The Boundary of Dreams

Chapter XXVIII: Nurturing the Petals

Sunrise filtered into the Master’s Suite as if through an old wound. Andy woke abruptly, the shock of unfamiliar light painting the world in flat, glaring stripes, and for a moment he had no idea where he was. There was that ice-dry taste in his mouth and a film of sweat on his chest, but otherwise, he could have been anyone, anywhere, on any ruined morning. He was alone, lying in the center of the vast, silken bed, the sheets a damp knot at his knees.

For a long minute, Andy lay perfectly still, letting his heart clatter back to some acceptable rhythm. The only sound in the suite was the distant hush of the ocean and, closer, the faint hum of the air conditioning. No voices, no footsteps. No sign that anyone had ever been here, much less the woman who had come to him in the night.

He turned his head, almost cautiously, expecting Arabella to be watching from the doorway, or perched like a hawk at the foot of the bed. But there was only empty space and the soft drift of dust motes. There wasn’t even an indentation on the mattress. The events of the previous hours—the challenge, the paintings, the long exhale of post-show exhaustion—felt unreal, like the detritus of a particularly insistent dream. Arabella’s body against his, the way her skin had seemed both colder and warmer than human, the way she’d let herself tremble in his arms… None of it had the decency to feel fake, but none of it seemed possible, either.

He sat up, gingerly, and blinked at the light. His mouth tasted of iron and something sweet, as if he’d been chewing on the past all night. He ran both hands over his face and tried to recall the order of things: Had they really just held the first challenge? Had he watched every woman in the harem stand before him in nothing but paint and memory, had he really seen all the pieces of their lives that weren’t meant for anyone but themselves?

He **** himself to stay still, but already the images came, one after another, unwilling to let him dodge the work ahead.

He remembered the way Marissa had stood on the runway, spine straight, eyes lit with that blue certainty. She had smiled at him, but there had been an echo of something else—fear, or maybe hope, he couldn’t tell. He remembered the way her hand had trembled, just once, as she’d brushed a hair from her cheek.

He remembered Erin’s voice, the hitch in it as she’d dared him to touch the keyhole painted between her breasts. The flicker of pain behind her bravado, the way she’d refused to let herself cry, even when it would have been easier. That offer, to talk about the good that had been in their relationship.

He remembered Sam’s laugh, her hug, the way she’d held him tighter than anyone else ever had. He remembered the heat of her body, the smell of cinnamon and sweat, the way she’d whispered, “Don’t get weepy on me, Cooper,” into his ear and meant it as both threat and promise.

He remembered the way Liesa and Claire had made each other giggle, the way Norah’s jaw set when she was about to say something honest, the way Dawn’s eyes shone with an emotion he’d never been brave enough to name, the way Emi had taken up the stage for the first time in her life, unfurling like a flower to finally shine.

Andy had never thought of himself as worthy of worship, but last night, in the way they had looked at him, he’d glimpsed what it might be like to matter. At least, to these eight women from his past who had chosen to show him their real selves last night, bringing down all barriers, however temporarily, for him. Who had trusted him with some of the most precious, most secret parts of themselves. He felt humbled. And terrified.

Because today, he had to choose. He had to look each of them in the eye and decide which one would be left behind, which story would be twisted into something new. The Audience would vote, yes, but he had half the responsibility. Arabella had told him the power was a privilege, but right now it felt like a gun loaded with bullets. He wished he didn’t have the option to choose, so that someone else would bear the responsibility, the guilt.

He lay back on the pillow, staring at the perfect ceiling, and let the dread roll over him. He felt it in the ache behind his left eye, in the spasm that started at his thigh and didn’t stop until he **** it away. In his hands, too: the fingers trembled, then stilled, then started up again, as if the nervous system had staged a coup overnight.

