“Hector! Hector! Wake up!”

  Infinite variations of chaos swam before him, transforming again and again.

  “Do we call an ambunce?”

  “Maybe! I don’t know what’s wrong with him!”

  “I’m going to get Rahman to come in.”

  “Hector!”

  Chaos into cosmic energy. The truth vibrated in resonance with a deeper reality Hector saw stretching away all about him. He knew it with such certainty that he couldn’t imagine why he never understood before. Of all the knowledge he had amassed throughout the life of himself and his dream counterpart, this was the only bit that stood by itself as an absolute axiom.

  A new voice. “How long has he been like this?”

  “It’s been fifteen minutes since we got here.” The familiar voice. “I don’t know how long he was like this before that. When did we call him to pick us up at your pce? Two hours ago?”

  “So he could have been like this for two hours or maybe as long as six, if he became comatose as soon as he reached the hotel.”

  “Do you think it’s a stroke? Or maybe a blood sugar thing?”

  “Let me try a sternum rub. If he’s conscious, it should rouse a response.”

  An unpleasant sensation grew rapidly, distracting him from the hypnotic dance of chaos.

  Hector jerked and shoved the knuckles away from his chest. Three concerned faces stared down at him. Evelyn was petting his head like he was a dog and Professor Rahman’s hand was extended towards Hector’s chest. “Ow.”

  “Hector! Are you awake?”

  “I’m awake, Evelyn. Why don’t you keep your hands away from my chest, professor?”

  “What happened? Do you have chest pains? Is your arm numb? Do you have trouble moving one side of your body?”

  Hector’s thoughts returned to the revetion of Volithur. It was all so clear still. He wanted to act on the new knowledge right that moment.

  “Hector!”

  “What? I’m still awake.”

  “Are you having a stroke?”

  “No. I….” How to expin what he had learned? “I think Volithur had a true insight.” Those two words didn’t give the appropriate weight to the situation. “Evie, I was wrong about Volithur. He can’t possibly be a nobody. What he just discovered… it’s big.”

  “You were dead to the world, Hector. We couldn’t wake you up. I thought my much older boyfriend stroked out.” Her voice caught at the end.

  Hector pulled her hand off his hair and held it. “Hey. I’m not having a health issue. I’m in better shape than most people you know. This was just a dream thing.”

  “The dreams don’t prevent people from waking,” Professor Rahman said.

  Jeremy jumped to defend his argument. “Well, maybe his brain needed extra time to download the true insight.”

  “The dreams aren’t a data download,” Evelyn snapped.

  “Of course they are,” Jeremy said. “One of the benefits of absorbing legal energy is that thoughts become quantized. All the messy biological noise is corrected or removed, leaving a precise pattern of meaning that can be accurately transmitted. It’s how Jinn upload their minds to computers. And it’s almost certainly how these memories are being transmitted into our brains.”

  “That’s Jinn nonsense,” Evelyn said. “I don’t know how the dreams are coming to us, but I can tell you that the phenomenon is strongly based in illusory energy.”

  “It’s both,” Professor Rahman said. “I don’t know the specifics, but both Jinn and Arahant were involved in creating the Dream Engine.”

  “What?” The question came from Evelyn, Jeremy, and Hector.

  “My dreams come from a more recent era,” Professor Rahman eborated. “After the attack on Tian convinced the Xian to ally with the other branches of humanity to form the coalition army. There were two pns proposed to deal with the unchecked spread of the monsters, which were spreading like a virus among the millions of universes occupied by humanity. The first was to wipe out the unempowered worlds entirely. As insane as the proposal was, it had supporters among all three of the major species. The other option was to give the unempowered worlds the ability to fight back. They constructed a device that combined the methods of the Jinn and the Arahants so that unempowered humans could gain enough knowledge to fight back.”

  “I’ve never heard any of that before,” Jeremy said.

  “There is a normal distribution of eras being experienced. Most people dream of events between the fall of Aes and the formalization of the alliance between Jinn and Arahant. A few see much older events, all the way back to the formation of the pact that requires mutual aid during a dragon attack. Not only did I experience the te era, which is rare enough, but my counterpart actually had some knowledge of current events at a time when there was very little crity.”

  Hector cleared his throat. “As interesting as the history lesson is, professor, my revetion is more relevant to the imminent monster invasion.”

  Evelyn’s hand tightened on his. “What is it, Hector?”

  “Volithur witnessed the Lord General create a transit sphere and gained a true insight. I know how to get as much cosmic energy as I could ever want right here on Earth.”

