A POST-APOCALYPTIC FIRST CONTACT EPIC
Aliens, First-Contact, Collapse, Dreamtech, Revolution and Extinction.
IT IS DECEMBER 2399.
Civilization has long collapsed—the legacy of an inescapable disease. Only a religious group has adapted to lifespans of mere 27 years, spreading into the global rural utopia known as Goah’s Gift. A happy society, oblivious to its own fragility.
A STEP AWAY FROM EXTINCTION.
Welcome to the history seminar of Professor Miyagi of the University of Lunteren-Deviss. Using the latest twenty-sixth century dream sensorial technology, you and your fellow students are about to dive deep into the momentous events when doom was playing dice with humanity.
AND WINNING.
This is the story of a badass woman that meets an alien deep in her dreams. An alien with an agenda.
This is the story of a world-shaking religious revolution. In a deeply religious world.
This is the story of DREAMTECH, and the impact of alien technology on a dying human world.
A POST-APOCALYPTIC FIRST CONTACT EPIC
Aliens, First-Contact, Collapse, Dreamtech, Revolution and Extinction.
IT IS DECEMBER 2399.
Civilization has long collapsed—the legacy of an inescapable disease. Only a religious group has adapted to lifespans of mere 27 years, spreading into the global rural utopia known as Goah’s Gift. A happy society, oblivious to its own fragility.
A STEP AWAY FROM EXTINCTION.
Welcome to the history seminar of Professor Miyagi of the University of Lunteren-Deviss. Using the latest twenty-sixth century dream sensorial technology, you and your fellow students are about to dive deep into the momentous events when doom was playing dice with humanity.
AND WINNING.
This is the story of a badass woman that meets an alien deep in her dreams. An alien with an agenda.
This is the story of a world-shaking religious revolution. In a deeply religious world.
This is the story of DREAMTECH, and the impact of alien technology on a dying human world.
Ximena watches with morbid fascination as Atahualpa—in a gesture of foolish arrogance that would turn history on its head—leaves his eighty-thousand strong army on a plateau nearby, and enters his city. His Empire. His demise.
The Inca’s retinue marches slowly and full of confidence through the narrow streets. The city has been emptied by the war, but the Inca’s escort—a few thousand of his most loyal courtiers, all dressed in the finest garments—walk along with the sure arrogance of power. Some carry fine discs of pure gold on their heads. Others, adorned in cloths of patterned colors, sing songs of praise. And in the middle of it all: the Sapa Inca himself, Atahualpa, godly power incarnate, surrounded by silver and fine feathers, and carried in a ceremonial litter by eighty of his most loyal servants.
But, crucially, nobody carries weapons. Why? Ximena asks herself. What were you thinking, Atahualpa? You knew there were less than two hundred of those exotic bearded foreigners you’ve heard were roaming your lands, didn’t you? And they sent word they were keen to join your glory, didn’t they? Were you that curious? Were you really that sure that they would cower to your godly splendor?
The retinue arrives at the open city square and stops. Nobody moves, the singing fades.
A lone Christian friar exits a nearby stone building and approaches the litter, carrying a cross and a thick book, his breath visible in the fresh winter afternoon. Ximena squints, trying to remember his denomination. A Dominican?
The man reaches the litter and begins a heated exchange with Atahualpa, hard to hear from a distance, and impossible to follow even by those nearby because of the lack of interpreters. The friar is shouting the language of the conquistadors at Atahualpa, which Ximena’s ancestors would understand but, sadly, she doesn’t.
The book finally reaches the emperor’s hands, who stares at it like it were a fistful of live worms, and drops it dismissively.
There is a long silence, like destiny holding her breath. Ximena’s eyes widen with anticipation.
The friar gives out a sudden shout of outrage and the ambushing warriors begin to pour into the open square from within the surrounding buildings and alleys. Impregnable in armor and helmets of dirty steel, lean swords in their hands, and soulless greed in their eyes, it is a terrifying view. Some ride imposing warhorses—creatures of hell from the look of their petrified victims. They charge, outnumbered one to forty.
