NIKKO'S DREAM
A SHORT
STORY BY
JOE HUTSKO


         Copy right ©1999
           by Joe Hutsko


Ripped by: ????
Date : 02022001
Version : 0.90

In Taylors dream, he always wakes
before finding out what lies at the
heart of the matter..

It's the same every time. The
playground with its swings and ropes
and jungle gym, the rungs warm and
moist to the touch. Impossibly nestled
in a muggy forest. The spacecraft
never far from sight, its odd flesh-
tone surface perspiring in the sunny
clearing. The girl with the curious
brown hair, liquid brown eyes. Her
very pale palm pressing to his chest as
she leans in as though to kiss him. And
always, the screaming - first the
missiles as they arc across the sky,
then his own - signaling the end of the
dream and startling him awake with
his heart going crazy in his chest, his
hand instinctively flattening against it
as hers did, as if to keep it from
bursting through, always with a sense
that there, just beneath the surface.
lies the answer to the mystery, some
resolution to the recurring dream,
which has never played itself out
beyond the scream. He has never
kissed her.

The next morning it is always the
same too, the dream forgotten upon
waking. The hot shower doing nothing
to bring back the rainforest imagery.
No recollection as he slips into his
clothes, fumbles with his belt buckle,
and ties his shoes, the little task not
lengthy enough to bring out the
soreness in his hands from wringing
them so tightly in his sleep. He'll feel it
though, a bit later.

Not until he's outside and on his way
to work does the dream begin to bleed
back into his consciousness. He hears
hoarseness in his voice as he politely
orders a Cafe Americana at
Starbucks, and remembers his scream
hours earlier. Now there's the ache in
his hand when he accepts the cup, the
pain emanating from the grisly joint
between thumb and forefinger. The
container is unusually hot to the touch
despite the little protective cardboard
sleeve. He switches hands, only to feel
the same soreness and heat. He
recalls his hard grip on the jungle gym
rungs, hand over hand, his flesh
virtually searing, yet he never once
flinches or looks down, only ahead, to
the girl with strange brown hair, her
eyes warm... almost sad... never
letting go of his.
His throat is still scratchy when he
says good morning to his lab mates,
listens to idle retellings of weekend
barbecues, movies taken in, family
mishaps and inter-lab intrigues real or
imagined. No one ever asks much
about Taylor. It's not that they don't
care or aren't interested. It has more
to do with his way of always turning
attention away from himself. No one
gives it much thought. Not even
Taylor. It's just his way.
With morning pleasantries behind
them the lab settles into a quiet, if
temporary, state of preparation. Files
opened. Notes set out and flipped
through. Charts gone over and goals
taken into account. Fresh log sheets
torn off. Pens picked up and date filled
in here, employee's ID there, and in
the next column, subject's name.

Pausing before the last, Taylor sips
his coffee. The brew has cooled to the
point of being uninteresting, yet the
cup somehow still feels too warm in his
light, achy grasp. It's only his
imagination, he tells himself, without
realizing he is nevertheless blowing on
the already tepid coffee... maybe to
fan away the last threads of the
dream and its small and shaky hold on
his heart.

Which suddenly flutters, as if on
command.  It's happened before, and
he waits. Waits to see if it will do its
strange thing. Sometimes it does.
sometimes it doesn't. All around him
his coworkers are busy with their own
forms and files, none aware of what's
going on behind Taylor's ribcage. Or
so he believes.

Whenever  it happens he is
instinctively drawn to Time. His eyes
seek a watch or clock or anything with
seconds ticking off. Here in the lab it's
the enormous white-faced clock that
reminds him of grammar school
science class, the second hand
creeping along as he times the effects
of one reagent with or against
another. He follows the agonizingly
slow hand past five, ten... but not
twenty, he is relieved to discover. The
flutter abates; his heart resumes its
normal beat. Or what he figures is
normal. It's something he's been
meaning to find out with a check up.
He is in his late-twenties, lean, jogs a
few times a week, and is careful about
what he eats. He has no sex life,
which, he read somewhere, is
supposed to be good for the heart.
But he doubts that's the trouble. No,
he's pretty sure it's the caffeine in
the coffee, proving his self-diagnosis
by reading articles he's searched on
the Web by stringing together the
keywords "flutter and heart and
coffee."

