The Last Dreamer
In a world where humanity predicts every future path, uncertainty is contagious - a short story.
Image by Justyn Warner in Unsplash.
He was already there when it happened. The heel of her shoe broke and she stumbled, falling, but his hands were ready to hold her. With that, another path was sealed, the many branching ramifications cut off.
He already knew where to go, what his superior would say, he knew everything right up to the point he crossed into the tower. Yet he still played his part, words spilling from his mouth, following a script just as she did.
“What happened to my predecessor?” Jonathan asked her.
“This is the optimal extraction point,” she said calmly.
Jonathan studied the life path, skimming over the bottlenecks and inflection points.
“You can see your own map,” she sent over more data. “Two years and thirty-seven days, no more.”
“I’ll get to it, then.”
Jonathan caught the rail, jostling with the crowd for space in the tube-like vehicle. He squirmed towards the door in preparation for the next stop. When the doors hissed open, passengers flooded out. It was then he stuck his leg out and blocked the path of the puppy on a leash. The doors slid close, another adjustment made without anyone noticing.
Outside, the crowds thronged across the wide cobblestone avenue, strolling beneath the shadow of centuries-old trees. He saw it in the distance: the tower. High walls rimmed with barbed wire enclosed the slim high-rise where a single man dwelt.
Jonathan watched the Dreamer’s feed. He twitched and turned, babbling incoherent words in his sleep. For the first time, he stared into his own future and saw only noise. All those paths were completely unaccounted for as the projections refused to collapse.
It was already nine in the morning when the alarm rang. A hand shot out from beneath the blankets, hitting the silencer.
“Son of a…” the Dreamer mumbled. For hours, the alarm rang and the hand shot out as dreams bled into reality. It was midday by the time the Dreamer rose, bleary-eyed and dragging his feet. Jonathan left the secluded section he now called home and rode the elevator up to the Dreamer’s floors.
Jonathan found him in the kitchen, slumped over the table, rolling slices of ham over squares of cheese, before shoving the entire roll into his mouth. His hair had grown wild and tangled, impossible to distinguish from the long, bushy beard. He did not look up as Jonathan strode in, dragged a chair and sat opposite him.
The silence stretched, as a cold pit sank into his stomach. The words, the script, were absent. For the first time, he had to improvise.
“We should cut your hair,” Jonathan managed after a while.
“Why is that the first thing you block-heads always say?” The Dreamer said around a mouthful, finally looking up. “Geez, do you guys come out of the same factory?”
“I share no relations with my predecessors.”
“I know. It was a joke. You still know what humour is out there, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Tell me, then. Have you ever laughed? Truly laughed? That uncontrollable rumble that comes from deep within?”
“Everyone laughs.”
“But not really. Just the expected reaction to a joke that you already know the punch-line to.”
Jonathan took a step back. The system was not perfect. Statistical anomalies and outliers always skewed the averages, but it had kept humanity on track ever since the Collapse. To doubt it meant putting the survival of the species at risk.
“We steer the boat–” Jonathan recited, before the Dreamer interrupted.
“Else it crashes into the rocks,” the Dreamer finished. “I know your motto.”
The workshop was chaotic. Dust glittered in the air, ignited by the sunbeams across the broad windows. The interior was stuffed with canvases, piled on the floor or leaning against the walls. Pictures of faraway planets with alien moons or wild jungles with creatures that did not exist. So many scenes that never were and never would be.
The Dreamer wore only his underwear beneath the paint-stained apron, his nose almost touching the canvas of his latest creation as he pencilled in the details.
“Do you paint your dreams?” Jonathan asked.
The Dreamer stopped to look at him. “Sometimes. Other times, I dream with my eyes open. They come to me. Flashes, glimpses, even a simple idea.”
“Hallucinations.”
“No. Imagination, there is a slight distinction,” the Dreamer laid a hand on his shoulder. “You should try it. Release your mind from its leash.”
“What value in that?” Jonathan gestured around the paintings. “Curiosities, nothing more.”
“Value? Once I am gone, this will all be forgotten. Value,” he scoffed. “There is no value in anything anymore.”
“Then why? Why do you keep dreaming?”
“You think I asked to be born this way? Locked in this tower? I am what I am.”
Ripples. They spread outwards from the tower, barely visible, before they turned into waves. So he watched. And the system watched, adjusting retroactively, smoothing out the jitter. Yet, while the Dreamer lived, the danger remained: a cascade, a rush of infinitesimal probabilities falling into place faster than they could control. So he watched.
Sometimes, the Dreamer screamed in the night, bolting upright, dripping in sweat. Haunted by nightmares only he could endure. The Dreamer was cursed. A being without purpose, whose future could be anything yet whose life was more predictable than most.
He painted. He wrote. He sang at the top of his lungs in a horrible voice, dancing across the empty halls of the tower. He was not forbidden from leaving the premises, but he never did. Beneath his words, he too knew the risks.
He painted less and less now, spending his time reading books from a forgotten era, scraped from the archives. Below the glass balcony, the city sparkled in the night and lights filled the horizon. The Dreamer put down his book. He looked like a different man now, his beard shaved and his hair cropped short.
“Did you never dream? Not even when you were a child?” The Dreamer asked.
“Ever since the implantation, I knew every next step.”
“How do you stomach it? No surprises? No unexpected joys? Even sorrow, lost in foreknowledge.”
“How do you bear it?” Jonathan asked. “Doubt. Uncertainty. Anything could happen tomorrow, anything at all. How are you not afraid?”
“I suppose it must be nice,” the Dreamer said with a sad smile. “Comforting.”
“It is more than that. It is safety, it is survival.”
“And is surviving enough?”
“It is the only thing that matters.”
Rough hands shook Jonathan awake in his bed. The white lights were harsh and the Dreamer stared at him with wild eyes.
“It is over,” the Dreamer whispered.
“What is?” Jonathan asked as he got up.
“The dreams… they are gone.”
Jonathan bolted out of the bed. “Are you certain?”
“For three days now,” the Dreamer paced from side to side in the small room, bare feet slapping against the metal floors. “Run it,” he mumbled. “Predict my life.”
Jonathan accessed the system, bringing out his file. What was once a grey ocean of changing vectors had now coalesced into branching paths of probabilistic certainty.
As the sun rose over the horizon, the last Dreamer walked out of the tower. Without knowing why, Jonathan wept.
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beautifully melancholy.
This story honestly felt haunting in the best way, especially the contrast between Jonathan’s controlled life and the Dreamer’s chaotic imagination. I really loved how quiet and reflective the conversations felt because they made the ending hit way harder emotionally than I expected. Did you always plan for Jonathan to start changing emotionally the longer he stayed with the dreamer because that final scene felt really powerful?
Also, I got an idea while reading. Can we connect in DMs? So I can share the idea with you there <333