"And then he made the coins go back into the pouch!" Jenny explained with a guilty face.
"Also, I think he might be addicted to cigarettes and lying about it…"
It was lunchtime, and Jenny was explaining her dream to Saturn and Plural, in a park close to the office. Jenny was lying on her back, looking at the clouds. The other two were sitting and eating their sandwiches.
"You remember all of that?" Saturn asked.
Jenny nodded.
"I never remember anything about my dreams," Plural said.
"Same," Saturn added.
Jenny grabbed her phone and searched for a certain figure's online encyclopedia page, then handed the phone to Saturn.
"Nyar… Lat… Ho… Tep…" Saturn mumbled.
"He was in my dream, too! Looking exactly like that!" Jenny said, referring to the picture featured on the page, which was identical to the way He was represented on the pyramid base.
"I'd never even seen that before!"
Saturn looked at the picture and tilted the phone towards Plural so she could see too.
"So what?" Plural asked skeptically.
"Isn't it weird that I'd dream something up before seeing it for real?" Jenny asked.
"I don't know… If anyone could do that, it'd be you," Saturn said.
Jenny took her eyes back to the clouds and wondered if maybe she had in fact seen the picture before and just forgot about it.
"You gonna dream again tonight? Can you do it at will?" Plural asked.
"I don't know… It hasn't happened every night…" Jenny responded.
"How long do they last?" Plural asked.
"All night… Last time I was pulled out of it by my alarm," Jenny responded.
That's right. She didn't get to say goodbye to her dream companion before being brought back to her bedroom by her internal alarm clock. Jenny wondered what would happen if that didn't go off.
"I wonder if the next one continues where I left off…"
"Whatever happens, you probably shouldn't pick a fight with this guy," Saturn said, still reading the page.
"Or do, it's just a dream," Plural said.
Jenny thought about the implications of what Plural just said. It's just a dream, so it doesn't matter if she gets herself killed.
"Have you guys ever… died… in a dream?" Jenny asked the two.
Saturn and Plural looked at each other for a second before Plural spoke up.
"Sometimes I fall to my death, but I wake up before I hit the ground."
"Yeah, I guess so," Saturn added.
Jenny wondered if the same applied to her. Something in the back of her mind considered whether she was having the same kinds of dreams as everybody else, or there was something just a bit more real about them. If she were to believe everything Top Moments said at face value, that meant the dreamlands really existed and she popped into existence there whenever she dreamt. But even if that were true, she doubted her real body disappeared each time. That was something her friends could verify, if it ever came to that.
She was prodded out of her thoughts by Saturn's finger poking her cheek. He was lying down in the grass next to her and smiled at her. Jenny tilted her head to face him, pushing her own cheek back into his fingertip in the process.
"You're worrying. I can tell," he said.
"Oh…" Jenny said blushingly.
"You should enjoy your dreams. Especially if you know you're dreaming when you're in them," Plural added.
That was another good point. Most people aren't aware that they're dreaming, and they generally forget about them. Jenny, however, immediately noticed something was off about the strange dreamlands and concluded she must've been dreaming. That technically made her a lucid dreamer, even though she didn't feel like she was able to control anything about her dream state at all. She made a mental note to try that again next time.
♦
That night, Jenny lay on her bed again, plugged in, ready to enter hibernation mode.
But she was nervous about it. After all, the hearing about the Dark Jenny incident was tomorrow morning. She wanted desperately for it to go smoothly. To make sure her friends didn't have to deal with any additional backlash for, well, being her friends. Jenny had already explained to them how the hearings normally went, and they'd rehearsed their stories to make sure their accounts were consistent.
Could she afford to dream tonight? And risk sleeping through her alarm?
Then again, she hadn't been able to dream for the past couple of nights. Maybe it wouldn't happen tonight, either. In fact, maybe she wasn't ever going to have another dream again.
Alternatively, she could just fly around all night, but doing that always left her in a bit of a silly state, even if her state of charge was high enough.
