Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

43

Okay, here's a knotty little question: If you're dreaming that you're tied up by mad scientists in a secret experimental facility, and then you fall asleep and start dreaming, are you really dreaming?

Which one is the dream?

Which one counts?

How can you tell?

I'd been torturing myself with these pointless circular conundrums all day. Which raises another question: If I'm torturing my own brain by trying to figure stuff out, does that still count as Them torturing me? Because they caused the whole situation to happen?

At any rate, at some point I must have "fallen asleep," because at some point, a hand shaking my shoulder made me streak back to "consciousness."

As always, I leaped into wakefulness on full alert, automatically trying to assume a battle position. Pretty much impossible when you're all strapped down.

I see perfectly in the dark, and it took only a split second to register the familiar hulking bad news leaning over my bed.

"Ari!" I whispered almost silently.

"Hi, Max," Ari said, and for the first time in a long time, he didn't look that mental. I mean, every time I'd seen this poor screwup in the last couple months, he'd looked more and more as if he were standing on the edge of insanity with one foot on a banana peel.

But now he looked-well, not anything close to normal, but at least all the frothing at the mouth had stopped.

I waited for the first volley of venom.

But Ari had no snide remarks, no taunts, no threats. Instead he undid one of my arms, then pulled it down and strapped it to the arm of a wheelchair.

Hmm. Could I still fly if I was strapped into a wheelchair? I thought maybe I could. I guessed we would find out. In fact, if I could get some serious speed going on this thing, it might lend a significant boost to an exciting takeoff.

I sat down in the chair, and Ari strapped my ankle to the post by the front wheel. Just as I was tensing to make a break, he whispered, "They made this chair with lead bars. It weighs about a hundred an' seventy-five pounds."

Crap. Even though I was really tall for my age, I weighed barely a hundred pounds because of all the avian modifications to my bones and stuff. And the fact that I could almost never get enough food. So even though I was really, really strong, there was no way I could get a wheelchair that heavy off the ground.

I looked at Ari with loathing. "What now, big guy? You taking me to your leader?"

He didn't rise to the bait. "Just thought I'd show you around a bit, that's all, Max."