It could be something very serious,
several of the articles caution. A
condition that, one abstract
described, caused a twenty-one-year-
old college basketball star to fall dead
in the middle of a game, a victim of
sudden heart failure. The
accompanying yearbook  photo
showed a seemingly healthy kid in
tank and shorts smiling under the
hoop of his dreams, a future so bright
both the NBA and Nike had their
collective eye on him. Taylor pictures
it slow-motion: Nabs the ball... face
excited... dribbles... ducks... then drops
dead. The autopsy revealed
stimulants, triggering the condition.
which, he'd learned, was a form of
arrhythmia known as
supraventricular tachicardia. There
are different types, different
degrees, but he never feels
interested enough to dig any deeper.
What he experiences, a little flutter
that can suddenly turn to 2OO or more
beats a minute, he stops by simply
bearing down, tensing and holding his
breath like he is really angry. He's had
it off and on since he was a kid and
since he knows how to end it he never
really gives it much thought, except
during another episode. When he was
little Coca-Cola was the trigger, not
coffee. Caffeine, just the same. Still,
he is a one-cup-a-day kind of guy, so
there can't be that much harm in it,
he tells himself. And that's all he thinks
on the matter.

Setting the empty cup aside he turns
his attention back to the form and, in
his precise, infinitesimally trembling
hand, neatly fills in the name of
today's subject: Nikko.

               ***
Nikko and his peer group spend most
of their time downstairs from Taylor
and his peers. Upstairs from Taylor
there are others still, however
because his rank is restricted to the
first and lower levels only, Taylor has
only a vague idea of who or what
occupies those higher floors. He
knows, for instance, there is
administration... an in-house medical
suite complete with pharmacy... and
advanced research and development,
this the most interesting to him, but
also the most mysterious. Oh he has
some idea of what's going on. The
occasional small slip overheard in
hushed exchanges. He has always
assumed the lab is funded by one arm
or another of Defense. And being
intelligent himself, he intuits that his
work, the things he works on at his
level and downstairs with Nikko, are
processed into components or
technologies that wind up in things
that eventually find their way higher
up the tree and almost certainly
beyond these sterile walls altogether,
into the real world. It's all very top
secret and it isn't his place to ask, so
he can only go on what he envisions.
He simply does his job, only
occasionally wondering if he'll ever
move  (or be moved) to some higher
level, in some new but impossible-to-
know role.
He isn't unhappy with his career, his
life, though it might seem so. Each day
working with Nikko is more or less the
same as it has been going on four
years now. He stops to give this a
moment  of thought. Was it four years
already? Before Nikko, Taylor's
memory  is not always clear. He knows
he's been at his job since college, but
it's only these last few years with
Nikko that Taylor feels any sense of
connectedness with his immediate
past and present. If he really let
himself run with it. Toy lor would
eventually realize that's when the
curtailed and recurring dream began:
when he met Nikko.

As for his future, he gives it little
thought. Taylor always takes things
one day at a time.

                ***
So does Nikko, Taylor likes to think,
but Nikko knows differently. Less
perhaps about his past - where he's
from, how he got here - and less still
about his future. But the future is at
the front of Nikko's mind, all of the
time, despite what Taylor jots down
on his clipboard. His vision of it is
abstract, tenuous. Nikko has no idea
what his future holds, knows he has no
hold over it himself, yet clings onto
the intangible hope that each day he
moves closer to it, an escape from
Taylor's grasp. Not that Taylor has
ever been hurtful, even remotely
cruel. Just that he holds all the cards,
deals the deck, the same way he's
always the one doing the shuffling and
turning over when they play the
occasional game of Concentration.
Abstractly, Nikko pictures his future
as a changing of hands of sorts, a
reversal of roles, where this time
around it's Nikko who provides the
guidance.

Indeed, time will tell, Nikko reflects as
he watches the second hand crawl
around the clock face, counting its
cycles as it escorts the big hand to the
point where Taylor will come in and
they'll begin a new day together. He
shifts to a more comfortable position,
rearranging the durable, sensor cord
trailing from the base of his spine to
the wall outlet, and waits.

Soon, Nikko thinks, very soon.

               ***
At 9:28 Taylor and his lab mates
quietly rise from their workstations
and file as one down the long white
corridor to the deep elevator that's
always waiting for them. They board
and turn about-face, clipboards to
chests beneath folded arms,
schoolgirl-like, for the one-story
descent. The doors slide closed silently.

"They say it's supposed to stay sunny
like this all week," someone point outs
to no one in particular, and Taylor's
thoughts return fleetingly to his
dream again, the jungle gym rungs in
his grasp burning hot in his mind until a
synthetic voice announces they've
reached the lower level.

                ***
Nikko turns his gaze from the second
hand when it moves past 12 and
ushers Taylor into the room. A soft
buzzing sound quits when the door
clicks shut. It's simple little things like
this that Nikko doesn't really
understand, but are so familiar
they're now second nature.
Spontaneous. In time, he thinks again,
as he rises up to greet Taylor.

