friend who returned the gesture and the next second her hand fell limp and Sooyoung was fast asleep.
“That was fast,” Taeyeon wondered wide eyed at the dangerously narcoleptic looking event that took place. She turned her gaze at Tiffany; the latter had the exact same baffled expression mouthing silently to Taeyeon ‘amazing’.
“Yeah it can be a bit unnerving the first time you see it,” Hyoyeon said as she walked across the room to sit next to Sunny on the right. She glanced at the sleeping face of Sooyoung resting on Sunny’s thighs and laughed. “The first time she showed me that ability she did it on purpose while standing up. I freaked out thinking she had fainted.”
“Can you do the same as her?” Yuri asked having made her way to the cushion next to Taeyeon’s.
“No not like her. I can only enter the dream world like normal people by sleeping or with Jessica’s assistance,” Hyoyeon looked over at Jessica smiling before returning to look at Yuri. “However I have so much experience in there that it takes little effort now.”
“What do we do now?”
“We wait.”
-----
Opening her eyes Sooyoung was greeted with the familiar sight of her safe room. The long dining table filled with fantastical food from all around the world, simmered and steamed on her table.
Always fresh, always tasty, this was the dream for any food connoisseur. Steamed and fried vegetables on one side leading to a fresh salad and a variety of dressing of your choosing to top it off. Boiled chilli crab, deep fried crab, crab cakes and crabsticks enticed you to a treat with more seafood spreading across the width of that section of the table. Fried tiger prawns with both soy and chilli sauce, fried rice of your dreams. Burgers, hotdogs, fresh meat off the barbeque – pork loin, steak, meatballs, meatloaf. The food spread seemed endless. In reality the table merely presented the foods that you most desired on the table, making it an ever changing rotisserie of that which each person desired, much like the honey glazed rotisserie chicken that dripped with flavour next to the hot wings.
Sooyoung was so glad she had eaten before coming back here as otherwise she would have been tempted to take a moment to enjoy some of the food before heading out to look for Yoona. Not that this imaginary food would have actually filled her in real life, but the hungrier her body in the real world was the hungrier her mind would tell her she was here in the dream world.
With a heavy sigh and heart for having to leave all this food alone for now, Sooyoung got up from the chair at the end of the table that she had woken up in. Directly behind her a deep reddish-brown mahogany door appeared from the wall, as if roots had broken through the wall and its tendrils slowly creeping along the surface filling out into the form of a door. The texture of it was rough, the natural tree itself had grown in to take the form of the doorframe and door.
She pulled the door open, the rough corners of it grating slightly against the doorframe, and eventually streaks of light and hot air began to flow into the room between the edges all around the opening door. She was greeted by a familiar sight behind the opened door; a massive endless desert.
The door disappeared behind her as she stepped out of her room and she began to wonder what would be the best way to try and find Yoona. She had to also be aware of the risk of bumping into Saebyuk. Any Yoona looking person here she should assume was Saebyuk. It frustrated her to no end that there was no easy identifying physical feature that she could rely on to identify the fake since she was a true copy of Yoona and hence manifested perfectly with her appearance. The only way was to engage in conversation and figure out if they knew any details of events Saebyuk was not part of.
Skating through the hot fine grained desert sand she could once again see the pyramids in the far distance; the only constant feature of the dream world. That was a mystery in itself. Why in the world did it exist and why was it the only permanent fixture of the overarching dreamscape? And why was the void between dreams a desert in the first place? Mysteries that probably only the Creator, or creator’s themselves could answer.
Wondering what the best approach was to finding Yoona, she decided on going to her safe location, the one that she always would wake up in when consciously entering the dream world – Seohyun’s apartment. Usually these dream safe locations were hard to find but since she had once visited it she could now find her way there easily. Much like Saebyuk had found her location when she had first tried to rescue Sunny.
Her own safe location was obscured so that it could not be found by accident, only with purpose, but since Yoona had visited her safe location years ago Saebyuk could use that information to find it. This was a serious security flaw in the dream design. If only she could somehow upgrade her security by calling in a security company to help deal with it. Well, she could dream a security team into existence but it wouldn’t serve any practical use, it would just be for the aesthetic.
Seohyun’s apartment appeared beyond the crest of the next dune that Sooyoung skated over. It was a rather hilarious sight; as if the apartment had been a Jenga piece and just pulled out of the existing apartment building. It had a bare concrete flat roof with electrical wiring and plumbing sticking out where it would have connected with the floor above. The wall with the front door of the apartment had no windows in it, not that they would’ve helped as you could not see inside windows of buildings that were separate dreams of their own. Somehow the glare of the sun would obfuscate all angles you tried to look inside from, even when you attempted to create shade to see inside no shade would exist and the sun’s glare would burn your eyes out.
