Note: this was written for The Chronicler’s joint story project, Project Blackwater. For the original post, read below:
My contribution to the saga began with Audrey Awakens. For part two, read on:
Suddenly Audrey found herself in a plush hotel lobby. “Fancy,” she thought. Black and white checkered floor, a red-carpeted staircase lending up to a pair of elegant golden doors, a revolving door on her right and a concierge desk on her right. A chandelier glowed overhead no less, and a song played discretely in the background. “We’ll meet again…don’t know where…don’t know when…” 1
“Ah,” she thought. “The failsafe. Well. That is a relief.”
“The what?” said a voice from the concierge desk. Audrey turned. A blond man in the white coat stood there, a startled expression on his face. She remembered him from the intro video she’d watched before. He’d seemed confident then. Not quite so now.
“I take it you haven’t dealt with telepaths before,” Audrey said. “Or if you have, you’ve only done so on a basic level. You’ve learned a few tricks. Your nurse earlier could block her own thoughts, I noticed. Well done her. I mastered that when I was eight, myself. The really technical things you learn later. For instance, how to insert your own reset point such that no matter how, shall we say, problematic, the dream world gets, none of it intrudes into reality. We always end up right back here with Vera Lynn.”
“You mean-” said the doctor.
“Quite,” said Audrey. “Of course you know by now that your nurse outside, Jennifer I believe, is perfectly safe, her consciousness fully intact. My evil psychic twin hasn’t gone rampaging anywhere; if she had, my friends would have been here already tearing this place apart. All that said, as much as I enjoyed that lovely little trip through my own psyche, I would like to leave now.”
She turned to the revolving door and marched out into the night.
Suddenly Audrey found herself in a plush hotel lobby. “Fancy,” she thought. Black and white checkered floor, a red-carpeted staircase lending up to a pair of elegant golden doors, a revolving door on her right and a concierge desk on her right. A chandelier glowed overhead no less, and a song played discretely in the background.2
“Ah,” she thought. “The failsafe. Well, that is- what?”
“Yes,” the doctor said from the concierge desk. “I have read those texts you mentioned earlier. The Cerreta, the Greevey, the Logan and all. Something I picked up when I read one particular chapter in the Cerreta. Did you know it’s possible to create controlled dream loops?”
Audrey blanked. This was new. “What?”
“Oh yes,” Dr. Karasevdas said. “It’s not the preferred way to achieve immortality but it’s certainly an option. And of course, what happens next is entirely up to you. You can go out the door and then right back here with your… Vera Lynn, was it? Alternatively, you can go down the elevator and we explore more of that marvelous telepathic psyche of yours. You are correct, by the way; we haven’t dealt much with true telepaths before. We really were hoping for one, though.”
He smiled and disappeared before Audrey could hit him with a psychic blast. She looked back and forth from the elevator to the revolving door, unable to decide, as the song echoed above.
“Keep smiling through, just like you always do….”