True Believers Prologue

Prologue

ONE NIGHT A. C. HAD A DREAM, AND HIS FRIENDS HAD THE SAME DREAM.

Anders woke up to see that he was in some sort of big dim room, with lights somewhere up above him which he couldn't make out because of this strange light fog floating around him. He tried to explore, curious, only to hear someone calling him. The voice was familiar. But no matter how hard he looked it seemed he was getting nowhere. The fog was growing thinner and the lights brighter, making it hard to see. A loud thrumming noise filled his head as he looked. It grew louder and louder until it hurt, and just as he thought he was going to go deaf or crazy he entered another room and saw a long metallic table surrounded by small figures beckoning to him.

That's when he really woke up.

The room was dark. He looked around him, just barely able to make out another bed in the dim moonlight coming in through the window beside him. The figure in the bed was still. Letting out his breath, which he realized he must have been holding for quite some time, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, going over to the dresser. There was a pitcher of water there if either of them got thirsty during the night so they wouldn't have to walk down to the dorm bathroom, and he poured some into a glass and splashed it on his face, then looked into the mirror.

He looked fine, just tired. But he couldn't say the same for the strange figures behind him, still beckoning.

A gasp, and a pain in his head; stars danced before his eyes. Someone was shaking his shoulder. A voice, the same voice he'd heard in his first dream, was calling his name.

"Anders! Hey, A. C.! Wake up! Are you okay? Wake up!"

Anders slowly came to, blinking and looking around him in a daze. His roommate, Dino Garris, was looking down at him, eyes wide.

"A. C.! Are you all right? You were just thrashing away there and then you fell out of bed. How's your head? You hit it on the nightstand."

Anders sat up, rubbing his forehead. There was a small cut, nothing else. But still it pounded as if the thrumming noise were still there. "Was I having a dream?"

"It sounded more like a nightmare," Dino replied, helping him up. "It took me forever to get you up. You were saying something. I think it was my name. But there was something else."

Anders sat down on the edge of his bed, now massaging his neck. "What was it? Could you tell?"

"I really don't know. It was funny, y'know? It was a name, but it didn't sound like anybody I knew. Something about Rose or Rosie or something. You were shouting it like you were asking somebody and you couldn't hear what they were saying. I can't really say. Hey, are you okay? What were you dreaming about, anyway?"

Anders opened his mouth to tell him, but found to his surprise that he had absolutely no recollection of what he'd dreamt.

And about two dozen others in the college were having the same problem. [Note--I never do go into all the others having the same experience; it's probably not THAT many.]