Dream Schools

 
Artists
The artist’s guild has one leader, one name, and pretends to be one guild.
But it’s not.

The guild binds together many familiar visual and performance arts: painting, drawing, sculpture, pottery, digital imagery, story, theater, song, music, and dance.

And one art that only energy masters can perform.
Flowsong, an art form built on flow and weaving, mixed with song and sculpture.

There are many arts, but there is one simple idea that brings them alll together.
Reaching toward unseen worlds of possibility.

There are two types of flowsong in the guild.

The first combines flying dance and song, performed by one or two flying artists.
It reminds me of the old ones and their temple.

The second combines flow, sculpture, and movement.
The artist flows air into raw materials, or objects of many forms.
The raw materials give birth to a sculptured object as the spectators watch.
And one object becomes another, changing its material, color, brightness, shape and size.

The performance area is an open stage, fifteen feet tall.
Objects appear, disappear, transform, and move around the stage, at different heights.

To receive the master’s band in the guild, an artist must become proficient in the techniques of at least three of the arts.
And the artist must choose one of the three, which she will use to create or perform a great work.

It’s like the old European guild system on earth.
There, an apprentice produced a great work as proof of his merit to be considered a master: a masterpiece.

 
Dreamnet
Which three do I pick?

My heart is full of the ways of flowsong, from my years in the Gen stadium, and the temple of the old ones.
My master work will come in this art.

But I need to choose two more arts.
Story and song have always called to my spirit, and danced through my life.
Here, finally, I’ll give them the love and care they deserve.

How do I complete my training of such complex, rich arts in a short time?

Apprentices use memcubes, hands on instruction, and practice, to gain skill.
And wait years to become masters.

But those who dare, use the dreamschools.
A dreamnet brings you into shared dreams, where you travel to artist’s schools in another world or time.
The schools and your body there, feels solid and real.

There is no sleeping, no eating, and no fatigue within the dreamschools, and the sun always shines.

In one night of dreams, three years pass at the school.

The dreams are clear and sharp, our minds and bodies bright and strong.
The memories and skills of the schools stay with us forever.

What is a school, really?

A distant physical or energy world?
Or just a simulation?

In the memories of the old ones that I carry, I find the answer.
The dreamschools are learning simulations created over a thousand years ago, connected to technology in the hidden city.

The guild council believes that twenty-three dreamnets remain in the world.
Once there were thousands.

The watchtower and its dreaming room holds one of the nets, for the use of the tower guardians.
Shazira and I sleep there.

The bed there is surrounded by a ring of stone cylinders.
When activated, these combine to create an energy canopy over the bed, a dreamnet.

But the dreamnet is dangerous.
You wake exhausted from these dreams.

A healthy adult can safely use the dreamnet once a month.
Children below thirteen can use it twice a week.

Those who work with weaving and flow almost never use the dream net.
The net drains our strength faster, and leaves us dead, or near death.

The dreamnet has other dangers.

Those like Shazira, with Bizra eyes, are by nature, closer to madness.
And the dreamnet brings out any hidden madness.

Shazira has never used the dreamnet.
But Tzina, with Bizra eyes like her mother, has asked to use it.

When Tzina reaches seventeen, she can use a dreamnet without our permission.
But until then, Shazira and I forbid it.

 
Dreamschool Begins
I absorb the method memcubes for my chosen arts, at Gen speed.
And I review memories from the old ones on these arts.
And I practice.

I spend a day at flowsong.
And two days each for story and song.

At Gen speed, two days is six months of intense practice.

But even this is only a beginning.
After this preparation, I am ready for real training.

I transform myself into a twelve-year-old version of myself, more fit for the dreamschool.

Shazira sleeps elsewhere.

It’s possible to activate the dreamnet myself, and then lay down under the net.
But traditionally, the dreamnet is activated by someone else.
It’s considered bad luck to active your own dreamnet.

Tzina sets the cylinders to send me to the story dreamschool.
And activates the dreamnet.

I go to sleep with a twelve-year-old body, but when I awake in the dream, my body looks twenty.

I walk on a white stone path suspended in empty space.
Blue and gold crystals within the white stone shine a gentle light, which guides my way.
To my left and right, above and below me, is fog.

Only the image of my body, and the path are clear and sharp.

In a few minutes I reach a solid wall which spreads as far as I can see to the left and right, above and below me.
I try to fly above it, but the wall seems to go on forever.
I return to the path.

There on the path are two black apprentice’s robes.
“Why two?” I wonder.
I put one on, and a door appears in the wall.

