The Dream Trap Ch. 02

"Yeah, well," I snorted, staring at the dashboard to avoid looking out the windshield. "As long as I can drive on the ground I'll be fine. At least on the ground I won't need to wait to get to the crash site if something goes wrong!"

"Aww, poor baby," Max cooed, running her fingernails down the inside of my thigh. "Tell you what, I could always distract you till we get there..."

My cock twitched at the suggestion, but Summer once again decided to nip Max's intentions in the bud. "Hey, not with the top down! Mom will kill me if I get another ticket for public lewdness! You know that!"

Max began to pout. "Oh, fine, I'll save it for later, then."

"Thank you," Max replied, steering us over a black iron fence. She hovered for a moment behind another car, then touched down in the middle of a black asphalt circle. She pulled out of the circle onto a two lane road that led to a large parking lot. Cars could be seen taking off and pulling into the flight lanes without a problem, but everyone landed at one of the designated circles. I thought about it for a moment, then realized it was actually a pretty good method for making sure people didn't accidentally get squashed when a car landed. I still wasn't sure whether they what it was that allowed the cars to fly, but I was pretty sure it wasn't going to negate nearly two thousand pounds of plastic and metal landing on someone's head.

Summer paused as we got out of the car and began to dig through her pack. "here," she said, handing me a piece of folded paper. "Its your schedule. You left it in my room last night and I spotted it on my desk while getting dressed. Thought you might want to have it for today."

"Thanks, lovely," I replied, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. "I definitely owe you one."

"Then I'll make sure to collect this evening," she accepted, grabbing me by the face and pulling me into a full contact kiss. Her tongue was just starting to invite mine over to visit when we were rather rudely interrupted.

"Ahem." We broke apart to find Max staring at us, tapping her foot with disapproval. "What was that about avoiding any more tickets for lewdness, dear?"

"Yeah, but at least this time I actually would have been the one to earn it," Summer replied smugly.

"Girls, girls, enough!" I ordered, holding up my hands in a silent appeal for peace. "There is plenty of me to go around, as well as plenty of time for the two of you to share. Now, if we could all get on with things?"

"Yes, dear," they both answered in unison, leaning in to give me a fast kiss on the cheek before each heading off on their own. I unfolded had handed me, and started reading it as I entered the campus proper. I kept one eye on the paper as I walked and the other on the campus itself, curious as to my surroundings. I wondered what college would be like in this brave new world, and it looked like I wasn't going to be disappointed. It seemed minimal dress was the preferred style around these parts, with most people wearing not much more than Summer was. Tall, short, thin, or fat, it didn't seem to matter what you looked like, you wore as little as the weather permitted. There was a cheerleading squad practicing in uniform by one of the quads, and I couldn't help but think they looked particularly over dressed, not a thought I normally associated with their typically skimpy costumes. There were also plenty of people dressed like I was, simple jeans t-shirt type outfits.

It was what was missing that stood out in my mind. There were no skater kids in baggy clothes practicing tricks on the curbs. There were no punks or metalheads proudly proclaiming their allegiance to this or that musical act by parading around in band merchandise, nor were there any t-shirts emblazoned with memetic catchphrases or triumphs of insanity. There was no sign of any counter culture groups anywhere, as if the entire campus was dominated by mundane and exhibitionists. More weirdness to add to the list.

My first class was "Advanced Creative Writing", as taught by one Professor Rick Castle. Room 225 in something called the Silver Building. On one hand, I was a sophomore so I should have already known my way around campus. In truth, I had figuratively been born only that morning. Have you ever tried to read a campus map? It was a dirt brown board marked by white paths branching out like the limbs of an ancient oak tree. Irregularly shaped green splotches marked the locations of buildings, helpfully marked in chipped and fading paint. Four matching black squares sat in the corners, representing the parking lots, add a touch of graffiti to flavor, then finish by having some joker scrape off the "You Are Here" sticker, and voila! Instant uselessness that nearly had me late to my first class. Fortunately, it was a small group so the professor didn't mind waiting for me.

Especially since it was so small that I seemed to be the only person in it.

