Dreamer's World

In a future where humanity has chosen permanent anesthesia to avoid conflict, citizens spend their lives drifting through engineered dreams. Greg, a Stage‑Five practitioner of the Dream Continuity Scale, has spent years mastering the art of thalamic introjection, his waking hours reduced to sterile, drab reality. The society’s ruling Cowls enforce this sleepy stability, promising peace at the cost of true experience.

When a desperate call comes from Pat Nichols, a former colleague who has fled to join a renegade group of Venusian colonists, Greg is thrust into the only real world he has ever known. She warns that she will launch a one‑way trip to Venus, leaving behind the comforting haze of anesthesia. Driven by fear and affection, Greg races against time to locate her, confronting the unsettling prospect of physical action in a culture that has long outlawed it.