I walk through.
There is a woman sitting at a desk.
“Name please!”

“Yagrin.”

“Master’s bands?” she asks.

“Flow, Healing, and Weaving.”

She looks through me, to see if I’m telling the truth.
“True,” she says.

“We haven’t had anyone here with three bands in a thousand years.”
“Looking to get your fourth master’s band?

“Yes.”

“Remember,” she says, “only the teachers are recognized masters here.”
“No one else enters or stays in the dreamschool without an apprentice robe.”

I hear another dreamer enter the door behind me.
I turn, to see a twenty-year-old woman in an apprentice robe.

For a moment I think it’s Shazira in a young body.

“Hello, ina,” she says, smiling.
“I followed you here.

It’s Tzina!
Everyone looks the same age while training in the school.

The woman behind the desk looks at Tzina.
“Bizra eyes in the school?”

“Go back,” I tell Tzina.
“It’s too dangerous for you to be here.”

The woman behind the desk shakes her head.
“Once someone enters the school, we can’t send her away.”

“Then let her go back herself!” I shout frantically.

“Calm down,” says the woman.
“School ends for her an hour before dawn, or earlier, if she wakes up.”

“There’s nothing you can do at this point.”
“But you two will not disrupt the school, or you’ll sit in this room the whole time!”

“Is that clear?”
“Yes,” I answer.

She checks in Tzina.
Then she gives each of us a locker to use while we’re here.

Tzina and I walk to the lockers.
“How could you do this, Tzina?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm.

“There’s so much I want to do, Ina,” she says.
“This will get me my master’s robe much quicker.”

“And I’ll be fine.”
“Once people with Bizra eyes reach the age of five, they never go mad after that!”

She gives me a hug.
“Now stop worrrying,” she says.
“It’ll distract both of us, and time here is precious!”

 
Dreamschool Lessons
We open the lockers.
Inside is a square display device.
With it, I can access a huge library of memcubes on story.

There’s a recommended viewing list.
And a schedule of memcubes, classes, practice sessions, and critiques that fill up the years here.

Each lesson begins the same way.
One of us is chosen to lead, and speak the opening.
The leader reads each sentence, and the others repeat:

“Free your power, and let it fill each word.”
“Let each word be a bridge to a glowing, beautiful world.”
“Imagine each letter, each sound in the word is made of an otherworldly fire.”
“The fire pretends to be captured on paper.”
“Within, the letters and sounds still burn.”

There are many writing and storytelling assignments.
Sometimes we work alone, and sometimes in teams.

“Write and speak every word and letter, so it glows with energy,” says the instructor.
I don’t care if it’s an hello, a note, an assignment, or a great story.”

“Let this energy live in your words.”
“Your words may look and sound like the words of others.”
“But readers, listeners and friends will circle around you, searching for your secrets.”

After two years in the school, three quarters of the students have vanished.

“What happened to them?” I ask one of the instructors.

“Awake, insane, dead,” he says.
“It’s hard to know.”

As the years pass, Tzina speaks to me less and less, until close to the end she only nods when we meet.

Her work with story is incredible.
And she is full of emotion as she writes or reads her stories, in or out of class.

But when she leaves her stories, she has as much emotion as a machine, and doesn’t speak.

 
Awakening
The years end, and we awaken.
The dreamnet has shut itself off, and the two of us lie together on the bed.

I’m exhausted, but otherwise all right.
I transform this young body into my older body, but rested and refreshed.

Tzina awakens, and looks at me.
I wonder if she will apologize for the way she ignored me in the dreamschool.

She looks at me with a blank expression.
No sense of recognition, or feeling, and not much intelligence.

“Tzina,” I say, “are you all right?”
Her face holds the same blank look.

I call for Shazira.
I tell her what happened, and ask her to bring other healers.

While she calls for them, I release my listening body upon Tzina.

There is a great hole in her, as though her essence is gone.

My listening cannot tell me how to restore her balance.

I try to heal her with energy and voice.
Her body glows with new strength, but her mind remains empty.

The other healers who come, are as baffled as I am.

Shazira is crying.
“This is how the ones with Bizra eyes look when they go mad,” she tells me.
“Tzina will die in a few weeks!”

“If you hadn’t gone to the school,” she screams, “she couldn’t have joined you!”
“This is your fault!”

I search the memories I have from the old ones, but I find no way to heal the madness.

“There’s only one thing to do,” I tell Shazira, quietly.
“I’ll take her to the Bizra.”
“Maybe they can heal her.”