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Alien Dream Machine: Third in the Phane Series
Alien Dream Machine: Third in the Phane Series
Alien Dream Machine: Third in the Phane Series
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Alien Dream Machine: Third in the Phane Series

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Gunnar is a young Las Vegas PI who struggles with narcolepsy, falling asleep at unpredictable moments. He tracks down a man who cheats at casino dice, only to learn that the guy is an extraterrestrial. Phane, the gambler, begs Gunnar to help him. He and his family are hunted by gangsters who want his dice secret. Gunnar is charmed by the stranger and wants to help, but Phane becomes seriously wounded. Gunnar and his sleep doctor try a desperate plan to revive the dying alien using focused dreams. But do aliens dream?

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 1, 2021
ISBN9781735541242
Alien Dream Machine: Third in the Phane Series
Author

William X. Adams

Bill Adams (writing as William X. Adams and William A. Adams) is a cognitive psychologist who left the academic life for the information technology industry to find out if the mind is like a computer. He writes nonfiction in philosophical psychology, and psychological science fiction to dramatize what he discovered. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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    Alien Dream Machine - William X. Adams

    Drizzle formed wavy curtains on the dirty windshield. Gunnar flicked the wipers once to see if anything had changed on the street. Nothing had. In the thin predawn light, a yellow porch light on a squat bungalow shone like a beacon.

    People are so vulnerable when they sleep, he thought. An assailant could stoop over your splayed body and stare into your face. The sleeper is utterly helpless. No wonder people lock themselves into a fortress before turning out the lights.

    Maybe he had come too early. Watching a house at night was mind-numbing, but surveillance was always the most challenging part of being a private investigator. At night, the stillness made it worse. He had to remind himself he was living the dream. This was what PIs do, stakeouts, and he was staking-out. When he graduated in criminology, he'd told friends, only half-kidding, that he planned to live like Jim Rockford of the old TV series, The Rockford Files. The reruns had been popular in Norway, and as a kid, he watched them over and over again until he could recite the actors’ lines along with them. He wanted to have a sunny, carefree life on an ocean beach, just like Jim Rockford. It was the perfect cover for the work of a master sleuth. He would solve crimes, be a champion of justice, answerable to no one. His friends said, Who's Jim Rockford?

    His rust-red, second-hand Corolla was a compromise, of course. Rockford had driven a sleek Pontiac Firebird, but you had to be practical. Gunnar’s two-room apartment in Las Vegas was likewise not a trailer home on Malibu Beach, but that would be impossible with today's zoning laws. Then, too, there was no ocean near Las Vegas. Still, he had the Rockford spirit; that's what mattered. He was a genuine PI, licensed by the state of Nevada, and here he was, watching a suspect's house before dawn. Those were facts. Rockford surely did long, miserable surveillances off-camera.

    Gunnar yawned. He wasn't sleepy, and his yawn wasn't about the early hour. He was always drowsy. It didn't matter how much sleep he got at night, which wasn't much. Up and down, all night, up and down. He did investigation-related research when he was up during the night and took micro-naps during the day, ten minutes here, five minutes there. His Fitbit said his sleep efficiency was terrible, but he knew that.

    He turned on the car's sound system and selected a flash drive. Norwegian Black Metal was excellent for alertness. He kept the volume low, just enough to feel the baseline in his stomach. A light came on in the house. About damn time, he thought. This guy's got to hustle to be at work in one hour.

    The suspect was Edward J. Molina, thirty-three, registration clerk at the Marrakesh Hotel and Casino just off-strip. Gunnar had to vet him for the front desk job even though the hotel had already hired him pending the outcome of the background check. The check was a formality. But Mr. Costello, Gunnar's always-scowling boss, had reminded him only yesterday that the reputation of Sage Security depended on accuracy and thoroughness. The subtext was, make it quick, but make it good.

    The report is basically done, Gunnar had said. I'm just formatting a few details.

    I want it on my desk Monday morning, eight o'clock. Backgrounding is our bread and butter, Hagen. If you can't do a simple employment check on time, you might be in the wrong business.

    You'll have the full case report on Monday, sir.

    Gunnar liked calling his assignments cases. That sounded Jim Rockfordy. The Molina Case, that's what he was working on. And the report really was practically finished, but not done-finished-done. Something nagged him.