"Good morning, Nikko," the scientist
says, unlocking the cage.
Goadmornmg,   ToyA?r, Nikko thinks to
say, but knows he can't. He moves his
lips anyway, pretending the words
come out as he gladly lifts his arms
and lets Taylor hoist him up and carry
him over to the sitting area, ever
mindful not to tangle the sensor cord.

For a few beats Nikko feels his own
heart pulsing against Taylor's, and for
the first time he believes he loves the
scientist. He holds on tight as a small
icicle of dread stabs into the good
feeling, a gloomy sense that
something is about to change between
them. Something not good.
                ***

It's the flutter again, in Taylor's heart.

Setting Nikko on his elevated stool
Taylor touches his fingertips to his
chest and, before glancing at the
clock, interprets what could pass for
concern, possibly alarm, in the
chimpanzee's soulful eyes.

He counts down the seconds, waits, his
heart drumming  away beneath his
slightly quavering touch. Out the
corner of his eye he sees Nikko
imitate him exactly; fingertips to
downy breast, eyes on the clock.
Together, they wait.

And wait. But this time Taylor's
arrhythmia keeps going, despite his
effort to stop it the way he usually
does, holding his breath and bearing
down.

A full minute passes and Taylor's
heart is still running wild. He is more
concerned for Nikko's delicate
perception of what's happening than
his own physical condition. He lets out
a long breath and draws in a deeper
one, holds it, Nikko mimicking his
every act.

Another thirty seconds, and still
Taylor's heart beats extraordinarily
fast. It's no use. The technique that
usually sets things right has no effect.
Nikko, whipping his head side to side.
seems to agree.

"Give me a minute, Nikko," Taylor
says, reaching for the chimp to return
him to his cage.

They both jump at the unexpected
buzzing sound and turn to see two
unfamiliar men dressed in lab coats
enter the room. Both wear latex
gloves, protective eyewear, germ
masks.
"It's my heart," Taylor says vaguely.

"And his," one of them says pensively,
petting Nikko's back.

Taylor doesn't understand, tries to
form his thoughts. It's not until the
other man is helping Nikko back in his
cage, unintentionally snagging the
sensor cord and causing the
chimpanzee to yip, that Taylor
comprehends. They're from upstairs.
The ones monitoring Nikko. His vitals.
His heart. Nikko's heart.

His vision begins to tunnel and
darken... knees go mushy as he
swoons and is gratefully caught in
unfamiliar arms, led gently but
steadfastly from the room. Nikko
watches with pale palms pressed to his
cage, not once taking his eyes from
Taylor's as the needle sticks his arm
and everything goes away for a while.

               ***
When he wakes he believes he is
coming out of a dream. His first
instinct is to feel for his heart rate,
however when he tries to move his
hand he can't. He is bound, each wrist,
torso, legs. He can move his head,
though. Groggily, he tries to make
sense of what is happening.

He is flat on his back. Scientists he has
never seen before, wearing lab coats
bearing the tiny SimiCom logo over
the breast pocket just like the one on
his own company-issued coat, bustle
around him. The room is all stark
white and shiny stainless steel,
intense lights aimed down on him. It is
a procedure room, and he is the
center of attention.

"He's coming to," one of them says
thickly, or maybe that's just how it
sounds to Taylor's ears. He blinks,
snaps his head side to side in an effort
to clear his mind.
"Just relax," another says, moving in
to scrutinize before quietly
instructing still another of the masked
personnel. Softly: "Give him a few cc's
more, he's a little too present."

No, Taylor struggles to protest, but
his mouth is too dry to make any
sound. A moment later he feels a
warm stream  gush into the artery at
the crook of his right arm. It frightens
him for an instant but then feels too
agreeable to object or deny. He
forgets what he was going to say as
the tension drains from his straining
neck, eyes lazily wander, absorb his
surroundings, only half-grasping what
he sees and hears.

"And he was doing so well," a voice
says.

"They both were," another puts in,
almost wistfully.

Rolling his head to the left Taylor is
mildly troubled to see Nikko, pinned
down on a smaller table and looking at
him in the very same way.

"Nikko," someone calls out, possibly
Taylor, and the chimpanzee's own lips
move, mimicking. Nikko's eyes are
shining. Seeing them, Taylor is
suddenly aware of the tears leaking
down the side of his own face and
puddling on the hard cold table against
his cheek.
"We always knew he was a risk. From
his file. The arrhythmia first reported
at age seven, grammar school gym
class."

