Mature Content Warning: A bit of foul language. :)

Author's Note:

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Chapter 2.2: I Hate That I Still Care.

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The Supra-7 was the type of convenience store that kept its shelves stocked at all times. Scott rarely shopped anywhere else due to that fact. Many other stores only seemed to keep the bare minimum on hand as a cost cutting method. Due to that fact, he was quite surprised when he discovered that there was only one bottle of cold medicine remaining in the store. Well, only one bottle of the kind that can make a person drowsy.

He lifted the tiny bottle of medicine then moved to the register. He asked Danny, young man around Scott’s age, “Hey, got any more of this in the back?”

“Sorry, that is the stuff from the back. That stuff is like crack nowadays.” replied the clerk.

“Dammit...” growled Scott. He would have to buy more online later.

“You’re going to start dosing, too? That shit’s bad for you...” said Danny.

Scott shrugged. “I have insomnia most nights. I’ve used this as a cheap way to get some sleep before.”

“I’m not judging, but there are better ways. You know.” said the man.

Scott’s left eyebrow shot up and he tilted his head. “Such as?”

“A lot of people have turned to hard exercise and meditation. You’re just as tired, but it’s actually good for you. That shit will kill your liver if you take it too often.”

Vigorous exercise felt like it would be quite draining. Still, Danny did have a point. “I’ll have to give it a try. I’m still getting this today, though.”

Danny nodded. “Right.”

Scott handed him the small bottle of nighttime cold medicine and the man scanned it. When he heard the price quoted his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. “Sixteen ninety-five? That shit’s normally five bucks for a bottle this size!”

“Yeah, stores all over have been jacking up the prices. Even online sellers are higher than normal. It seems like everyone who isn’t attending an anti-dreamer rally or grieving a lost loved one, is dosing.” said Danny.

Scott stared down at the bottle of cough syrup. He did not have much money left, but he wanted to explore the dream world for as long as possible every night. Exercise started to look more interesting now that the cost to buy his slumber had increased three-fold. Still, he fished out one of his few remaining twenty dollar bills.

Danny nodded to him then asked, “Want a bag?”

“Nah.”

“No, you want a bag... People have been getting robbed for this stuff.” said Danny.

“Seriously?” Scott had ignored the general news for a while. Had things really gotten to the point where people would rob you for cough syrup?

He took his cold medicine, properly bagged, and left. There were only a few more hours until he could go back to sleep and escape the nightmare known as reality.

On the way home he noticed a large gathering of people off to his left. He looked at them for a moment then snorted.

“Anti-dreamers... Idiots.”

Scott walked on by while a man stood on a makeshift platform and railed against the evils of dreaming. The man’s voice carried quite some distance.

“Beloved! This dream is nothing more than a work of Satan! It seeks to steal you away from your true lives.” said the ranting man.

A few shouts of hallelujah and amen echoed through the area. Scott picked up his pace. As far as he was concerned they were all diseased and he did not want to catch whatever they had. He did not have an issue with religion, but he did have an issue with people that he considered to be fanatical nutcases.

“Stay awake, children! Sleep is a wicked and evil thing. Stay awake in the name of Jaysus!” cried the man in a loud and confident tone.

Scott shook his head. Some people were desperate to listen to anyone who spoke in a sincere sounding tone. He knew that a lot of those people had probably lost loved ones or they were just lost in general. Still, the dream was what it was. There was no way to avoid sleep forever, while you lived.

Two miles up the road he heard another loudly crying voice. He looked to a much smaller group and saw attractive, scantily clad, women passing out fliers. He recognized two of them as local crack whores.

One of the strangely well-groomed whores ran over to him and handed him a flier. “Hey, handsome. Dream of me tonight, OK?”

She grinned at him then unleashed an exaggerated wink. Before he could say anything she spied another guy walking near the area. She rushed off to give him a flier.

Scott looked down at the flier then groaned. It was an advertisement for nighttime love. “Two hundred Jerin an hour?”

Well, he could not blame the whores for being enterprising. If anything, the dream world was the best thing to ever happen to them. They could ply their trade in a whole new world, without as much fear.

“How do they make a living from Jerin, though?” Scott had an idea, but he had assumed that such things would take a lot longer to implement. It seemed obvious to him now, though. The dream world was slowly turning into real money trading paradise for enterprising individuals. Slow was a relative term, though. It had only been a little over three days. Everyone, both religious and whore alike, had become crazed with the possibilities of that alternate world.

Scott stuffed the flier in his pocket. It was a waste of money now, but who knew. He was not above trafficking with a whore if she bathed more frequently than he did and had most of her teeth.

He managed to reach his tiny little home without any further issues. The place looked like an old dilapidated warehouse on the outside due to its origins as a warehouse. Still, the hole he lived in had come with a chain link fence. Scott liked a nice fence. If nothing else, his fence made it feel safer to live there.

After entering his modest home, he walked into his room and plopped the cough syrup down on his night stand. Afterward he eyed the clutter and garbage in his room then sighed. He had no energy for such things, but he had made it a habit to clean up his house every few weeks.

Two hours later he had managed to pick up all of the garbage, straightened up in general, and finished doing his laundry. He only had another hour or so until it would be time to go back to sleep. Until then he wanted to spend his time studying about that other world.

He turned on his television as well; he liked to have noise in the background. The first thing to pop up on screen was an advertisement. Scott’s eyes widened slightly.

“Do you dream of big, big, money? Buy house? Want a car like I buy? You pay me, and you get nice things too. You get too many nice things, have to buy new house to put things in. Send me money! Be wealthy, you like it!” cried a man who looked to be some variety of Asian. Scott was not really good with figuring out another person’s ethnicity, but the man onscreen definitely seemed to be Asianish.

Scott blinked when he noticed that the man was accepting both dollars and Jerin. “Isn’t this too soon?”

The dream was only three days old, yet people were jumping all over it as a business opportunity. What if it suddenly stopped? This seemed like too much, too soon. Still, he planned to spend a lot of time in that world. Saving money there might not be a bad idea for the future.

The advertisement ended, and a news broadcast covering some sort of announcement by the president appeared on screen. Scott watched for a moment then shook his head. “Dream taxes? Really?”

“You know what, screw you guys.” Scott had heard enough. The government was scrambling to find a way to maintain control. The first thing they say after three days is that a bill had been drafted that would require people to pay taxes on Jerin earned in the dream world.

“Fellow Americans, in this time of struggle and change we need to stand together...” continued the moron-in-chief.

Scott turned his TV off then sighed. It was like the world had gone crazy. Worse, a few elements in the government were trying to enforce its extraterritorial nature on an entirely different world. That was a waste of time and energy. There was no way to enforce taxation on the currency of a world no one even knew about, yet. They might be able to tax the real money trading efforts, but who was going to collect in the dream?

“I like the place, but why does everyone act like the dream will last forever?” asked Scott to his empty room. He had only been in that world twice now, once when everyone had gone, and last night. It was a highly vivid and interactive place, but there was no guarantee that it was now a permanent part of life.

Idly, he wondered if this was what it was like after people in Europe learned of an entirely unknown continent across the ocean. It seemed like everyone wanted to earn their piece of the pie.