He closed his eyes and tried to summon the image of Arabella, standing at the foot of the bed, naked and real and needing. For a moment, he let himself believe it was all some elaborate comfort, that she had come to him out of kindness, or mercy, or even lust. But he knew better. She probably had come because he was breaking, and because the Producers wanted to see if he could be broken. He was the experiment, not the hero. He wondered if the Audience had noticed.

Time bled forward. Andy made himself get up, his body stiff and unfamiliar. He padded to the bathroom, stripped, and stepped into the shower, cranking the handle to full hot. He stood there, arms braced against the wall, and let the water scald him until his skin burned. The pain, at least, was honest. It cut through the noise, gave him something to focus on.

Under the spray, he tried to mentally rehearse the day: breakfast, then the ranking, then the announcement. He would have to go down to the lobby, look at the faces of eight women who had given him everything, and tell one of them that she had not been enough. The thought of it made his chest hurt. And he did not know who to choose. How could he tell any of them that opening her heart and showing truths she had kept hidden there had not been sufficient?

He turned off the water, stepped out, and wiped the mirror clear with a flat palm. His own face startled him: the circles under his eyes, and a rawness in his jawline he’d never seen before. He reached for the toothbrush, but his hand shook and he had to set it down twice before he could actually use it.

He went back to the bedroom and he dressed mechanically: briefs, then jeans, then a button-down. The buttons took two tries each, his fingers stubbornly refusing to grip. He sat on the edge of the bed as he kept fumbling them, and stared at the wall. His mind kept skittering away from the thought of voting, clinging to anything it could to push it further in the future.

Andy was still buttoning his shirt, wrestling the cuffs into something like presentability, when he heard the sound: a single metallic clunk, followed by the whir of an electric screwdriver, then a string of cheerful, rapid-fire cursing in a language he didn’t know. Someone started whistling Stairway to Heaven. He froze, then replayed the noise in his head. Definitely real. He wasn’t alone.

A spike of dread cut through the morning fog. Had Arabella come back? Was one of the contestants here? He thought neither Arabella nor any of the women could come without him allowing them. He braced for either, then padded barefoot to the living room, the floor cold as judgment under his soles.

The source of the commotion was immediately obvious: a man was half-crouched by the elevator panel, long arms splayed above his head, a tangle of colored wires snaking down from the open wall plate. He was skinny—almost reed-thin, the kind of thin that made you think “genetics” before “gym”—and wore gray overalls with a safety-orange patch at each shoulder. On his head was a battered yellow helmet, festooned with cheap superhero stickers. The kind they gave out in pediatric wards.

He watched for a few seconds, expecting the man to sense him, but the stranger just kept working, his fingers moving at a pace Andy found faintly disturbing. The guy was fast, but precise, and his hands never shook, even when he twisted two wires together with enough torque to slice through the sheath.

Andy cleared his throat. “Uh, morning.”

The man didn’t look up. “Gimme a sec.” His voice was nasal, not harsh, but with the faint lilt of someone who’d spent enough time in Queens to hate it. He wrapped the last two wires, snapped them into a plastic block, then finally turned to face Andy.

His eyes were big, owl-like, but the rest of his face was so angular it seemed engineered for speed. He grinned, showing off a row of tiny, perfectly even teeth, and stuck out his hand. “Hey. Herman.” He pointed at the badge on his chest, which read “Herman M. — Maintenance” in bold black letters. “I’m the guy who fixes things.”

Andy shook his hand, which was callused and cold. “Andy Cooper. I live here?”

Herman barked a laugh. “I know who you are, pal. Not every day a Master gets the five-star suite.” He dropped Andy’s hand and returned to the elevator panel, this time sliding a matte-black tablet from his toolbag and tapping the screen a few times. “Arabella said to replace your entrance buzzer with this new touchscreen. It’s got voting capabilities, too. She’s big on the upgrades.”

Andy tried to process the pace of the interaction, which had left him half a step behind. “So, you work for the hotel?”

“I work for whoever lets me touch the hardware,” Herman replied, not looking up. “Used to be my Dad’s company, but lately I freelance. Pays better.” He shot Andy a look, eyebrows high. “You got a problem with the elevator, or just here for the entertainment?”