And the slaughter begins.
Horror and yells of desperation echo against the small buildings as the lives of myriads of unarmed nobles and slaves are slashed with industrial efficiency, a machine mowing the elite of an empire. And it takes time to kill, Ximena thinks, as she watches the dread of sure death reflected in thousands of eyes around her.
Cannons are hastily pulled out of the stone building, together with a detachment of gunpowder-spitting arquebuses and join the killing frenzy with explosive devotion. Ximena almost looks away. Almost. But her professional pride keeps her mind focused and her eyes disciplined. The smell of blood, gunpowder and feces fills the air. She wonders how the doomed victims are experiencing the sudden shattering of everything they knew sure in their primitive world: the unfathomable chaos, the mythic beasts, the deadly shooting, the smoke, the violence against their god-emperor. Some are surely going mad. A mercy, perhaps.
As the armored warriors reach the fringes of the Inca’s litter, his eighty chosen carriers, all dressed in the same fine gowns of the deepest blue, hold their stance with stoic fatalism—faith and loyalty written across their faces. They will carry their god all the way to the underworld, Ximena thinks. The foreign swords hack arms and hands with relentless zeal, eager to make the litter stumble and fall. They want the Inca. They need him alive to conquer everything they wished for. The power. The oh so sweet gold. Ximena stares in wonder as the last surviving maimed carriers, eyes beaming with fanatical determination, use their last breaths on earth to sustain the litter upright. With their severed limbs and stumps! The Inca staggers on the tilting platform, his face contracted in disbelief and terror.
“Ah, here you are.” The sudden voice of Ximena’s grandfather makes her jump. “What are you watching?”
Ximena makes a quick gesture with a finger and the gory scene around her comes to a sudden, digital halt. Even the stench vanishes. A date and time briefly blink at the lower right corner: 20th December 2515 16:55. She removes her visor-glasses.
“Abuelo.” She smiles at him. “You scared me.”
Ximena’s grandfather is quite unlike her. Where she is short, he is tall. Where she has the classic complexion of her Mapuche heritage—dark skin, black hair, broad face—his skin is lighter, his nose larger, hinting at Hansasian ancestry. Her hair runs down in two long braids each side of her face. His is nonexistent. She is pretty. He is not.
“Sorry, cariño. Are you working on your PhD?”
“Kind of.” Her heart is still leaping as she chuckles in delight. “You cannot imagine what I’ve found!”
Enrique sits on the bench next to Ximena, across the glass panels of their home’s cozy winter-garden. “Tell me. But be quick.”
“It’s the new access to the Lundev archives. It’s… Whoa! I can access all their historical documents, Abuelo. Everything! So easy to do research with this wealth of material. So… It’s almost cheating!” She cannot repress a giggle of joy. “I will complete my PhD in half your time. Mark my words!”
Enrique smiles cynically. “Don’t get your hopes up. I bet the Townsend University staff has no clue that their Global Program students have this sort of unrestricted access. Wait ’til they find out.”
“Why would they care? This is an opportunity for everybody at the university! Wait ’til I show them.”
Enrique scoffs and looks at the visor-glasses. “What were you watching?”
“Atahualpa and Pizarro in Cajamarca. Amazing! I found this sensorial dramatization by Professor Miyagi.”
“Kenji Miyagi?” Enrique raises his eyebrows. “The Miyagi?”
Ximena nods. “Unpublished, purely academic. Spectacular, too. But it looks a bit, uh…”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know.” Ximena wets her lips. It’s hard to find the right word. “Hmm, imaginative?”
“Imaginative, huh? A strange way to describe the work of the greatest historian alive.”
“I know,” she admits with a shrug. “But it looked more like a fantasy than history. It glorified the barbarians. They seemed more civilized than the conquerors. Can you believe it?”
Enrique nods sadly at her. “Reminds me of some old papers an old lady brought to me when we moved to Entre Lagos. We were the first historian family ever in the colony. I had little time to study them before they were taken out of my reach.” His eyes glide along the pines on the garden outside the glass panels. “Fantastic they were.” He nods slowly to himself.
