A Fugitive’s Fever Dream
“I could pull this trigger any second.”
Nemo’s dreaming. He’s been holed up at his apartment ever since the casino incident at the Scorpio New Moon two weeks ago. Word has gotten to his friends in the Patchwork Bar in downtown Zeitville—they leave food at his doorstep every morning.
Every night he dreams the same dream that he’s running from the cops. Except he’s 13 years old in it—and so is Casey, who’s on the run with him.
“I could pull this trigger any second,” young Nemo says to a seriously unimpressed Casey. The gun is pointed at a random television, sitting at the tree line of the field, broadcasting news of their fugitive status.
The strange thing Nemo notes—lucidly—is that Casey is all cool and Aquarian, whereas he for once is more like her, a showy Leo.
It’s like they’ve both stepped outside themselves and then gone into each other. Crossed some outer limit and been transformed. Re-balanced.
So much of the autumn has been he and Casey seeing past each other—talking past each other—and in this fever dream, he begins to see why.
“One step at a time, with a focus on authenticity,” he lucidly thinks, as the dream rolls on.
Ka-POW. Nemo pulls the trigger and a shot echoes. The TV screen glitches into a mess of lines. Direct hit.
The buoyant woop woop of a police siren immediately follows. It sounded close.
“We have to run for it,” young Nemo says to Casey. They bolt for the woods.
Nemo in his feverish half-aware state rolls that phrase over in his head: “We have to run for it.”
It reminds him of something Paul Publisher told him at the Patchwork Bar, back during Bold and Gold Summer, maybe around late July or August: “You have to want it. What good is a desire unless you embrace it? Doesn’t mean you have to attain the object of your desire—but at least you have to admit that desiring something is its own reward.”
So Nemo interprets his dream in real time: “Is this what Casey and I have to do now to smooth over misunderstandings? Do we have to validate in our hearts that we want each other? But once that’s done. . .then what? Come back to each other and say we’ve done our spiritual homework? That we’re ready for our Final Exam?”
“What are we going to do?” young Casey pants as they run. “How are we going to survive? We can’t keep making things up as we go along forever. We’ll have to commit to some plan. . .”
“The plan is to trust each other each step of the way,” young Nemo replies with a cough.
“But how can I trust you?!” Casey says. “You are taking me into uncertain territory!”
“You can trust me because I’ll show you that I’m trusting myself,” Nemo calls back. “And I want you to show me that you’re trusting yourself by standing alongside me. Come on!”
Casey has stopped in the woods, frozen.
“I can’t!”
“You can.”
“I’m not your equal, though,” Casey laments. “You run too fast for me.”
“And in other ways you’re too fast for me,” Nemo reasons. “You call out my bullshit. Like right now. You’re right, I could speak your language more—help you find ways to believe yourself. But we have to be a team, while also our own person.”
Casey catches up to him. They emerge from the woods into another field, but are quickly surrounded by robot security forces and SWAT teams leveling their guns.
Everything, from that deep conversation a moment ago, to this very showdown, feels life or death.
Nemo hugs Casey protectively—instinctively, immediately. She notices this instinct, too, and within deep cold fear also feels a lightning bolt of trust shooting up through her spine.
Suddenly, Nemo wakes, gasping for breath.
He looks around the room. 1:11 A.M. on the clock.
In dreaming of the brave child within him, and her too, he feels he rescued the cure of purity needed to restore balance to his relationship with Casey.
And yet, still so much is uncertain. Reality is always harder than dream—but maybe not so much these days, as time warps and bends around all that used to be normal.