“Hey,” said one of the soldiers in Scim's outfit, “what did you dream about last night?”
Scim, lying on his bunk, reached back through the haze and wondered about it himself. “We were on the battlefield,” he said automatically.
The other soldier wasn't satisfied. “That wasn't a dream, Scim. It happened. Can't you tell the difference?”
“Are you sure it happened?”
`Yes. The Battle called us as she always does and we looked for her.”
Scim had hoped his ignorance would not be so obvious. “Oh.”
“I get confused, too. I can't tell one day from another.”
Scim knew the feeling. Life had been one long day for him.
The soldiers felt the familiar presence of the Battle. The chatter in the barracks fell into silence. They stopped all superfluous activities and went to the supply wall—the only neat place in the crowded, narrow building. The clatter of armor resonated in the walls. Once they were all dressed and armed, the soldiers filed out of the building and found their way to the fighting by listening to the Battle's call.
When they returned several hours later, Scim looked at his comrades. The Battle had not treated their outfit kindly. Their glossy, angular armor was scratched and blackened. Worse, all of them had returned. There would be no celebration of a comrade's promotion this time.
Scim relived his experiences from the hours before. The Battle had preserved the images in his mind. This time, the image was in the brightness of a bursting bombshell: his armored hand pushing a knife into an unfamiliar soldier.
That night in the mess hall, the old discussion rose again. “Why do we always promote other soldiers?” asked Scim's friend, Toph.
“It's our job,” said another soldier. “If we do well, we will earn the same fate.”
Toph nodded in agreement. “I agree. But I can't remember how we know it. Did someone here tell us?”
“I think it was the Battle,” said Scim. “She tells us what to do. Or maybe she makes us feel what to do; I've never heard her voice.”
Toph thought for a moment. “I'd like to meet her. I promote the others because she is near. I always thought she'd see me. You know, Scim ought to be next. He has left more soldiers to the hands of the Battle than any of us.”
Scim looked down at his food tray. He had nothing to add. He knew where the discussion would lead.
“Scim,” asked one of the others, “do you ever dream of being promoted?”
“What's a dream?”
“You ask that every day!”
“You never answer my question.”
“It's too hard to explain to someone who's never experienced it.”
Scim conceded. He would ask the next day.
From there, the conversation turned to more pleasant things. The men were always eager to describe their encounters with the strange soldiers. Scim remained silent. Toph soon noticed. “Don't worry. Dreams aren't very important.”
Scim disagreed. He felt empty without the power to dream. The other soldiers had a partition separating one day from the next. Scim wanted definition in his life. I'll try it later tonight, he thought.
During the quiet hours, Scim lay on his bunk. For all he knew, he was dreaming: his eyes were closed, he didn't move, and his mind wandered.
Battle, he thought, why do you allow others to dream, and not me? I want to. I help other soldiers leave their positions in life. Don't I earn the right, like my comrades? Is there something wrong with me?
The Battle responded as usual: she drew him from his bed. The Battle wanted him; either she would give an answer or let him do his job. He would help to promote as many men as he could.
He went to the supply wall, took his mended gray armor from its hook, and made sure that his weapons were in order: sharp knife, loaded gun, primed grenades.
The Battle led Scim out the barracks door. His comrades knew he would return soon.
The Battle had called the soldiers several more times before Scim thought about dreams again.
He was cleaning the barracks with Toph and took the chance to talk to him. “What are your dreams like?”
“It's like being awake. You can see, smell, hear, feel, and taste. It's different in some ways.”
“How?”
Toph smiled. “In a dream, everything is possible. Sometimes I dream that I'm in different places, or that I'm other people. I've flown, I've been a weapon...” His smile widened and his voiced lowered. “In my favorite dreams, I meet the Battle face-to-face!”
Scim was shocked. “You've met her?”
“No,” Toph laughed. “Dreams aren't real.”
“What is she like in your dreams?”
Toph couldn't answer.
Scim sometimes wondered what happened when a soldier was promoted. He remembered the soldiers whom he had encountered while looking for the Battle. The muddy memories formed a continuum. Some of the soldiers were so eager to rise in rank that they ran to Scim and his comrades, their guns blazing in celebration. The joy in their eyes and their jubilant cries, made Scim wish that he were in their place. After stabbing or shooting those men, Scim saw them fall to the ground as though asleep. Did the promoted soldiers gain the right to dream forever?
Scim swelled with pride. He had already known that the Battle led him to the aid of the other soldiers, but now he saw that his service let them dream, a thing all the more wonderful to Scim because he had never had the chance. His memory returned to the last man he had put to sleep. The man's eyes had widened and he had spoken excitedly in a foreign tongue. As Scim had dismembered him, the soldier's excitement had grown. Like his comrades, Scim took pride in following the Battle so well.