    He pushed a button to skip to the next song, by Alaricus. He liked their nihilistic lyrics, not that you could understand them. You had to know. Although in truth, the lyrics often amounted to little more than black metal! screamed over amp crunch. The mood was what he liked, though, the angry screaming. Life is full of so much injustice and stupidity, you have to scream. Animals would scream if they if they understood. Gunnar’s father told him once that people were different from animals because we do the right thing. We stand up for each other, for what’s right. Animals eat, sleep, hump, and die. They don’t know. We know. Gunnar had thought about that a lot. But two weeks later, his father was shot in a derelict warehouse on the Oslo waterfront. The investigation revealed he’d called for backup but it never came, and he died face-down in his own blood.

    Gunner reached, tapped the music off, and looked at his watch. Molina’s garage door would open in ten minutes. He knew the suspect’s habits better than the suspect did. The odd thing about Molina was that he was so ordinary. No police record, typical credit report, no military service, high school diploma, no missed car payments, no gaps. He lived alone, no family in town. He was from Reno, in Vegas six months. His former employer confirmed dates of employment in Reno, the same registration-desk position he wanted at the Marrakesh. That was it. Employers wouldn't tell you squat anymore because they were afraid of lawsuits.

    On paper, the candidate was squeaky-clean, but Gunnar had a feeling. It was the bank statements. The balance varied from a couple hundred to ten thousand within a month. It wasn't like he started with ten thousand and spent it down. The money came in throughout the month in small blasts from FinClout, a financial transaction app, and went out in chunks to pay down credit cards. Hardly any detail showed at the bank except totals in, totals out. The balance swung wildly from low to high and back again several times in a month. Where was all that money coming from? Where was it going? Gambling, maybe? He had to be sure.

    A shadow moved across a bedroom window on the side of the house. That was him. Get a move on, pal. You're going to be late. The bedroom window went dark. Any other PI would have let Molina skate with a clean report. But Gunnar trusted intuition. Intuition can be wrong, but if you're smart, you'll pay attention to it. The bank statement said something was fishy. He would spear that fish.

    The bottom of the garage door swung forward, and the paneled sheet rotated up. A cobalt-blue Ford pickup backed out. A hard, black tonneau cover sealed the truckbed. The wheels were aftermarket and oversize. Sharp truck. Gunnar had admired it before. He looked at his watch. Right on time.

    The garage door swiveled down while the truck backed into the street. Gunnar watched the vehicle shrink away into the morning. The rain had stopped. He waited, turned the sound off. It was time to make the move, but he hesitated.

    Would Jim Rockford do a break-and-enter? Rockford pushed the rules, but Rockford would not commit a crime. Gunnar wasn't literally going to break in or break anything. He was just going to look. He wouldn't even leave footprints. Nobody would know he'd been there. Technically, it was illegal, but rules are made to be pushed.

    He'd already been through Molina's trash, which revealed an extraordinary number of broken-down shipping boxes in the recycle. He'd followed Molina to a nearby Whole Foods and watched him pick up packages from delivery lockers. The guy was a shopaholic. Gunnar had found packing lists in some of the boxes for gadgets and gizmos. Computer and phone accessories, wireless speakers, earbuds, car toys, watches. Fine pens, exotic coffee, laptops and tablets, headphones, clothing, kitchen appliances.

    It was a lot of small things, but Gunnar did the math. Molina was spending far more than his paycheck each month. How many wristwatches can you use? Maybe it was some kind of tricky scheme to resell the stuff. But he couldn't sell it for more than the retail prices he was paying. Something odd was going on.

    He stepped out of the car, pushed the door quietly closed, and walked along the side of the house, keeping his head down and his hat pulled low. He always wore a dark cap on stakeouts because his blond hair stood out. He opened a chain-link gate and went to the back door.

    It's virtually impossible to secure a lived-in house. If everything was bolted shut at the highest level of security, it would be a pain in the neck to live there. It was like computer passwords. You want them to be unguessable, but you need to remember them, so compromises are made. It was the same with house security. It didn't matter if Molina had an alarm system. He'd be in and out in two minutes. He just wanted a look-see.

