131 It was just a dream

Jayde entered the captain briefing room which was lavishly decorated, sneering to herself Jayde thought that if she had 'liberated' this starship, the first thing she would have done was stripped this office. It is a damn starship, not some luxurious resort.

"Ah, SN1098 so nice to see you," Vice President Xi said facetiously.

Jayde didn't bother to respond to Vice President Xi's question, giving him aloof look she sat down on one of the chairs opposite him, crossing her right leg over her left, she cocked her right eyebrow at Vice President Xi.

"I'm in no mood for your childish games, what the f*ck is going on?" Jayde demanded brusquely.

Throwing Jayde a mocking smile, Vice President Xi leaned back in his chair, "Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?"

Lawrence who had just taken a seat gave a short guffaw at Vice President Xi comment.

Jayde rolled her eyes. Suck up, she thought.

Seeing that Jayde wasn't rising to his bait, the mocking smile on Vice President Xi's face fell. His eyes turned cold and cruel.

"Well it simple my dear SN1098, you are my prisoner — and you have been for over four months now,"

"Bullshit!" Jayde barked.

"I want to know how the hell you escaped Crypso 3Q3U, and more importantly how transferred my soul back into this body?"

Jayde had been thinking through everything, all she could think of was somehow Lawrence and Xi had escaped when she denoted that antimatter bomb, and through some means had transported her soul from Doha into a cloned body.

While she didn't know how the hell the Federation had the technology to manipulate souls, the Protoss technology had convinced Jayde that is was possible. Cloning although illegal wouldn't have prevented the Xi Corp from creating a clone of her.

"Transferred your soul?"echoed Vice President Xi, then he burst out laughing.

"Oh my god, you believe that we transferred your soul," he said spluttering through his laughter.

"Oh god, this is too brilliant, SN1055 remind me to give those scientists a hefty bonus."

It took Vice President Xi nearly three minutes to regain control. While he was howling with laughter Jayde was feeling a bad premonition. What the hell was going on, she thought filled with confusion and fear.

"Shit SN1098, you really are a disappointment," Vice President Xi said shaking his head sadly.

"What the f*ck do you think this is — some sort of fantasy novel?" he said contemptuously.

"Let me explain it to you in simple terms, just so that small brain of yours can understand. Four months ago, when you tried to activate that cute little chip in your head to denote those antimatter bombs, our jamming device intercepted your signal."

With false sympathy Vice President Xi carried on with his explanation: "Unfortunately the feedback from the interception, cause a backlash and well — you suffered some temporary damage to the area around the chip."

Leaning forward Vice President Xi placed both his elbows on the desk in front of him, casually he rested his chin on his fists.

"And you have been under my tender care ever since." Smiling enigmatically he said: "You had such delicious information in that sweet brain of yours."

Impossible!

"I don't believe you!" Jayde cried out.

"To be honest, I don't give a f*ck whether you believe me or not, but I am so going to enjoy watching that composure of yours crumble." Vice President Xi said as he turned to screen embedded into wall of his office.

"Computer display medical recordings for prisoner SN1098 dated from stardate 32010518."

"Accessing video recordings."

Jayde looked at the screen and felt the blood in her veins freeze, as she saw a video recording of herself lying on a medbay bed. Various machines were attached to her head. Lawrence and Vice President Xi were standing next to her bed, with two scientists. They were discussing her current condition.

"I don't give a damn about your excuses," Vice President Xi voice came through the audio channel.

"I want the f*cking information in that bitch's head, what the hell is the holdup?"

"Sir, we are trying our best, but she keeps on fighting the data miner, if this carries on we will gain nothing, right now there are multiple brain hemorrhages from our last attempt, she could very well die if we continue," one of the scientists said.

"Don't give me f*cking problems, give me solutions!"

With that Vice President Xi and Lawrence left the room. The screen then changed to a new scene, at the top of the screen a new date stamp was recorded.

***

Stardate 32010527

The recording was nine days later in the same room. Vice President Xi and the same two scientists were standing by Jayde's bed.

"Sir, we think we might have a solution." the younger scientist said.