“Here, look.” Ximena passes her visor-glasses to him, but he catches her hand.
“No, Ximena. That’s all very nice, but there’s no time. It’s almost five.”
“What?!” A surge of adrenaline makes her stand. “Oh, Goah. I lost track of time!”
“Go. You can’t be late to enrollment. This is your one moment, cariño. The Global Program and the collaboration with the most prestigious university in the worlds—and Kenji Miyagi, no less!—is the opportunity of a lifetime.” His eyes sparkle with pride. “You are our legacy, mi vida. You’ll make the finest historian our family—no, the whole Andean Imperia!—has ever seen.”
Ximena is about to run, but hesitates. “Abuelo, you are the finest historian—”
“Don’t.” Enrique shakes his head, and gently pushes her into motion. “You are just twenty-seven, Goah’s Mercy. You still don’t know how much you don’t know. I hope you learn that from Miyagi, and then more that you can teach me. Now quick, run before your future shuts.”
Ximena leaps away and into the living room. As she runs across the open space, she doesn’t have time to wonder where everyone is. At this time of the early afternoon, at least one of her parents, or possibly her brother and Ramiro his lover, would be hanging around, lying on the sofa, sensonet visors on their heads, watching the world, listening to music, gaming with strangers—usual life. But there is a tension in the air, subliminal, that melts with her haste and leverages her already considerable anxiety.
Ximena’s eyes flinch over to the digital hour on the glass window as she exits the living room.
16:57.
Oh Goah, oh Goah, oh Goah! Three minutes. Three minutes to make it to the new auditorium recently created for the Global Program. Three minutes to meet the world-famous Professor Kenji Miyagi. That is, if she makes it in time. Oh Goah, she won’t make it!
She reaches the staircase and runs up in leaps of two, a sweat breaking on her forehead. Why did I get distracted like that, Goah’s Mercy? It’s always been her problem, losing herself in her obsessions. She shudders at the thought of missing the chance of a lifetime. If Abuelo had not come for her… The Global Program could really pull her historian career out of the imperial level where her family has always lingered and onto the international stage. She has the unique chance to put the name of the Epullan family on the lips of Academia worldwide. She can’t afford to arrive late!
Ximena trips on the last step and falls flat on the upper hallway.
Goahdammit!
She stands, ignoring the pain, and runs. Her room is at the end of the corridor. Her door, which she painted pink when she was a little girl, is half open. She pushes it and throws herself in.
Her family, bar Abuelo, is there, staring at her with love and hope. Abuela, Mamá, Papá, and her stupid brother Antonio. Well, he is not that stupid, he’s actually okay. They are all standing around her wu-sarc. Expectant.
“What—?!” Ximena cannot finish her question before Mamá embraces her fiercely.
“We are so proud of you,” she says, tears in her eyes. She resembles both Abuelo and Antonio, with her tall, sharp Hansasian features.
“But hurry, cariño,” Papá says. He and Abuela on the other hand are—like Ximena—pure pre-Columbian indigenous beauty in different shades of wrinkling. Papá raises his finger at the clock on the wu-sarc’s side table.
16:58.
No time! “Damn!” Ximena escapes her mother’s arms. “Sorry, Mamá, I really need to—”
“We’re leaving you alone,” Papá says hastily, beginning to push the rest of the family out of the bedroom. “Just tell us one thing.”
“Papá, please.” She feels a surge of impatience turning into rage which she immediately suppresses. It’s just her family being her family. “What is it?”
“Sorry, but we need to… uh, how long will you be asleep?”
“Hmm.” Ximena stares at the clock, eyes wide with stress, so it’s hard to focus. “It’s a long-format seminar, several uninterrupted dream-days long, but for those awake, just ten hours, so, uh, until about three a.m.? You’ll be sleeping.”