Castle had been sitting at his desk, feet propped up next to his computer screen when I finally came puffing into the room, having run the last few yards to make sure I beat the bell. He had a paperback copy of Heat Rising, his own cheerful smile decorating the back cover. "Ah, if it isn't the prodigal author, back from his summer vacation! So tell me, how was it? Any passionate love affairs or misadventures of derring do?"

"Ah, not that I know of?" I hazarded. "Just a typical summer vacation."

Castle looked crestfallen. "Well, that's rather disappointing. I was at the least expecting an encounter with Somali pirates or rock hounds in orbit around Mars. Nothing? Really?"

"Well, uh," I hesitated, my mind racing for an answer that wouldn't disappoint him. I didn't know why, but for some reason I felt it was important to impress him. "I did spend a couple of weeks temping with a PI. I was supposed to be working on a cheating wife case, but it turned out the guy she was fooling around with was Daemon Sadisto, one of the local capos. Well, he thought we were with the cops and tried to whack us to keep us quiet. We tried to get out of there, but they managed to corner us in an old abandoned warehouse. Shots were fired in anger, and both Daemon and the broad bought it. Unfortunately my boss also caught a round, and last I heard he was still in rehab. Though that could also be because his live in nurse is a redhead, so..."

"Well done!" Castle announced, clapping his hands in triumph. "See? Stories are always there, you just need to reach out and listen for them. I want five pages out of that by the end of class on Friday."

"Speaking of the class," I said, looking

around the room. "Where is everyone else?"

"Dropped the class," Castle answered, dropping back into his chair. "It probably should have been canceled, but the administration likes to boast that they have a big name author on the payroll, so I need to actually have a few classes to my name for them to justify it. Doesn't really matter how big the class is though, and I'm sure we'll get a couple more students once the year picks up."

"Ah, ok. " The door opened behind me, letting in a tall, lanky brunette. She actually had half an inch on me, courtesy of the three inch stilettos she was wearing. She was dressed professionally in a slate grey skirt suit that almost seemed designed to be undressed by the eyes.

"Professor Beckett, what a surprise!" Castle said, bolting out of his seat. "What brings you to my little corner of the building?"

"Well, it seems all of my dry erase markers have disappeared," Beckett admitted with a knowing smile. "It makes teaching my Intro to Criminology class a wee bit difficult. You wouldn't happen to have any I could borrow?"

"As a matter of fact, I do!" Castle answered with a smile. He reached into the top drawer in his desk and pulled out a brand new box of markers. "Here, help yourself."

"Thank you, Rick!" Beckett matched his smile with one of her own as she took the box and helped herself to some of the markers. "You know, you might want to stop by and observe my class some time. You might learn something for those mysteries of yours."

"You know, I would love to!" Castle accepted. "You should give me a copy of the schedule, I'll see how many of them I can make."

"I'll do that," Beckett replied with a nod. "If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my students before they think I've abandoned them and decide to use it as an excuse to cut."

I waited for Beckett to leave before turning around and asking Castle, "Did you...?"

"Steal her dry erase markers just so that she would have a reason to come down here and talk to me? Of course not!" He shook his head, but I could tell he was trying not to laugh. "That would be much too obvious, and I'm sure she's going to ask if anyone saw me do just that. She's too suspicious for her own good, that woman. Nah, I paid one of the janitors a hundred bucks to 'accidentally' throw them out when he went into clean the room last night."

I hung around for a little while longer after that, but there really wasn't much I could do with Castle that I couldn't do on my own. Having fulfilled the grueling demands of the administration by taking a successful roll call, Castle decided to release me back into the wilds of academia. A quick check of my schedule told me that my next class wasn't for several more hours, so I decided to head to the library. It was time to do some research into my strange new world.

I found an empty computer terminal up on the third floor. The set up looked a little retro, reminding me of the old black and green monsters that I used to play Oregon Trail on back during elementary school. But just because it looked old didn't mean it was old. Instead it handled like Steve Job's fantasy machine, moving so quickly and effortlessly that it didn't even seem to need to load a page. Just click and boom! Instant information. Better yet, Wikipedia still existed, and the next thing I knew I was lost in a tangled maze of hyperlinks.

