ALEKSANDR ORWIN
A university programmer hacks into the dream server to stalk his ex in the shared lucid dream realm.
Caught in the act, he faces an unexpected twist: instead of dismissal, the professor blackmails him into persisting with his covert activities, now shrouded by enigmatic instructions.
Cat and Mouse
There she goes again in her dream, playing our old cat-and-mouse game. She's definitely doing this on purpose, leading me on this chase. Classic her, always a step ahead, making me follow.
She loves the drama, the thrill of the chase. We get close, and then, like clockwork, she pulls back. It’s her move, always has been. She’s afraid of getting too close, I know it. She can't help drawing me in, either.
Yet I see right through it. She might think she’s in control, but I’m the one watching, understanding every move she makes.
A Trauma Replay
Her dreams are just another playground for our game. But there's one scene I never grasp.
I trail Maja into the train tunnel. The place where her mother died. What drives her back to this trauma? Each visit, the same scene: the sprayer in the black hoodie. As he turns to face her, she recoils. His face, a grotesque sunflower.
Then, the inevitable – the signal of a train. The Red Train approaches, its horn blaring. The merciless fate.
She wants me to see this. Again and again. Wants me to understand her pain. There's nothing wrong with her. There's something wrong with her memories.
It seems her subconscious is guiding me to a revelation. The sprayer, this figure in the agony of her past – could it be me?
A delicious irony
What a delicious irony. Being blackmailed to do what I already do: invading Maja's dreams. My guilty pleasure.
So let Ebbinghaus believe he’s using me. Let Dawn think she’s got me figured out. They’re just characters in the narrative I bend to my will. Ebbinghaus wants her father's secret? Fine. But this is my domain, my rules. He’s playing checkers, I’m playing 3D chess.
That's life. Sometimes I win, sometimes the others lose.
It's like stepping onto a stage where I'm both the director and the leading actor. Here, in the fluid reality of dreams, I'm unbound by the rules of the waking world.
Navigating the Abyss of a Cute Traumatic Psyche
