The Rave of your Dreams

  The lights in the elevator car went out and Michael stood there glowing softly as if refleg a hidden moon, now in a bck satin robe trimmed in silver, like a priest of an unknion. Befradie could say anything about it, the doors opened and he didn’t give a shit about him anymore.

  “Wele to the Allclub,” Michael said.

  There were people everywhere, wreathed in stars, ed in nebue, flying through the darkness and dang upside down on the tless, glittering honeybed ceilings that stepped towards the pulsing sky.

  The music was ihe beat hit all the time with an energy the best club anthems only rea moments. Running through it all, like a current, was the feeling that he had been trying to get here all his life.

  Before he realized what he was doing, he was out in the middle of it, dang with the most beautiful women he had ever seen, brushing his hands across every piece of flesh or scrap of light that caught his eye. Time dropped out behind him a impossible ahead of him. He could have been in the elevator a year ago or a moment before. Three women moved in and purred at him.

  “Aw, a baby!”

  “What’s this outfit? Going to work baby?”

  “It’s his first day! Look at those eyes!”

  “It’s just a dream. Be as dirty as you want to be.”

  He touched them all over, and they pressed themselves against him. Suddenly his hand caught nothing but air as they backed up in three different dires.

  “Catch us if you baby.”

  They scattered like hss missiles and he couldn’t decide whie to keep his eyes on. The st owirled in front of him and her clothes vanished in a burst of neon glitter. He watched her ass bouo the crowd and disappear.

  “They’re fug with you,” Michael said, suddenly o him, like a bad smell breaking into a wet dream.

  “We’ll see.” Gradie flew up in the air and sed the crowd for any signs of them. The world rolled like an o around him, stretg out towards a bck horizoween two pnes of glittering chaos. Gravity betrayed him and he lost any sense of dire.

  “If you want to get fucked, there are plenty of pces to do it here without having to indulge the ego of some glowgirl.” Michael was o him again, standing as if on an invisible flradie didn’t answer. He remembered one of the girls had green hair.

  Someoossed a bob of neon green over a pale shoulder at a pink-lit bar across the massive open space. She hung upside down talking to someone. He flew in her dire and dodged other flying dancers, mermaids, beams and orbs of light that looked solid as stone, and rolled in flight to align his up and down with hers.

  “Found you.” He nded behind her. She was fag the bar, a shifting wall of shelves that stretched backwards into infinity like a mirror fag its twin. Bottles flew freely off the wall and sailed in every dire. Oopped and tipped above the mao her. He held his gss up to catch the quicksilver stream and smiled as if Gradie had just mispronounced a very simple word.

  She took the drink from him and turned her head to Gradie.

  “You found me! Now what are you going to do?”

  “Let’s go somewhere private.” Gradie leaned in and stroked her , imagining that the touch would be electrifying for her. She gasped softly as his thumb traced a curve under her lips. In half a bass beat, she had her smile back.

  “See them?” She pointed with her hao her fad rolled her big eyes up, the whites fshing in the dark. He followed her gaze relutly.

  It was a man and two women, pletely nude, floating by at a ically slow speed, fug like animals. One girl was lig a neon liquid off the other. It was clear from their reas that whatever it was had a wonderful taste a incredible on the skin. It took a few seds fradie to realize the man had four arms.

  “Private pces are for talking, baby. We fuck all around.” Gradie looked down and something in her smile made the music sour. He tried to push past it.

  “All right.” He reached up to touch her again. The mao her leaowards him.

  “Let me give you some advice, cause we were all new once; If she wanted you, you would have already fucked her by now. That’s how it works—”

  Gradie interrupted him by drawing the two pistols and aiming them at his eyes. He was ready to prove to himself that this was a dream, and killing this guy then fug this girl would probably do it. The woman, the man, and a few other people around all ughed. Bitter, grating ughs. They cut through the musid broke the beauty of the melody into brittle fragments. Gradie pulled the triggers.

  Nothing happehe man reached out with a smile on his fad tapped one of the guns. It disappeared with a pop like a bubble bursting in a cartoon. The woman giggled and Gradie realized he hated her. He hated all of them. If they were here, it either wasn’t his dream, or it was a nightmare.

  The man stood up.

  “All right. Now fuck off.”

  The tips of his fingers glowed as he flicked Gradie in the chest. It didn’t hurt, but the bar and the woman dropped away to nothing, and he was a mile in the air before he was able to stop himself. The strange wlittered below him, aire hemisphere of writhing night and pulsing lights. A dance club that stretched out to every horizon.

  Miles away, something massive popped ience above the glowing curve at the edge of the p. Woven sunlight, the hue of a summer evening, ed around a pilr of whitewashed Mediterranean vils, like someone had crafted a spaceship out of a vacation photo. Other crafts appeared and disappeared, too far away for him to tell anything about them besides that they should o as thought.

  Could it be real? A shared dreamworld? A real mental pne?

  No. It’s exactly the kind of fantasy I would escape to, something to believe in just to get through the day. I o wake up. I o get out of here.

  He looked down at the maze of lights and darkness below him a himself fall. A ttice of walkways, gss tunnels, and floating streams of moonlit water rushed up to meet him, then passed without a sound. In the middle of a mass of ptforms and lights, he aimed for a catwalk, a solid line of bck stillness, lowing mesh of people and lights. Another dance floor.

  It was different than the one he had stepped out into. There was a thick fog rolling on the floor, and all the bare flesh glowed as if under a full moon whehe pulsing lights gave way to darkness. People flew up in pairs or floated down alone in fits of naked being dang. The music was the world; the bass geed deep in the earth, the high melodies ringing out from the air itself. There was everywhere that same hypnotiergy, that trated feeling of promise distilled from a million youthful Saturday nights, but he felt separate from it now. It had spit him out. Flowed around without toug him. He desperately wao get baside of it. Didn’t he?

  “You’re bored of it,” Michael said, appearing suddenly owalk.

  “Yea, I guess I am.” He must be in my head.

  “You ready to learn what this pce is? It will help you get some grounding. Keep you from floating around in a panic.”

  A door opened in the air o them, letting out soft mplight that cshed with the glowing darkness of the club. It almost knocked Gradie over. He realized how much he longed for something normal, something familiar. He closed his eyes and tried to wake up again, but it was half-hearted and he gave up after two bass kicks. No matter how much those people had disgusted him, he felt something magical was still waiting.

  “Yea. I’m ready.”

  What are the nightclubs and parties like in your dreams? ime, Gradie learns how the Allworld came to be, and so much more. Episode: Genesis