“Farewell,” Scim had said while tying a grenade to the soldier's chest. He had walked away as it blew the man into a dream.
The next time the Battle called them, she took one of Scim's comrades, Acki. It was a happy occasion; the soldiers left the field where they had sensed the Battle and came back to the barracks. They held a celebration in Acki's absence.
During the banquet, Scim decided to speak about their former comrade and his future. He stood and walked to one end of the long table.
“My comrades,” he yelled, “today we honor the promotion of our longtime friend, Acki.” The other soldiers roared their enthusiasm. “He earned his place with the Battle. He has done enough good work to rise in rank.” More cheering. “Let us reflect for a moment on where our friend is now.” His comrades quieted down to hear what Scim would say. He looked down the rows of seated soldiers and saw Toph smiling. “When a soldier is promoted, he earns the right to be part of the Battle. He no longer needs to follow her: he becomes her! He sleeps eternally, and dreams as you do. What is a dream? I have heard that it is part of another world: the Battle's world. Our goal is to find our way into her world, to dream forever. Promotion fulfills the goal. Let us celebrate our comrade's transcendence to the dream world of the Battle.”
Scim closed his eyes, enjoying the silence following his last words.
Battle, are you pleased? he thought.
She must have been, for she announced herself in the minds of the assembled soldiers. Before they prepared to meet her for the second time that day, the soldiers thanked Scim for his speech. He knew that with every slice of his blade, every pull of the trigger, and every explosion, he came closer to meeting the Battle. He had never been happier.
From then on, each time they left to seek the Battle, she took at least one of them. Scim thought of how his friends had received their rewards. He saw his comrades surrounded by different soldiers, brought to the ground by the weight of bullets. Although he missed their company, he was happy for his comrades—and happy that he would soon meet the Battle.
“Toph,” he said after a particularly successful search, “do you think that you will be next?”
“I always think I'm next. Don't you?”
“No. I will be last.”
“Only because your promotion will be the most glorious of them all.”
Scim smiled. “Thank you.”
Both men were right about their fates.
The Battle was always near, and Scim left his dwindling outfit more and more often. He took relish in promoting the soldiers he met outside, whom he found increasingly close to home.
His returns disappointed his friends. They hoped that his lone searches for the Battle would end in his transcendence.
Each soldier's promotion raised the hopes of the rest. Their numbers dropped from a hundred to only eight within six days. The anticipation made the soldiers solemn.
Scim was disappointed when he emerged unscathed from the sortie that had taken the last of his comrades, but he knew his reward would come.
He waited alone, thinking of the future that awaited him. The Battle, for whom he had been searching his whole life, would take him into herself. Loneliness would cease to exist.
I will sleep at last, he thought.
Scim was eating at the empty mess table when he felt the Battle. Her presence surrounded the barracks. This time, he did not have to come to her. The Battle had chosen instead to descend on him. He stood from his meal and waited.
An explosion, closer and far greater than any he had seen, blinded and deafened him. He felt rubble falling on him. His bones broke under the weight. The barracks crept back into his sight; it had crumbled under the mighty presence of the Battle. She came closer to him, and he swore that although he could not see her, she was within his reach. His hearing returned and rang with the echoes of the Battle's voice. He heard other soldiers speaking and saw them scrambling through the wreckage of the building. Scim tried moving, to continue his duty, but he couldn't. His efforts attracted the attention of a nearby searcher. The soldier walked up to him, said something in an unintelligible language, and he aimed his gun at Scim's head.
“Thank you,” said Scim. He smiled as the Battle embraced him. When the soldier pulled the trigger, her breath filled Scim and he understood why Toph had not been able to describe her.
For the first time in his life, Scim dreamed.
Scim's first dream didn't go at all as he had thought it would.
His embrace with the Battle ended. Emptiness coiled around him. Looking about, he saw nothing. Is this sleep? he thought. Is this a dream?
Bewildered, Scim asked, “Where am I?”
A voice surrounded Scim. “You are in the land created by your mind and filled with your dreams. It is my land, and I am Death.”
“Death?”
“You know me as the Battle.”
Scim was filled with relief. “Who calls you Death?”
“Everyone else.”
Scim couldn't expect to understand his goddess, not so soon after meeting her, but his confusion brought a frown to his face. He felt his relief dissolving. Before he panicked, the Battle flowed into his mind.
“You are lucky and unlucky,” she told him. “A faithful, innocent man in your own way. I can't let you remain in this world.”
“Why not?”
“It is empty. You had no dreams during your life; there is nothing here for you after death.”
“You are here. I'm happy.”
“You're happy, but I am not,” she said. “I'm sending you back into the world so you can dream and imagine. When this land is ready for you, you will return.”
“I can't leave you! I—“
“You love me. You have much to learn. Be brave, Scim. Goodbye.”
