Dustin stopped and looked around. He was exhausted. Walking during the rain seemed to have drained him, and he wasn’t sure why.

“Is anyone else feeling really tired?” asked the crystal prince.

“Yea, I can barely keep my eyes open,” complained Olivia.

“There must be something in the rain that’s causing it. I don’t remember this the last time it rained, but I also took shelter and didn’t stay in it the whole time.”

“Well, let’s find a place to rest.”

It took them about twenty minutes to get a little lean-to built. Using branches from surrounding trees to keep off a lot of the rain, they threw more inside to lay on. It didn’t look to bad for a rushed job in a downpour. As they climbed inside, exhaustion pulled at them, and they were all quickly asleep.

-Dreaming:

-“Dustin, what are you doing?”

-He looked up to see he had been going through her purse. (Why would he do that?)

-“My buddy said you went to see the clinic yesterday, so I was looking for the receipt,” he answered, glaring at her.

-“You think just because we’re dating, that gives you permission to go through my purse?” She was obviously pissed. (She should be! Why the hell would I go through a woman’s purse? Those things are like black holes!)

-“Then tell me why you went to the clinic.”

-“I got an abortion. I told you that I didn’t want no brats!” (Can you even get abortions at a clinic? What the hell?)

-“You bitch!” he swung at her, hitting her eye. (I would never hit a woman first! What kind of shit is this?)

Dustin managed to jerk himself awake, furious. That dream was supposed to be a rerun of what had happened, but he knew without a doubt, none of that had happened. What was going on?

He looked outside, to see that it had stopped raining, and things were starting venture out again. The birds had started singing, to fill the silence after the storm.

Olivia woke with a start, and sat up, with a scowl on her face.

“Did you get the dream augmentation, too?” he asked, curious.

“These dreams are a load of bull! None of that happened.”

“You’ve lived longer than they anticipated. The dreams are starting to break down,” said the crystal prince, as he sat with his back against the tree trunk.

“What do you mean?” asked Olivia, before Dustin could.

“We gave that technology to you human’s too. The dreams that are fabricated, only follow the original story line for a few days before breaking down. It’s supposed to make the dreamer more suicidal, at least based on what the human government was wanting. We used the dream tech for other uses.”

“So, does that mean, there’s a chance, that what happened, didn’t actually happen?” asked Dustin, suddenly wondering. He could see himself hitting a woman, especially if she had hit him first, but for a woman to be able to almost break a jaw, like he remembered, would take a pretty strong woman, and he never went for that type. All the girls he dated would have hated to chip a nail, much less actually punch a guy.

“Actually, that’s a pretty safe bet. It’s far easier to sentence someone to a crime, if that person believed they actually did it.”

Dustin and Olivia were both shocked and outraged. If they didn’t commit the crimes they thought they had, then why were they here?

“Does that mean, they’re just grabbing people at random to throw down here?” asked Dustin, trying to remember what had actually happened.

“That doesn’t make sense. I was a pretty big player in the Josagn political field. They couldn’t just make me disappear without a really good reason.” Olivia shook her head.

“Did you have anything political going on with you?” asked the prince, turning to Dustin.

“My dad was a war hero in the last excursion. He died shortly after returning, but how could that have anything to do with it?”

“With the Ogifgar? That was a brutal war.”

“The Ogifgar?? That’s why!” exclaimed the prince, standing up in excitement.

They both looked at him, like he had grown a second head.

“The Ogifgar are our top competitors at the moment. Or they had been. We only agreed to partner, somewhat, with the human race, because you guys took out the primary force of the Ogifgar race. Once you did that, it opened a doorway for us to be able to start playing our war games with them.”

“What, let me get this straight, you guys refused to deal with us, unless we crippled this other race for you, so you could go and kill them for fun?”

The prince shrugged. “That’s what we do.”

“But what does that have to do with us?” asked Olivia.

“What did you have to do with the Ogifgar?” he asked her.

“Nothing. I was a species analyst for your race. I stayed with your people for six years trying to learn about you for my government.”

“Oh! Well, that’s why you were sent here. Our people don’t like snoops. That is what you call them, right? Those who go into other places to learn about them?”

“Do you mean, like spies?” she asked.

“Yes! We hate those who would spy on us. I imagine one of our diplomats threatened to cut off relations if you weren’t removed.”

“By claiming you killed a general, that would give them plenty of permission to throw you away,” said Dustin, thoughtfully.

“Alright, I’ll give you that,” she finally conceded. “But that doesn’t explain you. Just because your dad was in a war, I don’t get the connection. What did you do for a living again? Something about building alien tech?”

“No, I reverse engineered tech that came from aliens. I was pretty good too. I had just gotten a promotion for this little device that came from somewhere. It looked kind of like a cube, but when you turned it, this glow would emit, causing all those around you to freeze, for like, ten seconds.”

“A dantien cube?” shrieked the prince.

“Maybe? It didn’t come with a name tag. I was told to reverse engineer it, just like all the other crap they throw at me, and I did. I was hoping for a larger bonus, but eh, I took what I could get.”

“What’s a dantien cube?” asked Olivia.

“It’s one of our most top-secret military devices! How the skadfhg did you guys get one???”