Andy shook his head. “Just… wasn’t expecting anyone.”

Herman made a sympathetic click. “Nobody ever does.” He turned the screwdriver once, then, as if remembering something important, pointed at Andy with the tool. “You want a coffee? I can make a mean Greek, if you have a briki.”

Andy blinked. “I haven’t even figured out the coffee maker in the kitchen yet.”

Herman shrugged. “You’re missing out, but okay. Let’s finish this up, then.”

He bent over the toolbag again, and Andy saw the flashes of logo on his sneakers: custom, bright-red Flash trainers, probably a collector’s edition. The overall effect was a little kid playing at being a grown-up, but there was nothing juvenile about the way he gutted the elevator panel. In less than a minute, he’d pulled out the old buzzer, snapped the new touchscreen in its place, and run a set of diagnostics on the tablet.

“Almost done,” Herman said, but then paused, glancing at Andy with a sly look. “You’re not the nervous type, are you?”

Andy felt his jaw tense. “Not usually.”

Herman grinned. “Sure. But today’s a big one, right? First elimination?” He pronounced the last word as if it were a party game. “Don’t worry. Everybody hates this part. Even Arabella, though she’d never admit it.”

Andy stared at the touchscreen, which was rebooting to a blank white interface. “Is she… here? Or did she leave?”

Herman’s grin widened. “She’s always here. Just not in the ways you think.” He tapped at the screen, then whispered, “There we go.” The device powered up, displaying the words: “Welcome, Master. Please select a function.”

“You just vote by tapping the button now,” Herman said, with the tone of a man giving directions to a very lost tourist. “No more buzzer. No more surprises. Screen pops up, and you rank the Contestants.” He lowered his voice, as if sharing a state secret. “She says it’s for clarity, but really it’s for the ratings. The Audience loves a good tap.”

Andy wanted to ask a thousand questions, but the weirdness of the moment had frozen his mouth. He watched Herman run through a few menus, then look over his shoulder.

“Got any more tools you want installed?” Herman asked. “I’m the best, you know. They never let me run the shop, but I know the guts of this place like nobody else. Even Mildred has to call me when she burns out the circuits.” He snorted. “She pretends not to care, but she gets flustered easy. Too much chaos, not enough order. Gives the electrics a migraine.”

Andy tried to imagine Mildred calling anyone for help, and failed. “So, you know her well?”

Herman’s eyes flashed with something like mischief. “We have a history. She thinks she’s above the rules, but she’s not. She just bends them better than most.”

He snapped the tablet shut, shoved it into the wall bracket, and patted the panel with affection. “There you go, Chief. All tuned up.” He straightened, dusted off his hands, and gave Andy a look that felt like a test.

“You ever wonder how it all works?” Herman asked, voice softening. “Not just the tech. The whole show. The voting, the eliminations, the transformations.” He said the last word with a little too much relish.

Andy hesitated. “Sometimes. But usually I’m too busy to—”

“—think about it?” Herman finished. “Yeah, that’s how they get you. Always a new drama, always a new emergency. But it’s not all random, you know. Someone’s always running the program. Even when it glitches.”

Andy eyed the touchscreen. “So, if I submit the votes, that’s it? No take-backs?”

Herman nodded. “One tap, no undo. Like life.” He picked up his bag, slung it over his shoulder, then walked to the door. “Oh, one more thing.” He fished a battered business card from his pocket and handed it to Andy, who didn’t really pay attention to it, putting it in his pocket.

“Call if you need me,” Herman said. “But don’t call unless you really need me. I don’t do house calls, except for Arabella. And now you, I guess.” He smiled, then turned to leave.

At the threshold, he paused, eyes flicking upward as if listening for a distant signal. “Almost forgot. The new touchscreen may glitch out the TV in the lounge. If you want to use it, reboot the set first. Should fix the bug.”