“No,” Papá says. “I’ll be awake.” He looks at the others as they leave the room. “And I suspect I’ll not be alone. Sweet dreams,” he whispers with a wink. And shuts the door.
Finally!
She hastily takes off her robes and lies on the copper-like shiny surface of the wu-sarc. The metallic-looking material immediately reshapes to fit her body, engulfing her in a familiar wave of release and comfort. Her body relaxes in an instant. She cannot avoid a last peek at the bedside table. The time on the clock changes.
16:59.
Ximena shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to rein in a sudden surge of nerves, and speaks the mental command: Wu-sarc, activate.
A frenzy of vegetation erupts from the bottom of the sarcophagus. A myriad of ivy-looking tendrils crawl up its walls like worms escaping an earthquake, and cover her body in warmth and darkness.
Ximena takes another, deeper breath to exhale the last figments of stress.
State REM-phase duration, a deep female voice speaks inside her mind.
Ten wake-hours, Ximena replies in her thoughts.
The tendrils around her body tighten with comforting familiarity. She can almost feel the dream juice rubbing against her skin, running through her bloodstream, penetrating her brain, releasing her from reality. The wu-sarc is truly a wonder of alien technology, the dream of every dreamer.
The University of Townsend is the most important center of knowledge of the Goah’s Imperia of the Americas, and the day Ximena was accepted as a student of history was the happiest in her life. A huge honor. The first of the Epullan family ever to attend the university of the capital of the GIA. But today, any lingering happiness is rashly consumed by an overwhelming anxiety.
She runs desperately through the busy halls of the University of Townsend. Not the real brick-and-mortar one, of course. That one is several thousand miles north, in the midst of the North American landmass. She doubts the real campus is in much use anymore, except for some fringe operations like those invaluable historical archives she would give her right arm to be granted access to. The real University of Townsend is not really real. It is a permascape construct in the dreamnet, as most human institutions are in the twenty-sixth century. A dream, if you like, inside an inconceivably larger dream shared by all humanity.
Ximena dodges student after student, their dream avatars robed in the obligatory white-and-blue colors of the university. Her own academic robes, identical to those of her fellow students, flap behind her haste in an accurate rendition of reality. Sometimes the permascape seems more real than the wake.
Sometimes.
When Ximena reaches the main hall—an open court surrounded by balustrades and columns several floors high—she jumps into the air and flies straight to the fourth floor: the History Department. It is not permitted to fly in the main building, but, honestly, today she just doesn’t care.
The main department hallway is empty; the only thing visible is a gate made of intricate iron with Gothic motifs. And this gate was not here yesterday. A signpost placed nearby reads: “Access restricted to Global Program participants.” And behind it, a second, more prominent sign flashes angrily in midair: “WARNING! You are leaving the Goah’s Imperia of the Americas.”
Ximena’s heart leaps. The gate is closed.
A lone university steward guards the entrance. He is not a real person, of course, but just a character designed by some dreamtech engineer and yet more realistic than even the latest AI prototypes that Botswana spits out for the space habitats. But then, human-like dream characters are only natural, aren’t they? After all, everything in the permascape is being rendered by the melding of millions of human minds.
“Can’t pass,” the steward says, raising his eyes at her with a very convincing bored expression. He even appears to be chewing gum.
“I’m in the Global Program,” she says, and points a hasty finger at the first signpost. “Ximena Epullan. You can check!”
“Sorry, ma’am.” The steward taps an old-fashioned watch on his left wrist. “Seminar’s started.”
“No.” She shakes off a wave of desperation. “It can’t have.”
The steward gives her a sideways smirk and keeps chewing in silence.
“No.” She walks past him, up to the gate, and begins pounding on it. “No, no, NO!”
The steward ignores her.
“Please, PLEASE,” Ximena pounds the gate with both hands. She turns to the steward, who shakes his head and scoffs. “Please,” she whispers, desperation filling her like sea water in the lungs of a drowning sailor.
She stops pounding and falls on her knees.
It’s over.