She stopped skating a few metres away from it and looked around while walking to the door. “Yoona? Are you here?”
Nobody was in the periphery of the building. Now by the door she knocked it a couple times.
No answer.
She knocked again for a longer stretch and a lot louder.
Still no answer.
A third drumming of the door revealed nothing new, so she went ahead and opened the door.
An afternoon sun flitted in through the windows painting the walls with gold and orange, softening everything in the room and hiding away any harsh edges or colours. Within this setting one could immediately feel at peace. There was an almost silent background noise from the city that was visible from the windows which was enhanced in the total silence of the apartment and the serene feeling that it radiated. No wonder that Yoona felt safe in this place. One could calm and centre themselves here.
Such a serene space worked perfectly as a place to relax and concentrate her mind onto Yoona. Since it was Yoona’s dream home base so to speak, it could possibly also help with connecting with Yoona better where ever she may be.
Sooyoung stepped inside closing the door behind her and immediately felt a sense of calm. The colouring of the room, the quiet sounds of a busy city and the warmth of the afternoon sun all combined to de-stress every inch of her body. She slid slowly across the floorboards taking in Seohyun’s apartment in its full. To the left of the entrance was an open counter kitchen that combined with the living room where a three-seat couch faced the opposite direction of the kitchen. A rather small TV sat on a stand opposite of the couch by the wall and to its left was the bedroom and to the right of the TV the bathroom.
Sitting down on the couch she pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged and started to focus on Yoona. There was nothing special to it other than concentrating on what you want to find. Thinking about all aspects of the person, their look, voice, mannerisms, smell; every aspect of them would enhance the search. Her mind searched deeper and deeper within herself feeling her soul take flight from her body and it wandered into the emptiness of the dream world, trying to find its way around. Like a bloodhound following the scent of its prey, she followed the scent of Yoona through the skies of the desert.
The longer she concentrated the further into the desert she seemed to fly, further in and higher up into the sky. The trail led her higher and higher until she felt like she was being pulled in by something. And before she realised or could react to it she was yanked in through a rip in the sky, a tear that seemed to be enlarging at an ever rapid rate. Her mind slipped right through the rip into darkness.
While the all encompassing void seemed to be swallowing her whole and Sooyoung was ready to pull her mind out of there she saw a faint glow – a flicker of fire among trees, two lonesome figures standing by the fire. A soldier and a woman.
Yoona!
The woman was definitely her. She had found her.
Yoona! Can you hear me?
It looked like she had caught her attention, the woman now turning her head about.
It’s me Sooyoung. Yoona!
Sooyoung attempted to project her mind further towards the standing woman calling out her name at the same time and it was then she felt a rip in her being, feeling like her mind was being torn off from herself. She instantly let go of her concentration and snapped back into her body. She was once again back in Seohyun’s apartment sitting cross-legged on her couch.
That was Yoona! She was alive! But the tear Sooyoung had gone through… this was bad.
With lightness to her step she bounced off the couch and glided to the front door quickly stepping out of the apartment. She walked out of the shadow of the building to the nearest dune and looked up in the direction that she had travelled to with her mind earlier and far in the distance growing with increasing speed she saw the tear. It was opening up faster and faster as if someone was slicing with a knife from both edges of the rip, while tendrils of the deepest black void seeped out of the gaping wound of the dream world’s fabric. The dream world was collapsing. This was extremely bad. Really, very bad. This was the worst case scenario they feared could happen. She had to warn everyone back at the shrine!
-----
It felt like she had been sitting on that rock for days, staring into the fire while trying to somehow figure out how in the world her powers worked. She had nothing to go on, no clue anybody could give her. All the new friends she had made at the shrine who might have had even the slightest of a clue how to work this mind muscle of hers were somewhere far away in another reality. She was stuck. Maybe the task of trying to focus on something she didn’t know how to focus on could’ve been less jarring if there was some change of scenery, but it was all the same all around.
She had tried wandering around the campfire; walking into the darkness without any sense of what was ahead with slow anxious steps to make sure that her footing was secure and that she wasn’t walking into a tree. Somehow though, within a minute or two of walking directly into the darkness she would end up seeing the same campfire in front of her in the distance. She either walked in circles or this place was positioning the campfire in front of her so she could never wander off. Just darkness endlessly spreading around her, a void with nothing in there except a forest of nothingness, devouring all ligh-
A faint flash in the distance.
Yoona got up from the rock she had been sitting on and walked to the other side of the fire to stare into the darkness where she had seen the flash. Another faint glow. Extremely faint with a hint of sky blue, like the fissures off the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus spraying jets of water vapour into the dark cold of space. It spewed this faint blue light for a few seconds before it died down again.
Was she seeing things? All this waiting in the void with nothing but her mind and an endlessly crackling fire could start playing tricks on any person. Soon another light blue jet of light burst in another location only to die soon after. She had to know what was going on.
