DreamVision
The old man rose from the log upon which he had been sitting. He didn’t know how long he had been there because he usually lost all sense of time when he visited the lake. He stretched to his full height and took a deep, cleansing breath of the cool crisp mountain air. The old man truly loved this place. He loved it even more since Ruthanne died. This had been their favorite place to go to get away from the city, away from its heat and dirt, away from the problems that constantly swept over them like tidal waves. Now that she was gone, he would come here to reminisce over the good times they once shared, and try to forget the bad.
First it was the water. They filled it with their poisons until it was unfit even to wade in. The old man missed pulling his pantlegs up above his knees and sloshing about in the cool water. They told him it was because it cost too much to clean, that it would cost someone his job if the water had to be kept clean.
It had been his idea to join the Greenleaves. Ruthanne was against the idea at first. “I’m too old and set in my ways to be an activist,” she told him time and again. “Besides,” she would always interject, “I want to spend time with our grandchildren.”
“So do I,” he’d counter. “But I also want to make sure our grandchildren have a world to grow up in.”
Next went the trees. They cut down the forests to build the houses and to make way for the towns that seemed always to be bursting at the seams. The old man missed hiking through the woods at the edge of his neighborhood in the Autumn, when the leaves were such brilliant hues. Now a shopping complex stood there, its parking lot obliterating the spot where the tree once grew that he carved his and Ruthanne’s initials into like an adolescent.
In the end, the old man had won. They joined Greenleaves. At first they did little more than stuff envelopes and make telephone calls. As time passed, however, it was Ruthanne and not he who became the true activist. She could canvass neighborhoods and camp out in government offices longer than the younger members of the group. She was a tireless campaigner for clean water and air, and for flowers and trees. Ruthanne came to consider the Greenleaves as the only solution to all the bad in the world. The longer she served, the more determined she became to set things right.
The little lake was a pristine setting, with its crystal clear water and a shoreline the color and texture of brown sugar. Did it even have a name? No one knew for certain. Perhaps it never had one. As far as the old man was concerned, this was his private lake and he could call it whatever he wanted. The name he chose was “Dream Lake” because it was here that he and Ruthanne talked over their dreams and plans. Many of those dreams and plans sprouted and took root at this very place. The couple would spend many peaceful hours listening to the sounds of nature and allowing their minds to wander wherever they would. Throughout all the years of their marriage, some of their happiest moments were spent right here.
Finally, the mountains disappeared, ground into powder by the developers. They needed the room, they announced, to build bigger and better highways, bigger and better cities and more factories to put people back to work. We’re in a depression, and in a depression creating jobs is more important than a few hills and trees. Surely you can understand that.
They called themselves the Developers of Tomorrow. It was they who ran everything now. The government, industry, commerce, indeed the very lives of every person were under the control of the DofT. Who was willing to trade their livelihoods for a few drops of clean water or the shade of an old tree, they asked? Wasn’t it much better to have money in your pockets?
The old man remembered the day he last saw Ruthanne as if it were yesterday. The Developers of Tomorrow succeeded in placing their own people in governmentfirst in Congress, then in the Presidency two years later. By the middle of 2005, the Greenleaves had been outlawed as seditious and its more active members found themselves under house arrest, or worse. When they came for their local chapter, Ruthanne was among the first to chain herself to the old tree in front of their headquarters. As much as he pleaded, the old man could not get her to back down. His last view of her was as he was pushed into a military truck and unceremoniously hauled away.
It wasn’t until three days later he found out Ruthanne was dead. She had been gunned down with the others still chained to the tree. When they came to ask the prisoners if they would renounce their Greenleaves membership in exchange for freedom, the old man readily agreed. He’d had enough of politics in general and dissent in particular. All he’d asked for in return was that he be allowed to give Ruthanne a proper burial. If he’d sign a form promising never to obstruct the Developers of Tomorrow again, they told him, he could retrieve his wife’s body. He buried Ruthanne on the shore of this very lake. She would have wanted to be nowhere else.
Within five years, The Developers of Tomorrow had clearcut nearly every stand of trees, dredged up nearly every body of water and graded and paved nearly every field and mountain. The old man stayed in the city, sequestered in his tiny apartment, living for the weekly pass he received to visit his lake. Only a few isolated natural places remained anywhere. Dream Lake was, by good fortune, one of those places.
The sounds were all around him today. Birds chirping noisily in the trees, the soothing muttering of the stream that fed the lake as it wound its way over the stones, broken only by the occasional splash of a trout snapping at a mayfly unfortunate enough to fall into the icy water. There was a gentle rush as the breeze brought fresh outdoor aromas to the old man’s nostrils. He sniffed pine, the bittersweet blend of wildflowers, the refreshing scent of crystal clear water. All these sensations were especially vivid today. He was aware of it all as he worked the knots out of his back and knees from sitting on the log.
The old man sought out the wildflowers he would pick to place on Ruthanne’s grave, as he did on each and every visit. He selected only the most beautiful blooms. These flowers, more than anything else, were what she died for. How fitting, he thought, that they should spend their last hours decorating her final resting place.
“And how are you doing today?” he asked a nearby grouse, who merely gave him a brief sideways glance as it skittered into the underbrush. The old man smiled to himself and half seriously wished that just once the birds would answer him in return. “How lucky you are,” he said to the bird. “You get to stay here while I must leave soon to go home,” he sighed.