Andy followed his gaze, saw nothing, then looked back at Herman.

“Thanks,” Andy said.

Herman winked. “Anytime, Chief. Good luck with the vote.”

He left, whistling a tune that sounded like an old video game jingle, and within seconds the suite felt empty again, the only evidence of his presence a faint whiff of ozone and the blinking cursor on the touchscreen.

Andy stood there, alone, and watched the bright screen, with its loading wheel.

He was still standing there when, in the corner of his eye, he saw the TV flicker to life.

The TV in the lounge had never called much attention to itself before. Andy had flicked it on a few times—once to check the local weather, once to see if Arabella was actually on every channel (She wasn’t, but Mildred was, although she called herself Clarice when giving the weather forecast), and once to find out it showed live feeds of himself and the women, which he preferred not to think about. But now the flatscreen glowed, not with any ordinary channel, but with a pure, retro computer blue, the kind of blue that usually meant you’d broken something.

At the top, white block text blinked: “LOADING SYSTEM. DO NOT POWER OFF.”

Beneath, a DOS-like series of command prompts and executed scripts started flowing until they filled out the screen, freezing while the commands worked their way into the flatscreen’s processor. Andy studied the loading screen, curious as to what kind of commands could a magical flatscreen use to boot.

SYSTEM BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED...
Checking memory integrity...
Boot sector: 0×4564656E - OK
*Stack pointer: 0x416E64726577 - INITIALIZED
*Source base: 0x45732D4B616D - ALLOCATED
Archive Reconstruction: 0x4D656D6F72696573427566666572 - REBUILDING*
**FLAGGED ALLOCATIONS - REVIEW REQUIRED**
Memory allocation: 0x436C61697265 (6 bytes) - PRIORITY 1
Memory allocation: 0x456D69 (3 bytes) - PRIORITY 2
Memory allocation: 0x4D617269737361 (7 bytes) - PRIORITY 3
Memory allocation: 0x53616D616E746861 (8 bytes) - PRIORITY 4
Memory allocation: 0x4572696E (4 bytes) - PRIORITY 5
Memory allocation: 0x4461776E (4 bytes) - PRIORITY 6
Memory allocation: 0x4C69657361 (5 bytes) - PRIORITY 7
Memory allocation: 0x4E6F726168 (5 bytes) - PRIORITY 8
Queue manager: Q2hsb2U= - NEXT ALLOCATION READY
Pending threads: 2 / 3 - UmlsZXk= - TXlyYQ== - SCHEDULED
+Data Recovery Protocol: TGF1cmE= - 25% COMPLETE
Rebooting… 12%

Andy’s eyes instinctively went to the flagged allocations, and he squinted. That was odd. There was no need to list the number of bytes for each memory allocation, given how tiny they were, nor did a priority order make sense. Besides, why would memory allocation chunks be so inconsistent in size? Huh. One of those looks familiar. 4572696E. Maybe he’d seen it in the code of some other software. His mind flailed to find some other task to focus on, anything other than voting. On a whim, he grabbed the notebook Claire had left on the coffee table days earlier, the one he had prepared for her night, and jotted down the ASCII codes.

The TV buzzed, the blue faded to black. Then the display flickered again, and a perfectly normal home menu appeared. The icons were standard: “News,” “Games,” “Local Channels,” “Special: Today’s Elimination Challenge!” No trace of the memory allocations. No “Rebooting” message. Just the faint, unsettling afterimage of something he wasn’t supposed to have seen.

He tried to shake it off. He crossed to the touchscreen, which was now up and running, humming faintly. The words: “Welcome, Master. Please confirm your selection.”

It was as if the world had shifted in the last hour—suddenly, every action felt weighted, observed. Maybe it was Herman’s visit, maybe it was the sense that even the technology here was in on the joke, but Andy felt exposed. He glanced at the painting of Katherine, half-expecting her to offer advice, but her gaze was fixed forward, inscrutable as ever.

