Page 37 of The Dream Hotel
B ut we weren’t friends, Sara thinks. If anything, Eisley Richardson had been increasingly hostile as her retention period was coming to an end, finding ways to justify everyone else’s repeated extensions. The conversation during her last night at Madison had been especially contentious; she was leaving the next day and was confident in the system. How strange that she’s writing to Sara now. And not just one message, but four. What explains the sudden interest, the needless expense?
Perhaps it’s survivor’s guilt. Now that she’s safe at home, surrounded by family and friends, she’s starting to cope with the distress and isolation that her retention forced on her, and realizing how lucky she has been to get out. She’s trying to make amends for her past behavior. Fine, Sara thinks. And she’ll take the commissary funds, she’s not too proud for that. She needs all the help she can get with her debts, and maybe in a few weeks she can afford shampoo again. She jots down a quick thank-you note and, with an eye on the clock, logs out before PostPal charges her for another thirty minutes of usage.
She ponders all this as she heads to the clothing office (no clean uniforms, come back tomorrow) and from there to the library, where she wanders the stacks. The charitable association that provides books to Madison has sent a fresh batch of GED study guides, a series of horror novels that were popular three decades ago, and a complete set of Penguin Classics recycled by a shuttered college in Vermont. Sara pulls out Jane Eyre from the shelf and reads until a seat at one of the computer stations opens up.
The Los Angeles Times is still covering the damage that the Perris fire has caused across two counties in Southern California, though the news is relegated below the fold, as most of the front page is taken up with a poultry inventory problem that started when two plants in Minnesota shut down over meat-safety concerns this summer, and cascaded into a turkey shortage that will affect Californians in the coming holiday season.
She clicks over to the national page, where she is greeted by news about James Wesley, who has formed an exploratory committee to decide if he should run for a U.S. Senate seat. In the photograph that accompanies the article, Wesley is shown stepping off a private plane, with his arm at his fiancée’s back, leading her toward a waiting black limousine. He smiles at the photographer, his eyes faintly visible behind sunglasses, trying to project the confidence that his hoped-for job demands. She hates everything about this man, and especially the fact that he belongs to the exempt class: whatever crime or injustice is revealed to happen under his watch, he won’t suffer any consequences.
Her thoughts flit back to the messages she received this morning. Eisley is a far better person than me, she thinks. If I’d gotten out in twenty-one days, I’d have put this place behind me, moved on with my life. And I wouldn’t be writing to people I barely knew. Maybe she was drunk? That would explain the typos, the chummy tone, that name she signed with.
Sara opens a new window. A search for “Eisley Richardson” returns two million results, a remarkably small set these days, but far too large to be of any use to her. She narrows the search to California, and gets a hundred thousand hits. Better, she thinks. There’s an audiologist in Sacramento named Eisley Richardson, and a math teacher in Torrance, and a horse breeder in the Central Valley.
When she adds the name “Julie” the search narrows to just three hundred results, all for a teenager who died in a boat-racing accident twenty-five years ago. There’s a picture of her in one of the newspapers, but she’s a redhead with green eyes, she looks nothing like the Eisley Richardson that Sara knows. She scrolls idly through the article, reading about this young girl whose competitive spirit led her to take enormous risks with her life. There’s another picture of her further down the article, this time with her best friend, whom the caption identifies as Julie Renstrom. There must be a mistake, because this Julie Renstrom looks exactly like the retainee who was released from here a couple of weeks ago.
Sara enters the name “Julie Renstrom” into the search.
All at once she has the curious sensation of being back in her childhood home, playing under the magnolia tree with Zach and Sa?d. Every time she calls “Marco,” Zach replies, “Polo,” but no matter how quickly she turns in his direction, she can never tag him; he’s too stealthy. Sa?d has no guile, though, and the moment he responds “Polo,” she grabs his wrist. “You’re it!” she says, delight raising her voice nearly to a scream. Now she can remove the blindfold from her eyes.
For a moment the world is blurry, and then it reveals itself to her with shocking clarity.
That is how she feels now as she rushes, breathless, out of the library. So many details take on another meaning: Julie Renstrom’s arrival during off-hours; her assignment to 258, next to the emergency exit in the back; how quickly she fell in step with the general routine; how eager she was to ask the other retainees questions about their lives.
But why did DI send Julie to the retention center? It can’t have anything to do with the hardware; the devices are checked every morning, and she wouldn’t need to assume a false identity if she were only investigating a problem with the implant. It has to be a software issue, Sara thinks as she ascends the stairs.
But the company already has their dreams, so what do they want?
They want more, is what she can guess, more than collecting and storing and weighing and interpreting the dreams of every person who has ever used a Dreamsaver. The only way to increase profit continually is to extract more from the same resources.
Toya is still curled up on her cot when Sara arrives in her room. “I need to talk to you,” she says.