    The screen door was unlocked, and the kitchen door had only a doorknob keyhole. He inserted a thin metal blade on a short handle. Pushing a button raised spring-loaded metal spines from the probe into the lock's tumblers. A green LED came on, and he opened the door as quickly as if he had a key to the place. Which he essentially did.

    The kitchen smelled like bacon and burned toast. Dishes were dirty in the sink, but a rack of beautifully polished copper pans hung on the wall behind the stove. Nice. Expensive. Gunnar wiped his wet shoes on a kitchen mat and walked into the living room. He saw a nice leather sofa, a stuffed chair, and three wall-mounted TVs. Who needs three TVs? Big floor-standing speakers apparently were connected to a woofer on the floor and wireless speakers all around the room. Six remotes were lined up side-by-side on the coffee table. No audiovisual system is worth that much trouble, Gunnar thought.

    He walked down a short hallway. A guest bedroom had no bed. Instead, it was the warehouse he had suspected, filled with lightweight metal shelving holding a dizzying collection of goods. His eyes drifted across phones and chargers alongside neatly folded shirts and pants. Headphones sat next to shiny kitchen appliances, some whose purpose he could not fathom. Everything was unpacked and ready to use, maybe already used. He saw no packaging, no labels, no price tags. The goods weren't organized into categories. Stacks of colored bedsheets sat next to a panini press and two cordless drills. Bottles of designer shampoo stood near a row of four harmonicas. Four harmonicas? Security cameras and infrared detectors were ready to be mounted on a wall. A quadcopter drone was assembled next to its controller. Software, video games, and DVDs were in stacks. No books.

    He opened the top drawer of a highboy dresser and peered down at sparkling wristwatches of all sizes and shapes on a black velvet cloth. Some were big-screen smart watches while others aspired to jewelry. He closed the drawer. Everything was for personal use. Molina wasn't building collections. Gunnar saw no rare coins or stamps, no exotic dolls or signed baseballs. But the goods didn't seem like inventory, either. This wasn't the warehouse of a business operation. These were the treasures of a guy with way too much stuff.

    What did it mean? There wasn't enough time in anybody's life to use everything here. It seemed like Molina just liked to shop and open packages. Weird, but not criminal. Except how did he pay for it?

    Gunnar heard something. He looked out the window and saw only the side yard and the neighbor's house. The sound had been a deep rumbling. Garage door. He listened. A car door slammed. Damn! Somebody was here. Impossible! Had Molina forgotten something and come back home? He never did that.

    Fighting panic, Gunnar stepped quickly over to the bedroom window and unlocked it. The single-hung was big enough and low enough. He opened it and stepped one leg through, then ducked his head and rotated out. His feet sunk into the wet earth below as he reached up and pulled the wooden frame down quietly.

    The world went black.

    Two: The Engineer

    If everything was working well, the engine room did not need lights. The machine worked tirelessly in the dark. The Engineer himself hardly needed lights, either. He knew every bolt and belt of the Beast, every whisper and murmur. He leaned back in a wooden chair, resting his head against the wall and scanned dozens of readout screens, each surrounded with knobs, buttons, and LEDs. The slow, rhythmic sighs of a bellows filled the engine room. That soothing sound meant all was well.

    People outside the engine room frolicked in loud music under sparkling chandeliers, feasting, talking, singing, working, loving. As long as the great ship of experience glided smoothly across the ocean, people did not think about the destination.

    As it should be, the Engineer thought. Nobody should ever wonder what drives the great ship, powers the lights, heats the rooms, keeps the clocks ticking. The Engineer was alert for exceptions when the infrastructure showed itself. That could break the dream for his customers. When an alarm appeared on his console, he would identify the problem and correct the situation before anyone noticed that the bones of experience were showing.

    Watching for an abnormality that shouldn't happen was a tough job. Fortunately, the Beast responded to most exceptions automatically. But one particular orange light on the console was worrisome. It had been on too long, meaning it was an problem the Beast could not deal with by itself. The Engineer knew he would have to intervene.

    Calling up details on a separate screen, he saw that the alert was for someone who had suddenly entered a dream without going through the gradual process of falling asleep. How that was possible, he did not know. You're either awake, asleep, or in one of the drowsy transition states. Nobody suddenly drops to the ground, asleep on the spot. But there it was, on the screen's event log.

