Sometimes I dream in stories. I love it when that happens. Last night’s was a particularly good one. The “visuals” were great (elaborate palaces and temples, and bleak dungeons underneath) and the story held together and mostly made sense— even after I woke up, which isn’t always true even when I think it makes sense while I’m dreaming it.
The plot isn’t especially original. It’s almost an Archetypal Edgar Rice Burroughs plot. Whether on Mars, Venus, Pellucidar or in the jungles of Africa, his heroes were always discovering lost civilizations with evil tyrants and dark secrets. You could also have easily seen it as an episode of just about any fantasy or sci-fi series. The Stargate team could have arrived on a planet and had this story. Captain Kirk could have beamed down from the Enterprise into it. The TARDIS could have landed the Doctor and his companions in it. Still, there’s a reason why archetypal plots are archetypal, and it was all the more fun for that. The story as it played out depended on one or two too-convenient points, but that’s par for the course for the old pulp magazine adventures that this was definitely in the style of.
Characters in my dreams never have names, I just know their faces, so I’ll call the two main characters besides myself my Sidekick and my Princess (because if this was a Burroughs story, she would always be a Princess, though not of the Disney variety, and because— it’s what she was. She was my Princess).
The three of us emerged from a dense forest in which we’d been wandering, and found ourselves in a mysterious country where we were trapped in a kind of prison compound. The people in the compound were half starved and beaten down, and spoke of the “Elite” or sometimes “the gods” who had conquered their country.
There was some kind of test coming up, and people who passed it would get out of the compound and made one of the Elite. Everyone was hoping to get chosen. We all lined up to perform this very tricky physical task that was something like you’d see in a video game. Members of the Elite watched from an ornate balcony above the prison compound and pointed out prisoners who they thought had done a good enough job. They seemed to be adopting the people they picked into their families.
I figured out that the task could easily be solved if two players worked together. My Sidekick and I tried it that way and succeeded, and were called up to the balcony. A very old lady among the Elite said that “understanding the nature of cooperation is a sign of being a person” — but even so she only wanted to pick one of us. She picked my Sidekick. I told him to keep an eye out for a chance to get the rest of us out.I made a couple of further attempts at the challenge but couldn’t do it alone. After a while, everyone who failed was taken back to the compound. My Princess was there (she wasn’t taken to the challenge for some reason), and I discovered she had fallen sick and was getting worse. She was very pale and thin, and even in a short time had started to look like the prisoners who’d been starved for a long time. The prison compound was cold, wet, and cheerless and I knew she’d only keep getting worse if we didn’t get out.
It was soon revealed that the prison compound was actually a slave compound. The Elite had arrived and claimed the country as their own, including all the people, and anyone in the population not worthy to be adopted into the Elite, by passing the test to prove they were “persons,” was to be auctioned off as property. We were dragged to the auction but because she was sick, my Princess was left behind. By this time I knew she was dying but no one else cared. The guards said if she wasn’t healthy enough to sell then she was worthless and there was no reason to bother helping her.
The dream skipped over the auction. I next found I had been sold to the leader of a strange pagan temple in the heart of the Elite city. Beneath the gold-plated, opulent temple were dark catacombs and dungeons, lit by flickering torches, where the temple initiates performed secret rites that seemed to be something like alchemy. I and the other slaves were kept far away from the labs where the alchemy/rites were performed.I met my Sidekick again. While the prisoners were starving, he’d gotten fat on the rich living the Elite gave themselves, but fortunately he hadn’t let it change his character and was still determined to help us escape. Though adopted as one of the Elite, he wasn’t yet trusted and it was hard for him to do anything unobserved. Even so, he’d found out some things. He told me he’d discovered the rites in the temple were the source of the Elite’s power, and allowed them to pose as gods to the comparatively primitive populations of the rest of the world, but he hadn’t discovered what the secret was.
Another huge secret was revealed when what appeared to be the Elite city began to move— it was actually a ship, as huge as a city. Not a spaceship, it sailed on the ocean. The Elite traveled in their city-ship from one country to another, conquering and enslaving the populations (except for those they found worthy to adopt). No one fought back because the various populations thought they were gods, but there appeared to be more reason for that than just the power of the massive city-ship. The secret was in the temple, if I could find it out. Meanwhile, the Elite were taking their ship to conquer another country and enslave its population.
After much sneaking and eavesdropping, I finally discovered that the initiates in the temple had the secret of brewing an elixir of immortality. They depended on it to live forever, and that’s how they’d convinced the rest of the world they were gods. There was only one copy of the secret formula for making the elixir, and only the High Priest of the Initiates was allowed to see it. It was too complicated for any one person to memorize, so all the power depended on that copy of the formula.
I knew if I could get some of the elixir and somehow escape from the ship, I could use it to save my Princess’ life. I had no way of knowing how much time she had, but I knew it couldn’t be very much.I also knew that I could free the world from the conquests of the Elite. They’d become decadent and complacent in their power, and had forgotten the knowledge and technology that let their ancestors build the city-ship and invent the elixir of immortality. For all that they posed as gods, they were primitives themselves and operated the city-ship, and prepared the elixir, by means of rituals handed down from the past that they performed by rote without understanding. If the formula was destroyed, they wouldn’t have the knowledge to reproduce it. If the city-ship was damaged, they couldn’t repair it.
With the help of my Sidekick, I was able to figure out a way to break into the inner sanctum of the temple where the secret was kept, through long-forgotten tunnels deep beneath the still-inhabited parts of the temple. Late at night, when everyone was asleep, I carefully snuck my way past the guards, and through the tunnels into the sanctum— the alchemy lab were the elixir was made.
I took a small bottle of the elixir, enough to save my Princess’ life. Only just enough, I knew neither of us would want to use it regularly and become like the Elite ourselves. Then I smashed as much of the equipment as I could, and broke open the chest that contained the formula.
The noise I made attracted the attention of the guards, and soon the sanctum was surrounded. The temple initiates arrived. I held the paper with the formula for the elixir over an open flame, threatening to burn it if they came closer. I demanded they turn the city-ship around and head back to the country where we’d left my Princess. It was a tense standoff…
And then I woke up.
That’s the only problem with dreaming in stories: I never get to the end.