The world wasn't just strange – it was fundamentally different from anything I knew. For starters, World War II never occurred, at least not as I knew it. Hitler never rose to power, but was instead arrested for his part in the Reichstag fire and sentenced to twenty years in prison. Irwin Rommel took over instead, and even instituted many of the same military policies that helped rebuild Germany in the first place. The difference was that Rommel left out the fear and hate mongering of the Nazis, preferring to cast foreign powers as the bad guys instead of Jewish boogeymen. Thus when the Soviet Union and China kicked off the Panasian war by invading Poland and Japan, it was Rommel's Iron Legions that were the first to respond to Polish calls for aid, giving Britain and France a chance to muster their own troops. Pearl Harbor still occurred in 1942, but instead of Japanese Zeroes it was Soviet built planes and ships crewed by Chinese troops. It also didn't go as well, a consequence of the attacking fleet relying on codes that had long been broken by German and British intelligence operations. Instead of a fleet of sitting ducks lined up neatly at anchor, the Pacific fleet met their would-be killers with open arms and loaded guns. D-Day came about on April 1st, 1944, when US troops landed in Hong Kong as the European allies raced towards Moscow.

No Holocaust. Not atomic bombings. But there had been a Manhattan project.

In 1945 a combined team of American. British, German, and Japanese engineers unveiled the first nuclear reactor designed for public use. They continued to design the atom bomb alongside it, but without the lingering specters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to haunt the public's memories the bombs were seen as nothing more than extravagant, if useless, weapons. After all, what good was a city if it got turned into a glow in the dark wasteland?

No more Soviet Union meant no Cold War, and no Cold War meant no containment policy. Vietnam came and went – the French still lost and nobody cared. The North Koreans got steamrolled by the South, and the unified nation joined the Japanese and the recently rebuilt China in forming an economic powerhouse.

The 60s came, and brought the hippies with it, but without any major wars to protest they got a much warmer reception by the Establishment. Instead of the Arms Race there was the Space Race. On July 4th, 1967, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to step foot on the moon. They were joined two days later by Captains Broderick Smith and Hilda Bruin of the European Space Command, who had unfortunately been delayed by foul weather. Captains Broderick and Bruin were married later that afternoon by Colonel Sousuke Tamino of the Asian Administration of Space Exploration, who arrived shortly before Captain Broderick had begun to serve the afternoon tea. Luckily for all involved, Captain Broderick had packed a little bit extra, just in case of visitors.

Kennedy got assassinated by Cuban refugees upset about the Bay of Pigs fiasco and Nixon resigned over Watergate. A young black man by the name of Terel Simpson was murdered on the balcony of his hotel room in Birmingham, Alabama. Simpson had been a member of the Black Empowerment League, and had been assigned as the bodyguard of one Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had recently received several death threats.

The shooting served as a wake up slap to America, as several riots broke out in major cities as a response to the shooting. Dr. King and several other leaders managed to calm the violence with strict appeals to reason and justice. The trial of the shooter, one Marcus Cerreta, was the media event of the year. The case was put together by a handpicked group of investigators, who went over every detail with painstaking thoroughness. The trial was as methodic and by the book as possible, interrupted only every so often by the defendants outbursts of racist rhetoric. Several years later, Dr. King would become the first black president.

The 70s came, and they were even more radical than the 60s. The ideals of free love and brotherhood became wedded to the means of capitalism and industry. The American philosophy soon became, "Do no harm, and make a buck while you're at it." The successes of the black activists inspired a new wave of those who stood up for themselves; the public was more than welcoming, and soon all were equal under the eyes of the law. There were still a few lone nutjobs, but they were all treated as the exception, rather than the rule.

Page after fascinating page went by. Waco happened but Oklahoma City didn't. No commie menace meant no McCarthy, which translated into no Reagan. Instead Carter and Bush Sr. got extra terms. There was no Iraq or Iran, but a Persia who was good friends with Israel, as they shared a mutual interest in checking Egyptian aggression. The last bit had me sitting there shaking my head in disbelief. I made a mental note not to discuss politics with anyone for a while, as even simple mainstays such as the Republican and Democratic parties seemed alien. The head of the democrats actually was an alien – a lime green fellow with three eyes named Oxilaindilar, who had originally immigrated to the States from Venus with his parents.