He slept and dreamed like a newborn. Nameless things drifted through his mind. He forgot that he existed. Slowly, he became aware once again. Sound came to him. Odors he had never imagined mingled with the familiar smell of blood in his nose.
Opening his eyes, he was blinded by light, the absence of which he had become accustomed to. He waited until he could see again. Something soft was wrapped around his body. His eyes focused on a pale group of people around him.
They spoke an unfamiliar language to each other long enough for Scim to realize that two of the group's members were different from anyone he had ever seen. Their voices, higher-pitched than the others', fascinated him. They reminded him of that Battle, but unlike the Battle, they had human form.
“Who are you?” Scim asked the group.
“Are those-who-mend-skin.”
“You mend skin? Not armor?” Scim had never heard of such a thing.
“Skin.”
Scim tried to sit up, but the softness around him gave ay to the coarse pressure of straps holding him down. The skin-mender smiled. “Are very... effective. Can't let—“
“I don't understand.”
“Language difficult. Words known—“
Skin-mender turned to a comrade and gave him an instruction ins the smooth sounds of their language. The comrade help up boards with words familiar to Scim: FIGHT, CONFLICT, BOMB, COMRADE, BATTLE. Each board had a picture representing the word, and underneath it, strange markings that corresponded to the sounds spoken by the others. The Battle's illustration was wrong. Instead of representing the Battle, it resembled the forms of the two odd people in the group. Scim stopped the skin-menders with a shout.
“They are not the Battle!” He pointed to the strange ones.
“Not your word for woman?” said the mender.
Wo-man. That's the word for those two, thought Scim. They unsettled him.
The skin-mender's comrade continued showing the boards to Scim. Eventually, the boards only had unfamiliar pictures and words. Every time, the skin-mender asked, “How say that?” Scim didn't know.
A long time passed before they freed Scim's hands and let him sit up.
“Promise... no promotion,” the skin-mender told him.
It was a strange request, but Scim nodded. He sensed the Battle, but the feeling was distant; promoting in this new world was the last thing on his mind. What, then, was his goal?
He remembered what the Battle had told him. He had to learn.
The skin-mender spoke up in the silence. “Haven't told our names.” He pointed to himself. “Doc-tor Flor-ence.” He pointed to the others. “Doc-tor Harr-is-on, Doc-tor Tra-vis.” His fingers moved to the two wo-man. “Doc-tor Ste-vens and Doc-tor Kay.”
“My name is Scim.”
The first day of his learning ended. Scim did not feel well and asked Doc-tor Flor-ence what was wrong.
“Need to sleep.”
Scim wondered what sleep would hold. He hoped to have a dream. Doc-tor Flor-ence turned off the lights and left Scim's room. Scim closed his eyes in anticipation.
He found that he couldn't sleep. He grew impatient and thought, Before, when I couldn't sleep, I had my comrades to talk to.
“We're here,” said Toph.
Scim opened his eyes to see his old friends surrounding his bed. “I met the Battle at last.”
Toph smiled and said, “Isn't she beautiful?”
“I could only see her for an instant... but yes, she is beyond what I had hoped.”
Scim then told them why he was not in the land of Death. This surprised none of them: Scim had always been special. The comrades kept Scim company with their memories until Acki spoke. “We should go soon. The strangers will come at dawn.”
Scim yawned and opened his eyes. His friends were gone and he heard someone outside the door.
His first dream.
As time passed, Scim learned more. His skill in speaking the strangers' language progressed. He learned that an enemy had shot him, and his body had been shipped to the hospital for study. They had found him alive, had learned as much as possible about his culture, and had awaited his awakening.
“Are you enemies, too?”
“According to our superiors, yes. They fear you. I don't see you as my enemy, Scim.”
Dreams were Scim's daily reward for learning. He usually dreamed of his friends; they populated his dream world and their visits pleased him. One time, however, he had been wandering through the desolate lands of his dreams and had found the Battle sitting formless on an edge of the emptiness.
“Leave me, Scim,” she had said.
“Why?”
“You are a failure. You don't deserve my gifts. You'll never see me again.”
And she had left him. The memory stabbed him; it was the memory of his past life and his empty existence. Even awakening from this nightmare brought no relief. What if the Battle had truly visited him?
The doctors were interested in the Battle. Scim told them stories of his flirtations with her and his quest to find her.
Doctor Florence asked the most questions about her. “You promoted the other soldiers because of your duty to the Battle?”
“Yes. The more we promoted, the sooner we would meet her.”
“Why didn't you promote yourselves?”
“That would have been wrong. We would have denied others their privilege.”
“Who told you this?”
“No one.”
Doctor Florence turned to the other doctors and spoke to them in their language. Scim understood most of it:
“The poor man. He was taught somehow that killing is right.”
“How could anyone survive under such a lie?”
