For several weeks the boy’s dreams had featured the end of the world in seething acid smoke and rivers of blood. This was worse. Since their exalted station and devotion to the shadowy arts of the Mountain Leopard Temple precluded a typical formal education, the boys received the majority of their curriculum via a hypnotic Dreamtime program. This program, designed by their great grandfather Atticus Tooms, involved oversized headsets and type X red crystal technology. Upon retiring for the night, on went the headsets. Into one ear streamed an ultra-high frequency transmission of history, great works of literature, and philosophy. Into the other went mathematics, science, and Sword Enterprises corporate propaganda. Neural pathways cored through the lads’ developing gray matter and instigated phantasmagorical dream states. Mac said that despite headaches, earbleeds, and night terrors, it beat sitting in a classroom all the livelong day. In this particular nightmare, Dred reverted to his six year old self, clad in Babar the Elephant pajamas and lost in a wood steaming with magenta mist.