“Zun?” Yoona asked carefully into the silent still air. All she could hear was the tipping of a log piece in the fire.
A caw from somewhere above.
“I have a question for Url, could you bring him, her, it, here please?”
“What is it you wish to ask me?”
“Aaaahhh!” Yoona screamed out and hobbled onto the ground after hearing the deep primal growl like voice of Url suddenly appear behind her. She turned around to look at the same black armour clad figure standing on the opposite side of the fire. “Please, don’t do that. It’s freaky.”
“What did you wish to know?” Url repeated his question.
“Oh right,” Yoona got up from the ground patting off the imaginary dust on her pants. “I saw these blue streams of light out there in the darkness. What are they?”
Url walked over to stand next to Yoona while looking far off into the distance where she was pointing.
Another short burst of light.
“There see! What’s that? I only started seeing them a few minutes ago,” Yoona turned to look at Url standing next to her. She hadn’t really given too much thought to Url’s size until now as it towered over her almost double in height. She quietly strafed ever so slightly giving a little more distance between them.
“They are tears in the fabric of the dream world.”
“Tears? Is the dream world tearing this place apart?”
“No, it is tearing itself apart from this place and is in the process of collapsing.”
“Collapsing? How… is that even possible?”
“There are mortals playing with the dream world, and the wound to its fabric that you recently opened worsened the already destabilised dream world. It is now at risk of collapsing into your mortal world.”
“What? How is that even possible? What will happen to the people down on earth?”
Her earlier intrigue towards the streams of light had now turned into horror upon hearing what was going on. She stumbled a few steps backwards clutching her face with her hands. “Will they die?”
“No. Most will fall asleep at first. Some will manage to wake up while others will stay in a deep sleep. However your world will have changed; the reality you know will combine with dreams.”
“How do you know all this? Can it be stopped?”
“It has happened before. The last time it happened was thousands of years ago, in human years. It can be stopped and reversed, but I do not have the knowledge on how it was done nor will you be able to do it from here. You need to travel back down.”
“I don’t know how to…” Yoona’s eyes were beginning to well up, the lining filled to the brim with liquid glistening in the limelight of the campfire. “Url you have to help me… how do I-“
Yoona!
Who was that? Where was the noise coming from? Yoona looked up at Url who was still staring out into the darkness where jet streams of light still appeared and disappeared every so often. The voice didn’t sound like Url either.
Yoona! Can you hear me?
That… that was Sooyoung’s voice! Yoona started to frantically look around her taking a few steps more back to the other side of the fire. Where was it coming from? Was she losing her mind?
It’s me Sooyoung. Yoona!
She turned to look to her left over the fire and in the distance saw the faint glow of another stream of blue light before it too vanished.
“Sooyoung? Sooyoung!”
Yoona darted into the direction of the vanished light, the black void having once again engulfed everything in that direction. She couldn’t see a thing and managed to get in only a few meters before she tripped on a root of a tree.
Face down in the mossy undergrowth of a forest she began weeping, the earlier tears now becoming streams and soon rivers as her body shuddered and convulsed in her escalating sorrow. She gripped the moss with her hands squeezing it tighter and screaming in frustration.
Url had turned around to look at her at this point standing at the edge of the campfire, letting Yoona expel her frustrations and sadness on her own.
A few minutes passed with both of them remaining still, Url patiently waiting while Yoona’s sobbing lessened and eventually all you could hear was near silent sniffling. She finally lifted her face off the ground and stood up wiping as many of her tears as she could, her sleeve now drenched from the cleanup. She turned around and walked back to the campfire.
“I think I heard my friend calling for me,” she said as she arrived next to the fire which illuminated her face revealing the puffed eyes still glistening from a couple tears left and a red nose still a little runny form earlier. A few strands of grass were stuck to her cheek and her hair was a mess which she attempted to brush by running her fingers through. “Am I going insane or is that possible?”
“It would seem that the tear in the dream world allowed your friend to make a connection with you. Normally this would not be possible, but with this collapse a lot of rules are being broken. You yourself are a broken rule.”
“I really…” Yoona stopped for a moment, swallowing the lump in and fighting back the tears. “I really need to find a way out. I need help.”
“I’m sorry I do not have the answer on how to activate your powers. If I possessed this information I would have let you know. However…”
“However?”
“The rips in the dream world are increasing their size and rate of appearing. If your friend was able to find you, you might be able to do the same. I suggest concentrating on your friend with all your thoughts and willpower.”
“Will that work?”
“Maybe.”
Yoona wiped away the last few tears that had made their home on the top of her cheeks. With renewed vigour and energy she looked back at Url.
“Maybe I should give it a try then.”
Taeyeon's note's on the structure of the cosmos:
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