The Uncurled Edges of Sleep

Owen picked at a loose thread on the frayed cuff of his jeans, the small, rhythmic tug a counterpoint to the thrumming in his ears. The headset felt heavy, warm, clunky. Made from scavenged parts, mostly, and a few illicit buys off the DarkNet. The plastic against his temples felt slick with sweat. He pressed the small, worn button. Nothing. Again. Just a faint static hiss that might have been his imagination, or the oppressive summer air outside.

“Still no joy?” Freddie’s voice was a low murmur, barely audible over the wheezing fan attempting a valiant, yet ultimately futile, battle against the Winnipeg heat. Freddie sat cross-legged on the floor, back against the peeling paint of the wall, a half-empty bottle of local, watery soda sweating in his hand. His gaze was fixed on Owen, patient, but tired.

Owen shook his head, pushing the headset up onto his forehead. The room swam in the humid haze, a patchwork of shadows and dust motes dancing in the sliver of sunlight that dared to penetrate the drawn blinds. The air conditioning in their district had been 'reallocated' last spring. Something about 'energy efficiency mandates'. They were still waiting for the 'more efficient' replacements. Everyone was. The city felt like one giant, slow cook.

“It’s the capacitor, I think,” Owen said, his voice rough. He hated working with electronics in this heat. His fingers felt thick, clumsy. “Or the frequency modulator. The readings are… off.” He gestured vaguely at the small, flickering LED screen that was supposed to provide feedback on brainwave patterns. It was currently displaying gibberish.

Freddie sighed, a long, drawn-out sound that pulled at Owen’s stomach. They’d been at this for weeks. Months, really. Trying to find the precise calibration, the perfect stimulus to bridge the gap. To pull them into the other place. The better place. The dream felt more real than the sticky vinyl chair beneath him, more present than the faint smell of mould from the bathroom.

“The wakefulness protocols are getting tighter,” Freddie said, without looking up. He took a long swig of his soda. “Saw a new directive on the public boards. ‘Optimal Engagement for Collective Productivity’. They’re tracking sleep patterns now, apparently. Anomalies flagged.”

Owen snorted, a dry, bitter sound. “Anomalies. Meaning anyone who isn’t a perfectly functioning cog in their machine.” He adjusted the small screwdriver, the metal warm beneath his touch. The thought of 'optimal engagement' made his teeth ache. It was a euphemism for ‘don’t think, just work, just consume, just exist within the parameters’. And definitely don’t spend hours trying to get back to a world where things made sense.

He remembered the briefing at the community centre last month, a bland presentation on ‘cognitive resilience’ and the ‘dangers of excessive introspection’. The speaker, a woman with unnaturally bright eyes and a smile that didn’t quite reach them, had droned on about the importance of ‘present-moment integration’. All designed to slowly, gently, herd them away from whatever inner life they still clung to.

“It’s not just about productivity, though, is it?” Owen muttered, more to himself than to Freddie. “It’s about… control. Even of what you remember. Of what you grieve.” His hands, usually steady, fumbled with a tiny screw. He nearly dropped it.

Freddie’s eyes met his then, a brief, shared moment of understanding. Freddie’s own sister, Willow, had been gone three years. Owen’s grandmother, Anabelle, nearly two. The real world, the 'present moment', offered little solace, just the hollow ache of their absence, sanitised and forgotten by the Collective’s relentless push forward.

The Faint Trace of a Smile

He pushed the headset back down, tight against his ears. The slight pressure helped. He closed his eyes, ignoring the flickering LED, ignoring Freddie’s patient presence, ignoring the distant, almost imperceptible hum that permeated everything in Winnipeg, a constant vibration that felt like it was rattling his bones loose. He focused on the quiet inside his skull, the persistent static that was just his own brain, the white noise of being awake.

He breathed, slow, deliberate. One. Two. Three. Four. The rhythm of it, a trick Anabelle had taught him for anxiety, years ago. *Find your centre, Owen,* she’d said, her voice like warm honey. *Don’t let the outside world wobble you.* The memory was a small, sharp thing, a shard of pure glass in the dullness of the afternoon.

He tried to recall the precise texture of her favourite knitted shawl, the one with the flecks of gold. The way it smelled of old lavender and baking. He visualised her kitchen in St. Boniface, sunlight pouring in through the window, illuminating the dust motes. The chipped mug she always used for tea. The specific squeak of the back door when she opened it. The tiny, inconsequential details that made her real, that made the *dream* real.

