Work Text:
He scrunched the blueprint into a ball and tossed it at the waste bin on the other side of his office. It missed, hitting the rim and bouncing onto the ground. Great.
That morning’s meeting had been a total shitshow. At least for Jay it was. The Administrator wanted new mechs for the field agents to make use of; apparently there had been a rather rowdy group of colourful pyjama-wearing people defying the Administration who had no issue thrashing their current mechs. With all the managers gathered around an inconveniently long meeting table, the Administrator had assigned the managers of the engineering department, scouting department, and weaponry department to this task of upgrading the designs, leaving every other department to continue business as usual.
But Jay knew he could be of use. Ever since being taken in by the Administration, he had desperately been trying to be moved to the engineering department. Instead, the Administrator had placed him in possibly the most boring and isolated department in the whole organisation and given him a fancy title of ‘manager’ to keep him satisfied.
He was not satisfied.
In his spare time (of which he had an almost infinite amount) he had been sketching blueprints of mechs and machines that quite literally came to him in dreams. He had a dozen different designs that he knew were far more efficient and practical than the clunky suits that were Administration-standard. Now would have been the perfect time to make use of them.
He grimaced as remembered the way the Administrator had immediately shot his suggestion down. Really, he only wanted one chance to prove how much better he’d do in a different department; one where he could reach his true potential.
“If you’d just give me an hour in the engineering-”
“Walker.” The Administrator growled, silencing him with ease. “This is outside of your department. Stick to your department.”
He leant back in his chair, holding his eyes closed in frustration. Slowly but surely, exhaustion started to seep through his bones. Jay didn’t bother to fight the approaching unconscious. There was no point - no one would tell him off for napping on the job anyway. Everyone of higher authority than him was too busy staying within the confines of their own departments to ever intrude upon his.
The transition from the Administration to the sleeping world was seamless. It made him wonder if he was ever really awake at all.
…
With sleep, came the machines. Feats of technology beyond anything he had ever seen.
They varied in shape and size; some were humanoid mechs while others were motorbikes, jet planes, and submarines. Only one made frequent appearances though; a striking wooden ship that soared above ground, often with a red dragon’s head in the place of the bowsprit. It was this ship that featured in this bout of sleep too.
Jay awoke from the nap with a replenished sense of purpose and, in a daze, set to transcribing the section of the ship he had seen in his dream. He had done this so many times before that it was mostly just a game of fitting the new information into his pre-existing understanding of the structure.
It went like this: the long hallway he had walked through in the dream could match almost anywhere in the current iteration of the floorplan, but the windows meant it had been positioned on the rim of the hull. Furthermore, the silhouette of an anchor he could see outside the furthest one meant that it had to be leading towards the bow of the ship. This was a strong start; it was a lot harder to work with dreams of lone rooms lacking windows, ones that he was only even sure belonged to the ship by the matching aesthetics and rocking sensation.
Jay ruffled through the papers littered across his desk, grabbing an approval-of-realm-travel-permit form that was meant to be filled out 4 months ago… It was perfect - it couldn’t be that important if he had gotten away without completing it for so long. He flipped it to face blank-side-up and grabbed one of the many pencils that had long gone blunt. They hadn’t had a good sharpening in years, unfortunately. Then, he began to sketch.
The floorplan was easy at first; three rooms along the length of the corridor and one at the end. The labels surfaced in his mind as he went through them one-by-one, though he had only entered one in his dream. Closet, meditation room, bunks, and at the far end.. the library, of which he had eye-witness testimony from his dream to support his mind’s claim. It was at this point that he realised his dream was fading from him, and he could no longer recall why he had been in the library. His scribbled transcription hastened. All he knew were the shelves piled high with scrolls and the wooden desk near the centre of the room, so that’s what he drew.
After one last stroke, he took a step back and admired his handiwork. Though something still felt off with his attempt to reconstruct the library, the floorplan was immaculate and he had never felt so sure in his work. Now, it was time for the hard part. Finding where it all fit in.
See, every time he saw the great boat in his dreams, it seemed to shift in shape and size. It was almost never consistent, and he had yet to create a complete blueprint of it for that exact reason. As he approached his cork board - likely meant to be used for appointment scheduling and to-do lists, not that he had ever been given specific instructions as to such - he considered the patchwork plan he currently had up.
There were three full floors to it; the deck, the living quarters, and the hold. It would make sense for his latest work to slot neatly into the second, and yet there was already a room of bunks labelled at the stern of the ship. Sure, there could be two rooms of bunks but… No, they didn’t need that many beds. ( How did he know how many members there were in the ship’s crew?). He must’ve confused the stern for the bow - yes, that’ll be it... And yet, the anchor would never be placed near the stern. That would be senseless; the ship would swing vastly during times of storm or rough tide.