The old man began to stroll along the lakeshore toward a grove of trees. As he walked, he gazed upward toward the mountains on the horizon. The morning mist had lifted from the water, but still shrouded the tops of the mountains. He knew that within a very short time, the sun would burn off the remaining mist and the day would grow warm. The animals would then move into the wooded area and if he wanted to see any of them he would need to go there as well. There were squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, even a few deer and fox living around the lake. The old man knew many of them as if they were his own children. He had given names to many of them. Occasionally, a squirrel or chipmunk would take food from his hand. Once, he even tamed a doe to the point where she would allow him to stroke her neck. He hadn’t seen her for some time and often wondered what happened to her.
The old man entered the woods. The sounds changed, as did the scents. Now he could hear the buzzing of insects and many more birds. He picked up the damp odors of moss and mushrooms. These sensations gave him a different kind of feeling, not unpleasant, but more eerie. He was reminded once more of the walks in the woods he so loved as a younger man.
“Insects aren’t very friendly,” he said to himself. “Not like the squirrels, anyway. Besides, they bite.”
For as much as he enjoyed the wildlife, the trees were his special pleasure. He identified each by their leaves and kept a logbook on each one. In it, he noted the changes each tree underwent as it grew and what colors the leaves became in the autumn. The old man would even help the seedlings grow by clearing out the dead limbs dr
opped by the older trees.
This was indeed his favorite corner of the world. The old man was never more contented than while visiting Dream Lake.
His inspection of the trees was barely underway when the female voice boomed over the speaker:
“Mr. Moore. I’m sorry but your time is up.”
“Please,” he pleaded. “Just give me a few more minutes. That’s all I want.”
“I’m sorry,” the voice repeated. “You know we can’t do that. You’ve only paid for two hours and that time is up.”
“But you know how much this place means to me,” he said. “It was Ruthanne’s and my favorite place. I haven’t even had time to visit her grave. I always put wildflowers on her grave.”
“Mr. Moore, I must insist that you leave. We have others waiting for this space. It’s not fair to them to keep them waiting, now is it?”
Sadly, Mr. Moore trudged out of the woods and entered the airlock. The door sealed behind him with a loud “Whoosh.” When the door opened, he stepped out into the lobby of DreamVision, Incorporated. He went to his rented locker, dialed the combination on the padlock and opened the door. Mr. Moore removed his protective suit and breathing apparatus from the locker. He put them on, checked the pressure on the gauge and entered the exit portal. The countdown began over the speaker: “Ten... nine... eight.” When it reached “zero,” the pressurized door opened with a smoky flourish. Mr. Moore stepped out into the oily, yellow atmosphere. He narrowly avoided being run down by a teenager on a jetboard who was careening over the broken sidewalk as fast as the board could go. “Watch where you’re goin’, ya ugly old sumbitch,” he screamed as he slalomed between two stripped cars.
“Sherry, we need to discuss this situation with old man Moore,” Frederick Lewis said. The pair sat in his office on the second floor of DreamVision Incorporated. “He’s the only one who still wants that old Outdoor Vision we developed back in the early 2010’s. We need to use that room for the War Visions all these kids want nowadays.”
“But he comes here almost every week and pays in cash,” Sherry told him. “Most of these kids don’t use money anymore. They pay us in scrip. And I’m not sure most of that isn’t stolen or counterfeit.”
“I know that, but there are a lot of those kids out there and they all want action and adventure, not nature. I’ve gotta do what’s best for business, or you and I will both be out of a job. I started this place with two chambers back in the days when virtual reality was still a new fad. I still remember watching people with those stupid-looking helmets on their heads waving their hands in the air and punching at nothing. When they figured out how to download someone’s imagination into a three-dimensional cube, I had to either spend a fortune and change with the times or close up shop. That means we have to use every room we have to the max. If someone comes in that door right now with a fistful of scrip and wants us to put him in the orgy he dreamed about the night before, I don’t have any choice but to do it, no matter how distasteful it might be. That old man doesn’t pay us enough to even pay the chemlight bill for that room every month.”
“Couldn’t we set it up so that they could hunt or fish or something?”
“We tried that once before. It didn’t work. Hell, one guy even told me afterward that a doe came right up to him like it was a pet. Said it just stared at him like it wanted him to pet it or something. He just stood there and blew it away. Said there wasn’t any challenge. People today want a REAL fight.
“If people wanted nature, they wouldn’t have allowed us to chop down all the trees and dredge up all the lakes back in the 1990’s. Besides, they can get the Nature Scenes Channel on their homevision sets. They aren’t going to pay us to show them some old lakes and mountains when they get the same things in their living rooms for a lot less money. We can’t even update that old scenario because there AREN’T any more lakes and mountains to copy from. And another thing...” hack, cough, cough, haackk... “goddam cough is getting worse. I gotta see about getting a richer air mixture on my next oxygen tank fill-up.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Sherry said. It was sad about Mr. Moore, she thought as she closed to door to Lewis’ office, but business was business. Frederick was right. The kids were the ones who would keep DreamVision going and she needed this job. There was no point in getting sentimental over one lonely old man.
Sherry adjusted the setting on her air tank and walked out to the front office. It was late evening and the sun was beginning to go down. The temperature had dropped to 132 degrees. The air was thinned out enough to see as far as 20 feet in any direction. In a few hours, people would begin to move about as the temperature bottomed out in the high 90’s, unseasonably cool, but tolerable for the middle of January.
In the first-floor window, directly below Sherry’s office, a Chemlight sign blinked on:
DreamVision Incorporated
Where your every dream
Can come true!
$50.00 per hour