"Hey, buddy, you using that?"

"Huh?" I turned around to find myself face to stomach with a beefy looking jock waiting for the computer. The name tag on his jacket read, "Yawgmoth". I glanced at the clock behind him and realized I had lost all track of time. If I didn't hurry I was going to be late to my next class. "Nah, go ahead, its all yours."

"Damned right it is," he grunted, sliding into the still warm seat. I froze for a moment, fighting the urge to make a sarcastic remark. I didn't like to let such petty insults go, but I also had no clue what I was up against. The only Yawgmoth I knew had been a dark god wannabe from a fantasy card game. Fifty – fifty shot I was dealing with either a normal pissy jock with testosterone poisoning or an eldritch horror from beyond time and space that would more than capable of melting my face with a word. I decided I liked my face right where it was, thank you, so I just muttered, "Whatever," and kept walking.

My next class was Human Sexuality, conveniently located in the same building as my Creative Writing course. The classroom itself was located all the way down in the basement, in the back corner by the boilers. Both boilers were going full blast despite the summer heat, pumping plenty of hot water up to the science labs buzzing away on the top floor. The air conditioning in the basement wasn't up to the herculean task of fighting the overflowing heat. The end result was like standing in the middle of a desert without a shred of shade to hide in, but at least it was a dry heat.

The room was packed, adding to the heat problem. Every seat in the room was occupied, leaving me nowhere to sit. There were slightly more guys than girls, and the reasons why were obvious. The outfits the girls were wearing were skimpy, even by the lax standards I had observed outside. Quite a number of people had simply decided to go without clothes altogether, their outfits rolled up and stuffed into the baskets underneath their desks. The lone holdout, unsurprisingly, was Max. She was sitting in the corner seat and still wearing her leather outfit, as if the heat didn't bother her at all. She waved me over as she slid out of her chair. "We seem to be a seat short, so you take this one."

"What about you?" I asked, taking the offered seat. I suppose it was a sign that I was getting used to the place when I wasn't at all surprised by her plopping into my lap. The thin leather she was wearing was more like a second skin than an article of clothing, and my cock began to harden as she squirmed in my lap. Her hips gyrated slowly, and it didn't take long for me to realize she wasn't trying to get comfortable, but was trying to give me a subtle lap dance. The only one who seemed to notice all the foreplay was the dark haired girl sitting next to us. She was pretending to be reading from the text book, but I could tell she was watching us out of the corner of her eyes by the way her pen had been sitting in the same place for more than two minutes. Well, if we were going to have an audience, then it was only fair that we put on a show...

Max hissed through clenched teeth as I slid an arm around her waist and began to stroke the inside of her thigh. I began at her kneecap and began working my way inward with shorter and shorter strokes, until I was just barely grazing her crotch with each pass. Her lap dance became a more insistent grinding as she bit her lip to keep from moaning out loud. Our neighbor gave up any pretense of studying and was now actively staring at us. She licked her lips and glanced around nervously, unsure if she should say something, keep watching or offer to join us. She caught my eye, but I didn't have any answers for her. This was quite possibly the most outrageous thing I had ever done, and my brain was operating on autopilot in self defense. My fingers brushed against the button holding Max's pants closed, and she tensed at the contact. I twisted open the first, then the second.

I was just reaching for the third and final button when the classroom door slammed open, letting through a stacked brunette carrying a briefcase. She was wearing a light blue button down with the sleeves rolled up and the front low enough to expose the black bikini top she was wearing in lieu of a bra Her daisy dukes did nothing to hide her long, tanned legs, a pair of sea green eyes sparkled from behind a pair of narrow glasses. She tossed her briefcase carelessly onto her desk before reaching for a red dry erase marker.

"Good afternoon boys and girls, I am Doctor Andrews," she announced, scrawling her name in huge letters across the board. "Welcome to Human Sexuality 101. Those of you who are expecting a rehash of your high school health classes should probably leave now. This also going to be a hands on course, so those who object to having a little fun should leave now. Any questions?"