“GAHH!!” He groaned, slamming the bottom of his palms into his eyes. “This doesn’t make any sense!” And that was the issue, wasn’t it? He wanted so desperately to believe that his dreams were proof of a life before the Administration, but none of it ever fit together. Dreams of a flying sea vessel that never stayed consistent. Dreams of losing his eye, proven false by the fact that he had two very functional eyes. Dreams of family that he should’ve known weren’t real when he first woke up alone and injured in an endless desert. As far as he knew, no one had ever come searching for him.
He sat back in his chair, staring up at the corkboard covered with mechs and cars and bikes and jets and that ever-shifting ship , and he felt something snap inside him. Some horrible disease emerged from behind his lungs, snaking through his ribs, seeping down his arms and into his fists. He stood up, hands shaking, and reached towards the centre blueprint. It stared back at him defiantly, but that only fueled his rage. He grabbed the edge of the paper in his right hand, and, with it clenched in his fist, he pulled .
Thumbtacks and post-it notes fell like debris as the many modifications he had made to the boat’s design came loose from the board. The sound of paper tearing released a little of the anger that was blocking his breath. It felt good . He reached forwards again and again, pulling and tearing and ripping and shredding. This amalgamation of dreams, this bastardisation of the engineering department’s work… It was the very thing that plagued him every time he woke from an afternoon nap, looming over his shoulder and infesting his brain in a manner he could only describe as parasitic. It had been haunting him for so long and he hadn’t realised the burden it was placing on him until he was here, exorcising it with nothing but his own two hands. He wanted it gone.
Catharsis made the destruction pass in a blur.
When at last the corkboard was clean of any trace of paper, he slumped against the wall, panting. From a glance at the ground, he found the office floor covered in a mess of now-unintelligible work, but it didn’t matter right now. Jay could finally breathe properly and was taking deep shuddering mouthfuls of air that reached the bottom of his lungs and cleansed his brain. For a few invigorating moments, he stood the lone victor in the centre of the battlefield, admiring his handiwork. Then, he began to sob.
Understanding of what he had just done dawned on him, realisation dissipating his hazy satisfaction like mist under the morning sun. Years of work dedicated to plotting the small parts of his past he was privy to… All gone. At his hands, no less. He had ruined everything.
The Administrator was right , he thought, and he stumbled to grab fistfuls of rubbish. Vicious desire to hide his mistakes fueled him as he crammed all he could into the mesh waste bin in the corner of his office. He should stick to his department next time .
A sense of overwhelming self-hatred accompanied his cleaning task. Disdain for his idiocy, impatience, and impulsiveness was evident in each tensed muscle and every sharp movement.
When the floor was mostly clean, or at least clear of the larger pieces of paper (though some smaller shreds were now making themselves at home in his carpet), Jay fell back into his chair. It spun under his momentum, slamming his calf on the leg of his desk. He scrambled back to cradle his leg and winced in pain. For an incomprehensible amount of time, he just sat there, hugging his leg and looking pathetic.
It wasn’t like there was much else to do. Sure he was tired, but he didn’t want to risk going back to sleep and again seeing the same ship he had just committed blasphemy against. Instead, he dragged his gaze across the room, hoping for a distraction from his shame that didn’t need to be filled in triplicate. He paused, eyes focusing on the space just before him.
The top drawer of his desk had been knocked slightly open.
Jay almost always left it shut, hoping to shield its contents from the monotonous and often unforgiving Administration, but a sliver of the interior was now visible. He glanced over the teardrop-shaped ceramic inside with a sickening sense of guilt.
It occurred to him that, if it had been in his sight in his moment of rage, he likely would have destroyed it too. The very idea left a pit in his stomach like nothing else, and he lurched forwards to slam the drawer shut. It felt like even looking at the ornament was sacrilegious, as if his gaze alone would ruin the only thing left from his past.
Dread overwhelmed him again and he abruptly stood up. He resigned himself to pacing the length of his office five times over. Then, he buried his face in his hands. “Fuck.” He said, and even that felt tainting of his past self in some way. “I hate this.”
Utterly out of tune with his mental breakdown, the fax machine in the corner whirred to life. When Jay glanced at it, he recognised the document it was printing as an approval-of-realm-travel-permit form. Along with it, a second sheet appeared with only one line of text.
It’s time to get back to work.