    The situation could be dangerous. Sudden switching between wakeful reality and dreaming could raise a lot of questions for a person. No reference material was on file for a sudden dreamer like that. He would have to invent a fix.

    The bellows on the big machine continued the low, steady breathing sound as if everything was normal. The Engineer knew it wasn't.

    Three: The Molina Intuition

    The earthy smell of grass and wet dirt was Gunnar's wakeup. He opened his eyes and saw pocked gray cement an inch from his face. His cheek was pressed into mud. He was as soaked as if he'd stood in a shower with his clothes on. When he rolled over, he was momentarily blinded by the light. Closing his eyes, he reopened them in a squint. The sky was bright overcast. He pulled his left arm out of wet loam and looked at his mud-smeared watch. Five minutes to seven. He'd been out for twenty minutes.

    Slowly, quietly, not knowing who might be watching or listening, he rolled away from the foundation onto wet grass. He lay still and listened. No sound came from the house or from the neighbor's, whose windows were curtained. If his little garden nap had gone undetected, he wanted to keep it that way.

    Rising to all fours, he crawled until he was clear of the window and stood slowly. His soaked shirt and pants were streaked in mud; the shoes were ruined. What a disaster. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and walked briskly, as if he belonged there, past the house, through the gate, and out to the street. His car was at the curb a dozen yards away.

    As the Toyota pulled into the street, Gunnar fought an urge to pin the pedal to the floor. Two blocks from the house, he parked at a curb and turned the heater on full blast. The slow, rhythmic sighs of his breathing calmed him. He'd escaped a bad situation. If he had been discovered lying in the dirt, he might have awakened in a hospital's ER and had a lot of explaining to do.

    Not that he could explain. Collapsing into a nap while on the job was not normal. He'd had trouble sleeping for years, but he’d developed a twenty-four-hour lifestyle dotted with naps, and that had always worked. This new thing was worrisome. How could you even think about your work when your body was acting strangely? The body commands attention above all other concerns and interests. The body is a bully. He’d have to do something about it.

    Once before, it had happened. He'd been exceptionally tired when a huge thunderclap shook the windows of his apartment, and he'd fallen to the floor unconscious. Maybe that was the sequence, fatigue followed by surprise. He'd thought then that he had fainted. This morning, he had been tired from the nighttime surveillance, and he'd panicked when he heard someone coming into Molina's house, and bingo, lights out. Maybe he was epileptic. Yikes. Was he going to be a disabled person all his life? Unable to hold a job? That was not the plan.

    Working as a PI was the perfect job for someone who wanted to work around the clock. Everything went smoothly as long as he took a few minutes of shut-eye every three hours or so. But a sudden, unannounced nap in the middle of something else? What if he had been driving when it happened? It was an incredible hazard.

    Falling asleep with no warning would be very embarrassing in a meeting or a conversation. He imagined a dinner party where his face suddenly splashed into a bowl of soup while people watched in astonishment. He'd have to see someone about this condition. Nobody could live with sudden, unannounced naps. His heart rate returned to normal as the car's heater warmed him. He pulled into traffic and headed home.

    Showered, wearing dry clothes, and sipping hot coffee, Gunnar considered his situation. Not counting the blackout, the morning hadn't been all bad. He'd successfully surveilled Molina's living quarters and discovered that the guy was a pathological shopaholic. That's the only thing that made sense. Even if Molina resold most of his goods, he'd take losses, so it couldn't be a money-making operation. He wasn’t a thief. He was buying stuff because he loved opening packages. It was childish, but as far as an employment investigation went, not a deal-breaker. Still, he’d hate to find out later Molina was a criminal. Where did his money come from?

    For Gunnar, intuition after a nap was especially good. He knew that intuition is just a vague feeling, and you have to ease it over the fence into a definite thought. Only then you can say, aha, It could be this, or what about that. Intuition was his friend and it seemed to be a benefit of his sleeping disorder. Each micro-nap produced new intuition. It was what made him a great PI. Or would, someday.

    So where was his intuition about Molina? He'd slept in the guy's damned flower bed. That should be worth something. Gunnar sat back in his chair and thought about what had happened, but no insight came to him. Was the sleep-magic not working? He'd awakened in the wet and cold mud and had been immediately focused on getting out of there. He mentally went back to the moment of awakening.