“Doctor, ask yourself what is and isn't a lie. He is more of an artist than a soldier: always seeking his beautiful goddess, his inspiration.”
“Something's wrong with him.”
Scim turned the words over in his mind. Wrong? His life, spent committing crimes. His existence, a lie.
His dreams that night were dark. A world full of people he had never seen screamed that he was wrong, and always would be.
Scim met a child named Brian, Doctor Kay's son. It took the Doctors hours to explain what a child was. Scim had occasionally wondered where he had come from, but he never remembered being small and immature. The only change in the lives of Scim and his friends had been promotion.
“How does one make children,” asked Scim.
The Doctors thought of how to use words that Scim was familiar with. “A man, like you or Doctor Travis, has in him half a new person. A woman has a different half. When both join together, the new person—the child—forms in the woman. Later, when the child has developed enough to survive outside the woman, the child is born.”
Scim met their embarrassed stares with a blank gaze. He didn't understand it. After they showed him the process in a medical book, he shrugged.
They brought Brian the next day. He was loud, active, and startling. A small courtyard at the center of the hospital served as their meeting place. Scim enjoyed the sunlight as he watched Brian play. As Brian used his toys to create characters and act out their stories, Scim understood the meaning of imagination. Scim had always regarded the unreal and untrue as a lie. In his own language, Scim named imagination “the waking dream.”
Scim approached Brian to speak with him. Before he spoke, Scim felt the Battle's presence. She was close, but faint. The guards who kept Scim safe held weapons in their hands. Scim stopped moving.
Doctor Kay was the first to notice the new focus of Scim's attention. “Scim? Why are you looking at the guards like that?”
“They never had weapons before. I feel the Battle in them.”
Doctor Kay frowned. “Our government is keeping a closer watch on you. Many see you as dangerous. They think that weapons will keep you from causing trouble.” Scim continued to look at the guns. The Battle was too close for him to ignore. Doctor Kay's voice betrayed a hint of fear. “It's time for Brian to go.”
She took the boy's hand and led him quickly away from Scim. The four trembling guards pointed their weapons at the patient. “You need to go inside, too.”
When he lay in bed that night, Scim let himself drift to sleep. He felt himself grow smaller. He forgot the hospital, fighting, his friends, and everything he had known. Instead, he found himself playing with a pile of wooden blocks in the dream world. Under his hands they formed buildings and cities.
Looking up from his blocks, Scim saw the he was on a grassy plain. Trees in the distance invited him to climb. Scim ran over the grass until he reached a tree. His first years of awareness held boundless promise, and as he climbed the tree, he smiled. His special friend would come soon.
At the top of the tree, he closed his eyes and felt the sun and wind on his skin. He looked into the pure blue above him, happily lost.
A girl spoke his name. He looked to the ground and his special friend waved to him. She's so pretty, thought Scim. “Come up here!” he said. When she reached the branch upon which Scim sat, she leaned against him. He felt her dark hair mingling with his in the wind. They held hands and watched nature below. It was good to feel the Battle so close to him.
“Scim,” said Doctor Florence, “Please wake up.”
“Why?”
“There are people coming who want to kill you.”
Scim noticed that the Doctor had used the negative word in place of “promote.”“What's wrong with that?”
“They hate you, Scim. They will hurt you. My report on your culture did the opposite of what I wanted. I hoped that you could join our society and find a new life with us. Now, they come to send you out of this world. The last I heard from the guards, the enemies had guns.”
Indeed. The Battle remained near him, even when he was awake. “Doctor, will you promote me?”
Doctor Florence stood aghast. “Why? Do you still believe in that Mistress of yours? After death is emptiness! You have to escape! I've come to take you out of here.”
“Doctor, she's close. I don't want to miss her again.”
“You can sense her?”
“Didn't you listen to my stories?”
“Scim, I think you're feeling stress and fear.”
“Fear is different. I am at peace. Please, Doctor. I want to go.”
“You're my friend,” Florence realized. “I don't want you to leave. You're the greatest man I've met.”
The lights went out. The two heard far-off shouts. the doctor fumbled for a flashlight. When he found one, he pointed it toward Scim. He then went to a cabinet. “Are you sure you want this?”
“Absolutely.”
The doctor brought a needle to where Scim sat. “Goodbye, Scim.”
Scim smiled. “You'll see me again. Just dream of me.”
Doctor Florence inserted the needle into Scim's neck and released its poison into his friend's body.
Scim once looked about himself. The fearful images of his nightmares, the emptiness of his world, were replaced with the beautiful, grassy plain of which he had just dreamed. The Battle stood before him. She was in the shape of a woman; she had aged since his last dream. As a little girl, she had been pretty. Now, her beauty took his breath away.
She walked to Scim and placed her arms around him. “Welcome home at last.”