Chapter 1

I was a misfit by temperament, a misanthrope by experience, and a parasite by choice. As such, I preferred to keep a healthy cushion of funds between me and the rest of the world. Things ran so much smoother that way, and liquid assets improved my sense of security. Not that my various accounts were in danger of running low, but it was best to keep everything growing at a moderate pace, and the overall market had not been doing well. It was time to do some investment research in an effort to beat the game.

I pulled my customized van into the far end of the parking lot of an all night grocery and went inside to relieve myself in the washroom. I brushed my teeth while I was there. When I finished and returned to the van, I climbed into the back, shut the curtain behind the driver and passenger's seats, and changed into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. I had learned from experience that most of the time businesses with big parking lots didn't say a thing if I caught several hours of sleep on their premises. To encourage such benign neglect, I didn't rub their noses into what I was doing, never spent two nights in a row at the same place, and cooperated fully without argument in the rare event that someone told me to haul ass.

Along one side of the van I had installed a bed. I climbed under my sleeping bag and meditated a few minutes before drifting off. Eventually, I began to dream, and I soon became aware that I was dreaming. Recognizing when one is in a dream is a learnable skill. Practice had made me an expert in it.

Most dreams are boring. This dream started out as no exception. I was reading a book while sitting in a chair. Dull as dirt, but it was a place to start, for taking control of one's dreams is also a learnable skill. It is rather more difficult than merely recognizing a dream; nevertheless, practice had made me an expert in it, too. I began to alter the dream to suit my purpose.

When one attempts to manipulate a dream, it's easiest and most effective to work with what one has been given rather than try to weave something completely new. I focused on the book my dream self was holding, and in an act of will and concentration, I changed it into a laptop computer. I then called up a popular search site and clicked on the link to the maps page.

My quarry that night was the chief executive officer and chairman of the board of a large corporation. Call him Joe and his company Big Corp. The financial press was rife with speculation about a potential merger between Big Corp and Bigger Corp. This represented a profitable arbitrage opportunity. If one could be sure before most other people that Bigger Corp was going to buy Big Corp, one could sell short the shares of Bigger Corp while simultaneously buying the shares of Big Corp, thus locking in a low-risk profit.

Of course, under normal circumstances, the only people who can be sure before everyone else that two companies are going to merge are company insiders. Insider trading is illegal in these United States. For outsiders without inside information, there is always the risk that the deal will fall through, thus causing the prices of the stocks to move in directions opposite to those hoped for. Under normal circumstances.

My circumstances weren't normal. When I had first read about the possible merger, I decided to use some of my own techniques to evaluate its likelihood. First, I downloaded the annual reports and SEC filings of the two companies and studied them. Next, carrying a book pack for camouflage, I paid a visit to a community college library to research the officers of the companies. Community college libraries almost always have a Lexis-Nexis account, and in my experience, seldom ask to see student ID when one uses their computers. A couple hours of work netted me a couple hundred thousand words, which I transferred to my laptop.

Back at the van, to limit the amount of reading, I decided to focus on Joe and his counterpart at Bigger Corp. Call him Charlie. If Joe and Charlie didn't pan out, I would try some of the lower-ranking officers later. I learned everything about the two men that I could. Using the library research and the internet in general, I took notes on where they went to school, their previous companies, the names of their wives and children, the locations of their primary homes, what charities they supported, any articles or papers the men had written, and so on. I also found as many related photographs as I was able.

I spent the next day studying my notes and building a memory palace with the information. I wanted to be able to recall as many facts about the men as possible, and mnemonic techniques were a great help to me.

My peculiar skill, entering the dreams of others, was an art rather than a science, and an uncertain art at that. The greatest difficulty for me wasn't so much entering someone else's dreams--that often happened spontaneously--as it was finding a particular dreamer out of the hundreds of millions of people dreaming on earth at any given time. I knew that distance mattered. I could, for example, easily find the dreams of anyone in the same house that I was sleeping in. How well I knew a person also mattered. I could, for another example, still find the dreams of my aunt and of my university roommates years after I had quit living with them. To find the dreams of a particular stranger, it helped to know as much about him or her as I could dig up, and it helped to sleep as close to his or her sleeping place as was practical.

It had taken me four nights of effort to find the dreams of Charlie. I now knew that he definitely wanted to buy Joe's company. To increase my certainty that the deal was going to take place, I wanted to know if Joe was just as eager to sell. I had driven to a location in suburban Seattle about ten miles, as the pelican flew, from Joe's mansion. I was asleep, dreaming, and in the process of searching out Joe's dreams.

I used the map page to call up Joe's mansion on satellite view. I then willed myself to enter the picture. After a few moments of intense concentration, I stood in the dream version of Joe's driveway. Unlike Charlie, Joe didn't live in a gated community, so I had taken a slow drive past his place earlier in the day in order to see what it looked like from the outside. Every little bit helped.