    There had been a dream. Yes, he thought. Just before I awoke. I was in a casino with slots flashing and bonging. I was trying to find a machine to use. The ones I could see were somehow not ready, so I had to wait. People were lined up behind me like at the supermarket checkout, and I felt pressure to go, but every time I spotted a good machine, it would swirl away into the background like milk stirred into coffee.

    One machine had a large screen that said, Book Your Dream Vacation Now! It was an ad for Scandinavian Airlines and it wanted me to take a trip to Norway. I walked over to it and sat, but I was shivering cold and completely soaked. I woke up in Molina's yard.

    Gunnar sipped coffee and stared into the corner where the tan kitchen wall met the white ceiling. What did it mean? Did it mean Molina works for an airline? Molina wasn't even in the dream. What was the dream trying to tell him?

    His coffee had gone cold and bitter. He rose from his chair and stepped across the kitchen to the Mr. Coffee. How had he felt in the dream? That was usually where you got the clue, from the feelings. He'd felt pressure from the people behind him urging him to get on with it. He had felt confused about the weird slot machines that couldn’t be used.

    He poured coffee. He'd felt a little positive feeling, too. Yes, the airline advertisement had made him feel hopeful. He would love to go back to Norway for a visit. That would be great. He hadn't been back since he left Oslo. When the University of Nevada accepted him with some financial aid, he had not hesitated. But he still had loans to repay and it would be too expensive to go home.

    He'd love to see his mother and brother again. He was an American citizen now and had a PI badge. His brother would burst with envy. Gunnar enjoyed being a hero to Liam, who had looked up to him since their father died. That’s what they said; he died. He was shot eight times on the Oslo waterfront. That’s not died. That’s slaughtered. But they had only been kids. He died.

    His father had a generous police line-of-duty payout, so they were financially stable and Gunnar rose to the occasion even at fourteen. He became the man of the house by comforting his mother and giving stern speeches to his younger brother. He learned how to track the monthly household bills and write out checks for his mother to sign. But he also became angry and resentful. What had gone wrong? His father had told him that being a cop is the most human job you can have because it means doing the right thing instead of just living for yourself like animals do. But what was the payoff for making that effort?

    Despite his childhood desire, becoming a cop was out of the question for Gunnar after the incident. Eventually he realized that living the rest of his life in Oslo was also out of the question. He had to get out of there.

    He hadn’t felt like he was ditching his family when, four years later, he announced he was going to America. His mother and Liam wished him well, of course, but he sensed their resentment. Liam, with one more year of high school to go, denied he was envious. He was happy in Oslo, he said.

    It’s random, Gunnar had said. You didn’t choose Oslo. You just happened to be born here.

    I like it.

    What are you going to do, stare into a computer on a desk in some office park for the next twenty years?

    Nothing wrong with that as long as I get paid.

    It’s meaningless. It’s someone else’s computer, someone else’s life.

    I’ll have an apartment and live with Anna. Invite Mom over for dinner.

    Gunnar looked at the bedroom floor and shook his head. Liam didn’t get it. His brother wanted to live a life of nothing. He wanted to live like an animal. Maybe he had been too young to understand what their Pa had taught them.

    You have to stand up. You have to declare yourself.

    You don’t know anything. Pa stood up and he got shot.

    Liam knew, as only a brother could, where Gunnar’s soft spot was. Gunnar had given their father’s cops versus the animals speech before, but they both knew it was hollow. Gunnar stood and took a couple steps toward the door but Liam held him in with a question.

    So you gonna be a cop in America?

    I’m going to college there, he said, turning.

    We got colleges here.

    But in America you can be whatever you want. I can be Jim Rockford there.

    That’s an old TV show. You can’t be that.

    Don’t be so literal. I can be a PI and stand up for what’s right without being a cop. I don’t wear a bright blue uniform like a target, but I catch bad guys my own way. You can do things your own way in America. You can shoot a guy in the head and as long as it’s for a good cause, that’s alright. Jim Rockford is America, don’t you see?

    You’re crazy.

    Gunnar took a gulp of hot coffee. He should go back. Liam would have matured in the last five years. Maybe next spring he could afford to go. Wouldn't it be

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