No. Everything was fine. It's like Plural said, she should enjoy her dreams.
Jenny wanted to take her sock puppet buddy on a dream-quest. Go on a fun adventure in a world where she didn't have to worry about anything. In fact, maybe she'd steal some more cigarettes from some shady merchant. Something she'd never dare do in real life.
Jenny closed her eyes and prepared to enter hibernation mode.
Three.
Two.
One.
…
♦
And that was it. The diamond symbol above this line suggested Jenny should open her eyes again.
When she did, she saw a dark sky with floating debris in the distance. She woke up lying on the grass and immediately sprung up into a sitting position with a smile. Her alarm spun again. She snoozed it.
Looking around, she was not where she last left off. If her memories were correct, that was by the statues on the mainland. This place was…
"The prologue island…" Jenny mumbled to herself.
She appeared to be in the exact same spot where she started her dream last time, except it was nighttime now. When she examined her own body, she found she wasn't in possession of the cloak and wooden sword anymore, either. Jenny took to the sky and hurried to the nearby location where she freed Top Moments the first time.
But instead of finding the creature there, she only found the unbound shackles. Exactly the way she left them. This fact, and the fact that it was night, suggested the state of the world was not reset. That meant she could find her companion right where she left off. In that plaza by the statue.
Jenny flew off in the direction of the mainland at much higher speed than last time and made it there in no time.
When she did, she made a sliding landing across the plaza, stumbling at the end and almost losing her balance, then firmly put her foot down and enthusiastically pointed at the creature she was hoping to find.
"Found you!"
Top Moments was there, still floating around the statues. He turned to her in confusion.
"I didn't go anywhere…" he said.
Jenny excitedly ran over to him.
"You waited for me here all this time?" she asked.
"Yes," he said as he spun around.
"The whole minute you were gone."
Jenny gave him a look of surprise, then made a thinking face.
"Interesting…"
Top Moments stopped his spinning and approached her.
"You went back to your world?" he asked.
"Uhuh. For like a week," Jenny said.
"Fascinating," Top Moments said.
"From my perspective, you disappeared into thin air a minute ago."
Jenny walked over to the spot she'd presumably disappeared at. The cloak and wooden sword were right there on the ground. Jenny equipped them once again.
It was safe to conclude that time effectively stopped here when she left. But if the dreamlands really existed, then how could more than one dreamer exist at the same time? Jenny was deep in thought, trying to reason about how the dream and her own world interacted with each other.
"Jenny? Hello? Are you broken?" Top Moments asked while bumping her head.
"All is relative…" Jenny mumbled.
Jenny looked at the statues again. On second viewing, that depiction of Nyarlathotep matched the online drawing from the real world meticulously. She was doubting herself now. Did it look the exact same before? Or did she change it in her head to match closer now that she'd seen the image?
She recalled the thoughts she'd had about lucid dreaming before and tried to change the way the statue looked with her mind.
…
Maybe that was too weird and she couldn't imagine it happening. What about a lightning strike instead?
…
"What are you doing?" Top Moments asked her.
Jenny was making a strained face at the statue.
"I don't think I'm a Great One," Jenny replied with a cryptic answer.
"I think you are broken…" Top Moments said.
♦
Jenny sat down on the ground, looking deeply focused with her tongue slightly poking out of her mouth. She was drawing in a notebook she'd "purchased" from the market. Top Moments was pleasantly surprised at the change of heart, which was extremely sudden from his perspective.
She did not take long to finish her drawing and flipped the book around to show him a detailed drawing of a city, covering two pages of the book side by side. It was… good… Jenny didn't even spend fifteen seconds on the drawing, but it looked like someone had taken fifteen hours on it instead.
"I don't uh…" Top Moments stuttered.
"…goodness…"
Jenny moved her head next to the book, which she was holding at the seam, to check if she wasn't accidentally showing him two blank pages.