  Jeremy pumped his fist into the air. “Yes! What’s the secret, boss man?”

  “Chaos can be transformed into cosmic energy. I’m certain I could reach through my externality aperture and draw as much as I need.”

  “Hell yeah! Let’s get back to the garage and tape an episode on how to do it. We can have every Xian on Earth power up to get ready to fight the monsters!”

  Hector paused. “Oh, sorry, Jeremy, I don’t think I can expin the method to someone else.”

  “Why not?”

  Evelyn answered on his behalf. “Because it’s a true insight. That’s not something you can learn from a lecture. Despite what you might think, insights are rare. Every person on Earth has been handed a free insight through their dreams, but on Maya it was estimated that only one in a thousand Arahants would ever gain an insight. If a Sage can’t teach an insight, then nobody can.”

  Jeremy defted. “So that means we get one Xian warrior.”

  “A Xian warrior who will never run out of cosmic energy,” Hector countered. “One who can level up as fast on Earth as they do on Tian. Maybe faster.”

  “That sounds like specution,” Professor Rahman said.

  “Let me do a quick test.” Hector stretched out a thread of cosmic energy through the externality aperture of his soul, then drew back a gulp of primordial chaos. The caustic substance transformed under his will, becoming pure cosmic energy as it entered his soul. That single puff was equivalent to hours of diligent cultivation. A smile stretched across his face. “I’ll reach level three today. Level four by the end of the week.”

  Professor Rahman closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “The three of you try my patience. The Sage of Foresight sees glimpses of potential futures. The limitation is that she can only see things that she might witness one day, correct?”

  “I’m not the Sage of Foresight,” Evelyn said.

  “That hardly matters,” Professor Rahman responded.

  “It really does. An Arahant steps into a role through the realization process. If I inhabited the role of the Sage of Foresight, I wouldn’t be seeing tiny glimpses. I would be living out entire hours from possible timelines.”

  “Thank you for the crification on that. My point remains. You are not using your power properly. Hector, I want you to spend the rest of the day cultivating, starting at this moment. Everyone please agree not to disturb him. When we meet you at nine tonight, please say the words ‘my estimation is’ followed by the time you expect to reach level four.”

  “Rahman, we don’t have time for that,” Evelyn said.

  “Evie,” Rahman interrupted her, “please look for the future where Hector gives his report.”

  Evelyn’s jaw dropped. “I never thought to use other people.”

  “Fortunately I did. Please take Hector’s report.”

  Two minutes ter, Evelyn opened her eyes. “He says five days.”

  “That’s fast,” Hector said.

  Rahman took a piece of stationary with the hotel’s logo on it and began to write rapidly. “Not fast enough. Each level doubles the potency of the soul, but the expense to reach it increases at a factorial rate. Assuming your estimates are correct and your rate of cultivation remains constant, you could be level six in about as many months. It would take three years for you to reach level seven. Do you think a level six Xian is capable of destroying an invasion that can annihite the armed forces of every nation on Earth?”

  The question hit hard. Hector could only shake his head in denial.

  “It’s obvious that you will not save the entire pnet by yourself,” Professor Rahman said. “However, that might not be necessary. You said earlier that you gained an insight by seeing a transit sphere. One made by the famed Lord General himself.” The man leaned forward. “Hector, do you think it would be possible for you to travel to other universes?”

  Hector frowned in thought. His insight, while inspired by a transit sphere, didn’t seem directly reted to that application. “I don’t know.”

  “If you ever realize that you can, I want you to invite Evie to see your departure. Agreed?”

  Hector could already see where this was going. “I will.”

  Professor Rahman turned his attention to Evelyn. “You are looking for a mirrored sphere. Can you see Hector making one?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and muttered something to herself that sounded like ‘please let this be it’. A few moments ter, her eyes shot open. “He does!”

  Professor Rahman nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Then the path forward should be obvious to all. Hector needs to find one of the Coalition Armies and bring it back here in time to save Earth. I’m not sure how much strength is necessary to create a transit sphere, but you should not dey your departure. Your immediate priorities must be growing stronger and learning from your dream counterpart.”

  “So cultivating and sleeping. I can handle that.” Hector left the bed to perch on one of the cheap chairs. He reached out to chaos and drew in a stream of purified cosmic energy. He would achieve level three and then sleep to learn more lessons from Volithur.

  And, despite his concerns that he might be dipping into voyeurism, Hector wanted to experience being married to Khana.