"I'll anchor for him first," Chris says, "so you can get your first look at the dream world without having to anchor at the same time."

The headset he hands Sasha is connected to a computer; it covers Sasha's eyes and ears, and has a microphone for him to speak into. Chris puts his headset on.

Sasha takes the headset and, after examining it for a moment, puts it on. 

The dream world flickers grey and vast for a moment, and then — 

— the dream world is very bright, with harsh shadows and harsh light, and very sharp, with no soft things and very few curves, and very small and never enough air. 

A woman is tied upside down, a peaceful expression on her face; she spins gentle in the air. A naked man is shoved to his knees in front of another man in leather pants, while a third prepares to take him from behind. A man bleeds from a dozen cuts on his back and chest and thighs; his dick is hard. The air is filled with the cracks of whips and moans and the sound of flesh slapping against flesh. 

The cracks are magnified; sounds are warped, here, made sharper. 

Marlo's anima does not, in fact, look particularly like a robot. It looks more than anything like a suit of armor, golden metal with intricate detailing that catches the harsh light. 

Sasha's headset puts information on his visual field. Chris talks him through what the symbols mean. This one means that Marlo's anima is undamaged. This one means that there aren't any aliens near them. Here is the list of mission goals (it currently says "ANCHOR TRAINING", with various subgoals) and this is how he marks a mission goal complete. 

He commits his notes to memory and practices marking mission goals complete and then unmarking them. 

And eventually Chris says, "Well, you're as ready as you'll ever be."

Sasha nods, and takes off his headset, and puts on the one that Chris was wearing before. 

The dream world flickers — the people having kinky sex vanish; the shadows are just as harsh but the light is greyer. The spaces are very large, or maybe Sasha is very small; they don't feel any less like they're about to cave in. 

There are no soft things, no plants, no life. The only sound is the wind, and Sasha's heartbeat in his ears. There must have been life here once, because they left enormous structures behind, but they certainly aren't here anymore. 

Sasha reaches out to take Marlo's hand, then realizes he can't touch anything here. "Hey," he says into the microphone. 

"Hey." 

His voice is very, very soft. 

"I can't hold your hand here but if I could I would be." 

"I know." He's still soft but he sounds — more relaxed, now. "Your dream world is big." 

"And the light in it doesn't hurt. — I've got you." You're not alone. Physical contact would be a better way to say it but this is what Sasha's got. 

"Yeah," and Sasha can hear the smile in Marlo's voice. "You've got me. And I've got you." 

Chris's voice crackles. "Sasha, you'll have to help him create his anima. Imagine-- protecting him, keeping him safe, wanting him to be okay--"

Yes. Okay, he can do that, that's — 

— he imagines Marlo smiling, not the too-tight nervous smile he wears most of the time but the real one, imagines him with his eyes closed and his head tilted back — imagines holding him while he sleeps, imagines playing with his hair — imagines a world where Marlo's usual smile isn't nervous and too tight — and — this is what he does — loves him. 

The armor forms around him, shadows turning themselves into bronze; it still catches what light there is, but — the light isn't so bright, in this dream world. It isn't blinding. 

"Good," Chris says, "it's a good sign you did it on your first try. Now you're going to try guiding him."  

The next mission objective says: "GO TO THE FRONT OF EROS."

"Okay. — First you're going to go to the other end of this hall, and then you're going to open the double doors —" This takes a moment; they're big, and Marlo is by comparison very small.

"And this is the atrium." Eros does not have an atrium. He thinks. Sasha is not actually one hundred percent sure what an atrium is, but he's very sure that the word for this room is 'atrium.' "Go that way, away from the — light source," because it isn't the sun, "and then turn left, and then a right, and then — that door looks heavy but it's through there —" 

This is... not the front of Eros. This is not actually any part of Eros but when Sasha asks the part of his brain that was very sure that the word was atrium it is equally sure that this is not the front of Eros. "Okay, so we're going around. Just keep turning left," it's left for mazes, isn't it? "and stay by the wall until you get to the front." 

"You're doing well," Chris says, "you have a knack for it." 

Sasha is pretty sure that 'a knack' is not what you call it when the person you're guiding has made five 90 degree turns and has not yet passed the front of Eros, but there doesn't seem to be another thing to do, until Marlo turns left a sixth time — isn't raising an eyebrow, doesn't look skeptical at all, but then it's Marlo so who can tell — and there it is, something that, while it doesn't actually look very much like Lake Eerie Correctional Facility at all, is very much the front of Eros. 

"Good," he says. "That's one way to move Marlo. The other way is teleportation. You can shift Marlo to dream, hm, let's go to Japan. You want to try to tell the dream world that it is Japan, and it will shift."

This feels like the kind of thing that Gwen would be really, really good at, and that he is really, really bad at. Sasha closes his eyes. 

Okay. He's going to go to Japan now. In fact, he is already in Japan now. — he is not in Japan. He is in front of Eros, which might be in the United States and which might be in Canada, he's not sure. But he's going to Japan. He's going to Japan right now. 

He opens his eyes. He is not in Japan. 

"How do I... do that." 

"Try thinking about what you think Dream Japan would look like, what features it would have."

That might work better if I knew literally anything about Japan, he does not say. He tries it, mostly thinking about half-remembered Pokemon games, and.... is still in front of Eros. 

Okay. New plan. What is the least Japan-like place he can think of. — Mexico. He is not going to question why his brain spat out Mexico, that's a question for later. That's where he's going right now. He's going to open his eyes and then he is going to be in Mexico, where they have beaches and staircase-shaped pyramids and art made out of colorful cut tissue paper and lots of skeletons, and — 

He opens his eyes and he's in Japan. 

"...I have no idea why that worked but you know what, solid."