"Recognize it?" Jenny asked him.
Top Moments moved closer to the book to check it out. It was hard to think about the answer to her question without getting lost in the immaculate details of the piece.
"Is this in a cave?" he asked.
"Yep! And this is a theater!" she said, pointing her finger to the building that was aesthetically framed to be in the exact center of the drawing.
"Why would all this be underground?" he asked in response.
Jenny gave him a disappointed frown.
"Guess you don't recognize it, then…"
She turned the book back to look at the drawing herself.
"No… I don't…" Top Moments said as he flew around to Jenny's side.
"Why do you want to know? Are you saying you drew this from memory?"
"Uhuh," Jenny nodded.
Top Moments turned to look at Jenny's expression, to see if she was joking.
"My first dream was here. This is what I saw when I flew into the air," Jenny said, still looking at the drawing.
"And you still remember every little detail?" Top Moments asked.
"I have all my memories saved. Kinda like a…" Jenny said and turned to look at her low-tech companion.
"…like a picture book"
Top Moments tilted himself to the side.
"Like a film?"
"Right!" Jenny said as she closed the book.
"Like a film."
Jenny stood up again.
"That quest I said I wanted to go on?"
"I wanna find this city!" she said.
"Are you in?"
Jenny raised her fist at him.
"Quite the task," Top Moments replied as he bumped his head into her fist.
"Where do we even begin?"
♦
Jenny had never looked more out of place than here in the tavern. It wasn't extremely busy, so the pair attracted some attention when they entered. At least most patrons were human, like everywhere else on the mainland.
Jenny did not hesitate to start asking around with surprising bravado. Her body language had a level of confidence to it that made her look even more out of place. After all, she looked like she'd order a glass of milk at the bar.
Top Moments was still floating near the entrance as Jenny looked back at him and shook her head to indicate the first person she asked didn't know anything. She tried another table and pulled up the book again, pointing at the drawing. The patron said something to her that Top Moments couldn't hear, but his facial expression said enough.
The bartender had been eyeing Jenny ever since they entered, and he looked pleased when she finally approached him to ask him the same question. Top Moments joined her at the bar.
"Rings a bell, yeah," the bartender said as he clicked his tongue.
He looked like he was probably the owner of the place.
"But whaddaya got for my trouble?" he asked Jenny.
Jenny looked at Top Moments this time and didn't seem like she'd prepared for this scenario. She was right to turn to him, because he always had his good old trick that never failed him. Top Moments ducked under the bar, so the owner could no longer see him. Then, he transformed into coins and flew back onto the counter. Jenny looked at the spectacle and caught on pretty fast.
"Y-You're lucky I'm feeling generous today!" she said with a seductive look in her eyes.
The owner looked at the coins, then back at Jenny, and he did not look impressed.
"Not interested in that…" he said, looking at Jenny with dreamy eyes.
"W-What then?" Jenny asked worriedly.
The owner couldn't make his gaze towards Jenny any clearer.
"Don't get too many cuties like you in here…" he said.
Say no more! Top Moments knew exactly what to do.
Coins-Moments floated back down under the bar and transformed into a pillow instead. Jenny looked down at him with a confused look, until he used his pillow-self to bump into her stool, signaling her to come down with him.
When she did, Jenny examined the pillow, which was slightly taller and slightly wider than she was. Her face turned into shock when she flipped it around and saw what was depicted on the front. It was her. A life size, seductive Jenny giving the observer a blow kiss.
"Are you serious!?" she whisper-yelled at him.
"What? This is perfect! Did I get anything wrong?" body pillow-Moments replied.
"I-" Jenny didn't finish her sentence and instead examined the pillow's print up close. Her eyes were wide and she was so close her eyeball may as well have been touching it.
"No…" Jenny replied.
"I've seen these at the market! Give it to him and he will fold!" body pillow-Moments replied.
Jenny looked red and embarrassed. Top Moments didn't really understand why.