He wiped his palm on his jeans, reached for the touchscreen. Clearly, he couldn’t leave the Suite until he voted. Arabella must have decided to avoid any risk of tainting the vote.

There they were: the names of the eight contestants, each rendered in bold font. He ran his finger down the list, heart hammering harder with each name.

Marissa. Claire. Liesa. Norah. Dawn. Emi. Erin. Sam.

He stared at the roster for a long time, his hand trembling as if the act of voting might zap him with a charge. The names didn’t help; they only ratcheted the pressure. Even the sequence on the tablet felt loaded, as if the order itself was a dare: Who’s first? Who’s last? Who gets to keep breathing the rarefied air of the Harem Hotel, and who gets atomized into myth, transformed into a discounted cautionary tale in the hands of Arabella’s Producers?

He wanted to just tap them in the order that felt right—reward the women who had shown him their hearts, or at least their intentions, the ones who’d played the game but also resisted it, who’d managed to be honest even in the face of elimination. But every time he hovered over a name, his mind snagged on the details, played them out in endless, exhausting detail. He tried to just touch the screen, to **** himself to act, but some tickle of paranoia—maybe it was Herman’s aftershave, maybe it was the eerily self-aware electronics—froze him mid-motion.

He could almost hear Arabella’s voice in his head, her words from last night: “The rules are the rules. The Audience’s vote will weigh as much as yours. You can’t save everyone, Andy.”

So he paced. He circled the kitchen island, fetched a glass of water he barely sipped, then returned to the touchscreen like a dog patrolling the perimeter of a newly fenced yard. Still, he could not escape the feeling that he was surrounded. He kept trying to find reasons to delay his choice.

He found his eyes drifting to the TV again, recalling the weird blue screen and its parade of memory allocations. Something to kill a few more minutes, trying to fish out why that ASCII hexadecimal sequence was so familiar to him. He was too hardwired as a puzzle-solver to ignore it.

He fished Claire’s notebook from the coffee table, thumbed past her neat, looping notes and diagrams until he found the page where he’d transcribed the memory allocations:

Memory allocation: 0x436C61697265 (6 bytes) - PRIORITY 1
Memory allocation: 0x456D69 (3 bytes) - PRIORITY 2
Memory allocation: 0x4D617269737361 (7 bytes) - PRIORITY 3
Memory allocation: 0x53616D616E746861 (8 bytes) - PRIORITY 4
Memory allocation: 0x4572696E (4 bytes) - PRIORITY 5
Memory allocation: 0x4461776E (4 bytes) - PRIORITY 6
Memory allocation: 0x4C69657361 (5 bytes) - PRIORITY 7
Memory allocation: 0x4E6F726168 (5 bytes) - PRIORITY 8

ASCII. Why the priority? Why numbering the bytes, when the amounts were so small? He’d written literally hundreds of dumb little cipher programs in college, usually to amuse Erin or drive his roommates nuts with hidden lewd messages. There were even stories—half-urban-legend, half-fact—about nerds at UIC who carved out full-scale ASCII art of the entire periodic table and stashed it in the root directories of the physics department computers. Sometimes, when he was bored or blocked, he’d do it for kicks, see if he could get a system admin to notice.

0x4572696E. It bugged him, the familiarity of it, the way it pinged some fossilized part of his brain. He’d spent enough years in codebases to sense when something was hiding in plain sight. And he had always had an exceptional memory.

He’d memorized the ASCII hexadecimal table during freshman year, particularly 41-5A and 61-7A, uppercase and lowercase letters. He’d written whole test suites in college that assigned ASCII and hex values to names, just to amuse himself—like spelling out “Babe” in leetspeak for his dorm’s wifi password, or hiding rude words in comment blocks. Once he’d written a limerick in ASCII. He’d even done this with Erin and Sam, once or twice, when they were bored at a UIC coffee table and he’d put Erin’s name into an ASCII cipher. He’d thought it was corny, at the time.

