Interesting, I think, considering how many people have it as part of their daily lives.

“Anyway, I realized where I was pretty fast,” he says, swigging again. “Found a way out, but then I saw those demon things. They were surrounding the building, like a barricade. Twisted little fuckers.”

“Yeah. A lot of them had faces of the people I grew up with.”

He shudders. “I fought my way through them but it wasn’t pretty. Then the drug hit me pretty hard, and I saw all the people I wouldn’t mind dead. That took a while as well.” He drains the drink.

“Wait, so you affected the Vervescape too?”

He stops at that. “I guess I did.”

“You’re a lucid dreamer, then, or you could become one.” I set down my glass with a clunk. “If you can lucid dream, you don’t need me.” Can I quit? Can I stop this before it’s really begun? The hope is painful.

“I’m untrained, and I can’t do what you can. I couldn’t get rid of these ones. It seemed like they almost killed me. I ended up having to kill them all. Cut them to pieces.”

I swallow.

“Most of the people I saw deserved it. A few have been put in jail and then quietly locked up in stasis. Doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wish I could have had the honor of actually killing them myself.”

“Everyone has a darker side,” I whisper, echoing his earlier words.

“That they do. Still, the shared dream should have worked better, even if it was Verve. I should have appeared right with you. I should have guessed that she’d be so strong. She was raised in the Hearth too.”

“When she was there, the Meditation stuff wasn’t as common,” I say, almost distantly.

“Really?” Nazarin leans forward, interested. “When did it really start?”

I stare off, remembering. “Maybe a year or two before Mia left, so like … fifteen years ago now? Mana-ma became obsessed with the idea that we could all become one, and when we did, that’s when God would speak to her even more clearly. So we trained. Before that, it was more Meditation to clear the mind, not to try and impact anything. But maybe that still gave Mia a foundation to start being able to control the Vervescape.”

“And did it work, this Meditation?”

“It did. By the end, we could take a pill and connect into one large shared dream world populated by every member of the Hearth.”

Nazarin’s mouth falls open, almost comically. “What was the drug?”

“I don’t know. Mana-ma kept her secrets. Maybe it was God, after all.” My voice drips with sarcasm.

Nazarin’s forehead furrows as he turns over this new piece of information. I’m sure he’ll follow it up with the SFPD, but I have a question of my own.