"What's the matter? Humans do these things all the time!" body pillow-Moments said.
"I… I'm not…" an embarrassed Jenny tried to argue.
"This is never gonna work…" Jenny whispered.
Nevertheless, she took the pillow with both arms and popped up from under the bar again. The owner was patiently waiting with his arms crossed. He chuckled when he saw Jenny holding the comically oversized pillow that was larger than herself. Once again, both she and the pillow looked massively out of place here.
"I'm sorry… You're not my type… Please accept this!" Jenny said as she placed the pillow on the bar counter.
The owner maintained his composure relatively well, but one could tell he'd never seen anybody do this before. He had a look of surprise on him, perhaps at the sudden appearance of this enormous object from underneath the bar, or maybe at the contents of the print. He appeared to be unaware that the coins or pillow were not real.
"Wow…"
"You… Carry these around with you?" he asked Jenny.
One of the patrons that was sitting closest to the bar started laughing, causing some others to do the same. One by one everybody in the tavern came to look at what just happened and started laughing. They appeared to be laughing at the owner, not at Jenny.
"Still have room on your bed for another?" one patron jokingly asked him.
"Not her type! Nicest thing a woman's ever said to you!"
One of the patrons who'd stepped towards the bar to look at the print on the pillow, saw the drawing on the bar and grabbed the book to take a closer look at it.
"You drew this, little lass? You've actually visited the tunnel cities?"
The owner rolled his eyes and gave the patron who'd apparently spilled the beans he was holding onto an annoyed look. Jenny forgot all about the pillow and stepped towards the man who gave her a new clue. Top Moments also immediately undid his transformation and joined Jenny in his normal form.
Upon seeing this, the owner gestured his hands as if he was asking the universe if he was being pranked by everyone present.
"No! But I wanna! Do you know where they are?" Jenny excitedly asked.
"Oh, well… I'm not sure if anyone knows. They're just stories. This guy'll tell you," the patron said, nodding at the owner.
The owner was giving the patron a tired look, his mouth slightly open and his tongue poking his cheek.
"Yeah…" the owner said in response.
He turned to Jenny and Top Moments, and ping-ponged his eyes between the two, then looked at the drawing one more time.
"It's good," he said.
"That act just now was uh…"
He held up his hand and gave them a confused look.
"Are you two performers?"
Jenny turned to him and gave him a smug grin.
"Whaddaya got for my trouble?"
The owner chuckled at her. Some patrons at the bar laughed.
"That's good," the owner said.
He slid the book closer to take a better look at the drawing.
"I don't really care… but…"
"It's said that a tunnel exists between the core of the world and the surface, lined with cities like this one here."
He flipped the drawing around so Jenny could see it the correct way up.
"It's like the man said, they're stories. Nobody knows where it is. I don't really think they're real."
Jenny looked disheartened.
"Besides," the owner continued.
"I doubt you'll find anyone- or anything friendly in a place like that," he said as he tapped the drawing.
"That I agree with," Top Moments said.
"Uhuh…" the owner said dismissively.
He stared at Jenny as she looked at the drawing, looking focused.
"You really are beautiful…" he said to Jenny.
"Let me offer you a drink on the house."
Jenny looked at him with a conflicted look, like she didn't know how to deal with this situation.
"T-Thanks… But I can't drink… I'm a robot…"
A screeching laugh came from one of the patrons. The owner swallowed, looking unsure if he believed Jenny at face value.
"That's nice," he said.
"Thanks for the information! I'm sorry I couldn't offer you anything meaningful," Jenny said with a guilty look.
The owner leaned forward with his elbows on the bar and gestured with his finger for Jenny to lean closer.
"Tell you what…"
He spoke into Jenny's ear so no one else could hear.
"You ever find that tunnel… draw me a map, okay?"
Jenny retreated to the bar stool again and gave him a thumbs up and an excited smile. The owner gave her a thumbs up and an exaggerated smile back.