Yes, Taylor silently agrees, that is
correct. They are talking about him as
though he isn't there, but he doesn't
mind. Perhaps they will tell him more
about himself that he doesn't know or
has forgotten.

Nikko blinks, and Taylor blinks back.
asserting their invisible bond.

"Ready to start the dreaming?" a
voice behind him inquires.

"Let's," the one closest answers.

Again, Taylor silently agrees.

Taylor dreams.

               ***
But this time the dream is different,
as though he's both in it and watching
it from outside, at the same time. He
still sees Nikko lying there next to
him, but his eyes are now closed. It's
as if the dream plays in a layer over
his real vision, yet at only half-
resolution, giving double-vision into
two worlds at once. Two versions.

An echoing voice issues orders,
dosages.
Another reports the patient is
responding.

Taylor's heart responds. It quickens.
And with it, the dream moves faster,
clearer, a bit sharper, into focus.

He isn't sure, but he believes they've
freed his left hand, allowing it to move
about. Unbound or not he sees what
looks to be his left hand reach across
to the close-lidded Nikko... and at the
same time a door manifests itself in
the side of the dreamy spacecraft,
which lies in the bright clearing like a
tired mound of flesh. Its thicker,
pointed pink peak glistens wetly in the
hot sun. Beads of condensation gather
and stream in runnels down its side,
painting shiny streaks across the
SimiCom logo affixed to the hatch.

He is unaware as the scalpel slices
easily into his chest. There is no pain,
only a vague dragging sensation that
isn't altogether unpleasant. It's almost
comforting.

With a small heave the dream-door
presses outward and away from the
ship, just as the surgeon separates
the rectangular flap of flesh from
Taylor's chest.

Taylor sees himself inside the
doorway of the strange craft, hands
pressing against an unseen force-
field. He is sealed inside, but only for a
moment  - an instant later a series of
tiny explosions at each corner trigger
the invisible hindrance to break free.

In Taylor's sternum, four miniature,
strategically placed explosions
separate a section of rib and muscle
and fiber from the surrounding
structure, the square coming away as
cleanly as it did four years earlier.
The porthole is open, Taylor's
vulnerable heart exposed.

Taylor sees himself leap from the
opening to the jungle floor.

He runs.

               ***

And runs, until he reaches his private
little playground, always waiting for
him. And, as always, the girl. There, on
the other side of the timeworn jungle
gym  he now recognizes from his
childhood. Grammar school.
Gazing across the short divide that
separates them, the girl extends her
tan arms, but she does not climb on.
She stares at him with quietly
pleading eyes, waiting. Her hair is
curiously short, shorter than any
girl's he has ever seen. He doesn't
know her but he recognizes her,
perhaps from the familiarity of the
dream, or maybe from real life. He
can't possibly discern what's real or
imagined anymore, nor will he ever
again.
The hot muggy jungle heat presses
down on him and his heart beats
harder. What is different this time
suddenly comes to him: He is naked.
He may have been all those other
times, just not aware the way he is
now, as perspiration drains down his
body, causing him to almost slip off
the first hot step as he sets his sole on
it. He climbs onto the jungle gym and
reaches out for the first rung, his
heart speeding faster the instant he
has the familiar hot metal in his
certain grip.

He swings out easily, hanging in space
for a moment, never looking down,
only into the girl's eyes. There are
rumbling sounds around him, possibly
a thunder storm on its way, maybe
voices. He doesn't care.

His free hand finds the next rung and
his heart speeds more quickly.
Children's voices, playground
screeches, tropical birds and
somewhere, a waterfall. He feels the
need to urinate and so he does,
unworried. He swings again, the next
rung, his heart beating faster and
faster as he makes his way across the
void, closer to the girl.

Who, the nearer he gets, changes
before his eyes. Becomes less
distinctly a girl. Oddly more familiar.
Her short brown hair, as he moves still
another rung closer, thickens, spreads
like maple syrup down the sides of her
head... to her shoulders... her upper
arms. Another rung, and the soft fur
oozes down her body, covers her from
head to toe, features shifting,
growing older, ancient,
breathtakingly beautiful, making his
heart race so fast he can no longer
distinguish the space between the
beats.

He is almost there, two more rungs.

               ***
In the procedure room they work
quickly, these last few minutes critical
to their research now that the
subject's course has deviated from its
hypothesized track. They're making
the best of it, allowing it to play itself
out, keeping the subject close enough
to consciousness to reasonably
understand, but far enough from the
pain coupled with having his chest
ripped opened, heart laid bare before
it succumbs to cardiac arrest.
               ***

On the other table Nikko's heart
beats with equal intensity, excited
but safely protected beneath warm
flesh, unbroken rib cage.