Ximena is not the type to cry—the Epullan are a tough lot—but here, on her knees at the edge of her shattered future, she feels entitled to shed a few dream tears. What will she tell Papá and Mamá? That she was late to her destiny? How long until she can look Abuelo in the eyes again?
The gate moves almost imperceptibly, pushed from the other side, without noise, until a sudden stream of natural light shines along the widening slit.
It’s opening! Ximena jumps to her feet, takes the opening crevice with her hands, and pulls with all her strength. Goah’s Mercy, will they allow me in?
“Hmm, thank you, dear,” a woman’s voice says, tinted with strain. A sweet, elegant voice; the cleanest, purest Hansasian accent she has ever heard. “This gate is sooo heavy. You GIA lot sure have a developed sense of the dramatic.”
As the gap increases, Ximena turns to the woman, her eyes widening with wonder.
A Neanderthal woman! An honest-to-Goah Neanderthal, brow ridge and all, right in front of her!
She blinks in a futile effort to avoid gaping at her narrow forehead. Neanderthals are supposed to be a bit… brutish. Dim, even. But this smiling, broad-faced woman in her fifties radiates sophistication. Short, brown hair, neatly pulled back, her avatar dressed with the elegant casualness Ximena has only seen in Hansasian sensorials. Why so surprised? Of course you would expect Nubarian Neanderthals in Hansasia, and most definitely in the Lundev, right by the Portal.
The Neanderthal woman’s smile widens, too gracious to let Ximena’s obvious reaction affect her affability. “Ximena Epullan, I presume?” She extends her right hand in greeting. “The missing student?”
Ximena nods. “I- I’m so, so terribly sorry for being late…” She stares at the hand in confusion and shakes it with an involuntary notch of aversion. It’s not that she’s racist, of course not. She enjoys Nubarian adventure sensorials as much as the next guy. Neanderthals are so passionate and full of drama. But in academia?! Not everybody can—
“So delighted to finally meet you!” the woman says like she means it. “My name is Ankhesenneferibre Ankhesenaten, but you can call me Ank.” She laughs with the ease of a person who has just told a joke for the first time. Which obviously she hasn’t.
“Uh, nice to meet you, Elder Ank.”
“Just Ank, please. I’m not Goahn.”
Of course you’re not. Nubarians are pagans, and too stubborn to convert, from what she’s heard. But pagan or not, she is her only hope. “I’m really sorry, uh, Ank. I beg you to accept my apologies for my late arrival. I’m with the Global Program. I hope I can still attend Professor Miyagi’s seminar?”
“Kenji certainly hopes you do. He personally suggested your name when drafting the list of candidates to attend this first edition of the Global Program.”
A tsunami of relief distends Ximena’s features into a wide-eyed smile. “My name? Why?”
Ank smiles noncommittally and puts a finger on her chest. “Part of it is because of your research on the effects of raw power in post-Columbian America. They are—how did he put it?—intriguing.” Ank takes Ximena by the arm and pulls her through the gap while speaking. “And it’s not easy to intrigue him. Trust me, I should know.”
Ximena, baffled at the torrent of gratitude she can’t avoid feeling for this Neanderthal, walks through the gate and has to squint from the sudden brightness of what looks like a sunny grass meadow on a beautiful, mild spring morning. Ximena knows it is all a dream, but the permascape air feels invigoratingly fresh and real. Her accumulated stress seems to evaporate with every breath. The gate shuts behind them, standing ugly and out of place in the middle of the meadow like a lone Gothic monument.
“Kenji is about to arrive,” Ank says, pointing at the regular door that stands in midair next to the GIA monstrosity, “so take an empty seat.” They begin to walk towards a stone amphitheater exquisitely carved into the hills of the meadow. “He is a bit of a showman, you will see,” Anks says with a chuckle. “Very punctual at arriving fashionably late.”
Ximena stops and gapes at the amphitheater below her. It is small—and intimate. A hemicycle of concentric stone steps of elegant simplicity leading down to the central stone-paved stage. Breathtaking! The structure wouldn’t be out of place in the Athens of Pericles—which is probably the intention. It even looks old and smoothed by centuries of exposure.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Ank says, pride filling her voice. “My own design. I hope you get the intellectual, hmm, vibe?”
