Asleep

Epilogue

Charlie~~

The sun beats down on my sunscreen-lathered skin. Nora's hand clutches mine as she leads me down the wooden walkway. The ocean breeze blows her billowy cover up against my leg.

Up ahead, Tuah swats at a seagull that swoops too close to him. Aaron snorts, and Radia covers her head with her arms.

It's been two weeks since we shut down the dream. The best that anyone knows is that Dad has disappeared somewhere in South America. I keep wondering what he would say to me if he was here despite trying to tell myself that it shouldn't matter. After seventeen years I stood up to him—I set myself free. And as long as he stays away, he doesn't deserve any of my thoughts.

The quadruplets have managed to resume control of the four OneirTech facilities and have Somnia up and running again, this time with a coma patient as the master dreamer, though they are trying to work out a way where either the master dreamer is no longer needed to stabilize the dream or where the master dreamer has the ability to experience Somnia in the same way as any other dreamer. My siblings have been debating the ethics of using comatose patients and want to move away from that as soon as possible. There's already promise that the solution could be discovered soon.

We descend the stairs that lead to the sand and slip off our shoes and dangle them between our fingers. I inhale the ocean air, and even salty, it makes me feel just as alive as the air outside the facility did. 

Radia, Aaron, and Tuah pick a spot in the sand and lay out their towels. When we first saw him after waking up, he asked for us to call him by his real name, and I think hearing it is helping him adjust to being back in the real world. Children run between umbrellas and chairs. Children who are below the age of sixteen. The only young children I ever remember seeing were my siblings. Sunbathers stretch out on their towels and chairs. Music plays all across the beach, the different tunes mixing together.

"Hilton Head isn't usually this busy." Nora unfurls her towel in the wind and carefully lowers it to the sand.

I set our bag down on the end of her towel to keep it in place. "You know I don't mind." This morning the four of them took me to see the lighthouse in Harbour Town—the one I have the model of. It's not the original lighthouse, that one having been destroyed in a hurricane in 2052, but they built it to look the same, red and white striped. I think I probably took about fifty photos.

The waves crash and roll, raising and rocking those floating in tubes. Though the middle of the day, I can still see the moon in the sky.

I went to the beach in Somnia, but this feels different. In the dream there wasn't any true risk to your life by going to the beach. No sea creatures could kill you. Sting, yes. Bite, occasionally. There was no need to fear rip currents. You couldn't drown.

Here, there's that underlying fear that you could die, but the desire to enjoy the shore and ocean outweighs any dread.

It's living.

Nora wraps her arm around my waist and leans her head against my shoulder. "I always imagine what's on the other side of the horizon. It's hard to believe there are whole continents just waiting on the other side."

"You'll get to see one of them next week." Europe is where I decided I want to travel to first. I want to see the ruins in Greece. The museums in Italy. The Eiffel Tower in France. OneirTech has accumulated a lot of money over the years, and I'm paying myself for all the years I never got a paycheck. "Did Kiernan ever decide where he's staying?" He's been living with me, Nora, and her family, but it's rarely not been awkward. Since Nora's mom is going to be traveling with us, Kiernan decided it was time he found a place of his own.

"This morning he said he's going to sign the papers on an apartment sometime this afternoon."

Tuah grabs a blue frisbee from his backpack and pokes Radia with it as she's rifling through the food she brought. When he woke up and regained his memories, he was faced with his family being dead. Radia told him he could come live with hers.

With his memories back, he isn't as different as I was expecting him to be. There's something older about him—sadder too, but that's to be expected with him waking up and remembering who his parents were to him. But it's a relief to know that Dad didn't alter him too much in the dream.

While Radia, Tuah, and Aaron move to a more open area, Nora and I make our way to the water, only going about waist-deep.

"If I hadn't noticed Raymond, hadn't then followed him that day you met with him, do you think we'd be standing here right now?" She rises up on her toes as a wave beats against us.

Raymond has reunited with his daughter, but he won't be getting back with his wife. She's decided to stay in Somnia with her new husband.

I've had to go back to Somnia twice, but I've been able to dream from Nora's home with the same machine I kept in my room back in the facility. The population is only about an eighth of what it was, and it's noticeable. Nora's had an occasional nightmare that's woken her up, but she's been managing to sleep without needing Somnia.

"I think if you hadn't, we'd still be in the dream with you hating me just as much as you did—no more, no less." I scoop up a handful of water and let it drain between my fingers. "Maybe more, depending on what my dad would order me to do."

"Maybe I would have finally found out you were stalking me."

I grimace. "I didn't think we were calling it stalking."

She looks up at me, grinning. "You can follow me as long as you want, Charlie Pace."

I splash her. "Really?"

Spluttering, she wipes the water from her face. "It's a good thing I really like you."

I brush away the droplets of water that remain under her eyes. Sometimes when I look at her, I can't help but be mesmerized. This is the girl who helped me win my life. We gave each other the gift of freedom after fighting for it. There is no one else with whom I'd rather see the world.

I bend down and kiss her, and I've never felt more awake.

The end.

I can't believe we're here at the end. Thank you so so much for taking a chance on Asleep. As the first book that I wrote, Asleep means a lot to me. It got me hooked on writing.

It's wild to me that you just read over seventy chapters of my work and that you even cared a tad bit about these characters.

So thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading.

And never stop counting your fingers.

~Mikaela