0×4572696E. His blood suddenly ran cold. Now he remembered where he had seen it before. He had written it before. Four bytes. Four letters. 0×42, E. 0×72, R. 0×69, I. 0×6E… E-r-i-n. Erin.

With a shudder, he looked at the code immediately above. 0x53616D616E746861. That was eight bytes. The “S” was 0x53, the “a” was 0x61, the “m” was 0x6D… He translated, penciling it out in the margin: S-a-m-a-n-t-h-a. Samantha. Sam.

Crap.

He checked the rest, just to be sure. 0x456D69, three bytes. His stomach dropped. E-m-i. Emi.

0x4C69657361. L-i-e-s-a. Liesa.

0x436C61697265. C-l-a-i-r-e. Claire.

0x4E6F726168. N-o-r-a-h. Norah.

0x4461776E. D-a-w-n. Dawn.

0x4D617269737361. M-a-r-i-s-s-a. Marissa.

A chill ran through him. But then… the priorities weren’t just arbitrary numbers. They were rankings. Audience rankings, invisible to the contestants but running under the skin of every interaction. The Audience vote had closed. Arabella had said it would, before he could vote. These were final Audience rankings.

He glanced at the TV, half-expecting the old blue loading screen to blink back to life, to deliver its next cryptic hint.

Nothing. Just his own reflection, pale and haunted.

He felt a cold shiver run up his spine. He looked at the codes again, compared them to the memories from last night: Marissa’s performance, bold and unguarded; Emi’s sweet, imaginative sharing; Erin’s proud stand; Claire’s quiet, uncanny genius; Norah’s admission of vulnerability; Sam’s refusal to fit in or give up; Liesa’s desire to forge a new future; Dawn’s acknowledgement of needing others. All of it, boiled down to a line of ASCII characters, a digital jury who already had produced a verdict.

He set Claire’s notebook down, almost reverently. He could feel her presence in the pages, the neatness of her looping handwriting in the few lines she’d drawn during her date night, the little hearts she drew over every “i.” He wondered if this was how she saw the world sometimes, as a set of puzzles to solve, each with its own hidden rules.

For a long, hollow moment, he just stared at the screen, his finger hovering an inch above the first name.

He ran his finger down the row, staring at each name in turn, trying to gauge his own heart’s response. Who did he want to save? Who did he want to protect? Who did he want to know better, to see what they’d become if given another week?

But it was impossible. Every name triggered a flood of memories: Sam’s dry humor and unswerving loyalty, Erin’s pain and the memories of happier times, Emi’s unshakeable sweetness, Marissa’s contradiction of analytical clarity and shyness, Claire’s relentless curiosity, Liesa’s kind attempts at friendship, Norah’s brief flashes of hope, Dawn’s **** need to belong. They were all real people. And yet, to the system, they were just lines of code.

He let his hand drop from the screen. He wasn’t ready. Not yet.

He paced the lounge again, footfalls soft on the carpet, and tried to reason through the logic of the audience rankings. He could choose to follow the crowd. Or he could break the pattern. Either way, someone was about to lose everything.

His jaw clenched, harder than before. He felt the bones grind.

He glanced once more at the painting—Katherine studied him and looked like she wanted desperately to say something, but it was beyond the capabilities to which the transformation restricted her—and thought: Maybe she’d understand, if he did it his way.

The world waited. Andy exhaled, bracing himself, and reached for the screen. Then, as he was about to tap, an idea came. A wild, improbable, absurd idea. He studied it, freezing, evaluated it, considered it from all directions. If he was right… if he had just seen the audience vote… if it hadn’t been a trap by Arabella, but a honest glitch… And if he could trust the rules would seek to reward drama, not annihilation…

He licked his lips, studying the touchscreen. There would be a price. One of them would have to pay it. Could he choose for her—whoever she might be—without asking? But in the end, he had to do what he could. He had promised he would protect all of them. Swallowing hard and clenching his fist, he started tapping on the touchscreen with the other hand, hoping he was right.