I was still in my own dream, not Joe's. I had not yet determined that he was actually asleep and dreaming. I might not find a dream of his for days, perhaps not ever, but I certainly never would if I didn't try. I walked up to the front door and turned the knob. Of course, the door wasn't locked. It was my dream, and I hadn't imagined it locked.

I went inside. My research hadn't turned up any interior shots of Joe's house, so I left the vision misty and vague, as it so often is in dreams. I found a staircase and went up. Letting my instincts guide me. I wandered down a hallway. At the end of the hall, I opened up a door and walked into a bedroom suite. I didn't know for a fact that Joe had a bedroom suite, but my subconscious must have decided that it was more likely than not. I strolled through the sitting room and entered the bedroom proper.

Joe was in bed with a much younger blonde. I knew from my research that once his kids had grown, Joe had divorced his first wife and found himself a trophy. I had seen in pictures that she was indeed a looker. I approached the pair, reached out a hand, and paused for a moment to gather my will. Human beings dream about two hours per night. That meant that even if Joe was currently asleep, the odds were about three to one that he wasn't dreaming. Even if he was dreaming, it didn't mean that I would find his presence in dream space just because I was myself dreaming about him. The moment of truth had arrived.

I touched Joe's forehead with my index finger and discovered that I had lucked out. I entered a new dream, and it wasn't one of mine. I'm not sure how I knew, but my intuition had been honed from much experience, and most of the time I could simply tell. That had not always been the case. When I was younger, I hadn't known for some time that I was entering the dreams of others, much less had the ability to tell our dreams apart.

Joe was piloting an old-fashioned airplane with four prop engines. It might have been a B-29, but I won't swear to it. Joe was wearing a bomber jacket and headphones. He appeared about thirty years younger than his true age.

We can experience our own dreams from two points of view. Most of the time, we see them from first person, as we usually experience the world when we are awake; or we can see them from third person, as in watching a play or a film. When I enter the dream of another, I can see if from the dreamer's first-person point of view; that is, I can ride along behind his or her eyes, basically. I also can see it from the third-person point of view in either a 2D perspective--like watching a play--or from a 3D perspective--like being an invisible observer upon the stage. For yet another option, I can enter the dream from a second-person point of view relative to the individual whose dream I have entered, that is, as a character in his or her dream. For Joe's dream, I chose this last option.

I willed myself to appear in the co-pilot's seat. I wore a jacket and headphones like Joe's. "How are you holding up, Bucky?" Joe asked.

Apparently, I was Bucky, whoever the hell he was. "I'm holding up fine, sir."

"We're going to be entering Kraut airspace soon."

"Are we going to be entering it, or should we say we are going to be merging with it?"

"What in hell are you talking about?"

"Mergers and acquisitions," I said.

"What do they have to do with anything?"

"Do you think the merger is a good idea?" I asked, while at the same time silently urging--willing-- him to tell me about it.

Instead of answering, he unbuckled, got up, and walked toward the rear of the plane. I changed into invisible mode and followed him. The rear was outfitted like a jump plane. Empty wooden benches surrounded the interior, and a large door in the side stood open. A woman in goggles, helmet, and a jumpsuit stood near the door. I didn't recognize her. A parachute appeared in Joe's hands, and he buckled it on.

"Are you ready, sir?" she asked.

"I'm ready," the CEO said.

"You can still change your mind."

"No, I want this. I deserve a big payday after thirty years of hard work."

A green light flashed on the wall, and Joe jumped out the door. I watched as a golden parachute opened. After several seconds, I willed myself to fly beside him. He was laughing. Well, one didn't need to be an experienced oneironaut to interpret symbols that clear. Make the trades. Make the trades. Make the trades. I thought the command to myself several times to help ensure that I would remember my results in the morning. I felt like celebrating.

With a bit of concentration, I was out of Joe's dream and back into my own. I was again standing in the bedroom I had imagined for the executive. Maybe the hot blonde, I considered. On the plus side, she was my own creation, no matter that she looked like a real-life person, so there was no chance of anyone getting hurt. On the minus side, she was just a dream puppet. I might not always be consciously aware as I pulled her strings, but my mind would be doing a hundred percent of the pulling. That was seldom as much fun as what collaboration with a real person--and all of his or her loves, lusts, fantasies, foibles, peculiarities, and perversions--could generate.

I opened a window that wasn't there a second before and softly glided down to the street. I began to jog effortlessly along it. As I did so, I imagined my senses expanding to detect any wafting lust that I might come across. I no longer was looking for the dreams of a particular person; rather, I was looking for the dreams of anyone who was horny. I allowed my instincts to guide my dream feet.