Ximena cannot reply, frozen at the sight of the students filling the benches up to the brim. There must be over a hundred of them! Those sitting closer to her are easily recognizable as Townsend students—her own people—wearing the familiar white-blue robes with somber patience. The other students though—more than half by the looks of it—whoa! They’re wearing the weirdest avatars she’s ever seen! Each different from their neighbor—a chaotic mesh of excited chatter and electrified anticipation. Most avatars she doesn’t recognize, probably cultural references to obscure Hansasian sensorials she’s never heard of. There are a few more classic themed avatars she can at least identify: there is Batman, over there a don’t-panic green smiling globe, uh, that one is definitely Michael Jackson, and there sits, yeah, Abraham Lincoln no less. The Lundev students are a very colorful lot indeed. And, she now notices, almost half of them are Neanderthal, including Lincoln!
“There aren’t any empty places,” Ximena says, browsing the busy place. “But it’s fine. I—I can sit on the stairs.”
“No need, dear. There is one place per student—I made sure of it.” She puts her hands around her mouth, and shouts with a voice that would make Ximena’s favorite fishmonger proud. “YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE! RAISE YOUR HAND IF THERE IS AN EMPTY SPOT BESIDE YOU.”
A sudden silence sinks in in the amphitheater as everybody turns and stares at Ximena. She can almost feel their combined gaze as physical pressure on her skin, and purses her lips involuntarily. That’s what you get for being late.
A lone hand raises up.
Oh, no, it’s the goahdamn Neanderthal Lincoln! Ximena desperately scans the neat rows of white and blue robes, but no Townsend hands volunteer.
“Go, dear.” Ank gently pushes her towards Lincoln. “Enjoy Kenji’s seminar, and welcome to the Global Program.”
In Dreamworms: The Advent of Dreamtech, we get an incredible glimpse into humanity's future. Author Isaac Petrov is a new name to me, but he has certainly done his homework. We, the readers, interact with the world through the eyes and feelings of main character Ximena, an aspiring historian eager to learn about perhaps the most intense revolution in humanity's history: the Leap-Day Reformation and the Century Blasphemy. It is in her pursuit of this knowledge that we first experience the eponymous dreamtech.
Ximena attends a Global Program lesson that has drawn scholars from various schools. Professor Kenji Miyagi has crafted a dreamsenso that places the audience directly in the middle of the Leap-Day Reformation, an event led by the badass Edda van Dolah. Thus, the book is structured as a story-within-a-story. Ximena enters into the dreamsenso and learns about Edda's life in episodes.
Stories-within-stories aren't exactly uncommon in science fiction, but Petrov carefully avoids cliche. The dream technology, religious elements, and political structures in this book are very well developed and keep the reader yearning to dive back into Petrov's unique world.
If there is a problem with the book, though, it's that the format heavily skews toward the (admittedly amazing) story of Edda van Dolah, with Ximena herself taking a decided backseat. That, coupled with Ximena's tendency to think or say phrases that seem far more suitable to a teenager than a twenty-something, can leave the reader struggling for a foothold in the story. I found myself continually wanting to rush past the Ximena bits to get to the Edda action.
I also found that the beginning of the book dragged slightly. This may be unavoidable, as a narrative is much more intriguing after you've spent time with the characters. It's also possibly tied into the previous issue, as the book truly begins to take off when we "meet" Edda in Miyagi's dreamsenso. You get a slight feeling that Petrov himself prefers Edda over Ximena.
But here's the deal. It might take you a chapter or two to get immersed in the world of Dreamworms: The Advent of Dreamtech, but it WILL be worth it. I eagerly await the next book in what promises to be a fascinating and well-thought-out series. I'd recommend this book to any sci-fi reader out there. If you like strange new technology, alternate history tales, and awesome heroines, this one's for you!