The first thirteen names on the list were not my own. Tentatively, I scrolled down. Again my name didn’t appear, again I scrolled, and again my name wasn’t shown. I was slowly starting to worry less about myself and more about the size of this list. The eight dreamers—during the days which the media had not covered the dreamer story, another had proven his or her self—who had compiled this list had left no one out, as many dreamers as they could think of had been placed on the list. I scrolled down for a third time, and there it was, third from the bottom, my name. Edward Joan.
Shivers, fear coursed through my body like electric waves. What now? Uncertainty plagued my mind as I desperately attempted to create some sort of plan of action. My brain stumbled throughout my skull, loosing the battle of creating any sort of plan.
Through the entirety of the night, I thought. I thought from when I saw the list at about 5:30 while I was on the subway until 6:00 when my alarm needlessly went off. All this thinking got me no where, and my mind sat in its same stunned position it had when it first saw the list. Beyond the point of caring whether or not my 8,400 subjects had dreams that had been too realistic, I methodically got ready for the day, lost in routine. When I stumbled through my door, down the hallway and to the elevator, my thoughts had basically been reduced to fuzz and static.
My eyes watched in morbid fascination at the numbers representing floors the elevator passed dinged from one to the next. After fifteen interesting dings, I was in my building’s lobby. My feet shuffled over the expensive carpet and out the glass doors, out of habit, they walked me to the subway station and onto the train. They then led me to the Henry and Madsen building, and quietly to my desk.
I pulled out Todd’s folder, shuffled to his cubicle, and tossed it onto his desk. It was that one ordinary task, not at all important, significant, defiant, or unusual that snapped my brain back into the real world. Something in my mind clicked. No longer did I care if I was fired, kicked out of my apartment, sent to prison, scorned by society, or even killed, I was going to live my life up until that point! Defiance and pride slipped into my bloodstream.
Throughout the rest of the day, I was resolute and alert from adrenaline. I went home that night, as normal, and to work the next day. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, nothing noteworthy or strange. It was during that day that my life started to crumble beneath my feet. At two thirty, I was called into my boss’s office.
I stared out of her large window and its view as she began talking to the side of my head, “Ed, I’ve seen something that… is disturbing to me.”
“Yes?” I asked, even though I already knew where the conversation was headed.
“Yes, you see, there has been this story running in the news of people that call themselves Dreamers, I sure you’ve heard of this, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m sure you know that their abilities have, if not been proven, have mystified the world. Of course, it wasn’t until recently that we, as a population, have known who some of these Dreamers are. Now we know of at least a group of Dreamers, as a list was recently released to the media. You know about all of this, right?” she asked, fear playing in her pupils.
“I do,” I responded, keeping my face stony and unreadable.
“Have you seen this list?” she interrogated.
“I have.”
“Then we both know that your name was on it. Mr. Joan, are you really a dreamer?”
“I am.”
“I have to say, Mr. Joan, that that is the strangest and completely amazing thing I have heard in a long time—one of my employees is a Dreamer. I’m sorry Mr. Joan, I really am, because this is not my decision, but corporate’s, and you are being… released from your job. I sorry, I really am, you’ve always done your job well and worked hard. I hope you understand. Henry and Madsen just cannot risk the possibility of people discovering that they are employ a Dreamer and risk loosing partners and contracts because of it. You do understand, don’t you?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good, I’ve been asked that you clean out your cubicle as soon as possible, this is your last day on the job. I’m sorry.”
“Ok, I understand.”
It had been two weeks since I was released from my job. I started receiving the paper because I no longer had free Internet. The news coverage of the dreamer story was a continuous stream. Every day there were updates. Every day more and more attention was given to it, until people began to pick sides; pro-dreamers and anti-dreamers.
After about a month, protests started popping up. People searched for Dreamers and harassed them, while others protected them. Beatings, fights in the streets, and civil unrest gripped at the country and soon the world. Law enforcement struggled to keep the peace, and in particularly heated regions troops were stationed, but nothing could calm the angry public. Protests turned to riots as people asked for the death of all Dreamers. Violence spread like a highly communicable disease.
After three months, my apartment was found by a loud, angry crowd. Doing anything he could to quiet the mob, my landlord shared my apartment number the unruly group. Unfortunately, I was in my apartment, and they found me. I was the first of approximately 834,000 deaths as genocide whispered to angry minds throughout the world and the population’s opinion of Dreamers dwindle at astonishing rates. But I am a Dreamer, and what the world’s population didn’t know was that a Dreamer doesn’t truly die until his or her responsibilities are taken over by another. There will always be Dreamers.
