Secret Window

Written by Anakin McFly

Sometimes in his dreams he ends up in that other world, a world that for some reason nags at his mind with an unfamiliar familiarity that sometimes frightens him. Places he knows he has never been – could never have been, for in them even the natural mutedness of the dreamscape cannot shield the brilliance of that sun and the freshness of that grass, real beyond anything any program could ever produce. Faces he knows he could never have seen, for he knows he would surely remember people that vibrant and full of life, people who would surely have stood out far too much in the drab grey-green of the world he grew up in, where everywhere were stoic resignation and expressions restrained by the grind of mechanic routine.

Sometimes in those dreams he finds his mind intruded on by snippets of thoughts that are not his – extracts from a stranger's mind oblivious to his presence, and yet at the same time infused with that same intense familiarity, a curious conviction that he knows that other person on a level far more personal and intimate than that of any casual acquaintance or friend or lover.

Those fleeting scenes – relaxed and laughing in the presence of friends, enjoying a steak at a restaurant, running down a dark street pursued by flashing lights, snuggled in a quiet chair lost deep in some thick book; and all these fade away and dissolve into nothing each morning when he awakes, back in his bed, the steady hum of the ship's engine dispersing any fantasy. Grimy cabin walls, ragged clothes, goopy food. No steak here, no Bordeaux wine, no Norton motorcyle that hours ago in sleep he could have sworn he'd ridden many times before. But he knows he's never owned a motorcycle. Doesn't even known how to ride one.

By the time breakfast is halfway done the dreams no longer seem real. Laughable, fragile wisps of things, figments of his imagination that have no place in reality. Products of perhaps an over-excited mind trying desperately to conjure up some ideal life that he had never had but wished he did. His own attempts to explain them away never seem enough, but he tries. There's nothing else he can do about it, anyway.

But then the night comes again and with it the dreams return, fuelling in him a rising desperation to know the truth behind it all, behind the other world he could not have known, behind the person whose thoughts he sometimes shares – trivial thoughts, usually, reactions to things around, tangential offshoots from observations, silent jokes sprung from a sense of humour Neo never had, and once an uninterrupted mental recitation of a chunk of what sounded like Shakespeare.

Who are you? he wants to ask. Where are you. How am I seeing all this?

A tree-lined avenue. A house, under-furnished, with a swimming pool. Stacks of paper with typewritten words on them. White tablecloths. A bass guitar. A mirror – and the reflection that stares back is his, but different: slightly older, scruffier, a bit of a beard, a T-shirt that had seen better times; and Neo makes a sudden mental effort to make his presence known, a scream of I am here -

He feels something break open to a rush of foreign memories into his mind just as he thinks he sees the reflection give a start, the eyes in the mirror narrow-

A violent jolt and Neo wakes back up in his bed, hyperventilating, breaking out in a cold sweat, and grasping desperately at the stolen thoughts which even now are starting to slip away and leave him with nothing but a single name.

Breakfast. He waits for a suitable time to speak and tries to sound casual.

"Trin?"

"Mm?"

"Does the name Keanu mean anything to you?"

"No... I don't think so. Why?"

"Nothing. Just-" He breaks off and shakes his head, going back to his goop. "Nothing," he says.

And the dreams no longer come, no matter how long he waits for them; and for some reason their absence makes him feel incomplete and so alone.

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