The only alien invasion into Nikko's
body is the flexible cable that
protrudes from the base of his spine
and through a gap in the table. It
snakes across the floor and runs up
the side of Taylor's table, through a
similar hole, into a port reopened at
the base of his spine, not unlike
Nikko's. The primary difference is
where it connects. In Taylor's version
it's at the very base of the lower
back, the site of the LS disc - the one
anthropologists report is no longer of
use to humans. It is only a matter of
time and endurance before the piece
is evolutionary purged. The same
way the tail grew shorter and shorter
over millions of years until,
eventually, it vanished.
               ***

He is almost there, one rung to go.

He reaches easily and feels the warm
air lick his sweating body as his foot
alights on the other side. It's the same
as always only now... the girl is no
longer a girl.

Her brown eyes are as primitive as all
he could ever learn, blanched palm
and elongated fingers and prominent
thumb, as she reaches to him, fusing
the most beautiful sequence of
motion he has ever beheld.

When she flattens her palm against
his chest his heart explodes with love.
He is no longer breathing but it does
not matter. His smile is changing
shape as their heads move closer, her
dry lips inviting.

Outside his conscious his heart
arrests. Mere seconds are left in his
life as knobs are turned, commands
are issued, the last sequence is
play ing itself out.

               ***
Gazing down he sees his heart swelling
in his chest, a thick scarlet balloon
filling with air. The others in the room
step away from the table. It is a
dream, his dream, but it isn't. He
knows it is almost over as he looks one
last time at Nikko, who stares back at
him through closed lids, lips pursed.

He feels an abrupt shift in his chest
and watches in awe as his ruined heart
stretches out of the porthole...
stretches... and finally, bursts,
sending a mushroom cloud of blood in
all directions.

He hears the screaming and his mouth
drops open to object. He does not
want to scream because then it will
end...
This time he does not scream. It's only
the missiles screaming as they cut
across the sky. The missiles bearing
the SimiCom logo. Guided so smartly
by SimiCom intelligence.

Yes, he beams, determining his small
part in the impossibly bigger picture
as he watches the thing that
destroyed his heart rise from its foul
place and flex its tiny shoulders. It
shines dully under the hot brightness,
sinewy, synthetic, yet so
painstakingly articulated it gives the
impression of genuine aliveness. A tiny
animal, but no mammal ever
conceived by nature. Slowly it turns to
face its dying host. A tiny cybernetic
duplicate of Nikko, minus the fur. And
minus the eyes, which it has no use
for. Instead, two spots, like dry lentils,
with none of Nikko's compassion in
them as it scurries up Taylor's neck,
trailing a thin fibrous cord behind it.

It stops before Taylor's chin, places
its perfect little hands on either side
of Taylor'slips.

The kiss, at last.

The brief intimacy unleashes a flash
of images in Taylor's nearly expired
brain, filling in the few remaining
blanks: The jungle gym from
childhood... Letting go when his heart
suddenly starts beating crazy... Falling
to his knees, bloody... The school
nurse... The emergency room... Sticky
sensors on his chest and bleeping
noises... Assurances that the rare
defect isn't life-threatening... Never
thinking much about it... College...
Swimming... Running... Career day...
SimiCom... The lab... The
experiments... The procedure...then
Nikko in his life... Then his life before
Nikko almost non-existent. After
Nikko, the dream...

All of this Taylor perceives in just
milliseconds as the creature that no
longer has any use for him reaches
over and lifts up a scalpel. Rising to its
full height of six inches it bares
pinpoint teeth and raises the
instrument over its head.

Mimicking the creature exactly
Taylor bares his own teeth, without
malice, unafraid, the corners of his
curling up at the edges.

A searing glint of light flashes as the
creature whirls the scalpel in a perfect
arc, past Taylor's face and around to
its own small backside, slicing through
the thin cord that binds them
together.

As his unblinking eyes go as calm and
flat as the tiny lifeless beads staring
back at him, Taylor finally
understands. It was never his dream,
but Nikko's. Nikko's dream.

At last, he is free.


About  the Author

Joe Hutsko joined Apple Computer in
1984 at the age of twenty, and a year
later was made former chairman John
Sculley's personal technical adviser.
After leaving Apple in 1988, Hutsko
worked as an adviser and writer for
several high-tech companies, including
A.C. Nielsen and Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs's NeXT Computer, Inc.,
before it was acquired by Apple. He
has written for The New York Times,