"About bloody time." Vice President Xi responded.

"Well what is it?" he asked when the scientists didn't immediately respond.

"If we distract her mind, give it something else to concentrate on, we believe that we could then sneak in and obtain that information."

"How are you going to distract her brain?"

"We believe," the scientist said indicting himself and his partner, "that if we stimulate the reticular activating system [1], concentrating on the cortex, limbic system, and the amygdala and depress the frontal lobes, we can put her into a continuous dream state. With her frontal lobes depressed this would make her believe that her dream state is real.

While she is experiencing her dream state, we could then actively mine her hippocampus and cortex, accessing her memories."

Vice President Xi looked at the two scientists seriously. "And just how are you going to stimulate her to dream, she has been trained her whole life to be rational and logical?"

"Ah, we have that covered as well," the older scientist said excitedly. "We will feed her audio suggestions."

Vice President Xi looked at Jayde lying on the bed for a minute then turning to the two scientists heordered: "Do it."

The screen on the wall faded out, and a new scene was shown.

***

Stardate 32010606

The new scene showed the two scientists and Lawrence in a conference room. They were discussing the current experiment with Lawrence.

"We can get her to dream but every time we give her suggestions to deepen her dream state, she fights our suggestions and we can not start the mining operation." the younger scientists said his voice filled with frustration.

"Hmm," Lawrence said thoughtfully.

"What are you trying to get her to dream about?" he asked.

The science handed over a datapad to Lawrence, which he read through.

"I think I know what your problem is, you are trying to make her believe that she is still head of the rebellion and carrying out missions. Change it. I do know one thing about SN1098, she had a passion for ancient earth history, use that."

"Really?" the younger scientists look up excited.

"Hmm but what sort of environment would be best suited then?" he mumbled to himself.

Laughing Lawrence said: "Make it as unrealistic as possible, you want to distract her — then give her an unreal experience that she has to puzzle over."

The scene of the conference on the screen faded out and was replaced with a new scene.

***

Stardate 32010616

The screen showed the medbay again, with Jayde lying on the medbay bed. Only the younger scientist and Vice President Xi were in the room with Jayde.

"It is working Sir!"

"Really?" Vice President Xi asked shocked.

"Yes Sir, we are being careful to only data mine her memories slowly, so as not to alarm her, but so far everything is working perfectly," the young scientists bragged.

"Interesting, so what suggestions are feeding her?" Vice President Xi asked curiously.

With a smug smile, the scientists pointed to a large screen above the medbay that Jayde was lying one. One the screen was a list of words.

Doha, Reiko, Yinxin, Dragons, Alchemy, Magic School, Fire Magic, Isha, Protoss, Fireball, Direwolves, Telia, Ryunzo, Sword, Dark Forest, Junro, Mage, Magic.

Looking at the scrolling list being displayed Jayde's shoulders slumped down, as her hands fell limply onto her lap. Closing her eyes, she let out a hard sigh. Jayde felt a strange thickening feeling in her throat, as her mouth filled with dryness.

Oh my god, it was all a dream, she thought sluggishly. Everything was just a dream, there was no Reiko, no Yinxin or baby dragons, everything was just a f*cking dream.

A sharp stabbing pain hit Jayde left chest at that thought. Lifting her right hand she rubbed that painful spot. Gods am I so weak that I am having a heart attack due to the shock.

--

Quote of the day

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt

Notes

[1] About dreaming

The whole brain is active during dreams, from the brain stem to the cortex. Most dreams occur during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. This is part of the sleep-wake cycle and is controlled by the reticular activating system whose circuits run from the brain stem through the thalamus to the cortex.

The limbic system in the mid-brain deals with emotions in both waking and dreaming and includes the amygdala, which is mostly associated with fear and is especially active during dreams.

The cortex is responsible for the content of dreams, including the monsters we flee from, the people we meet, or the experience of flying. Since we are highly visual animals the visual cortex, right at the back of the brain, is especially active, but so are many other parts of the cortex.

Least active are some parts of the frontal lobes, and this may explain why we can be so uncritical during dreams, accepting the crazy events as though they are real – until we wake up.