Inside Blackstone Tower, in the penthouse nerve center located deep within the upper reaches of the skyscraper, Gabriel Benicolustro’s eyes flickered across the internal data on his Lucid as it synced with the output from Adam’s clone pod monitors. Everything was within normal parameters, and all the levels remained in safe zones.
There had been a minor flurry of activity recorded from Adam’s brainstem and the body had twitched in response, but Gabe knew it to be nothing unusual. Occasionally, the clone dreamed on his own accord, consolidating Arthur’s memories as Adam’s own. On certain late nights, Gabe felt powerful urges to bring the neuro-clone out of slumber and ask it questions about what it was experiencing, hoping to glean some insight into how souls were created, but he resisted, concerned about what impact his words might have on the carefully curated interior landscape of Adam’s mind. Thinking about Adam’s dreams reminded him of a ritual his grandfather had taken him to as a young boy in Queens.
It had been a gathering of Achuar in the back room of an herbalist shop in Flushing, which Gabe’s second cousin had taken over from a retiring Chinese gentleman. The backroom was bare, and a group of Gabe’s male relatives would sit on the floor in a circle at breakfast time, sharing hard rolls of bread and somewhat mealy pears. After breakfast, Gabe’s great-uncle explained that the Achuar were known as the Dream People, as he passed around an infusion of herbs known as wayús. Even though the horn of greenish, leafy goo smelled awful, Gabe took a sip from the narrow end and passed it to a cousin.
