“You’re out of your mind.”
“Maybe I am,” Dr. Aisling Denton retorted, watching the Dreamwater inch toward the top of the large, cylindrical upright tank. It was a vast improvement over the sensory tanks of Old Terra, she reflected, as cool air circulating from a nearby vent sent a chill breeze her way. The biometric suit she had donned to enter the vat would maintain her temperature and monitor her vital signs. Out here in the hallway between tanks, though, it did not offer near enough protection. “That doesn’t change the fact that this has to be done.”
“Dammit, Ais…!”
“John!” she retorted, spinning around.
It hurt to look at her older brother’s face, to see the anger and fear that burned there. John Edwards knew the stories of women who had drifted off and died, or whose bodies and minds had changed too fast to adapt, after their sporadic immersion in Dreamwater just as well as she did. Dreamwater – the liquified form of Dream Crystals, a two-edged medical treasure seeded throughout the Milky Way – had properties that they still didn’t fully understand centuries after the first explorers from Old Terra discovered it.
When humans were immersed in Dreamwater for short periods of time or took it in small doses, they changed. Men became stronger, faster, and more durable. Women, while they could not be submerged in the water, developed psychic powers when they injected it into their veins. Known as Dreamsingers, any children such women had – whether they were male or female – possessed the best of both worlds; they were often psychic and had physical faculties well above human average.
The danger inherent in submerging themselves in vats of Dreamwater had not stopped some women from trying to increase their physical as well as mental capacities, however. Aisling had known a couple of those women, both of whom had taken their unborn children with them when they died in their tanks, which only made the tragedy worse. Bad enough having to clean human blood out of a Dreamwater tank; having to clean up the blood of two people, one of whom hadn’t even had a chance to breathe before being unceremoniously forced into the world by his or her mother’s convulsing, warping body…
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