He concentrated on the sensation of gravity, the weight of his own body on the chair. The subtle pressure points. Then, he tried to separate from it. To float. He imagined a string pulling him up, gently, from his navel. It was an old technique. Foolish, maybe. Desperate, certainly. But what else was there?

A faint ripple, a flicker at the edges of his vision. Not darkness, but something else. A softening of the stark lines of reality. A hint of green. The smell of cut grass. He pushed harder, a low groan escaping his lips, his jaw clenched so tight it ached.

It wasn’t a full dive. Not yet. But it was a crack. A slender fissure in the wall between here and there. He saw it: the pale yellow of a kitchen wall. Not *his* kitchen. Not the one in the dusty apartment. But *her* kitchen. Anabelle’s kitchen. And the sound of a kettle whistling, a high, clear note that pierced through the drone of the city, through the oppressive heat, through everything.

He saw her hand, familiar, wrinkled, reaching for the kettle. A simple movement. So mundane. So utterly perfect. She was humming, off-key, a little tune she always sang when she was making tea. The light in the dream was soft, diffused, utterly unlike the harsh glare of his own room. It was morning. A normal, summer morning.

He felt the coolness of the linoleum floor beneath his bare feet. Heard the distant chirping of crickets, not the metallic scrape of the city. He could almost taste the bitterness of her strong black tea. He strained, pushing, trying to anchor himself, to pull himself further through the gap, desperate to step into that ordinary, golden light.

Then, a sudden jolt. The headset slipped. A loud crackle, sharper this time, electric. His eyes snapped open. The oppressive heat of his room slammed into him. The whirring of the faulty fan. The distant, ever-present hum of the city. Freddie was looking at him, a slight frown on his face.

“You okay?” Freddie asked. “You went… still.”

Owen swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. He felt a profound sense of loss, a dizzying nausea that churned in his gut. The dream had been so close. He could almost still feel the coolness of the floor, the phantom scent of lavender. The warmth of Anabelle’s hand, reaching for the kettle. It was gone.

“Almost,” Owen rasped, pulling the headset off, the plastic leaving red marks on his skin. “Got a flash. Anabelle. Her kitchen. Just… making tea.” He wanted to punch something. The wall, the headset, himself. The frustration was a physical thing, clawing at his chest.

Freddie nodded slowly, understanding in his eyes. He knew that feeling. The cruel tease of a vivid fragment, the bitter taste of waking up. “They want us to forget them, don’t they?” Freddie said, his voice flat. “Forget the past. Forget the grief. Just… move on. Be present. Be productive.” He looked around the small, cluttered room, as if expecting to see a sensor in the shadows.

“But we can’t. Not when they’re so… real. In there.” Owen pointed vaguely at his temple. “More real than this, sometimes.” He looked at the mangled wiring, the flickering LED, a sudden, desperate thought seizing him. What if it wasn't the device? What if it was *them*?

“The power readings are off on this whole block,” Freddie said, changing tack, tapping his empty soda bottle against the floor. “Not just your device. I noticed it on the street chargers too. Low output. Someone’s diverting power.” He paused, then added, "Or suppressing it. Everywhere.”

Owen stared at him, the humid air suddenly feeling colder, sharper. Low output. Suppressing. It wasn’t just a faulty capacitor, then. It was something deliberate. Something systematic. They weren’t just tracking; they were actively interfering. A new, more insidious layer of control. Not just discouraging dreams, but making them harder to reach. Making the connection harder to forge. The thought sent a cold shiver down his spine, despite the heat.

He gripped the headset, the cheap plastic digging into his palm. If the Consortium was truly throttling their access to the subconscious, to the places where they could find solace and connection, where Anabelle still made tea and Willow still laughed, then everything changed. It wasn’t just a personal fight anymore. It was a war for their minds, for their very memories. A slow, silent battle, played out in the quiet spaces of sleep.

A dull, rhythmic thud began somewhere in the apartment block below them, vibrating through the floorboards. It wasn't the usual building creaks. It sounded like something heavy, something being moved. Or installed. Owen looked at Freddie, his heart beginning to beat a frantic, uneven rhythm. They were running out of time.